The Caddy SUV was nice. Almost bought one, but the dealer body scared me off. One didn’t really care and the other tried to sell me a leftover flood car, denying it when I pointed out the grit under the cleaned carpets and the rusted seat rails.

Acura sold an MDX that day.

The caddy dealers WERE the loud suit, cigar chomping stereotype.

Getting to GM Death Watch 200 isn’t a wish as much as an inevitability. See you there.

I guess it’s also fair to mention that Toyota makes money from every single car it sells … while GM loses money on every single car it sells.

Imagine if GM set up shop today – and offered a prospective customer 0% financing for 72 months, with a substantial reduction of the sticker price. As the company in this scenario is completely new, you won’t have any history to go by, but the nature of the offer would lead you to ask:
“What’s wrong with the cars?”

That’s Mr. Wagoner’s legacy.

If this country completes the slippery slope to Socialism, My wife and I will be the next couple featured on the HGTV show “House Hunters International”…

I have seen that show, and liked it. But I doubt if a suitable alternative even exists anywhere else on Earth.

I’ve often thought that the new pilgrims will likely be space travellers…

You’re preaching to the choir, brother!!! My mother left Communist Cuba in the 1950s. Needless to say, if our parents didn’t leave their respective countries, you and I wouldn’t be here on this forum today…

If this country completes the slippery slope to Socialism, My wife and I will be the next couple featured on the HGTV show, “House Hunters International”…

In terms of buyouts, GM already did that with a fairly small Oldsmobile network and it was not cost effective. This type of arrangement usually works better if another dealer simply gobbles up the territory and GM helps smooth out this consolidation process.

No lie. Fiat is doing very well on it’s own now, thanks in part to the $2B divorce settlement it got from GM. But the question is, why couldn’t GM make a success of Fiat with that same $2B?????

The. Management. Sucks.

So the answer is for the Feds to step in and abolish those pesky rights of private small business owners because it benefit’s the big company. Why don’t we have the Federal government just seize the dealers and close down the excess ones. Isn’t that what you are advocating. I hate dealers but please complaining about the fact that people have private property rights and will fight for those rights al pesky state franchise laws is kind of scary. My parents fled communist China in 1949 it’s a slippery slope to start down when we advocate taking someone else’s property rights away simply because we deem it beneficial to GM. Maybe we should all have our homes seized and they can auction them off with proceeds to go to GM, maybe that would save GM too.

In practice it would work the other way. The franchised dealers would have to sue in order to get the legislation overturned. I have no doubt they would do that to the fullest of their capabilities.

“After all these years, GM still has no answer for the Civic.”

They do and did. I would go so far as to say that the Astra’s primary competition is the Civic. The Pontiac Sunfire was also a sporty alternative that really tried to compete with the Civic. It wasn’t a bad vehicle for the real selling price of that time… but it certainly was no Civic.

“The fact that GM birthed Hummer blows a hole in the theory they’ve tried to reduce brands.”

The fact that they spent billions closing up Oldsmobile, merged three brands into one ‘dealership’ and virtually starved all of them except for Cadillac and Chevy, makes me think otherwise. If it weren’t for the franchise laws Saturn, Saab, Buick and Hummer would already be history.

This is a joke, right? We could debate the improvements, or lack of improvements made in domestic cars all day, as there is plenty of ammo for both sides of that battle. Lets address your blanket statement that pretty much can be summed up by saying that America makes movies and music, but not much else. High end stereos? How about Krell or Mark Levinson (yes the brand that is in Lexus), Pink Triangle, Spectral? I could go on. American companies have a very large share of the high end market. Sorry, Sony, Denon, etc is not even remotely high end audio. Even the once mighty Nakamichi has failed to move from analog tape machines to the digital world. American speakers are considered some of the world’s best. Audiophiles, by the way, are very fussy when it comes to fit an finish. Industrial equipment? American brands have a very large world presence in medical equipment, electrical distribution/generation, robotics, test equipment, avionics, to name a few. America has no problem competing in the cost no object arena. America fails in the price sensitive consumer market, where once proud brands prostituted themselves by producing product wherever they could shave off a few bucks. There simply is no way America can compete with workers in China. Nor should we.

Hmmm… Saab and Saturn have been pegged as far down the proverbial R&D hole than any mainstream brand I know of short of Mercury.

Then you have the merger of Buick – Pontiac – GMC dealerships throughout most of North America. Buick has gone from 10 models in 1991 to only 5 in 2008. GMC has gone from 11 to 6 in the same period of time, and Pontiac has declined as well (especially in terms of market breadth).

Chevy and Cadillac have received a lot of good attention, but here’s the catch. If the other brands along with Hummer weren’t around, GM’s ability to compete based on these two brands alone would enable them to offer far better products to consumer. The need to market and equip all of these brands with their own styling and engineering tweaks is literally costing GM several billions of dollars and plenty more in overall reputation.

GM needs to kill this excess baggage… and the only one that may help them in the end will likely be Uncle Sam and perhaps the 21st version of CREEP better known as the Supreme Court.

I would welcome it. The trustbusting of the early 20th century needs to be carried on to ‘cartel’ busting for the 21st. Everything we buy these days is a frigging joke compared to what’s available in the rest of the world (cell phone plans, cable, insurance, health care.) Just name the entrenched interest and you’ll find millions of Americans paying through their noses to fund the unspoken collusion between them and well compensated government officials.

Unfortunately I do not think that Obama will have advisers that are knowledgeable regarding the auto industry at all. The only two fellows from Harvard Square that even know a lick about cars got their degrees from MIT. But the powers that be will certainly have powerful players who will want the new POTUS to play ball, and they will make sure that their allies in Congress and beyond get their way with him.

If GM has wanted to ditch brands for 20 years, why haven’t they just accelerated the starving they’ve done in recent years? Looks like the the dealers would have folded to me. I admit I know nothing about any liabilities they might have incurred, but it’s hard to tell the difference between a poor result with honest but incompetent effort behind it vs. intended bad and/or very limited product.

I’m really surprised that the folks here actually believe that GM WANTS to have eight different brands for the North American market. For over 20 years GM’s management has merged the dealer networks, in part, because eight independent brand dealerships seemed to be absolute lunacy. It has easily cost GM tens of billions of dollars in lost profits, excessive cost expenditures, and in overall reputation as well.

This arrangement needs to end above all others.

I’ll have to respectfully disagree here. Most American manufacturing is actually the exact opposite of this. What you’re referring to has to do with consumer goods in a few select industries.

The octopus that GM is could be given a lot of new blood if the following happened…

1) State dealer laws are changed to reflect the needs of the 21st century… not the early 20th.

2) GM is able to rid itself of everything but Chevy and Cadillac within the next three years.

3) The automakers are given a program that is equivalent to what the Japanese receive through MITI.

4) A new management team is given carte blanche to make the needed changes inside GM (this may be the most difficult component of all)

5) GM and their parts suppliers are given the financial footing needed to make this transformation.

There are at least several hundred other ingredients needed to change the current recipe. But GM North America will simply not survive if these five goals aren’t met in the next 18 months.