Recruited Back From Toyota : New Chevy Boss Shows GM’s Desire to Change
Ever since the Japanese became a major force in the American car market, they have relied heavily on refugees from Detroit’s Big Three to help run their U.S. sales and manufacturing operations.
It has usually been a one-way street, however; few of those American executives ever have had the opportunity--or the inclination--to return to General Motors, Ford or Chrysler.
GM, in particular, is known for placing such a premium on loyalty that it has been almost impossible for defectors to come back to the fold--and never at a top position.
But every rule was made to be broken, and Jim Perkins has done it at GM.
Not only has he just come back from Toyota Motor Corp., where he was running Toyota’s new Lexus luxury car operation, but he has done so in a big way. He was hired back to run Warren-based Chevrolet, GM’s biggest--and perhaps its most troubled--passenger car division. As such, he has become the first person wooed back from a Japanese car maker to a top-level executive position at GM.
In fact, the return of the 54-year-old Perkins seems to mark a significant turning point for GM, a recognition--finally--that the world’s largest auto maker has to change its ways.
Perkins’ return “says something that GM has never really said before--that GM can learn from someone with outside experience,” says Tom O’Grady, a former GM official and now president of Integrated Automotive Resources, a Wayne, Pa., automotive market research firm.
And nowhere does GM need more of a shake-up than at Chevrolet.
No longer the pre-eminent marketer of basic transportation for the American family, Chevy today is a car company that has lost its way, mirroring the greater malaise affecting its parent company.
“It’s critical that Chevrolet turn back to being Chevy, offering basic transportation--with home-grown, American cars,” says Jim Wangers, president of Warren-based Automotive Marketing Consultants. “Right now, they aren’t doing that.”
As a result, in the past five years, Chevy’s share of the passenger car market has steadily declined, from over 15% to below 14%; in 1988, it sold 100,000 fewer cars than it did in 1984. Now it has even lost its traditional standing as the nation’s best-selling car line to its archrival, the Ford division of Ford.
So Perkins is taking over a division badly in need of a new identity--and more interesting products.
Perkins is, of course, no miracle worker and won’t be able to turn Chevy around very quickly. In fact, he now talks up Chevy’s products, arguing, for example, that Chevy continues to do well in trucks and that the new Chevy Lumina sedan is on the verge of becoming a big hit in the marketplace.
But most industry observers agree that Perkins recognizes the need for change at Chevy and that he is well suited to the task--if GM gives him the freedom and flexibility to do what’s needed.
A Texan who joined GM in 1960 in Chevrolet’s Dallas sales office and rose to general sales manager for Buick, Perkins was a GM lifer when he was recruited by Toyota in 1984.
Perkins had spent most of his GM career in Chevy’s marketing and sales operations around the country and eventually became known as an expert at working with Chevy’s huge network of retail dealers.
Built Dealer Network
At Toyota, that knowledge of the retail end of the car business led him to take over the creation of the new Lexus division, a job that mainly involved building a dealer network from scratch.
But just as Lexus was about to get off the ground, GM recruited Perkins--who had always kept in touch with friends at GM--to take over Chevy from Robert Burger, an old-line GM sales executive who was ready to retire. So in January, Perkins came back as Chevy’s assistant general manager, taking over as general manager when Burger retired in May.
For his part, Perkins insists that he hasn’t come back to turn Chevy Japanese. “I don’t think GM was waiting for Jim Perkins to come and tell them how to improve quality,” Perkins says.
Indeed, he adds that he has been “pleasantly surprised” by how much GM changed for the better while he was gone. “GM is much more product-driven now than it was when I left, and we now have much shorter lines of reporting and communications. Now general managers of the car divisions can meet directly with (GM Chairman Roger B.) Smith.”
Still, he does add that he has learned a few things from the Japanese that should help at GM. For instance, he cites the willingness of top managers to really listen and try to get everyone in an organization to feel involved.
But he also suggests that managerial life for an American inside a Japanese company has plenty of drawbacks as well and that he wouldn’t want to transplant all of that environment to GM.
“You’ll never see the day that GM emulates Toyota, nor should it,” Perkins says.
Perkins, who insists that he never personally had a problem working for a Japanese company, said many Americans find it quite frustrating.
“They were great to me, but there are people who can’t be comfortable in that Japanese environment,” says Perkins. “The truth is that American managers in Japanese companies find themselves just carrying out the mission that the Japanese establish, and that’s a difficult thing for some managers.
“You also have to work very hard to gain their (the Japanese people’s) trust, and you can lose that trust with one false move,” Perkins adds. “That can leave you on the edge of your seat.
“There are such huge cultural differences,” he notes, “that it is doubtful we could ever be like them.”
FORD VS. CHEVY YEAR TO DATE, 1989: Ford cars: 801,312 Light trucks: 760,806 Chevy cars: 733,007 Light trucks: 663,898
