Man the Lifeboats! GM's Going All-Out Overseas
In the quarterly conference call to offer excuses discuss the latest financial report– the one where GM lost $3.5b in Q1— CFO Ray Young reassured someone that GM has no plans to kill any of their eight North American brands in North America. Advertising Age [sub] reports he's standing behind the recent reorganization that divvied-up the brands amongst four marketing chiefs. Young called it it "the right way to go." However, the CFO termed their North American operation's losses last quarter as "unacceptable." (Yeah! Someone should be fired! Oh wait…) GM's North American market share is now down to 21.7 percent, compared to 22.5 percent a year ago. In the global market, The General's share dropped 0.5 percent to 12.5 percent. Without North America's numbers, their share went up 0.1 percent to 9.6 percent. So, instead of addressing the problems at GMNA, the General will "beef up" its overseas activities and put "our foot on the accelerator… and jam it through to the floor" in emerging markets like Russia and India. They'll probably succeed, too. After all, it's a lot easier to peddle utility grade beef to someone who's starving than to discerning diners in the restaurant district.
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Seems the 5 yr/100k warranty excluded the timing belt (and related damage if it failed) after the first scheduled maintenance of 30k. So if the belt failed at 35k or whatever, was the warranty valid or not? Nobody from GM seemed willing to say If they explicitly excluded the timing belt changing at 35k , then is your Baby. Just like brake pads, the useable, wearable stuff is not included. Mnd you if the car sells for 100 grand then they will send Taxi to pick u up on service days too. A lot of these new cars owners dont know enuf about cars, then anything looks polished up could be a very good car. They have to wait for TTAC to be printed in there own language.
GM has to go after emerging markets. The clock is ticking on GM it will just be a matter of time before the Chinese and Indians realize Toyota and Honda have better products.
Relative to GMs North American stuff, the GM Euro cars are pretty good. Relative to other European cars they are at best average.
Implying that emerging markets are willing to settle for "utility grade beef" is an insult to emerging markets. Since when were American customers "discerning diners in the restaurant district" and emerging markets "starving"?? Spend some time in those markets and you'll realize that those customers are just as demanding as American customers, if not more so. The menu and ingredients have to be different, because the tastes and requirements are different. "You'd better buy that Suburban now, because there are starving customers in China who would do anything for one of them."