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Auto industry rivals GM and Ford have steered their decades-long feud into cyberspace. So, which one is winning the Web battle? By Steve Ulfelder
A MUSTANG. A CAMARO. A 2 a.m. stoplight. No cops anywhere.
Ford Motor Co.'s global e-commerce unit and e-GM, General Motors Corp.'s new online division, inherit a fight that goes back 92 years. The field of battle is the so-called information superhighway. The stakes? Mark Hogan, e-GM president, says: "GM will become e-GM." He pauses. "No, that's not it: GM will become GM.com."
Ford and GM have absolutely hurled themselves into the business of selling cars online. Their lists of deals, alignments and relationships is dizzying. Ford/Yahoo Inc., GM/America Online Inc. Ford buys into Microsoft Corp.'s CarPoint. GM cuts a deal with NetZero Inc., a provider of free Internet access in Westlake Village, Calif. Ford creates Auto-xchange, an online procurement system, with Oracle Corp. Hours later, GM announces it has teamed with Commerce One Inc. to create a similar system.
(There's a deal that Ford and GM are doing together, along with the third member of the Big Three, DaimlerChrysler. The automakers last month unveiled plans to join forces on a common Internet automotive trade exchange that will offer procurement transactions for the Big Three, other automakers and their extensive supply chains.)
At first glance, GM and Ford's deals look scattershot. When discussing online business, they speak of new sales channels in one breath, in-car Internet access in the next and back-end supplier partnerships in the next. Colossal strategy? Or are the companies making it up as they go along, unable to prioritize or even distinguish among the opportunities?
In looking at GM's and Ford's Internet-related gambits, it's not unreasonable to ask: What the hell is going on here?
But that's the second-most important question. The most important question, as anybody who ever blipped the throttle at a traffic light could tell you, is: Who's winning?
We look at three critical areas - the people in charge, the progress toward a Dell Computer Corp.-style build-toorder model and possible confusion in the sales channel and see which company could peel out to an early lead in the race to shorten delivery times, enhance (or replace? More on that later.) the car-buying...