Wouldn’t it just be cheaper to liquidate GM and pay the employees a pension?

There is a vast difference between foreseeing the demise of GM and wishing/hoping for its demise. Many, like yourself, who have owned or driven one of their P’s-O-S have wished and hoped for the eventual failure of GM.

There are likely just as many who have hoped, wished and prayed for the failure of Microsoft for their arrogance, business practices and never ending stream of crap software. At this juncture in time though, I don’t believe anyone has foreseen the demise of Microsoft.

When the prophet Farago originally posted this article, I certainly wished and hoped GM’s arrogance and business practices would result in their eventual demise, but I only dreamed it would actually come to pass. After all, most all others were preaching, “GM is too big to go down.”

On 03/04/2005, TTAC called it and everyone else thought they were barking mad.

I think a little smugness should be permitted….

Bought my ‘99 Bonneville from the same folk back in ‘00. Both deals didn’t leave bad tastes in my mouth and I didn’t have to eat the first year (overpricing premium) depreciation.

I suspect that like a majority of vehicle buyers, and a minority of folk on this site, to me a vehicle is merely an appliance, purchased to serve a purpose, nothing more.

The United States has been a second rate industrial power for the past 35 years, in terms of its ability to build manufactured goods.

At GM, working on smaller cars in foreign places became the entry level OJT before you got to go gigantic on one of the cooler brands – but being stuck with a smaller car was a clear sign that your contributions were considered sub-par.

The mantra became fixed: you can’t make enough money on small cars for it to be worth the bother.
“Load ‘em up, drag ‘em out!” became the war cry for GM (and a number of other car makers. Just look at what happened to the SUV category as they became as large as vans. Try driving that off-road.)

Will they be able to downsize? This is the company that put hybrids in their large trucks, and that turned out a pre-bloated Chevy Volt before bloating it some more.
It’s not in GM management’s genes to build sensible, smarter vehicles. It just isn’t.
The people running GM don’t deserve to be saved – they’d just screw up again.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I mean about the Deathwatch #1 and all; not the chicken.

I want to say you’re brilliant Robert. In some respects you are…and a lot of it has to do with the freedom of the internet. It allows one to say it like it is in a completely uninhibited manner. Put two and two together and you get a nice 4yr running…which is damn cool in my book.

But at the same time, most anyone with a lick of sense saw GM’s demise. Some were in denial, some where too arrogant to admit it…but the average Joe, including myself, who has owned and driven one of their P’s-O-S….it doesn’t take more than that to know GM was doomed.

Thanks GM for fulfilling the prophecy. See…you’re good for something after all…your piss-poor performance is almost Biblical.

God Bless.

Think of all the reasons that you wouldn’t kill Hummer if you were Red Ink Rick….

- Kill it and you can’t sell it for anything…
- Maybe the union go nuts if you kill a brand outright…
- So try and sell it.. Maybe the Union wants commitments from the new owner to maintain wages and benefits for X years which kills the deal…

I think of GM, Ford and Chryco as American business cess pools.
None of them have viable business plans. Ford seems to have the best shot by changing the rules.. New union deal, cut a deal to lower the debt…

All of the owners (unions, shareholders, bond holders) have just been working over the management for years trying to get to the head of line for the scraps left over after Ch. 11.

So far they have all bet right.. Even when the company was bankrupt, they were able to bring in a new sugar daddy to keep the payouts coming.

You can bet all of the employees and management are stocking up on drugs, dental work, elective surgeries and such courtesy of Uncle Sugar..

Why can’t they fire Rick? Who in their right mind would take his place?

Sorry, but this is a bald faced lie. Reporters were present for the whole thing, transcripts of his speech were handed out.

On the matter of what’s needed now to unclog inventories of existing new vehicles on-ground at dealerships and factory lots in the US set to put people back to work at US company owned factories ASAP, I propose:

1. Offer direct federal access to funds to franchised new vehicle dealers for the purpose of accelerating loans for qualified consumers and fleet operators.

Franchised new vehicle dealerships sales actualization requirements must also be taken into account in this matter as they are an integral part of the new vehicle sales “food chain.”

If traditional funding sources don’t want to, or find they simply can’t sufficiently underwrite this business, let’s seek out and provide motivated lenders who would then be provided access to special funds set aside by the Fed under special circumstances or rules established for this purpose.

2. Accelerate Special Offers for Fleet Operators to cycle their vehicles

This would include all private as well as public fleets not as yet contemplated by the present plan (i.e., non- Federal Fleet vehicles), to ensure fleets replace their vehicles as they would normally cycle them.

These offers should seek to balance alleviating inventories of existing new vehicles on-ground at dealerships and factory lots in the US, while phasing in offers for more fuel efficient vehicles as the existing inventories of new vehicles are more rationalized.

The offers could include everything from accelerated depreciation, cash incentives to guaranteed residual values.

3. Auto Manufacturer and Parts Supplier Shareholders’ Guaranteed Value Plan
This proposal would reward long term stockholders of companies who pass similar, so-called stress tests now planned for the banking sector. For this purpose, “long term stockholders” could be defined as those who retain the stock for an agreed-to period of time.

The plan would contemplate developing a formula which would guarantee a certain “floor price” for qualified stock.

The benefits of such a plan would include taking a great deal of uncertainty out of the value of companies who remain in this space by virtue of a larger group of shareholders who, in effect, have been encouraged through this guarantee to hold onto their stock. These companies, in turn, would benefit from access to funds from the stock purchases as well as other financial benefits associated with increased stability.

4. National US Auto Industry “Super Sale”

Designate a short, specific time period where consumers would benefit from the acquisition of a new vehicle through any number of offerings (i.e., large cash incentives, pre-paid maintenance, extended warranties, accelerated tax incentives beyond those passed in the stimulus bill, etc.) all set to, again, unclog existing inventories and get people back to work.

Surely you jest.

I’ve also noticed the unions are running Employee Free Choice Act commercials now. That is the Holy Grail of the unions, and will be an unbelievable political fight. Since GM’s fate – and the fate of its union – is now in the hands of politicos, that whole decision-making process will be increasingly driven in relation to the Card Check bill, and it is going to be an epic legislative battle.

2009 is going to be a decisive year on the future direction of organized labor in the United State, fittingly the year the most visible corporate icon of American organized labor goes under. If unions and the corporate interests they feed on are allowed to escape the consequences of their failures, the United States will be a second-rate industrial power in twenty years, kinda like France.

Case in point, Buick took on small and intermediate models in a complete lineup including converts, wagons, sedans and hardtops. Olds did the same. Obviously these small specials, and F-85’s etc should have stayed with chevy and maybe the intermediates could spread to pontiac. When the badge engineering took over, the individuality of the brands melted away.

Further, GM could no longer devote enough capital to updates of basic lines when they were so busy cloning the entire GM product line. As has been said, to cut costs GM started to pull the individuality out of the larger cars that had carried the day for GM for 50 years. With a substandard small car line and now a vanilaized large car line, market share began to drop.

Remember the mid-eighties. Lincoln advertised that you couldn’t tell the difference between a FWD olds, caddy, or buick. The town car still made on the old frame RWD was larger and more distincitve looking. Of course you couldn’t tell these GM large cars apart they were virtually identical inside and out.

This was the first time GM dropped the veil that division no longer just shared components, they shared the entire car. In fact, this is when there were no longer divisions each independent capable of designing their own cars. You now had BOCA (buick olds, caddy) and chevy pontiac for small cars. Gone was the excitment and competitive spirit between the divisions. The divisions disapeared at the factory level, but at the dealer level they were all still there.

Now the dealers got their wish in spades. They all had badge engineered clones of each others products. This ended the days of papering a dealership windows in Sept in anticipation of the fresh news models to be shown inside. What was a new pontiac, olds, or buick? Really a GM type car of a certain size. The ivory soap block style of GM was in ( a tribute to Ron Zarella marketing wizz kid from Proctor and Gamble).

Gone were wide track, an American standard for the World, and wouldn’t you really rather have a Buick? Now it was wouldn’t you rather have a bland corporate car that is a poster child for a rental car? Now add time and the competitors constantly working the edges of GM. Each competitor zeroing in on a particular market of GM. All of them laser like in their focus on just taking business from one particular part of GM.

Add all of this in a blender and bake for 20 years, and you have a fallen cake we call GM.

I tend to believe GM mgmt played the hand as best the could… From 2002 – 2007 massive amounts of cash was rolling around Wall Street and if GM was worth something, they would have been bought and then sold off piece by piece to reap the rewards.

You only need to look at the Chryco deal for evidence.. Daimler had to pay billions to unload it and the deal only worked when the banks took 95% of the risk. The Chryco deal was the peak of greed and blind risk taking.

It would have taken a whole new level of stupid to get a GM deal done.

*Sigh*

And while I’m not on the same side of the table on all issues as T. Boone Pickens, his four minute run-down on energy consumption kind of points the way:
http://www.pickensplan.com/index.php?bcpid1842760405?bclid=1842745810&bctid=1653634930&page=white

GM did build some solid good cars over the years, its a shame they became so arrogant and stubborn they could not see a better way. Regardless some of their products will take their place along side those of Packard, Pierce Arrow, Duesenberg, Studebaker, Nash, Hudson and others.

Now its time to look forward to the future.

The fall of the decadent [but once great and mighty] GM empire has been preordained.