Nissan's chief design guru Shiro Nakamura knows GM pretty well from his time at Isuzu during the GM-Isuzu Alliance of the 1980's. So when Shiro speaketh on the issue of the General, we try and listen. It seems Shiro had something to say at the opening of a new Nissan facility in Japan today. Shiro was very outspoken in his belief GM has "a lack of customer-orientation," and that, more than anything, is what's led the automotive titan to it's current situation. Well, you may be asking yourself...self, why is this important? It's important cause it reflects a potential killer in any auto company, especially one under seige, an insular hunker-down and bunkered approach to external criticism. Now you may be askin' yourself...self, why's this bad? It's bad cause if you can't listen to your customers telling you what they like, you certainly aint listenin' when they're telling ya what they don't like. And that is probably a bad thing to do when you're like, designing cars for them and stuff.
Nissan's top designer says GM lost touch with customers [Detroit News]
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More on Nissan [internal]