Hell – It’s already happening. Take your new GM car in for warranty work and you’ll feel like GM is already in bankruptcy!

I would like to see a little more depth in the question of how many people would buy from a bankrupt automaker.

Some one should break it down and show the percentages seperately for domestic intenders and import intenders.

While I’m not in that department, I can tell you in the research our company did we eliminated respondents who said they would NOT consider a GM/Chrysler product anyway.

The critical question we were trying to determine was if you could improve the result by backing any Ch11 warranty further. The answer appears to be yes and the result is better than the current situation (ie nearly bankrupt).

The Merrill data looks like ours, but as a lowly internal operative, I can’t see who we sold it to.

As usual there’s lots more data there, but I’m also not sure why the MSM are missing the critical question on the warranty issue. It should be all about the relativities of being nearly bankrupt vs in Ch11.

Cars are priced according to ability to pay of the target market. Any Dad of a family of four or more will marvel at how the car a foot longer and eight inches wider is 15k more than the next down, even if both use the same engine, running gear and electronics. I guess steel is more expensive than I thought.

With a Bankruptcy the cars go for liqidation. That 45K vehicle which cost $15k (?) to make and sells for $22K distressed will destroy the ability of anyone to ever sell for the bloat price ever again.

As to when / if they will get money, it makes sense for G.W. to delay as long as possible to prevent any opportunity for somebody to challenge this decision before the holiday. It is probably coming soon.

SteveL

Good 3 Stooges reference

Some one should break it down and show the percentages seperately for domestic intenders and import intenders.

I have a sneakin’ hunch that the bulk of the “no way” 60% (or whatever) are import oriented anyway.
Debt-roit doesn’t have these folks anyway.

The Debt-roit leaning buyers are already pretty inured to pain and suffering (otherwise the last few decades would have finished this long ago).

Perhaps the sales loses would not be that great.

toxicroach-Obama’s Happy Fun Time Unicorn Reorganization

Thank you. I enjoyed that immensely.

It does sound like the “La Casa Blanco” crowd is giving this a strong lookover. They may make conditions that will drive this BK yet.

We’ll see.

Bunter

Of course, I’m also a person who cannot fathom why on earth our “representatives” could possibly see fit to drop (how much is it really adding up to by now? $4 trillion?) $700 billion (cough cough) in the laps of the banksters.

With no accountability.

And virtually no conditions.

And no requirements for “let’s see your game plan” before handing over the dough.

And with the Administration essentially saying that if the banksters didn’t get the dough, there would be Martial Law. (Or did everyone miss that? It sure wasn’t played up in the lame stream media as I thought it would be – since they all hate GWB with a purple passion).

I doubt that anything like this will happen soon. The timing would be bad.

I could see GM slowly fizzling out, selling off some overseas pieces as it quietly disappears. The big blowout with fireworks has low odds of happening right now, they can’t afford it. Moody’s doesn’t see it, either, for what it’s worth.

A bankruptcy of some kind is going to happen.

You can call it Obama’s Happy Fun Time Unicorn Reorganization if it makes people feel better, but bankruptcy is going to happen.

I also wouldn’t misinterpret the report. The report is not advocating a prepack, but putting odds on what the government might do. It gives odds to the prepack being the most likely outcome (and I suspect that their prediction will be proven wrong, but we’ll see.)

Rightly or wrongly, Moody’s is expecting the prepack to occur, but they would prefer a bailout. Their report is written from the perspective of debtholders, so their view of what is best is based upon what is best for the creditors, not necessarily what is best for everyone else.

Tons of sales would go Fords way via dead cat bounce, esp. if Chrysler goes C7. Hell, GM and Chrysler declaring might be all Ford needs to make it to the fabled land of 2011. Not to mention the UAW will be crapping nickels and give Ford at least as much as GM got.

Am I making any sense?

I suspect it may well be Plan 11 for GM and GMAC, and Plan 7 for Chrysler.

Wouldn’t it be weird if Ford ended up with Jeep’s Toledo operations and the Wrangler?

Historically speaking, it’d fit (since during WWII, Ford built GP’s to the Willys pattern, while Willys built Jeeps – they were essentially identical). During a war emergency, to heck with the normal rules of paying royalties, etc. It was all ordered “so” by the Washington powers that were.

Will this pre-packaged deal also go for the suppliers bound to go down or are they on their own?

This will still be damn ugly, but I gotta say, I think this probably does make the most sense. Now why didn’t they do it for the banks? This bank issue is still one I have problems with. Why the blank checks??

I was really wanting to see Ford make it without help. It would have been a major PR positive for them, to go along with all the other big strides they’re taking. Now I fear they will get sucked into this.

On the flip side, I actually think that besides the jobs lost, etc, bankruptcy looks better from a PR standpoint (people will view it negatively but will get over it) vs bailout bucks(people would not forgive these companies for taking their tax dollars).

Its still gonna be a bad bad hit on the economy. And SE Michigan is still going to hurt royally. But overall, this probably makes more sense, hopefully costs less overall (though what about pensions and health care, as well as unemployment costs?), and will hopefully get this over with more quickly while saving as much face as possible.

I suspect that there may be some politics related to the timing. The GOP congressmen are caught between a rock and a hard place, they need to figure out how to keep the president from causing problems with their voters, all while juggling to keep the economy afloat.

Also, the markets got a nice rush out of the huge Fed rate cut yesterday and from the TARP-bailout announcement last Friday, so they may as well stagger out the good news in order to get the full benefit of it.