Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 10, 1993 TAG: 9301080187
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DORON P. LEVIN THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: DETROIT LENGTH: Long
GM STAUNCHLY RESISTS THE TREND TO THE ONE-KEY AUTOMOBILES
Standing in the dark next to a locked Buick Park Avenue, arms filled with packages, a shopper inserts the key in the door; it won't turn. A package falls. The door opens on a second try, but the key fails to turn in the ignition because it has been inserted upside down.In the mid-1970s, Toyota Motor Corp. followed by other Japanese automakers, introduced a way to prevent this annoyance: a single key, insertable in either direction, that unlocks the ignition, door, trunk and glove compartment.
While Ford Motor Co. still issues a separate key for the trunk of most models, for security reasons, most automotive engineers today agree that the single, multipurpose car key is a blindingly obvious, inexpensive and low-tech innovation that in retrospect probably should have come earlier. But 15 years after single keys were introduced, General Motors Corp. has yet to adopt the idea and is not even considering it.
Despite research that shows that customers prefer a single key, GM issues one key that operates the doors and trunk, and a second key for the ignition. Only GM's Saturn brand, which accounts for 6 percent of the 3 million cars GM sells in the United States each year and operates autonomously from its parent, has switched to one key.
It is not the first time GM has resisted innovations. The automaker was behind the pack in bringing out advanced engines and transmissions. It also fought against seatbelts in the 1950s and air bags in the 1980s.
And some marketing experts and analysts say this aversion to innovation, even in the face of consumer demands, is a big reason that customers have defected over the years from the nation's No. 1 automaker.
"It's hard to fathom what goes on in that company when it comes to decision making," said Brian O'Neill, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a non-profit research group. "The decision to go slow on air bags definitely hurts them now."
Several senior GM executives interviewed say the automaker has not changed to a single key because two keys better prevent dishonest parking attendants from opening the trunk. But a single key also was made impossible by an anti-theft feature GM introduced in the 1980s to cut down on a wave of GM vehicle thefts. Ignition keys are imbedded with a chip that electronically enables the ignition to work, but complicates the adaption of a GM ignition key to fit a door or trunk. Moreover, the protruding chip makes it far more difficult to engineer the key so it can be inserted in either direction.
To cut through some of the inconvenience of multiple keys, GM, like most automakers, now offers a remote door opener for an additional $135 on 30 of its 65 car and truck models.
One automotive engineer who spoke on the condition of anonymity theorized that regardless of that technical problem, shifting to a single key would have been an operational nightmare at GM. The company manufactures all of its steering columns at a factory in Saginaw, Mich., and prefers to ship them to assembly plants with keys already in the ignition. This practice makes it somewhat difficult to match ignition keys and door keys.
GM's "whole system has been geared to produce conservative, cost-conscious decisions," said O'Neill of the safety group. "They'll tell you saving a nickel a car adds up to a lot of money - maybe their key system is a holdover from that."
Yet the tiny Saturn division, whose mandate was to lure customers from Japanese brands, adopted one key after testing everything its competitors were doing to see what innovations customers liked. "It's not black magic," said Paul Young, manager of Saturn product planning.
Best of all, Young said, one key costs less. Chrysler, when it switched to one key for all its vehicles in 1990, also discovered that its costs actually declined, said Robert Dynes, executive engineer.
GM executives have said they wish to learn from Saturn. But Young, a 31-year GM employee, gave a reason that they did not follow Saturn's lead in this case: "Why doesn't GM go to one key? It's because they always had two keys. I don't know."
Business scholars and marketing experts fault GM for failing to compare what competitors already offer against what it does. "I'd like to know the last time a GM exec walked around in the street and talked to ordinary customers," said Paul Strebel, a professor of business administration in Lausanne, Switzerland.
For decades, General Motors was regarded as a leader in technology and the first to incorporate inventions like safety glass and the air bag into its vehicles. With far more sales than any other automaker, GM virtually ignored competitors' models, sticking to the view that its own inventions and research from its own laboratories were what had made it No. 1. Its consumer research was aimed mostly at customers who already owned GM vehicles, so the company unwittingly insulated itself from criticism that its models did not stack up.
GM was the first to offer an air bag as a $600 option during the 1970s, but decided that too few of its customers were willing to pay for it. So the company canceled air bags until federal law forced the issue in the late 1980s.
In the early 1980s, as Japanese automakers chipped away at GM's dominance, it became clear that Toyota, Honda and others were benefiting from firsthand observations of how people used vehicles. Product planners for Japanese automakers, for instance, might stake out shopping centers and then design a station wagon tailgate that is easy to open with packages in one's arms.
For drivers who fear a dishonest parking attendant might open their trunk, Toyota and others have introduced one key that opens every lock and the ignition, and a second - to be given to a parking attendant - that works on everything except the trunk. Saturn, Young said, is working on a separate "lock-out" feature that would protect the trunk from theft but would not require a separate key.