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The Problem With GM
Like a heroin addict who just can’t wean himself off of the good stuff, General Motors is going back into subprime lending to finance new auto sales.
Although the much diminished company is still over 60% government owned, and has made great strides at reforming its errant ways, they still do not understand their fundamental problem. My dad was a lifetime GM customer, religiously buying a new Oldsmobile every five years. Once he even flew to Detroit for a factory tour and drove his new prize all the way home to California.
Thirty years ago I told him he was doing GM no favors buying their cars, and the only way to force them to improve a tragically deteriorating product was to buy better made German and Japanese vehicles. This was right after the State of California forced auto makers to install seatbelts on new cars. Airbags and ABS brake systems were still years away.
His response, "I didn't fight the Japanese for four years so I could buy their cars" (He was a Marine). GM's problem is that my Dad passed away nine years ago. Of the original 17 million WWII veterans, 1,500 a day are dying, and there are only 1 million left. All of them loved Detroit because it built great Jeeps, Sherman tanks, and half tracks that brought them home from harm's way.
Their kids prefer German, Japanese, Italian, Korean, and soon, Chinese and Indian vehicles. It is no coincidence that GM's problems really accelerated with the passing of the "Greatest Generation."
During the last 35 years, when Japan's share of the US car market climbed from 1% to 40%, I begged GM to mend their ways and build a quality, price competitive product that Americans wanted to buy. They answer was always the same: "Nobody can tell GM how to build cars." A more inbred culture you could not imagine. Maybe someone should have told them.
Today, the company’s only real hope is that young, upwardly mobile Chinese continue to buy their low end cars in large numbers. Over the last decade, GM has boosted the number of dealerships in the capital city from seven to 27, while closing hundreds of rural dealerships in the US. The problem is that the next time you need a tune up for you Caddy, you may have to drive to Beijing to get it.
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I sell Buicks and GMCs in Connecticut. Our dealership has been getting very low volume this month and salesman are having trouble meeting numbers. To those who say that GM can't make good vehicles I suggest you test drive a LaCrosse. Their vehicles are fine, it's just that everybody is un/underemployed and really aren't buying new cars.
More 2011 models will come standard with 4 cylindar Ecotec engines to cater to the gas-saving crowd.
Those "world-class" Buicks might as well be called Opels with all the badge engineering on them. Before you take criticism against me for doubting General Motors, they're one of the few that don't make golf carts of cars. Problem is, GM seems to be going too far to the gas-saving, granola-eating, "a turbo is good enough for you", "global makes it better", "so what, they use I-4's at Indy", crowd. Yes, Opel. The W platform's treatment of Buick is forgivable, but this takes the cake.
That said, GM would have to fold up completely, be acquired by one of the transplants in the South, or be completely packed up and shipped to some Third World country before I would consider them unwelcome. Right now, Buick has been packed up and shipped to China.
Their vehicles are fine, it's just that everybody is un/underemployed and really aren't buying new cars.
No problem with that statement.
GM auto sales are taking off in Latin America and possibly other parts of the world.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1818233420100818
"Maybe someone should have told them."
Ross Perot
The media sure is being paid alot to pump this crappy IPO thats for sure. Anyone in their right mind is going to stay far far away from this tumbleweed company. Look what they did to the last shareholders and preferred shareholders. No way I would touch this company's fraud stock. Their entire quarterly report is nothing but an Enron accounting scandal authorized by Benny Boy so they can sucker people into this crap. 70%+ of their sales were to the government using taxpayer money. How many bailouts do you get before you call it quits? Obviously, with Benny unlimited amounts. They gotta get this guy out of the FED bank and fast.
They already got $9 million of the proceeds set aside to pay the former CEO. How do you get $9 million for accounting fraud? Where do I sign up for a job like that? Their plan is to help their execs get richer and stiff the shareholders again and again.
You didn't even mention their great idea of bringing out the Volt, a totally inferior hybrid priced thousands of dollars higher than Toyota's Prius, itself not objectively a competitive vehicle. But GM will make up for it with a lot of suprime loans, LOL!
A handful of people got really rich, the vast majority suffered. Trickle-down theory in practice.
What! You don't consider a $40,000 electric sedan new and innovative? It only took GM 10 years to catch up to Toyota in this arena!
You take exception at the idea of a $40K sedan that will cost GM more than $40K to manufacture (meaning that the taxpayer gets to eat the diff)?
What kind of American are you???
Replacement Battery Packs?
Priceless: $17,000.
.....shouldn't we all be getting a FREE CAR from GM after all the taxpayer money we've "given" them ?? So, first we have to give them free money from the taxpayer just so we can turn around & take out auto loans to purchase GM cars !!! I've already paid for a car via taxpayer dollars ~~ I'll be DAMNED before I ever give GM another dollar out of my pocket ~~ I'd rather WALK to WORK FOREVER before I EVER buy a GM vehicle .
revolution is coming to this country, nothing is fair anymore.
Sad part, is GM's woes are coming from folks who REFUSE to buy their vehicles because they see them as OBAMA MOTOR CO.
GM's vehicles are damned good vehicles.
I would stack the majority of their models against any foreign cars, trucks on the road.
But, the OMC,@ 60% ownership, and the fact that taxpayer dollars bailed them, is stuck in the craw, of Mr. & Mrs. America............
If they go under, it will be bad for Americans.....they really do make great vehicles NOW, and did prior to the collapse in '08.
No American cars, in the late 70's, and thru the end of the late 80's made a car,or truck for shit.
What a crock. And Ma and Pa America are so pissed that we are still letting the banks suck at the tit of the taxpayer that they closed all their BUSH BANKS. Give it a rest and get a clue. This is was a pretty small bailout considering the supply chains, et al.
Keep your eye on the big picture and get out of the silly political trap. Too many politically captured people here these days. Left and right are all the same. Stop pinning your hopes that an election will change a thing as it will not. I guarantee it.
The banks paid back the bailout, right? No, they did not by a longshot.They screwed it all up so bad that monetizing the debt is the new normal.
All the bickering about other issues in the world isn't going to save GM if they can't build cars that people want to buy, own, and drive. I don't think they get it.
Creating profit by switching 20 cent widgets for 5 cent widgets, instead of coming up with better designs, more appealing cars, or sane labor contracts.
I tried to support this doomed company before the takeover. Unfortunately for them, the Cadillac I bought was the biggest POS I have ever owned. The trunk leaked, the Northstar made oil disappear...before it eventually just went(impeccably maintained). If that one experience didn't take them out of my future for good, which it all but surely did, then being such pussies as to not be able to get their house in order and start something new and improved certainly did. FUCK YOU GM! I'm only in my mid 20s and you'll never get a dollar from me you thieving lowlifes. Overpriced trash, THAT is GMs problem.
The trunk leaked, the Northstar made oil disappear...before it eventually just went(impeccably maintained)
Sounds like you got a used Cadillac. Yes, the ones with the particular oil-leak problem.
It was a brand new 01 STS. They replaced the trunk seal, but wouldn't replace the engine even though it ate a quart of oil every 1,000 miles. Had to buy a new one and install it myself after it seized. Douchebags of the century.
Know someone who had a 07' Trailblazer, and just for kicks and giggles went down to the dealership to get a trade value on it about 1 1/2 yrs later, and they were trying to give him $11,000 for a vehicle that cost $27,000 loaded to the max with tow package and everything. He told them to go "F" themselves loud as he could so everyone in the place could hear. Then he proceeded to stop paying on it, and then did a voluntary repo. So yes, their vehicles are way overpriced.
How a vehicle is worth over 60% less than what it cost a year and a half later with only 9k miles on it, just shows the scam these American companies run on people year in and year out. It's not about making a profit, its about greed. They rape and rob people everyday, and people are tired of it. The problem isn't just about the vehicles they make, it is the way they are treated after the sale.
But there's no better way of communicating the fact that I'm a douche than by driving a Denali.
I love your avatar, if I'm correct he looks like the Shogun of Harlem from that one Kung Fu movie from the early 80's The Last Dragon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogun_of_Harlem
Anyway, the only reason that GM was saved was because of the massive hole that would have been done to the employed (unemployment) and the retirees and also the companies in the whole chain of supply for GM. We are done as a manufacturing leader.
Yes, my avatar is Julius Carey III aka Mr. Nuff.
Samuel L Jackson is playing him in the remake (I kid you not)
Hell, that's Bernankes Cuz Buttwheat.
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