First off no, Toyota will NOT post a loss next month. Not even close. Toyota is still making BIG profits, even though their profits have dropped they are still profitable.

Secondly, this economic crisis and huge drop in industry sales did NOT cause GM’s problems. GM has been losing money at an astronomical rate for years now. If this economic crisis had never happened, GM still would have eventually run out of money in a few years.

The ONLY thing this economic crisis has done is accelerate the inevitable, and what is inevitable for GM is Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Giving GM a bailout will only temporarily delay the inevitable.

If they want to do a meaningful bailout, they’d be better off helping key suppliers so the non-Big 3 (and Ford) can continue to produce than to be handing more money to the UAW, Cerberus and Wagoner’s management cronies.

From my families’ awesome 454-powered and indestructible ‘Burb to my brother taking me for a spin in his Grand National when I was 13, there’s been some nifty GM cars in my experience. Of course, I’ve had my dark times too. Had a Pontiac Grand Am powered by an Olds Quad-4 (?). The car was actually quite fast, but had no balance shafts and after twenty thousand miles the thing had damn near ShAkEn ItSeLf tO pIeCeS. Who would be so stupid as to sell a 2-ish liter inline four without a balance shaft? Holy crap that was stupid. Anyways, GM isn’t all bad cars..there’s some diamonds in the rough.

“Southern welfare state”? spoken by someone who has never lived or worked in the south.

This is a reference to where Federal taxpayer dollars go. That is, pretty much all Southern states get more Federal taxpayer dollars worth of “stuff” (roads, military bases, whatever) than then their citizens pay. The opposite is true in states like Califonria, whose citizens pay much more in Federal taxes than they get back in “stuff”.

So for all you Detrioters and Dems having a fit out there, you need to direct your ire at DEMOCRATS who voted it down, not Republicans.

It passed in the House, but failed in the Senate, on a vote of 35-52. That is, the 35 were the winners, since the Republicans threatened to filibuster, which can kill any Senate bill unless you have 60 votes. Of the 35, 31 were Republicans, and one of the four Democrats was Reid, head of the Senate, who voted no not because he was against the bill (or, more precisely, he was not against stopping discussion of the bill; aka ending a filibuster), but because there is a Senate rule where somebody who votes against something can bring it up again later.

This is how a bill dies in the Senate even though 53 of the 100 members want it passed and only 34 of those 100 members want it to fail. Welcome to American democracy, enjoy your stay.

This is why getting to 60 votes was a big deal in the last elections. The Dems only got to 58 or 59 (Minnesota still undecided), but that’s close enough, as they will pull off at least two Republicans for most cloture votes.

Michigan’s fixed labor racket with the unions have guaranteed that no outside company not already stuck in Michigan would ever build a factory there. For a business owner or investor that amounts to having a “co-owner” involved with the business, and the co-owner hasn’t plowed a dime of risk into the business. I mean for God’s sake, the union is involved in future product planning? What the hell? That’s what the UAW is to the D3, right down to having their stickers festooned on the cars laying around Detroit’s airport right about now. Who would plow money into that? Apparently no one.

And while there was obvious trouble with these car-makers going all the way back to bail-out 1.0 (Chrysler) Michigan never changed its legislative tune or legal structure for working in that state. Michigan sat and watched these southern states with less infrastructure and a less-skilled population get all these transplants factories precisely because no sane automobile company would want the UAW “helping” them make decisions about their businesses.

Michigan sat on its ass while all this happened over a period of thirty years and now I watch their governor on Meet the Press blame everything wrong on everyone else and even take a shot at Wal-Mart’s CEO because Wal-Mart has the audacity to control its destiny without Jimmy Hoffa’s help.

Can you imagine what Silicon Valley would be if every time you opened a start-up you had to call the local Teamsters rep and schedule contract talks? There wouldn’t be a Silicon Valley, that is for sure.

Oh, and next Friday… is Hawaiian shirt day… so, you know, if you want to you can go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans.

Any editorial that riles my blood AND makes me salivate thinking about the eggplant parm at Angelo’s Civita Farnese is awesome.

Every type of manufacturer imaginable whether it is steel, building products and yes, automobiles, set up shop in the south to escape the failed economic policies that are endemic in northern states, i.e. lack of right to work regulations, union feather bedding, excessive regulation, excessive taxes, excessive land costs, excessive energy costs; the beat goes on and on.

We should all be happy that collectively we, the U.S. still have the ability to attract and support major manufacturing and the great jobs that it produces; southern states and their business policies are the reason there still is a vibrant industrial development policy in the U.S.

Southern Republican senators are doing what southern Republicans, and frequently Republicans in general do and that is abhoring Federal involvement in private commercial matters. Don’t forget that Tennessee and Kentucky stand to lose a lot if the domestic car industry ceases to exist, as Kentucky has three domestic auto plants (two Ford and one Chevrolet) and Tennessee has one (Saturn). Doesn’t sound to me like a ringing endorsement in support for the foreign, not U.S. based, auto industry.

That said, GM wouldn’t survive as is down south or anywhere for that matter. This day of reckoning has been a long time comming and they are singularly reponsible for their deplorable state of affairs. It’s absurd to blame their problems on the current state of the U.S. economy. They can still fix their problem, I believe, but they need to stand in front of a mirror, blame themselves and make a commitment to right the ship.

Regarding choosing the best vehicle for the job, the Daimler vans are head and shoulders above the Big 2.2 products, which haven’t been updated in 20 years. As for pickups, they are all about the same to me, as far as using them for work trucks. Given their UAW heritage, the Big 2.2 trucks would have to be markedly better for me to consider them over the new Tundra. And as far as I can tell, the Toyota is just as capable as any.

I love it!!!
But…..sadly…..it is probably true.

Sigh…

its true. GM vs Toyota. GM screws you and Toyota (or Honda) helps you.

GM regularly and unilaterally lowers prices and says “we have seen your balance sheet and we know you have some money left and you are dependent on shipping to us worldwide each week. Take the lower price or we will put you out of business.”

Toyota says “OK this part generation is not so good, lets work together, we will help you make a better design and then we can all make some money here.”

I knew in 1976 that Detroit was in trouble. That was the year my Dad and I each went half in the purchase of my first car. We were looking for something small, sporty, economical and reliable. The Big 3 offered nothing that met these conditions so we ended up getting a 1976 Toyota Corolla SR5 Coupe (of blessed memory). The fact that Detroit couldn’t meet our needs was my first clue. The second was that my Dad was a Marine Corps veteran of the Battle of Okinawa. The fact that someone with his history could buy Japanese told me that the cultural barriers to the imports’ success were gone. A kid like me understood this 32 years ago yet the “experts” in Detroit were oblivious or in denial for decades. Disgraceful.

The last time I checked the Republicans were a minority in the Senate. And the House. And the Dems were THE MAJORITY. So if this was voted down, it wasn’t because of Republicans voting no, it was because some Democrats joined them. The Bushocrat was even going to sign it, but somehow this is the Republicans’ fault?

So for all you Detrioters and Dems having a fit out there, you need to direct your ire at DEMOCRATS who voted it down, not Republicans.

Aren’t most of those problems vendor related? Are you saying that GM tells the same vendors who sell to Toyota that they want the unreliable parts? That the OEMs have bad designs. Or that you and your coworkers make crap?

If you read what eamiller has written through the filter of what ijustworkhere has written, there is nothing inconsistent. Your questions are then not really relevant.

Can you cite me an article where anyone predicted that N.A. annualized unit sales would fall from 17 million to 10 million?

No, I cannot off the top of my head provide one that features those *specific* numbers.

There have, however, been countless articles in the MSM predicting GM’s soon to come BK over the last 3+ years.

Moreover, unless you are on the GM corporate koolaid IV, the last 20+ years of CONTINUOUSLY declining market share coupled with ridiculous waste and untenable legacy costs lead to the current inevitability.

When GM bought Perot off the BoD, he was very public about all the corporate culture issues that kept the Titanic heading straight into the iceberg. Same thing with York.

When DeLorean’s book ‘On a Clear Day, You Can See General Motors’ came out, it was crystal clear how broken the corporate culture was. That book came out in the early 70s. If you know anything about how corporate culture works, you knew that GM had become an institution that was unwilling to change, because it had the hubris to believe that it would never need to.

Hell, up to this very fucking minute, GM and its apologistists, continue to pretend that the problem is everything but GM itself.

My family left Michigan in the early 70s. The writing was on the wall even then. The only surprise was how long it took to get to this day.

My parents couldn’t take anymore of the lousy products, high prices, and shoddy treatment from the domestics. They went Toyota and Honda in 1978.
They’re not coastal liberals. They’re midwesterners. It always bothered them to have to buy a ‘foreign’ car. But they aren’t rich. They couldn’t afford cars that needed new engines at 70K miles. “Whaddaya expect” said the dealer of the last domestic POS that they bought.

They even shopped domestics one last time about 4 years ago before they bought an Avalon. Same old story at the domestics – cheap interiors, lousy paint jobs, new cars with rattles on a test drive. And of course, pathetic subhuman sales monkeys trying to high pressure sell my mother. This, after of course, the obligatory insults about not having my dad with her to make the buying decision. As if my mother can’t write her own checks without my father’s standing next to her. Those guys deserve to be living under a bridge and dining at the soup kitchen.

So, she went back to where she got a quality product and a dealer experience that wasn’t out of the 50s.

If you study the auto industry’s history, you’ll learn that it is always cyclical. If you study economic history, you’ll learn that the higher the climb, the sharper and deeper the inevitable downcycle.

The economic downturn was inevitable. A concomitant downturn in auto sales always follows. Couple that with the inability of marginal buyers (the people who have been driving the housing and car markets for the last 5 years) to purchase a new car, it’s really a no-brainer.

Average Americans carry more debt than ever in our history. Few people actually *need* a new car. If your car is not totalled, or broken beyond repair, most people with delay a new car purchase. Couple this with a ballooning number of repos and people and corporations shedding extra vehicles. The used car market will become the market of choice for most consumers.

Bottom line, I can easily paint a scenario where new car sales drop below 8MM units for 2009. In fact, it could drop down to 6MM units, especially as credit markets continue to contract.

Ford may have a prayer. They are actually changing their corporate culture. I do really hope they succeed.

Detroit Todd – it’s really important, if NA is to salvage its auto industry, to try to penetrate the chaff and propaganda that has been thrown up, to let management appear blameless here.

As RF writes, management did nothing, just continuing their delusional approach to making and marketing cars, and GM was in trouble long before the financial meltdown. In fact, GM managers used the availability of easy credit to cover up their problems, ensuring the finale would be even worse.

They remain delusional, claiming (in the first appearance in Congress) that they expected better sales in December of this year, and that the market would pick up. This is chaff, thrown up because they have to pretend they’ll be able to repay the loans, and preferably soon, since they are desperate to get money now.
But it’s going to take years before GM makes money again, and it’s going to take at least one hundred billion dollars spent on GM alone, money that will not come from GM profits, there aren’t any.