Exhibit A??! Try Exhibit Q.

Exhibit P: Opel Saturn Astra

Exhibit O: W-body cars. In 2008?

Exhibit N: Lacrosse and Lucerne

Exhibit M: $Billions to develop the finest 18 MPG vehicles the world has ever seen.

Exhibit L: Failing to market their few bright, unique vehicles, like the Malibu Maxx.

Exhibit K: Cobalt

…and so forth…

“Their” is a possessive pronoun like “her” or “our” “They eat their hotdogs with sauerkraut.” Everything else is “there.” “There goes the ball, out of the park! See it? Right there! There aren’t very many home runs like that.” “Thier” is a common misspelling, but you can avoid it by remembering that “they” and “their” begin with the same three letters. Another hint: “there” has “here” buried inside it to remind you it refers to place, while “their” has “heir” buried in it to remind you that it has to do with possession.

And here is the link if your interested, their.

I also find it odd how you can defend our education system right now when we are far behind other nations. It wont be long before developing countries start putting us to shame.

I remember 1984. I was doing an MBA and our HR lecturer said something like, “The biggest company in the world is doing the biggest reorganization in its history, and no one’s interested enough to discuss it.”

I dutifully bought a Time magazine which explained that Roger Smith would split GM up from a single monolith to two smaller monoliths but with common bits like Fisher Body (I forget the details).

Ho-hum, where would you like to work: Large Car Group or Small Car Group?

All the commentators of that time were agreed that GM’s main problem was lost brand loyalty. This applied to the designers, engineers and workers. They would work late into the night to make e.g. Chev better than its competitors, but not strive to make some distant accountants in head office look good. And it applied to the customers. They were offered bland badge-engineered offerings in the name of economies of scale, and no longer bought into what one might call the “Chev spirit.”

This is what happens when the boss says, “General Motors doesn’t make motor cars, it makes money.” A crumpled dollar bill is worth the same as a new one.

Where is his respect for the pride and dedication of the people who thought they were making motor cars, and damn fine ones at that, and the loyalty of the people who bought those motor cars?

Exactly the same thing happened at British Leyland. Individual brands were merged into a huge blob of a corporation in the name of economies of scale. Loyalties evaporated and workers and management lived only to screw each other. The government poured millions after millions of pounds into it, and where is the British car industry today?

When the Jaguar factory became Large Car Plant no 9 under British Leyland, Lord Stokes the ex-head of Jaguar stalked into the boardroom and took down his portrait in protest at the loss of identity. He had built cars for “Grace, space, and pace.” His successors were building cars for, I dunno, it’s a job innit? I mean, one job’s as good as another. At the end of the day it’s what’s in yer pay packet, knowhatimean?

Nothing has changed. GM will become the US British Leyland.

WRT to the Big 2.X, I think market forces ought to be left to work this time, and GM, Ford, and Chrysler should sink or swim on their merits, not their ability to get grants or government guaranteed loans.

But, of course, that’s exactly what you’re doing, and what you went on to do after typing those words.

Therefore it was your intention, and or, desire.

It is not my intention nor desire to hijack this comment thread (which is supposed to be about the death of GM and the rest of the Big 2.X in Detroit – you know, market forces and capitalism), but if you have a better explanation (with evidence) for the collapse of America’s schools, I’d be happy to hear it.

Perhaps you’d like to read this Open Letter from the Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction, wherein a director of “ethnic studies” here in Tucson is quoted as saying: “Our teachers are left-leaning. They are progressives. They’re going to have things (in their courses) that conservatives are not going to like”. That director keeps a poster of Ché Guevara on the wall of his classroom.

Somehow I doubt that the “ethnic studies” director is teaching John Locke, Adam Smith, or F.A. Hayek in his classroom.

If one doesn’t know the difference between they’re, their, and there, one should not contemplate homeschooling one’s children. Believe me, I don’t criticize anyone’s spelling – just sayin.

There are somewhere around 6000 + school districts in the US. Though they get federal funds, most of the funding is local, and so is most of the management. Your local school board isn’t very likely to be staffed by ivy league MBAs, but more likely local businessmen – the kind of men and women who run hardware stores or beauty salons, realty companies, grocery stores, Dentists, and the like.

Getting back to GM – I can’t see money being given with conditions. It would be nice, but I just don’t see it happening.

Phil is right – the boards of bystanders need to go first.

And to get a Green Tax Break for the Volt GM has to actually Produce The Volt. So far, despite plainly obvious Market Demand, that’s been a major hurdle.

I’m the author of that essay. You note: “I read that link. Interesting, though, that children in significantly-more-socialist western Europe or Asia test far better than those in the considerably-less-socialist United States. Just a point.”

Quite right. Teachers in those systems don’t have to waste their time indoctrinating their students in the “Wonders of Socialism.” Since the students are immersed in the system already, they know better to begin with, so the teachers can get on with the important jobs of teaching mathematics and language – the tests those students score far better at than ours do.

Oh, and thanks, menno, for the link. I probably received a couple hundred hits from this site today.

I read that link. Interesting, though, that children in significantly-more-socialist western Europe or Asia test far better than those in the considerably-less-socialist United States. Just a point. GM’s problems are the result of groupthink, but it’s distinctly well-educated, MBA-driven, too-abstracted-from-reality groupthink.

No one at GM can really admit they’re wrong, or tell their boss that he/she is wrong, because that would imply that they could have been (and likely were) wrong about so much else. It’s like telling a little lie; it forces you to tell a larger one to cover it, and then another one that’s larger still. Eventually, the whole house of cards gets so big that it collapses under the weight of misconception.

It’s also what amazed me about Kat Watanabe: hearing him confess, to an audience, that Toyota has slipped up due to over-rapid growth but is taking steps to fix the problem. Amazing. By the American or European metric, Toyota could kill kittens wholesale their balance sheet would absolve them of responsibility. But they don’t–they recognize their problems, address them and move on.

I think a whole lot of good could from someone like Rick Wagoner admitting to GM stockholders, dealers and customers that
1. GM has done stupid things in the past, such as a, b and c.
2. GM is going to do x, y and z to correct it.
The message that would send through GM’s corporate culture would be important: this is not the old GM. The old GM was wrong, here’s why, and here’s how we’re going to fix it. No blamestorming, no cover-your-assism, just “let’s fix it”.

I’d be impressed if the fear of lawsuits and/or collective corporate ego would allow that to happen.

I suspect I’m in good company in not at all wanting the demise of the D3. I’d love to see GM, Ford and Chrysler survive and prosper. In recent years, quality has improved, the cars have improved, but the thing which has not improved is management. I’d like to see a special bankruptcy category in which an ailing company first reneges on all “golden, silver and multi-hued” parachutes along with all extended managerial benefits, then is required to sack the entire management team. Their collective assets (which really belong not to them but to the corporation which overpaid them) are auctioned off to help hire competent managers who are compensated at no more than $200k/year, plus a share of the growth in corporate value in ten years. The share will be the same share earned by the good people who actually design and build good automobiles.

I realize this dream could not occur under our current political system, where robber-barons like Rick Wagoner and his ilk are the friends of the political elite, but it sure is nice to dream…

How does the sad state of our educational system explain the downhill slide of the big 3? Gen X, Y, or the Millennials are not running these companies. As far as I know, Rick Wagoner was never a Starbucks barista. If there are young people in the factories, they certainly weren’t there in the 70s and 80s when the slide began. I’m just not connecting the dots on poorly educated young folks and the Chevy Uplander.

I know my Generation (X) is a bunch of nitwits that is going to blow up the planet with our ignorance, but I’d rather not have the big 3’s demise resting on my shoulders when we do.

I have a contrarian opinion. It’s worth it to Toyota to be able to put GM and Ford out of business any time it wants. Just cut truck prices to the bone…start an even bigger price war. Who dies first? Toyota can break even while sending GM to the wall.

Toyota’s management is amazingly paranoid that the US Congress will put up trade barriers and block imports of their vehicles. They do not want the Detroit 3 to collapse, because they fear the backlash from Congress will hurt them.

Thing is, they don’t have to worry about that. They’ve been real smart. Note that all their plants are in different states. Every time they build a new plant in a new state, they get two Senators on their side. From an efficiency standpoint, it’s horrible to spread their plants around the country, but from a political standpoint, it’s great.

Meanwhile, the Detroit 3 are closing plants all over the country-especially ones far from Detroit. Again, it’s good from a efficiency standpoint to have all your facilities close together, but horrible politics. I don’t think Senators from Georgia or Oklahoma (to name just a couple of states with recently closed plants from Detroit automakers) are really inclined to support the Detroit 3 now.

Even ignoring that, Democrats are pro-Toyota because of the Prius, and Republicans don’t really care about job losses, provided the job losses aren’t in their district/state.

Now, Toyota realizes that, unless they really want to go out of their way to prop up the Detroit 3, one or more of them will go out of business at some point. They were thinking that day would be in the future, but the must realize that it’s coming soon. I just hope they also realize nobody (well, few people) will attack them when it happens.

None of them except HUMMER and maybe Saab are worth anything outside of GM nor independent of GM. They are simply names the same people stick on the cars they come up with.

Case in point; when I toured the Hyundai factory near Montgomery Alabama* the guide told us that ONLY high school (or GED) graduates were hired; no drop-outs. Plus, from what I can gather, they do aptitude, intelligence tests and ability tests when hiring. Wow, imagine that! Making sure that the workforce can actually do the work! What a novel idea!

Hey, wait a sec, why can’t Detroit Inc do that? Well, for one, they’re way too busy exporting jobs to other countries. To save 1/10th of a penny per car. Or, whatever.

*here was me, born and bred in Michigan, in January having to drive 2300 miles round-trip to go see cars being made – FINALLY – since every car-guy should see cars being made new, right? Right. Isn’t it ironic that the Detroit 2.8 factories don’t do tours? (And no, I didn’t want to see F150’s being built – I’m a CAR guy – nor did I want to see Corvettes being built – that’s not representative of true mass-production cars, but a specialty factory).

http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2008/06/george-orwell-daycare-center.html

Someone forgot to tell Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai and Mazda that American workers can’t handle precision assembly methods. All of those companies build vehicles in the USA (and they are increasingly engineering and styling them here, too), and those vehicles score quite well in comparison tests and reliability surveys. For that matter, look at the build quality of the CTS and the Corvette…no apologies needed there.

Likewise, jurisb. Being just over 1/2 century on earth and having lived in other countries, and also having paid attention to the rest of the world – and using discernment – I have to agree with your assessment.

Interestingly, Scotland was also once known for excellent engineering. Now, what is Scotland known for? Whiskey? Tourism? How about drug addled, down-trodden yobs?

When we visited sister-in-law in Scotland 3 years ago, she warned us to not walk on the grass in the parks. Don’t sit on the benches without carefully looking. Huh? Why? Disused druggie needles. Um, er, oh.

We walked through a recently improved picturesque area with a nice modern bridge (someone’s tax moneys went to good use). The “vandal proof” lamps on the bridge were – smashed. Perhaps just to prove that it could be done, who knows?

My Scotish neice lived with us in Michigan for a little while. She was lazy, thought very highly of her intellect and her “computer knowledge” but in reality was a no-account (which in southern American speech, means – a useless individual). She supposedly had the best tax-paid education in a semi-private Catholic school system, in Scotland. In reality, she was no smarter than the lowest-common-denominator-public-school-education-system results coming out of American schools.

So Scotland has gone, so America is going.

On another predictive note, it’s often said that C11 reorg will “save” one of the big 2.8, or that the remaining North American players will benefit from a “dead cat bounce” increase in sales. (As you said in this article Robert, who can tell in this market?) If the recent events at Plastech are any indication, I question whether either of those ideas have merit.

How many other big-2.8 suppliers are in the same position as Plastech? ie: if one of the big 2.8 pulls their business, by choice or by insolvency, the supplier will be forced into Chapter-11. Granted, parts won’t necessarily stop flowing out the doors the moment a supplier files C11, but I would bet that this puts strain on the supply chains on all the Detroit manufacturers, and the bad press from news about more suppliers in C-11 will give consumers pause before they buy a new vehicle from a domestic brand.