My doctor hasn’t prescribed bloodletting as a cure for a long time. I don’t see why the corporate version that armchair executives trot out ever so often is any better.

The “bloodletting” I’m referring to in the first sentence, of course, is the recurring cry of automotive pundits that this or that (almost always) American manufacturer should eliminate this or that division or nameplate. The argument is not whether it should be done but whether which should be eliminated. At GM, they say, Pontiac and GMC should go. They’re already laying flowers on Mercury’s grave.

Not that the manufacturers themselves haven’t been a party to all this. After all, Chrysler pulled the plug on Plymouth and GM dumped Oldsmobile. Perhaps those were good decisions. Maybe GM had plans at the time to make Saturn the new Oldsmobile because the original Saturn model wasn’t working anymore and Saturn had more value as a brand than did Oldsmobile. It’s hard to get the young to go to Olds, but who wouldn’t want to go to Saturn. The young and adventuresome certainly would.

Plymouth, on the other hand, had become Chrysler’s budget brand. Unfortunately that had come to mean “cheap,” but that was more a reaction to Chrysler’s overall cheapo-looking materials that infected not only Plymouth but Chrysler branded and Dodge models as well. A market exists for inexpensive—dare we say frugal—wheels. That’s what Plymouth could have been, teamed with premium Chrysler, mainstream Dodge and “trail-ready” Jeep brands. But Plymouth is an opportunity missed.

The problem is not too many brands. The problem is brands that don’t mean anything. Back in the good old days, each of the GM divisions had its own powertrains, for example, and each had its own proponents and champions inside and outside the corporation. A Chevy small block was not an Olds V-8, a Buick motor was different from Cadillacs, and Pontiac had its own engines. Not all of the ideas were good ones—usually more because of marketing or market realities. Pontiac’s overhead cam six is one example of innovation that didn’t have a place at Pontiac or even in America where its sophistication was unnecessary compared with simpler and more powerful overhead valve V-8s: too much cost for too little power.

This wonderful diversity disappeared during the emissions/oil embargo fiasco in the seventies.  GM (and others) had to reduce engine choices just to meet the latest round of emissions requirements. Ford was almost put out of business in 1975 when emissions testing cars broke down (with problems unrelated to engine/emission systems) midway in EPA’s 50,000-mile emissions durability test. Exit engineering diversity, enter Cadillac Cimarron and a Pinto that long overstayed its welcome.

Diversity (of product) sells. Walk down the breakfast cereal aisle at a grocery store. There are, it seems, hundreds of choices, but they’re primarily made by three companies, Kellogg’s, General Mills and Post. Those companies didn’t get that way by cutting product. Indeed, just the opposite. There are nine different varieties of Cheerios alone, from the original to “Berry Burst Cheeries,” “Multigrain Cheerios” and of course, Frosted Cheerios.

To the argument that cars are different than cereal because cars are an expensive long-term purchase, we say bosh. Both are consumables, and applying the mathematical field of topology to marketing, they share primary characteristics. They’re end products on sale to the general public. That they’re not under the same roof, well, of course not. They’re bigger so they’re spread further apart. Though what city of any size doesn’t have an “automobile row”?

The trick is not to have as few products as possible but to have good product that people want to buy. “Sawdust ‘n Woodchips Cheerios” won’t sell—except to the most hardcore tree-hugger perhaps– even if General Mills were to “Fiber One” cereal. How many different kinds of cereal does General Mills make? A bunch. Any first year marketing student will tell you that one way of increasing sales is to increase the amount of space taken in the cereal aisle.

It’s not the only way, of course, and simply putting identical cereal in different boxes won’t help. That’s badge engineering, practiced at its worst by British Leyland when, for example, it slapped the MG brand on Austin products and the moribund Riley label on anything that made the remotest of sense. Or not. BL’s biggest problem was that that its product simply wasn’t very good, inspiring among others the bumper sticker that read, “The parts falling off this car are of the finest British quality.”

Kellogg’s, however, offers “The best to you each morning.” With General Mills it’s “The big G stands for Goodness.”

Thank goodness, the other GM from Michigan seems to be catching on.

Toyota didn’t rise just because it had just one nameplate. It grew because its product was good. And to the contrary, Toyota found it necessary to add brands, as did Honda and Nissan. With Prius, Toyota is poised to add another.

So talk about which division stays and which goes is so much proverbial rearranging the deck chairs. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler should capitalize on the decades of goodwill earned over decades and expand it by building good cars that people want to buy. Then the rest will take care of itself.

Bloodletting is so out of medical fashion.