You guys get the point. Some things don’t need to be public.

Besides, do any of us really know when and where this current economy is going?

GM is hot building small cars in Mex. Texas doesn’t need to know thses things. Besides, it’s already public knowledge.

Their turnaround plan should be privvy to investors and owners only.

Period.

No they are trucks without frames, returns the same fuel efficiency too.

GM does do some vehicles very well, but they just don’t have a balanced portfolio of vehicles. If each class of vehicle was the equivalent to the Vette or CTS or Silverado, there most certainly would not be a deathwatch going on…but you have a point that there is a vocal group of posters that seem to enjoy kicking Detroit. Why being a Toyota fanboy is any better than being a Blue Oval guy is somehow lost on me.

Yes, there will always be a market for these. But increasingly, it will be a smaller and smaller market. The day may not be far off when the only people who drive trucks are the people who actually need them. Running a performance sedan will require a foregoing other purchases – some will do this, some won’t. GM can perhaps continue to be king in these markets (but it’s not like no one else can enter or compete) but not with it’s present infastructure/overhead.

Could these purchases be because of the recent, ridiculous, finance offerings the General had? Looking at the sales figures for the last few months, it is likely that a lot of those new cars are from the 0% for 72 months spree.

Didn’t GM say that they weren’t going to do this sort of thing anymore? Perhaps Betty Ford has a program for them.

I know that everyone’s instinct is to be down on the home team. However, GM’s product renaissance is really only half over. Eventually, we will all adjust to $4 gas, and make economic decisions accordingly (fewer designer clothes, less eating out, etc.). There will still be room for trucks and performance sedans — where GM has been and is king.

The magic model year 2010 is going to tell all. Almost all of GM’s products are due for a makeover. The products to watch are the Chevy Cruze, the new Saturn Astra, the new Aveo, maybe a Saturn Corsa, new Buick Lacrosse, the new STS/DTS replacement, a slimmer and leaner Saturn Vue, perhaps a new G6, and a few others. GM can perhaps ride out the next year in giving cars away at great financing (which does seem to work somewhat for the short-term). In the meantime, GM got its two-tier wage system through and will benefit at existing US plants with the weak dollar.

Another aspect of all of this seems very underreported. To what extent are Japanese, German, and Korean manufacturers subsidizing the costs of their foreign-built vehicles given the weak dollar? There is no way that the dollar can sink 20% against the Euro (really 60% since 2001), and have VW/Audi’s prices, for example, stay the same. If GM is losing money on every Astra, then VW has to be losing money on the Rabbit.

I remember when my father showed me a color insert that was part of a package that was sent to GM stockholders. This must have been 15 years ago. Two Cadillacs were proudly displayed with a statement about the quality award Cadillac had just won. I believe the award was the “Malcom-Baldridge” award but I may be mistaken. Anyway, he showed me the picture and said what is wrong here? Three seconds later, I said ” the left headlight is so far out of aim that it would illuminate the ceiling.” Hey, nobody sweats the details like GM…

It’s the culture at GM that is deeply flawed. In a company that promoted teamwork and good team decision making, Wagoner would have remained at mid-level in the finance dept., leading a relatively quiet existence. Wagoner isn’t up to the task in front of him, but it’s not his fault he became the head Honcho. GM’s culture is at fault.

Wagoner needs to be encouraged to retire soon, but let’s not pretend that it’s a lack of a dynamic hard charging dominanting ego who’s pay is linked to GM’s performance that will make all the difference. There is something deeply flawed in the decision making process at GM and it isn’t going to get fixed by placing a new king on the throne.

GM apparently learned absolutely nothing when the had Deming in to advise them.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1988/02/15/70199/index.htm

Ross Perot had it nailed 20 years ago. When Mr. Perot was run off, I stopped considering GM as a viable alternative.

I know how to spot a rental car, man; none of these cars had any of the telltale signs. They all either had paper temporary plates in the back windows or license plates with recent tabs on them. I understand that the West Coast doesn’t buy GM products in large numbers (I live in Seattle most of the year), but that doesn’t mean that nobody buys The General’s offerings.

I’ve seen exactly ONE Lucerne on the road since it was introduced, no Lacrosses or Pontiac anythings. I haven’t even seen a new Impala recently. I live in the San Gabriel Valley…3 miles north of one Buick-Pontiac-GMC dealer, 5 miles south of another. There are 3 Chevrolet dealers within 10 miles of where I live. All those dealers…no new cars do I see.

Now, if you want to talk more than a year out from now…

No kidding. Besides Silverados, Tahoes and Suburbans ….. how many Escalades and Hummers do you suppose went out the door on two to four year leases? Luxury nameplates usually rely far more on leases than do pedestrian nameplates. Residuals are likely to be 25%-50% lower than planned for. Cerberus is going to get hit very hard by this effect thanks to their ownership of Chrsyler Finance AND half of GMAC. Since these captive finance operations do not take deposits, we are not likely to see the feds step in to take them over like they just did with IndyMac.

I look forward to the day when we can start having happy conversations about automotive topics, but it feels like those days are a very long way off.

“Considers”… there is no consideration here at all. GM is a Truck/SUV company. Period. The only cars they build are Corvettes and Rental Fleets. Been that way for over 20 years now.

Now, if they had started a car based marketing (and engineering) push a decade or so ago, they might have survived now.

Hell, even if they started the week after Katrina hit, which was only three years ago, they’d have a chance. But no, they sat on their hands! Morons.

–chuck

GM stock- all of it- is worth about 5.5bn. I’m guessing that the majority of this is owned by institutions such as index funds and pension funds. This is peanuts compared with other american industrial companies like Caterpillar (40bn value) Boeing (47bn value)or United Technologies (60bn). Heck, even the truck company PACCAR is worth about 3x as much as GM. Those are worth fighting over. GM doesn’t have any investors big enough or with enough percentage invested enough to care.

I still think GM could be saved, but they won’t do it. They are treading water until they run out of cash, at which time they will go under. I think they will get more money, but the terms will be absolutely brutal. I think rates over 10%, probably over 12%.

If GM truly had a plan, we would have seen evidence of it. GM would have chopped models and dealers, and plants,lawsuits be damned. You would see massive chopping in the ranks, a sense of urgency. Instead, we have 10000 volts in 2010. To put this in perspective, if each customer just gave them $40k in a suitcase for nothing, and GM spent zero producing the car, the total sales of Volt would cut the cash burn by about a third.

But there is another big problem. Residuals on GM trucks out on lease. Billions of dollars evaporating without a trace. GM makes leases based on a prediction of what the trucks will sell for at the end of the lease. These end of lease prices on Silverados are cratering.

GM will be forced to cut off-lease truck prices to the absolute bone to sell them. And when a 3 year old Silverado sells for next to nothing, why would anyone buy a new one?

The Detroit 3 painted themselves into this corner. They ignored their car lines for so long that the general public now considers them to be truck/SUV companies only and not car companies. This was fine when they could make oversized profits on said truck and SUVs, not so fine when nobody wants the things any more. So, the few cars they do sell they sell at prices that make little if any profit for them, plus they now lose a bundle making unwanted pickups and SUVs.

Now, if they had started a car based marketing (and engineering) push a decade or so ago, they might have survived now. But they didn’t; anything starting now will probably be too little, too late.

The only saving grace for GM is that Chrysler is in much worse shape than they are. If three guys are being chased by a bear, two of the guys don’t have to out run the bear; they just have to out run the third guy. GM (and Ford) can’t out run the bear; but they probably can out run Chrysler.

What happens in 2009, which is only six months away?

Besides, if the stockholders aren’t able to get GM execs’ pay to be linked to performance, I don’t think they have the sway to oust Rick entirely. It’s sad, really.

Unaccountability at its finest.

That’s probably a fair assessment. The only winners in this deal are the Board and the C-level Execs.