The point I was trying to make is that almost everyone is expendable.Bankers? Do it over the Internet.Supervisors? Mostly unneeded.Architects? Use the plans already on file.Real estate agents? “The WEB”. Auto Mechanics? Reduce their ranks by employing “Diagnosticians”(Plug and Play).

GM may indeed be in it’s death throes, but then so is the U.S.A.

That will become evident in the next couple of months.

While all of the armchair experts are arguing amongst themselves, the country is coming apart.

Even the wealthy are losing in this economy, and big.

Have to disagree. Though cars look similar and are engineered fairly the same, the quality of their construction and its impact on operating costs will be more important than marketing. This is not to discount the importance of marketing, but to put things in a real world perspective.

U.S. companies disdained Demmings’ quality systems while Japanese companies thought them the equivalent of holy writ. Now we see who was right.

For more details, http://www.examiner.com/x-6882-LA-Classic-Cars-Examiner~y2009m4d17-GM-near-bankruptcywhat-happened

Well that was 50 years ago. Now, cars are like refrigerators. We know what they need to do. We know how to build them and /or are told how to build them by government. Any if you take any of the standard sedans and trucks apart you can see they are built pretty much the same.

Well GM was a giant when they weren’t the same. They marketed a variety of unique products under one corporate umbrella that satisfied the masses.

Now, government, competition and technology has wrung the ability to build something different, even if it incorporates such useless things as tailfins and poor gas mileage, as too risky.

Given that the cars are going to be mostly the same anyway, then it is the marketing that will be the most important. In GM’s case, emerging out of bankruptcy carrying its “heritage” baggage may give reason to just dumping all brand names and start anew.

Just like Daewoo. Except no one will remember the bad head gaskets in a 1981 Daewoo because there weren’t any!!! Hence the value of reinventing oneself.

Reinventing oneself, having the ability to build cars out of the gate and reemerge as a different, albeit new, company may be the best route to go. That way you can rest on a new set of laurels instead of the tainted ones of the past.

I’m so glad, as an Oldsmobile enthusiast, that Oldsmobile went out with some kind of dignity, even though they were a guinea pig of the most unlearned kind.

These facts are a part of Labor History.

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Apparently, conditions were poor at most, if not all Auto plants….the sit – down strikes spread.Do you really think people would have risked doing these unprecedented actions without sufficient cause?
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Why is it that every time there’s a problem in the automotive industry, it’s automatically agreed that it’s the Hourly workers’ fault?
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At one time, yes, when GM had over 50% of US market share, hourly workers were ALLOWED by Management to abuse the system.

Maybe,that happened because Management had grown accustomed to abusing the system themselves. Those days have been long gone…since the start of the ’80’s.
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With each “concessionary” contract granted to GM since 1982,not ONCE has GM reduced it’s prices of vehicles and/or parts. NOT ONCE.
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It is incredibly difficult to hold down an average hourly job inside GM. I would not want my Grand – Children working there.
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There’s no respect from the general public, (who have their nose into any and all hourly workers’ work lives), no real job security, no real power in the UAW (Toothless, in fact, they now do Management’s dirty work),dirty, hot/cold, and loud working conditions; and a worklife of stress.
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Work Rules? LOL…there are precious few work rules at all. A worker is either 1) Skilled Trades, or 2)”Unskilled”. #2 is a misnomer, since most jobs are continually re-assessed by the manpower coordinators, who time test the production of workers and constantly look for new ways of adding work onto “non-skilled” workers.
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I defy anyone to walk in and do any assembly line job without intensive and extensive training.
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The Skilled Trades have been reduced to very few trades, and cross – training reduces the types of trades needed.
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Millwrights weld,Electricians move heavy equipment , Pipefitters do electrical conduit and some electricians’ work.
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All skilled trades carry 2 – way radios,and are directed to wherever needed in far – flung areas of a department.
There are fewer Skilled Trades people, they are being “Reduced out by attrition”. I fully expect that by the next contract, they’ll be replaced by outside contractors.
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Some “Non-skilled” workers also carry radios…Paint booth robotic technicians (Non – skilled!),Team Leaders, parts chasers,etc.
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My plant – Flint Assembly – had, in the ’70’s, 8,500 employees, consisting of computer support people,salaried (Management) people, and 2 assembly lines (Line 1 : Pickups, Line 2, Suburbans and Blazers), on 2 shifts.
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Now, Flint Assembly has 2 Lines (900 series 2500HD and 3500HD Pickups, and the 560 Commercial Truck line).
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The 560 line has one shift only.

The 900HD line has 2 shifts.
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There are a grand total of 2000 employees at Flint Assembly….That number includes Computer support personnel,Management,”Outside Contractors” such as BASF paint support personnel,sanitation workers, construction workers, and all (UAW)Hourly workers.
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The plant is incredibly automated,there are literally hundreds of Fanuc robots.
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FUD.That’s what it’s like working in an assembly plant.I know, I spent 36 years working in one,now I’m laying back enjoying my big, fat,undeserved pension; concocting ways to spend GM’s money with my astronomical health care benefits.

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How much money do YOU make? What are YOUR benefits? What are YOUR perks? Finally, What makes you think YOU DESERVE your income? I, for one; don’t buy it. There’s always somebody who’ll do YOUR job better, who’s more conscientious, and will do a better job than YOU, for less money and benefits.They will do it without a pension, and without health care.
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When the 9 week – long layoffs start, we’ll see what happens to the US’ economy.
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Are you still working?

KEEP BUYING FOREIGN AUTO’S!

And/or- KEEP BUYING AUTO’s FROM FOREIGN OWNED CORPORATIONS!

And now, auf wiedersein, Pontiac!
http://www.examiner.com/x-6882-LA-Classic-Cars-Examiner~y2009m4d25-The-Pontiac-story-death-of-an-American-classic

Ditch the brands entirely. Bring them back as model names. Ditch most of the dealers, the rest become GM dealers.

Malibu becomes the Chevrolet, the upcoming Cruze becomes the Chevette (or another Chevrolet-derived name). The Equinox can be the Chevrolet Wagon.
CTS becomes the Cadillac
The full-size trucks become the GMC, sell the Burb as the GMC Suburban, sell the current small truck as the GMC Lite.
Either the Lucerne or Lacrosse becomes the Buick.
The Aura Hybrid becomes the Saturn, eventually gets replaced in this role by the Volt.
The Camaro end up with a screaming chicken as the Pontiac. V8 versions are the Trans Am trim level.
The Corvette is pretty much the idea here. Each vehicle gets its own badge (from the Brand) and the GM badges on everything now make sense.

Jeep gets merged into GM after Chrysler goes C7, provides the Wrangler and Grand Cherokee as the ‘Jeep’ and ‘Jeep Grand Cherokee’. Lose the rest of the SUV’s from all the brands.

Customers do not define themselves by the vehicle brand they drive, these days. Cars are commodities to most, not icons or symbols – and this will be even more true after the current economic crisis. Sure, there are people who make a statement with a Prius and those who do it with an Audi A8, but the majority of the market is buying Corollas and Civics and they don’t have brand loyalty.

GM needs products that offer quality, and they can sell if they do that. Here in Berkley East – Madison, WI – the land of the Civic and Corolla, we’re seeing a lot of new Malibu’s on the street, a particularly remarkable development because GM’s promotion of that vehicle has been terrible.

Unfortunately, it is not realistic to see GM actually accomplishing this across the line, because it has no money and has systematically decimated its engineering ranks. It has very efficiently killed off its capacity to survive as anything beyond a patient on government life-support, waiting for the plug to be pulled.

Sadly you are right. I still love the uniqueness of my 9-3 ‘vert. Don’t see many at all.

Like it or not, Hummer needs the “posuer’s” to make money. If people want all-weather capability, they can get a Subaru. GM is no position to keep a brand that has little chance to make a profit.

It’s kind of like sports. The NHL has as many hard core fans as any other major sports league in the US. The problem is that they have few part time fans. The hard core fans of any brand are rarely in great enough numbers to keep the brand around. At some point, you need the “posuers” to spend their money or else the brand will collapse.

Good, because I want no car that said “red blooded American male” would buy anywhere near a Saturn dealership. Saturn wants the RBAMs nebbish older brother. Saturn has no point if it is not cars that people with social phobias can be comfortable with purchasing and proud of owning.

Saturn is done only because of product. The brand is still good. Bring back the Saturn of 1991 and we’ll line up at the dealer’s doors.

“Hummer’s done. Their sales are in the toilet, and their brand just seems to stand for the good ol’ American excess and waste that helped drive the economy into the ditch. Nobody needs a huge macho-styled gas guzzler that barely seats five. I think people are starting to be a little more conscious about image, and a Hummer isn’t the image many people want to portray any longer. Shutter the brand.”

More the reason to keep HUMMER around. Now that the poseur HUMMER owners are gone people who want HUMMERs for their superb all-weather and all-conditions capability combined with luxury can buy their cars. Plus the styling does stand out.
And no one will ask a Traverse owner to rescue people from a natural disaster.

Is the Malibu really all that great? Sales aren’t any better and reliability is mediocre.

I didn’t know that Buick and GMC were part of “bad” GM. In that case “bad” GM will kick “good” GMs booty.

“Freed Mike and Paulie Walnut are right. Where is the bitching and complaining about Toyotas badged as Lexus, Hondas badged as Acuras, and Nissans as Infinitis? The silence is deafening.(BTW, The Lexus RX is a Highlander)”

You’re bitching and complaining right now.
No Infiniti, Lexus or Acura is a rebadged Nissan, Toyota or Honda that I know of. They may have similar design platforms but they are all quite different from each other. The “standard” and “luxury” brands of the Japanese companies also have separate cutomer bases. 2 different people will buy a Lexus and a Toyota. 1 person will buy a Chevy, or a Pontiac,or a Saturn, or Buick or GMC
(depending on type of car desired)

Buick’s current appeal seems to be lost on the here and now types. Maybe it’s a youth thing.
Buicks are the most reliable GM cars.
Makes for a lifelong commitment.
BTW, killing the LeSabre and Park Avenue nameplates, enormously stupid on GMs part.
The LeSabre was the only GM car that garnered the same praise the Camry does.

There are numerous mistakes with that comment, which I quantified in detail elsewhere on this site.

Toyota is a good proxy, because it produces a similar amount of cars and GM (theoretically) competes against it in the same segments.

Toyota spends more on operating costs per vehicle, yet makes a profit during periods when GM generates losses above the line, not including pensions.

Interestingly enough, Toyota also has a substantially larger number of employees. (I’ll bet Rick Wagoner never told you that.)

Based upon a normal year of operations, Toyota could fully fund GM’s pension and VEBA obligations with three years’ worth of business.

GM would not have a “legacy costs” problem if it had good products that generated the revenues that would allow it to hurdle the costs. GM already spends less than does Toyota to build roughly the same number of cars, but it sells its cars for one-third less.

GM has lower revenues per unit than either Toyota or Honda. That’s quite something when you remember that Honda does not have a well defined luxury brand that it can use to sell high-margin vehicles at high prices. That should be a hint of how poorly positioned GM is to sell products at a decent price point.

We know this isn’t going to happen, because the PTFOA isn’t going to be significantly more focused and disciplined than old GM.

Chevillac won’t work, because without a placeholder between them, they’ll both loose their identity.

Keeping GMC actually makes pretty good sense. Next to Hummer, GMC is the most focused brand GM has. GMC is synonymous with trucks. I’ve often wondered why people buy GMC in preference to nearly identical Chevies. There must be a reason. Flipping it around though, doesn’t seem to me to be a problem. What Chevy truck buyer will turn up his nose at a GMC?

The trick is to get GM to build actual brand identities. GMC already has an identity. Make GMC the only truck brand and let all the Chevy dealers be Chevy/GMC dealers. This at least takes away some of the lack of focus at Chevy.

I don’t know what to do with the rest of it. I’m too tired to come up with any more ideas.

I’ll go back to my first thought – just Chevy. It will be hard enough for GM to do the right thing even with only one brand to manage.

Perhaps the biggest problem GM faces today is the fact that their cars don’t sell for nearly enough money.

Perhaps. It’s somewhere between that and that they have a legacy cost structure (number of employees, number of retirees, number of plants, especially number of retirees and retiree health care and pensions, etc.) based on GM being much, much larger, and selling a much greater number of cars. Even if every car was sold at a profit, it wouldn’t be enough to pay for all the retirees and idling workers who have contracts.

So the big point of this solution is to dump the obligation for the retirees onto the taxpayer. The government has already promised to back union pensions and benefits in the case of C11. Funny how GM and the UAW can both agree to make the taxpayer pay for it, huh?

It’s almost exactly the reverse of the retired NFL players issue. In that case, NFL players who retired with certain promises and pensions when the NFL was poor want to share in the league’s new-found wealth, even though they’re getting what was promised at the time. Here, the retirees want to continue to be paid what they were promised when GM ruled the car market, even though it’s much smaller and poorer now.