GM = Genius Management? No.

According to BusinessWeek, GM has delayed the launch of the Chevy Cruze, the car I wrote about previously that's GM's best hope in the U.S. small car market, to 2011. This is the car that GM needs now, could have had next Spring, and instead won't have until 2011, assuming that the company is still in business by then. Instead, they'll put all their resources into the wildly overpriced Chevy Volt, which was always considered to be a "halo" car that was more about image than sales. In other words, exactly the wrong investment when the company needs sales. The next-generation Chevy Malibu, which is one of GM's few successful cars, will also be delayed by six months, into 2013.

Even when you're battening down the hatches, you still have to invest to insure that you've got competitive products to sell. Otherwise, bankruptcy, the word that GM executives dare not utter, makes more sense than the other alternatives. The Chevy Cobalt, GM's current small car flagship in the U.S. market, is already outdated, and keeping in in the market until 2011 as a placeholder while competitors continue to introduce new models isn't a strategy, it's surrender.

Update, October 30th: Hey kids, you know that Cruze that you won't be able to get until 2011? Well, GM is selling it in South Korea right now, as the Daewoo Lacetti Premiere! That's right, South Korea, the market that has hardly any small, fuel-efficient cars, so GM needed to focus all its attention there. I have no idea what they were thinking.