Playing in "the middle"

GM today announced it way laying off 500 engineers from its Tech Center in Warren. After the Aztec, HHR, Malibu, Lumina, and to be honest, the latest SLEW of ugly-ass vanilla products developed by GM, I'm surprised they aren't firing 5,000. I cannot believe people are surprised that competition has swallowed GM almost completely, and driven it to the point where no one wants thier cars. Why? They are ugly and void of character. GM has too long tried to "play in the middle" in their styling and products, and will continue to fail miserably at it. Montgomery Wards, K-Mart, Lord & Taylor, Crowleys, Mervyn's and the like learned what playing "in the middle" of their market segment does to their brand, and does to their profit margins. Being like "everyone else" will make you do the same as all of the others... go out of business. Mazda learned this... Diamler Chrysler learned this... Ford is beginning to see the light... Why is GM so clueless? Is it a matter of steering a battleship harder than a speedboat? Or has GM just become accustomed to everyone "buying what they are given and market the hell out of it". Sure they have fought their quality issues, sure they are trying to "right the ship" financially... they still build ugly cars, and THAT above all else will wreck any company. You can walk around drunk knowing one day you will sober up, but you can't do the same when you are ugly.