New GM Incentives: You Don't Pay What They Pay
I once made the mistake of asking Jim Dollinger to fax me over a list of all the GM incentives in play. I swear to God I threw away my fax machine afterwards; I ran out of that stupid carbon crap at 15 pages, and we’re talking about a non-mid-life compatible typeface size. Anyway, now that GM’s last– I mean “latest” Employee Pricing for Everyone Sale is done, the automaker’s amping-up the incentives to its last redoubt: GM employees. (If you doubt it’s a readoubt, read out this pdf re: GM North Central’s sales figures). Automotive News [sub] reports that the General’s offering the discounts to “GM employees and their extended family members, and employees of GM suppliers and GM dealerships — essentially anyone who knows anyone who knows someone who qualifies for the GM employee purchase price, said Jim Bunnell, executive director of GM’s channel support group.” Support group? Do they hold hands and sing Kumbaya? Anyway it’s an extra grand (The Chevrolet Malibu, Traverse and Avalanche; GMC Acadia; Saturn Outlook; Buick Enclave; Hummer H3; Cadillac CTS; and light- and heavy-duty versions of Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra extended-cab and crew-cab pickups) or two (Chevrolet Impala, Pontiac G6, Saturn Aura, Buick Lucerne, Saab 9-7X, Cadillac Escalade, Hummer H2 and light-duty versions of the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra regular-cab pickups) on the hood.
More by Robert Farago
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jkross: I was looking on the GM supplier site today and it looked liked the g8 had $2500 on the 08's and $1500 on the 09's at least in NC
I would like to have a long-wheel-base cargo van to live in if the economy gets worse. If Chevy would sell me a new one for $6,000 I would lift my boycott of all GMC vehicles for this one time.
There are several ways of looking at cost. The technically most correct way is figure out everything that goes into the vehicle plus it's portion of the overhead etc. The other way is to just add up the actual costs of the materials (metal, paint, supplied parts), add the actual hourly labor COST to put it all together plus the energy that is needed to get the thing down the line etc and forgo everything else. (Heck, if the for example a laid off worker were to get 95% of his normal pay in a Jobs Bank, then the incremental labor cost to build the car is only 5%.) Whether a car is built and sold or not, Rick Wagoner is still getting paid, the rent is due, the property taxes need to get paid, the phone bill is coming, the receptionist needs paying. The development costs of the car are money that is already paid out, it;s gone. Any penny that is gained over the DIRECT cost of the vehicle in question is a good thing. If however you are selling under THAT cost, then it's really game over. And of course it may be difficult tofind the money to fund any further development or new models...
This whole pricing incentive daisy chain is symptomatic of what's wrong at GM. I'm not in the car business. I'm just a normal no-connections consumer on the outside looking in, so maybe I'm being naive. And I don't have a third cousin 6 times removed that works at GM to get any Employee Pricing deals. I'm gonna go out on a limb here, but if GM built good solid vehicles that actually lasted and didn't have decades of POS quality stigma attached to them, they wouldn't have to play the pricing hokey-pokey to sell their crap. They could charge a good fair price for a good vehicle with a reputation of having good value and quality. Period. But what do I know?