GM axes performance division

[Jeff Lee]

So long SS, CTS-V
Cadillac’s world-beating high-performance V-series CTS and STS as well as the spirited Chevrolet Cobalt SS and HHR SS are no more — all casualties of GM’s restructuring to help slow the global automaker’s downward spiral.

On Wednesday, GM pulled the plug on its High Performance Vehicle Operations in Detroit which produced the aforementioned shining stars in the company’s lineup. Workers employed at the division were reassigned to other areas of the company.

“All high-performance projects are on indefinite hold,” GM spokesman Vince Muniga told the auto trade publication Automotive News. “The engineers are moving into different areas of the organization, and they will work on Cadillacs, Buicks, Chevrolets and Pontiacs.” On Tuesday, the foundering automaker submitted its viability plan to the U.S. Treasury Department. That plan calls for as much as $30 billion from taxpayers by 2011; meanwhile, the company says it will cut 47,000 jobs, shutter five more of its plants in the U.S. and jettison Hummer, Saab and Saturn either by selling them off or phasing them out as it did Oldsmobile. What about Pontiac? Well, it won’t be John Z.’s Pontiac ever again, that’s for sure. The whole plan is here.
- By Mike McNessor
Hemmings online 02/19/2009