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Holt Ware becomes Design Director at GM-PATAC

Holt Ware has been appointed to design director at GM's Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center (PATAC) joint venture in Shanghai, China. He replaces Friedhelm Engler who has since relocated to Germany to lead the Advanced Design Studio, a position vacated by Anthony Lo earlier this year. Ware's new role at GM-PATAC puts him in charge of designers and modelers working in China's leading automotive engineering and design facility.

General Motors will prep plants in 2012 for next-generation pickups

General Motors will begin retooling assembly plants next year to build the next generation of its full-sized pickups, GM's U.S. sales chief Don Johnson said. "We have some scheduled plant downtime in 2012 as we convert to the next generation of our pickups," he said.

GM to slash global vehicle platforms by more than half, to 14, by 2018

General Motors says it will cut the number of vehicle platforms it uses globally by more than half over the next decade, in a bid to reduce complexity and save on product-development costs. “More of our components will be common, and more of our vehicles will be on global architectures,” GM CEO Dan Akerson told analysts on Tuesday. His remarks came as GM kicked off a series of presentations online, billed as its 2011 Global Business Conference.