It was a statement that was relevant to how many miscues the company has had. And you don’t know how relevant it really is. Or maybe you do.

“All this stuff, indeed. Even a die-hard death watcher has trouble keeping-up with all the “normal” calls on GM’s remaining cash pile…”

No matter.

Which debacle will be the last one?

It’ll stop being funny if/when it starts being you. MILLIONS of people will be adversely affected by GM’s mismanagement. And if we’d started the GM DW when GM’s decline had truly begun, we’d be up to GM DW 3452 by now. At least. And it would still be relevant.

Anyway, please restrict the discussion under the post to the matters at hand. If you wish to talk about TTAC’s editorial stance or style, contact me directly: robert.farago@thetruthaboutcars.com

Which debacle will be the last one?

“Ok guys. For reals here now. The last one was almost the last one. This IS THE final nail in the coffin for sure…”

My daily observation of the operation of GM was and is,that very little has changed in the past few years.Sure I’ve seen massive production cuts and the hourly ranks have been decimated.

Cause of my high seniority I’ve been at work during down weeks,with the white collars out numbering the blue.Talk about too many chiefs and not enough indians.

Even today a senior managers stature is measured by how many flunkys follow behind him,or her.

Time will tell if they know something I don’t.

Ex GM GUY:Sorry about your dad,its never easy.I hope he had a long and happy retirement.

mikey, there is an old story about cooking a frog and I am sure that it has been mentioned here before.
Drop a frog in hot water and it’ll jump out. Put the frog in cold water and slowly turn up the heat and it will not notice how hot it is. Eventually, it will cook.
So it is with the GM workers and execs. The union locals don’t like the negotiated national changes (See the strike at Lansing earlier this year). Local management don’t strive to change local agreements to reduce headcount because they don’t want to upset the apple cart. So we still have stupid lines of demarcation. Boths sides are slowly cooking and they can’t feel it.
Brains must the size of frogs.

Rick and the other incompetents on the BOD may have no leadership ability, technical aptitude or desire to push GM to win, but they’re not stupid.

“Engine” Charlie Wilson and Harlow Curtice were quite effective leaders. Wilson led GM through the early postwar years, and was an effective negotiator with the UAW, which was, if anything, more militant in the immediate postwar years than it is today (read about the infamous GM strike in the aftermath of World War II). The excellent Cadillac and Oldsmobile V-8s were developed under his watch, as were the trend-setting two-door hardtops.

Curtice was an energetic leader who kept GM ahead of the competition. It was under his watch that the 1955 Chevrolet was developed, and the Corvette morphed from an odd two-seater with an underpowered six into a true sports car with V-8 power. Cadillac maintained its supremacy of the luxury market with terrific “regular” models and the low-volume, semi-custom Eldorado line. Under his watch, GM’s main concern was capturing TOO MUCH market share, and thus triggering anti-trust action.

runfromcheney: I don’t know how many times I have to reiterate this, but all of GM’s problems have stemmed from the Roger Smith era.

GM’s problems began in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The brand overlap, serious quality problems, terrible small cars and refusal to seriously understand what made the Japanese popular at the low end and the Germans popular at the high end really began during this time.

Roger Smith was a terrible leader, but many of his actions were a response to problems that had taken root long before his tenure. Unfortunately, his solutions in many cases made the problems worse.

But the rot was spreading through GM before he rose to the top.

Shouldn’t that be something that worries you. You are aware of how much money the General has been losing, the situation that is pretty public now and can’t be swept under the rug about their financials. Do you think it’s smart to still be running things “business as usual”. I would be less worried if you saw real action, major changes happening fast, and people in real panic because then the situaltion might change. If they continue as they always have you can’t expect any results to be positive.

Just look at Ford and the changes that have happened their, do you think it’s just business as usual their. I think the General needs even more radical surgery but doesn’t seam able to face what needs to be done, they just continue with the same old cuts they have been doing for the last 2 decades. Unfortunately they are cutting the people who didn’t really cause the problems, for the most part.

The thing that’s going for you and your co-workers is that even after all the cuts GM-North America is still a gigantic enterprise. If the debt burden can be reduced, and redundancy in brands, overhead and dealerships eliminated, with more attention to product competitiveness I’m sure GM’s future would be that of a major player in North America, selling lots of Impalas, Silverados, CTS’s–and, I hope, Buicks–at a profit.

By by my count, at current cash burn rates, GM its out of cash by early 2010.

If this is what folks mean by denial,believe me its alive and well.Upper managements parking is full of Yukons,and Suburbans.My theory is they drive them cause nobody else wants them.

I’m not saying bankruptcy aint gonna happen.But speaking as someone that witnesses it every day,I
personally don’t see much evidence of emminent armageddon.But being at the bottom of the food chain as I am,maybe I’m not supposed to know?

Like I said before, although Rick Wagoner is a complete idiot who has no business running a multinational corporation, he is not the source of all of GM’s problems.

I don’t know how many times I have to reiterate this, but all of GM’s problems have stemmed from the Roger Smith era. GM’s problem of all of their brands being diluted and competing with each other stemmed from Roger Smith and how he decided to pack all of the brands together. All of the rampant beancounting stemmed from Roger Smith. Basically, if you do any research, you will see that all of the problems that we have pointed out with GM all have stemmed from the Roger Smith era.

Like I said before, GM should have gone down in the 90s. Back in 1992 and 1993, directly after Smith’s decade of mismanagement, GM was in almost the exact same condition that they are in today. Back then, like today, they were losing money and getting assfucked by both the Japanese and a resurgent Ford and Chrysler. They were saved purely by the shot of dumb luck that was the SUV craze. So, quit blaming Wagoner. There is only one person we can blame for this, and that is Roger Smith.

I agree, GM hasn’t had a really effective leader post Sloan. Sloan was by no means perfect, but he built an outstanding organization which was literally the largest, most profitable, most studied and most copied corporation in the world. Since his departure the best have been effective caretakers, and the worst has got to be Wagoner.

Your half right about Pan Am. All their valuable assets and routes were sold to Delta after they filed for Ch. 11, my father being one of those assets. What was left before the Ch. 7 filing was of very little value. All their remaining fleet was leased. Except the 707’s and I think 727’s in the Pan Am Express fleet that were old airplanes. The latin American routes were split up between other airlines. The name was resurrected twice but was only related to the original Pan Am in name, they didn’t even have the same routes. It’s still alive pictured on freight trains somewhere up in the northeast.

For those who are interested it is better explained here, Pan Am.

“What could go wrong did. No one who followed Juan Trippe had the foresight to do something strongly positive … it was the most astonishing example of Murphy’s law in extremis. The sale of Pan Am’s profitable parts was inevitable to the company’s destruction. There were not enough pieces to build on”. —Stanley Gerwitz

Change the bold to Sloan & General Motors, history has already writen GM’s future you just have to look for it.

I began raising this issue a year or so ago. The auditors have to be worried sick about GM’s viability. If GM goes into bankruptcy, there are bound to be a jillion lawsuits against any bystanders (auditors, brokers, pension or mutual fund managers, trustees, etc.) with deep pockets. It’s the American Way.

folkdancer: “Anybody know the name of GM’s auditing firm?”

Deloitte and Touche. I think they have been GM’s independent auditors for many, many years.

MacInnis: “MAYBE they’ll go C7, then a shareholders group and banking consortium … Creates “THE NEW GENERAL MOTORS” and goes forward…”

Hmm…New General Motors…NGM… motto: “more scars than there are in the heavens” I like it!

Interesting: “The consequences of a GM bankruptcy [would be] staggering.”
I agree. The psychological blow might be as bad or worse than the direct financial harm to the economy.