Is GM finished?

[Furcifer]

I think it really will be very bad in Michigan and Ohio and surrounding areas.

It was damn bad after the steel workers got burned and the auto workers were laid off in the 70's. This will be worse. But there is no better alternative.

Chrysler will almost certainly go with GM or go under; there is no third alternative for them.

Ford may hang on longer but if GM goes through bankruptcy, they will almost certainly have to follow suit just to stay competitive!

.

Out of curiosity balrog666, how long do you think the Japanese will last in this economy?

 

[balrog666]

Out of curiosity balrog666, how long do you think the Japanese will last in this economy?

I think they will survive. And that is all that is needed at the moment. They have a somewhat ideological outlook to care for the employees that have been put in their trust and they will accept company wide (managment and blue collar) pay cuts, slow-downs, and plant idlings to keep all their employees around. And the employees will appreciate it since less pay/work beats no pay/work every time.

Too bad the UAW won't allow anything like that for GM, no matter how much the employees might prefer it so they can keep their jobs and benefits through the coming bad times.

Why just the other day the UAW management offered to let GM send some "Job Bank" workers home at only 95% of pay and benefits. Wow! They must really be concerned about the jobs of the few actual union members who work for a living, huh?

ETA: I suspect my next vehicle will be Japanese made ... in Mississippi.

.

 

[WildCat]

You seem to echo WC's "screw em'" stance on the matter. While I respect this, for the reasons many have stated here, I also see a bigger picture. I've heard a lot fo numbers over the years, but the auto motive industry creates some 10 indirectly related jobs, and 3-4 directly related jobs for every 1 in the company. What about the feeder plants, whose employees saw half of the earnings their counterparts saw over the years, but continued to do their jobs to feed their families? "Screw em'"?

You can't feel sorry for GM, the UAW or the CEO's? Fine, their just an assortment of capital letters.

But can you really say the same when you put faces to those letters?

Yeah, I could say it to their faces.

I'm in the construction business, and business isn't booming. I've been lucky to get a day or 2 of work a week since last winter.

Nobody's bailing me out, I'm not even eligible for unemployment benefits. Screw every one of those bastards, from the CEO to the newest hire on the assembly line. They aren't any more special than I am, they certainly shouldn't be coming to me with their hand out.

Screw 'em.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

Nobody's bailing me out, I'm not even eligible for unemployment benefits. Screw every one of those bastards, from the CEO to the newest hire on the assembly line. They aren't any more special than I am, they certainly shouldn't be coming to me with their hand out.

I find it rather interesting that those guys, no matter how much they screw the company or the customers, can always walk away keeping all their "hard earned" money, bonuses, properties, you name it. This society is really weird.

 

[Furcifer]

Yeah, I could say it to their faces.

I'm in the construction business, and business isn't booming. I've been lucky to get a day or 2 of work a week since last winter.

Nobody's bailing me out, I'm not even eligible for unemployment benefits. Screw every one of those bastards, from the CEO to the newest hire on the assembly line. They aren't any more special than I am, they certainly shouldn't be coming to me with their hand out.

Screw 'em.

Can't fault you for that WC. This really is the crux of it. Who is and who isn't more special and deserving of a hand out at this point? Not for me to decided, thank God. All I know is if you're going to bail out Wall Street to the tune of $700 Billion, for lending money they didn't have to people who couldn't afford it, you'd better bail out the blue collar folk who showed up to work and did their jobs.

 

[Roadtoad]

Yeah, I could say it to their faces.

I'm in the construction business, and business isn't booming. I've been lucky to get a day or 2 of work a week since last winter.

Nobody's bailing me out, I'm not even eligible for unemployment benefits. Screw every one of those bastards, from the CEO to the newest hire on the assembly line. They aren't any more special than I am, they certainly shouldn't be coming to me with their hand out.

Screw 'em.

Thank you, WC. You and I seem to be on the same page.

Waggoner needs to lose his job. The whole GM board needs to be terminated. And the UAW needs to take a long hike. They've now succeeded in killing the goose.

 

[NewtonTrino]

So I really want GM to stay around so that I can continue to buy their products.

So I think I'm for the bailout. The marginal increases in my taxes due to the bailout are worth it to me so that the car is available. Probably won't cost me all that much directly (nothing like the cost of the car for example, just a small premium).

 

[Roadtoad]

So I really want GM to stay around so that I can continue to buy their products.

So I think I'm for the bailout. The marginal increases in my taxes due to the bailout are worth it to me so that the car is available. Probably won't cost me all that much directly (nothing like the cost of the car for example, just a small premium).

In my business, the technical term for guys like you is "Mooch." You'll buy anything.

 

[balrog666]

Can't fault you for that WC. This really is the crux of it. Who is and who isn't more special and deserving of a hand out at this point? Not for me to decided, thank God. All I know is if you're going to bail out Wall Street to the tune of $700 Billion, for lending money they didn't have to people who couldn't afford it, you'd better bail out the blue collar folk who showed up to work and did their jobs.

Recapturing past bonuses and "incentive payments" to management requires outright fraud.

But there is an argument to be made that GM management has been deliberately derelict in their duty and their fiscal responsibilities. For a long, long time.

But proving it in a court of law might be rather difficult.

And while it would never happen, I would love to see it placed before a Michigan jury.

.

 

[Furcifer]

Thank you, WC. You and I seem to be on the same page.

Waggoner needs to lose his job. The whole GM board needs to be terminated. And the UAW needs to take a long hike. They've now succeeded in killing the goose.

I'm not sure how it follows that the UAW needs to take a hike for enforcing a contract the GM board agreed to?

Again, I'm not a big fan of the UAW, but they negotiated a binding contract. I use the term negotiated loosely, but non the less.

 

[Hindmost]

I find it rather interesting that those guys, no matter how much they screw the company or the customers, can always walk away keeping all their "hard earned" money, bonuses, properties, you name it. This society is really weird.

Just watching Anderson Cooper...seems the big 3 CEOs flew to washington on corporate jets to ask for their handout. They certainly don't know marketing.

glenn

 

[Dragoonster]

Just watching Anderson Cooper...seems the big 3 CEOs flew to washington on corporate jets to ask for their handout. They certainly don't know marketing.

glenn

Not only that, but the domestic airline industry is in trouble, and just as "blue collar" and "real America" as they were trumpted big 3 as. I wonder how the airline unions feel about their travel choice (and I noticed the UAW leader also flew private).

 

[Furcifer]

After seeing these CEO morons today can you really hold the average autoworker responsible for what has happened? These guys are totally ignorant. A private jet? To go beg for a handout? Unprepared to answer any questions? Unbelievable.

 

[davefoc]

Sir [addressed to drkitten] you have me confused.

drkitten is a sir?

... which is why I drive a Honda Civic.

Me too. I just bought mine about 3 months ago. It is a spectacular car. I don't have much to compare it to. I'm not a car aficionado but I never thought I'd be lucky enough to own a car this nice. My brother has an expensive Mercedez and I think he'd rather have this car. It's a five speed EX with the nav package. I've never gotten less than 36 mpg and I got 41 mpg on a long trip.

drkitten's freemarket rants
As to the rest of the stuff that drkitten has been saying: Right on! I had no idea that drkitten was such an advocate for the free market, but I think everything she has been saying about the problems with bailing out GM are exactly right.

I voted for Obama but I thought he was on the edge of making a huge mistake when he has pushed the bailout. Although, I think he's been a little more tentative than I realized initiallly in his support for it. And now thanks to some of the greedyest, most arrogant CEO's that I could have imagined the bailout looks much farther away than it was before. The Democrats won't bail those bastards out and the Republicans aren't going to fund a bailout where the union wages are so far out whack that no profitable business is possible. The moderates might score a win on this one.

I think it's also possible that the Democrats deserve more credit than I gave them. After 8 years of Republican cronyism I just figured the Democrats would replace the Republican cronyism with their own and ship off $25 billion or so the to UAW without much debate. Maybe I was too cynical on that. Could it be the Democrats have more integrity than I gave them credit for?

More dump on GM anecdotes
My father married a woman about five years ago who had about a seven year old Cadillac. They took it into the dealer and the dealer replaced the battery cable and charged them $400 plus. Apparently GM had made the battery cable extremely difficult to replace. I was pissed twice. 1. Any garage shop mechanic would have fixed that cable by fitting a replacement battery connector on to it if it had involved that kind of complexity to get it out (nice to see GM service departments gouging old people) and 2. What the hell was GM doing designing a car in such a way that the battery cable cost $400 to replace. Screw em.

One would have thought that selling that car would have been easy. They live in a retirement community and at one time lots of the old folks drove Cadillacs. But no more. Nobody wanted a big old, expensive to maintain, expensive to fix Cadillac. The car was eventually sold for a few thousand dollars.

My decision to buy Honda versus American
I didn't do a lot of research. I was really thinking about the Ford Fusion. It would have been a gamble though. I had owned Hondas for years with good results (I'd rate my Prelude only fair, my two Accords as good to very good). But I felt some desire to help out Ford and I liked the looks of the Fusion quite a bit. In the end I found a US News and World Report (I think) article that summarized testing on economy cars from other sources and they did a little analysis themselves. Honda had two of the top three rated Models as I recall and one of them was the Civic I was looking at. The Fusion was well down in the list. At that point I just decided I was not going to take a chance on going away from Honda that had worked out well for me in the past.

Roadtoad's Comments
I enjoyed all your insights into the various car models and the big three automakers. Thank you.

 

[NewtonTrino]

Frankly my current GM vehicle is an amazing car. Excellent value and it's still running well after 4 years a 70k miles. Best in class value, world class performance, good gas mileage etc. I don't get why people want to buy cars from foreigners when we make such great stuff here.

 

[Just thinking]

Just watching Anderson Cooper...seems the big 3 CEOs flew to washington on corporate jets to ask for their handout. They certainly don't know marketing.

That struck me as the equivalent of showing up at a soup kitchen during the depression in a chauffeured limousine. Only this time it's for much more than a bowl of soup and the food isn't voluntarily donated.

PS: ... and do you want to guess at their salaries/bonuses from just the last 12 months?

Simply put ... that's ballsy!

 

[Just thinking]

Frankly my current GM vehicle is an amazing car. Excellent value and it's still running well after 4 years a 70k miles. Best in class value, world class performance, good gas mileage etc. I don't get why people want to buy cars from foreigners when we make such great stuff here.

Not to knock US productivity, but their stuff isn't shabby either. My wife still drives her 1991 Integra with over 176,000 miles (not km's) and it gets over 30 highway mpg.

 

[Disbelief]

But, but, but my friend has a Honda and the Japanese are masters of this domain. They're so efficient...

These are the numbers we discussed on a daily basis, during those boring meetings before start up (unpaid mind you). These are tracked very closely by all of the manufacturers (that, CSA and your RTR, Required to Run). Prior to the JV with Toyota and GM, GM held the reigns in this area if I'm not mistaken. I'm not saying this was a reason for them to do a JV, to get a glimpse of the goings on in a GM plant, but...

The reason for the JVs between Toyota and GM (NUMMI was the first), was for GM to learn more about the Toyota Production System and for Toyota to learn about the US manufacturing base.

Here are some of my issues with the Big 3:

1. Taking Saturn upmarket - What genius decided this was a good idea? The whole purpose of Saturn was to be the import fighter, so why change that when you have Buick and Cadillac as more upscale? Gee, how about a using them as a response to Scion with niche cars based off existing platforms?

2. Marketing - What the hell do any of the Big 3 stand for? Who killed the Taurus at Ford? What does GM do with their many divisions and why can you have a successful strategy?

3. Product - While there are many excellent domestic vehicles, who is responsible for the duds? The Pontiac Aztec was uglier than sin, but no worse than the Honda Element. So, why is the Element around and the Aztec a joke? Price. Lincoln Blackwood Pickup? Who thought a +$50,000 "pretty" pickup was a good idea? Obviously not the consumers since they sold about 1,500. The new Chrysler Sebring? Is there a good review of this car anywhere?

4. Vision - I touched on this earlier, but what is the vision for each brand? How do you plan on selling it? If Pontiac is supposed to be the "excitement" division, why not make some exciting cars? Since the domestic industry took such a beating with the last oil crisis, why no forethought to how to be prepared in case it happens again.

One thing though, since everyone here seems to give the foreign makers a pass, is that they jumped on the truck/SUV bandwagon as fast as they could and they did not see the dramatic drop coming. If so, do you think Toyota would have opened up a new truck plant in San Antonio and increased capacity at the truck plant in IN?

There are really no easy solutions, but I find it strange that these CEOs are getting bludgeoned on TV while the Wall St fatcats have not had to answer to anyone? Where is the head of Lehman Brothers? How about AIG? Why is the financial sector getting $700 billion plus and not facing scrutiny while these guys are asking for LOANS and getting piled on?

Here is an excellent article from someone who follows the auto industry and has been highly critical of the domestics in the past:

http://www.forbes.com/manufacturing/2008/11/18/cars-automakers-detroit-biz-man-cz_jf_1118flint.html

 

[Just thinking]

Just to add some thoughts on a few points ...

1. Taking Saturn upmarket - What genius decided this was a good idea? The whole purpose of Saturn was to be the import fighter, so why change that when you have Buick and Cadillac as more upscale? Gee, how about a using them as a response to Scion with niche cars based off existing platforms?

It seems everybody is on this "upscale" bandwagon. Nothing is entry level anymore. (OK, there are some models, but overall?) Take any given model and watch what happened over time. Anyone recall the BMW 2002? Great car ... a tad expensive, but not like the new ones which can't be touched for under $30K. Or the VW Beetle. Or the Audi Fox. Or early Subaru's; (remember their slogan? Inexpensive and built to stay that way. You don't hear that said anymore!). Cars that were built and marketed as inexpensive, fun to drive and got very good mpg. And it's not just cars. Who builds entry level homes anymore? Everything going up is a McMansion. Could this have been part of the housing bubble's burst?

2. Marketing - What the hell do any of the Big 3 stand for? Who killed the Taurus at Ford? What does GM do with their many divisions and why can you have a successful strategy?

Or killed the Pontiac Fiero? That could have been a great car to compete with the then Toyota MR2, which did get nice improvements in time. Not so with the Fiero.

One thing though, since everyone here seems to give the foreign makers a pass, is that they jumped on the truck/SUV bandwagon as fast as they could and they did not see the dramatic drop coming. If so, do you think Toyota would have opened up a new truck plant in San Antonio and increased capacity at the truck plant in IN?

There's something to be said regarding Toyota, Honda and some European car manufacturers that got a good footing in the US market back in the mid 1970's to 80's. They basically always made good fuel efficient cars ... yes, smaller than US cars, but almost always better mpg. Now, that's a feature that is always in demand. In good times with low fuel costs there are always those who want less expensive cars to buy and maintain, so they have that market. But in hard times, they become even more in demand, as more and more folks simply can't afford gas hogs. So their market goes from good, to better, to back to good ... and on and on. So, how does the US make a similar dent into that market? Well, one way I don't think they do it is by making a product that nobody would want during hard times ... yet, that's exactly what happened.

 

[Furcifer]

More dump on GM anecdotes
My father married a woman about five years ago who had about a seven year old Cadillac. They took it into the dealer and the dealer replaced the battery cable and charged them $400 plus. Apparently GM had made the battery cable extremely difficult to replace. I was pissed twice. 1. Any garage shop mechanic would have fixed that cable by fitting a replacement battery connector on to it if it had involved that kind of complexity to get it out (nice to see GM service departments gouging old people) and 2. What the hell was GM doing designing a car in such a way that the battery cable cost $400 to replace. Screw em.

Many Cadillac's have the battery in the trunk. It provides for better weight distribution and more room in the engine compartment. Unfortunately it means a costly repair if it needs to be replaced. If you find yourself dead on the highway, having the battery in the trunk can be a life saver. Instead of tricky maneuvering the booster car backwards down the shoulder of a busy road to get the cars nose to nose, you simply pull up behind and boost the battery.