MELBOURNE, Australia -- General Motors' decision to cancel North American plans for rear-drive premium vehicles means a diminished status for Australia in GM's global product pipeline.

In January, GM assigned Holden, its Australian subsidiary, as its global engineering center for its rwd platform, or Zeta architecture. GM also named Gene Stefanyshyn as Zeta's chief engineer.

But GM insiders say Stefanyshyn, the vehicle line executive for GM's Epsilon fwd mid-sized car architecture used in the Chevrolet Malibu and other cars, never moved to Australia, and his future in the Zeta program is unknown.

"We don't know the implications for Gene or his role as a VLE," a GM spokesman says.

Last week, GM Vice Chairman Robert Lutz told employees in an e-mail that the current business climate forced a stoppage of Zeta's use in North America. Engineers and designers now will switch their emphasis to pulling forward GM's full-sized trucks and SUVs.

The news seemed to catch Holden off guard.

Holding pattern

On March 3, Holden Chairman Denny Mooney told Automotive News he was greatly anticipating Stefanyshyn's arrival in Australia.

Tony Stolfo, Holden's design director, said the next generation of Zeta essentially was in a holding pattern waiting for Stefanyshyn's direction.

"We're just waiting for Gene. When he gets here, he'll set the direction," Stolfo admitted.

GM executives had weighed the decision to stop Zeta for "about a month," one GM insider says.

GM had planned to use the architecture as the basis for products that were scheduled to launch in North America in 2008 as sedans, sport wagons and coupes.

Lutz told employees the decision does not mean GM has canceled plans to build rear-drive vehicles altogether.

Mooney admitted "there is a lot of technical interaction on how we do our rear-wheel drive and how they do it," he said. Over time, Mooney said, there could be more sharing between Australia and the United States.

GM has invested heavily in developing Holden's engineering and design facilities in Port Melbourne, adding a $6 million virtual design room, one of only a handful of virtual design studios in the world.

Holden design executives work daily in the design studios, collaborating with counterparts in Warren, Mich.

Design reviews

Mooney said he has met at least quarterly with Lutz on design reviews.

"I'm going to say it probably is going accelerate," Mooney said.

One North American supplier says GM's Zeta vehicles were completely engineered in Australia and were ready for tooling. The forecast volume was 400,000 globally.

With that much work done, it was surprising to see North American production canceled, the supplier said: "It was essentially all baked in Australia. All they needed to do was to put in a plant here."

The supplier says 50,000 units will still go to China.

But, as for North America, the supplier says: "For now, they say it's canceled."

DETROIT -- If the head of General Motors is betting his survival in the corner office on getting the United Auto Workers union to accept quick and deep cuts in health-care benefits, he should probably start looking for another job, industry and labor analysts say.

GM officials said last Wednesday -- a week after the company issued its biggest profit warning in more than a decade -- that they want to level the playing field by getting UAW hourly workers to accept the same reduced health-care benefits already provided to GM's salaried or white-collar workers.

But there are no guarantees GM will be able to convince the traditionally militant UAW to sign off on such a deal, which the company says it needs to shore up its finances and compete with fast-growing foreign rivals such as Toyota Motor Corp.

The world's largest automaker, which is losing market share and struggling to return its automotive operations to profits, make have to look for cuts elsewhere.

The UAW recently raised hopes it was prepared to sacrifice at least some of its generous health-care benefits by agreeing to have hourly workers who use preferred-provider plans at the Chrysler arm of DaimlerChrysler pay the first deductibles charged to Big 3 workers.

That deal is expected to be matched at Ford Motor Co. and GM at some point. But GM, the biggest private U.S. provider of health-care benefits, is looking for savings significantly beyond those now in place at Chrysler.

'A TOUGH SELL'

"It's going to be a tough sell," Harley Shaiken, a professor specializing in labor issues at the University of California at Berkeley, said when asked about the likelihood of getting the union to make an unprecedented concession on benefits for hourly GM employees.

Shaiken and other analysts told Reuters that getting the UAW on board with its plan would also mean getting it to reopen a labor contract that is not due to expire until 2007.

There are few precedents for that in the U.S. auto industry's turbulent history. And a so-called "reopener" would mean putting a revised contract up to ratification by GM's entire UAW work force, a move some say could open the door to a strike.

"This isn't something that one or two quarterly profit statements are going to have the political weight to bring across," Shaiken said. "This is not going to be something that just happens either at a moment's notice or without any opposition."

Working in GM's favor, according to many analysts, is the fact that UAW President Ron Gettelfinger is seen as a pragmatist who understands the realities of a cutthroat industry and the need for U.S. automakers to stay competitive to preserve UAW jobs.

'CHRYSLER WAS DYING'

But the situation at GM is less dramatic than it was when the UAW made a series of concessions to pull Chrysler back from the brink of bankruptcy in the early 1980s, and that works against GM.

"Those were circumstances in which Chrysler was actually dying," said Gerry Meyers, a business professor at the University of Michigan and former head of American Motors. "GM is a long way from dying," he added. "They've got $23 billion of cash ... Chrysler had no cash."

Another negative for GM -- which spends more on doctors and medicine than it does on steel -- is that Gettelfinger ruled out any sweeping concessions on medical benefits for the UAW rank-and-file in collective bargaining talks two years ago.

Gettelfinger also knows that Ford and Chrysler would insist on matching any deal the UAW strikes with GM, since they demand parity in their labor contracts.

"Yielding this concession to GM right now, even with a vote, would result in Ford and Chrysler asking for the same thing -- much to the anger of the active and retired rank-and-file," said Sean McAlinden, a senior economist with the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.

There could still be surprises. But any fix of GM's health-care mess is likely to come well after next month, when GM and UAW leaders will meet to talk about medical costs and other issues affecting the company, industry analysts said.

Most agree that GM CEO Rick Wagoner could soon face an irreparable loss of confidence in his leadership if he is unable to come up with any quick solutions on the labor costs that give GM some relief.

"Until recently I would have thought that he (Wagoner) would have been able to survive most anything because he's such an outstanding executive. However, the forces are militating against his continuation," Meyers said.

If the head of General Motors is betting his survival in the corner office on getting the United Auto Workers union to accept quick and deep cuts in health-care benefits, he should probably start looking for another job, industry and labor analysts say.

Imagine how much stronger General Motors would be if it launched three additional new-model programs every year, each costing about $1 billion.

It could, if it didn't have to pay for its retirees' health care.

That is one of the most fundamental differences between GM and Toyota Motor Corp. GM pays for the health care of 339,000 retirees - and the number grows every year. In contrast, Toyota pays for fewer than 3,000 retirees' health care in Japan, a number that remains fairly stable.

That difference gives Toyota and other Japanese carmakers a massive advantage over their American rivals.

"The cost of health care in the U.S. is making American businesses extremely uncompetitive vs. our global counterparts," says GM CEO Rick Wagoner.

Toyota and other Japanese carmakers benefit from a national health care plan that reduces its obligations to retirees to almost nothing.

Wagoner and other U.S. auto industry executives are increasingly vocal in seeking government action to address this competitive disadvantage. But Wagoner stops short of seeking a national solution as comprehensive as Japan's.

Day and night

A close look at the numbers at GM and Toyota shows diametrically different conditions.

About 1,200 of Toyota's Japanese employees will retire this year. Within two years, each will switch from the company-backed health insurance scheme to the national health plan. At that point, Toyota's spending on its retiree's health care drops to zero.

Toyota pays health care costs for its employees in Japan in the form of premiums for medical insurance. But it does not continue to pay those costs for retirees. Former employees of Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. also turn to the Japanese government for health care coverage.

The American Big 3 pay - and pay and pay - for their retirees' health care.

GM covers the health care costs of approximately 125,000 active employees and 339,000 retirees. Health care costs for those retirees amounted to approximately $3.6 billion last year.

That's more than two-thirds of the $5.2 billion GM spent on health care and medical-insurance premiums last year. GM also contributed about $9 billion in 2004 to a trust fund set up to pay for health care costs.

In 2004, Ford Motor Co. spent $2.0 billion on health care for U.S. retirees.

The Chrysler group last year spent $1.3 billion on retirees' health care.

$1,525 per vehicle

GM says that its payments for retirees' health care - more than what the company spent for steel - add about $1,525 to the cost of every vehicle the company sells.

In contrast, Toyota must contribute to health insurance payments for only about 64,500 active workers in Japan.

Toyota's health care costs are so negligible that they aren't even a line item in the company's financial statements. Toyota benefits both from the Japanese national health plan's coverage of retirees' medical needs and from the way that plan is structured.

Health care is paid for through a combination of mandatory payroll deductions from employees and employers. The cost is spread equally among various employers. That means older companies with large numbers of retirees are not at a disadvantage compared to companies with fewer retirees.

GM argues that it pays for more than its own employees and retirees. Indirectly, it pays for the approximately 45 million Americans who do not have health insurance. That's because medical providers charge higher fees to those who are covered by insurance to compensate for those who are not covered.

Toyota does not pay extra taxes to fund the government health care plan. Corporate income tax rates in Japan and the United States are virtually identical at just below 42 percent.

Perhaps sensitive to comparisons, Toyota declined to say whether its total health care spending in Japan amounted to more or less than $10 million a year.

The difference represents a huge competitive disadvantage for GM. Money that must be spent on retirees' health care cannot be spent on developing new models, upgrading factory equipment or hiring the most sought-after designers.

"The impact of the health care burden is particularly frustrating, because over the past decade GM has made huge improvements in our operational competitiveness," Wagoner says. "We have some of the most productive plants in North America, including four of the top five, and our quality has improved dramatically."

Wagoner's plan

Wagoner stops short of calling for a national health plan.

He wants industry, government and labor to cooperate to find ways to hold down spiraling costs.

"We need to encourage access to affordable health care coverage for all our citizens," he says. GM then wouldn't have to pay indirectly for the uninsured.

He also wants to address so-called catastrophic health care costs, which account for 30 percent of all medical costs. He calls for a "comprehensive insurance model to better share these catastrophic costs among all consumers."

Most of all, he wants Americans to be smarter consumers of health care, choosing less expensive yet comparable medicines whenever possible. But that's unlikely, as long as Americans believe that someone else, whether an insurance company or the government, is picking up the tab.

There is no evidence that Japanese consumers are any savvier in their health care spending than Americans. But in Japan, it's the government picking up the tab for retirees. In America, GM retirees pass the bill to GM.

General Motors may derive rear-drive Buicks and Pontiacs from an exclusive Cadillac vehicle architecture. But don't expect any Chevrolets based on Cadillac underpinnings.

A less costly version of Cadillac's Sigma vehicle architecture is a candidate for several rwd cars now that GM has killed plans for its rwd Zeta architecture in North America.

"A natural place to land would be Sigma," Jim Taylor, Cadillac general marketing manager, said last month at the New York auto show.

Taylor said another option is re-engineering Holden's VT architecture, which is the basis for the Holden Monaro and Commodore and Pontiac GTO.

Financial difficulties

GM's financial difficulties were blamed for the Zeta decision announced last month. The architecture was being developed for a variety of rwd Buick, Pontiac and Chevrolet cars that would begin to debut in 2007. All-wheel-drive versions also were planned.

The GM product plan would have emulated the Chrysler group's strategy by replacing its front-drive, mid-sized high-volume car lineup of rwd models.

"I don't think I would conclude that plans for rear-wheel vehicles at GM are cancelled forever," GM Vice Chairman Robert Lutz said last month at the New York auto show. "I see it more as a delay. We will study other ways to get at rear-wheel-drive passenger cars."

Still in the product plan

Taylor said some rwd cars originally based on the Zeta architecture remain in the product plan.

He said a possible architecture for some of these models is a less costly version of the Sigma vehicle architecture, referred to internally as "Sigma-lite."

The Sigma architecture is used exclusively for the rwd Cadillac CTS, STS and SRX.

Before taking his current position at Cadillac in August 2004, Taylor was vehicle line executive for Sigma. The first Cadillac to use the architecture was the 2003 CTS.

When the Sigma architecture was being developed, Taylor said his team investigated whether it was possible to use cheaper components to create vehicles for brands below Cadillac.

"It was a quick study on the component side to see whether we could create Sigma-lite, and it was feasible to do," he said.

Range of vehicles

GM later decided to do a range of rwd cars for Chevrolet, Buick and Pontiac. But the Sigma-lite architecture proved too expensive for models that might be priced below $25,000.

The automaker decided to develop the less costly Zeta architecture, which could be used on a global basis and applied everywhere from Chevrolet to Cadillac. But on March 21, Lutz announced that GM had canceled plans for using Zeta in North America.

According to supplier sources, Zeta was going to be used for the next-generation Chevrolet Impala and Monte Carlo; Pontiac Grand Prix and GTO; and two Buick models - a coupe or convertible based on the Velite concept and a sedan. The Chevrolet Camaro name also was going to be resurrected for a four-passenger coupe.

Zeta was one of two vehicle architectures under consideration for an ultraluxury sedan planned by Cadillac that is expected to debut at the end of the decade.

The Chevrolet Camaro name also was going to be resurrected for a four-passenger coupe.