According to the established definition, ‘pundit' is a Hindi word used to describe the ‘native surveyors who explored regions to the north of India for the British Empire.' However, an earlier version of pundit was in part used to describe sage interpreters of the signs of the future.

Later, the word migrated into the world's technical lexicon and a century and a half later, although its meaning still retains some of the original flavors, pundit has evolved into being a more complex term, generally describing a person capable of both - ‘surveying' his/her area of expertise combined with the ability to ‘see' the future, and most importantly, having the ability to explain it all in an easy, lay language.

Tough act, needless to say, especially if one has to advise on the complex future of Canada's automotive sector.

During the Canadian International Auto Show, we had the chance to talk to two of the most respected Canadian auto analysts - Mr. Dennis DesRosiers of Richmond Hill-based DesRosiers Automotive Consultants and Mr. Richard Cooper, Executive Director - J.D. Power Canada.

Here is a brief of our discussions, regarding the immediate future of Canada's automotive sector:

Last week, GM posted an impressive loss - US $38.7 billion and although it was largely due to a third-quarter charge related to tax credits, is still an impressive number. What are the repercussions for GM's operations?

Dennis DesRosiers:
GM has been going through a variety of phases to become the new GM. It looks like right now they're at the final end of their restructuring stage - and this is where all the negatives are happening. They still need to go through their economics - like getting the wages down, but now they're emerging out of the ‘bad news story' phase, and we'll see as this year progresses into next, they'll be morphing into the next - the ‘better news story' phase. We're already starting to see snippets of it, such as specific products that they're introducing, plants that are going to be kept open, and of course, the reinvestments. They're exiting the first two phases - which are the relatively negative ones and entering the third - a much more positive one.
I'm not concerned about the GM announcements - they're expected, its part of the game. The issue is that we spin things so much in this industry that sometimes we get carried away and we start believing in the spin itself...

Richard Cooper:
I don't' think that GM's final result was a total surprise given the Q4 results - they've been working on cutting their costs and regaining market share and producing new, good products - like the new Malibu or the Buick Enclave and other products. We believe that the future looks strong for GM -especially as they now have a strong management in place. The main issue is that the industry doesn't stay the same and even as they're going through this entire process of restructuring, the industry keeps moving ahead and it gets more and more competitive ... Our outlook for GM is positive - we don't think that the recent announcement is major issue for GM in the longer term, and certainly when we're looking at GM on a global basis, it's a very strong company.