I'm coming late to this thread and haven't read more than the first two pages so I'm sure this has been stated already. I don't think GM should be bailed out and I recognize the failure of the GM will lead to severe unemployment and many other bad things. That said though what will continuing to prop up a mismanaged company with severe structural problems do? In the end it seems to me that the money spent propping up GM could be better spent on providing social services to the those who lose their jobs from the collapse. Now this will be expensive but for the long term health of our economy I think it is better that we let terribly managed inefficient companies go under. To me the short term benefit of keeping GM on lifes support is outweighed by potentially longterm harm of continuing to keep a company with endemic problems going. Further I think the moral hazard issue is one that should be avoided as I have a hard time buying that GM management will consider making radical changes down the line if they feel they can hold the US government hostage over the argument that they are too big to fail. Stating that above though I fully expect the government to bail out GM. Our whole culture seems incapable of thinking about the long term over the short term and realistically I can't see Congress allowing GM to fail and facing the specter of tens of thousands of unemployed people. I get the feeling that a GM bailout will be blocked by the Republicans in this Congress as a last stand of defiance since they know that they will be even further out of power in the next Congress and any repercussions will fall mostly on the Democrats but once the next Congress comes in one of its first acts iwll be to pass the bailout.
All those are fringe cars and half of them cost more than 50K. The only car out of those that I would actually consider buying would be the escalade but its a 60K gas guzzler. The Camaro is all right if I were single or entering my midlife crisis. Those cars really going to sway the Camry/Accord/Civic/Lexus crowd.
Escalade - a luxury tank that actually sold well - didn't help, because it also helped to kill the company as they rely too much on these monstrosities that few people really need, especially when gas prices went up. Camaro - "we're out of ideas, let's jump on nostalgia like all the other American carmakers!" Pontiac G8 - I don't know about reliability or the interior, but for the $, this is a good car that suffers from the Pontiac/American car stigma. CTS-V - I would hope if I pay $60k+ for a car, it would do well. CTS Coupe - pushed off another 1-2 years. Saturn Sky - Cute. ... but as a driver's car, the Miata is still better. Here's the deal : American carmakers have relied on people saying "BUY AMERICAN" to sustain them as they put out shoddy product after shoddy product year after year. They didn't care they were putting out CRAP - YOU WERE STILL BUYING! If you don't believe this, there's a documentary about GM that CNBC runs occasionally where they basically say they're going to change their ways and build better cars. It's not American cars vs. the world. The German carmakes also have had massive reliability problems over the past decade or two. Mercedes isn't the bulletproof tank it used to be, Audi was a crapshoot in terms of reliability, there are several VW owners that would love to shoot their cars. I've read an article in which I believe an Audi higher-up basically admitted their quality was crap for a while and that they were changing for the better. Toyotoa and Honda built their image of reliability thanks in part to the US carmakers producing junk that breaks down repeatedly within 75k-100k miles. I have a 2004 Acura TL I bought in October 2003 that just hit 110,000 miles. There have been 2 or 3 recalls on the car - nothing major from what I recall. How many unscheduled repairs? Zilch. This is on a first year production of a new generation car. Before this I had a 1997 Nissan Maxima that in 120k+ miles had 2 major problems : the odometer/speedometer assembly went out at around 90k but was covered under my warranty. Then the starter went out sometime after 100k miles - that was the only out of warranty repair I had on the car. GM and Ford are "crappily-run" companies that I doubt will change their line of thinking anytime soon. They make better cars now, but what's a shame is their reputation precedes them. How many mottos has Ford gone through trying to prove to the public "we dont' really suck!" in the past decade or two - the fact is, they did suck! Hell, I considered a CTS when I bought my TL, but it wasn't a good buy bang-for-the-buck. The CTS Coupe was high on my list of next cars to consider and they push it back due to the current economic climate. Nobody wants Chrysler at the moment - Daimler got rid of them, Cerberus wants to dump them, etc. after they came up with one of the best ideas in their history since Iacocca came along, the 300 - the pimpmobile for the common man. lol. I want these carmakers to succeed for one reason : there are a lot of subsidiaries, downstream manufacturers, etc. that employ a bunch of people that would suffer greatly if they went under. I feel for the people that work for them. Outside of that, I couldn't care less about a group of carmakers that, for the most part, didn't give a flip about Americans who bought their cars and just wanted to "sell" whether they made crap or not.
It really happened dude face it. They made the Aztek. they named it after an extinct civilization. It's not GM, but I recently rented the Ford Focus, the ugliest car in America. http://jalopnik.com/399115/the-ten-ugliest-cars-currently-sold-in-the-united-states As much as we loved the original Ford Focus when it debuted, and as often as we pine for the Euro Focus, the US focus has gotten perpetually worse in the looks department. That was in 2008. For 2009 Ford Focus randomly added curves, lines, bulges and spoilers until we wished the once becoming Focus would soon be going.
dude don't complain about random lines and bulges on the focus. It looks pretty plain to me. I really like the looks. As for the Aztek, I am hoping they allow GM to fail.
my roomate in college had a camaro, that was a piece of crap, it broke down all the time. so will the new camaro compete with the mustang? it can still suck like it did back in the day. there was a period when the camaro and mustang disappeared like that INXS song. Then it was replaced by Acura integras, Mitsubshi mirages, and souped up Civics and Preludes. didn't they learn anything from the japanese? they want speed but not gas guzzlers.
I didn't name the Focus the ugliest car in America. see that link. go rent a Focus. I rented one and drove all over California for 3 days with it. Honda is not paying me to tell you that that car sucked. I'm doing it for free so that when you or any fellow clutchfans rent cars, spend that extra $20 bucks to get anything else. On Highway 1, I felt like I was going to die cause the handling was so bad at high speeds. Freaking Priuses would pass me.
that whole period you missed in the 90s when you first bought your f150 and were watching reruns of Knight Rider.
you mean when the 5.0 was ruling the streets? Or when the 300HP Camaro (which i think is a POS) was schooling the rice burners?
yeah that period when i had to drive my roommate to chevy every month to get Camaro fixed while we saw people drive to the grocery store with no problems in their hondas. Vanilla Ice wrote a song about when the 5.0 'ruled' the streets Rollin' in my 5.0 With my rag-top down so my hair can blow The girlies on standby waving just to say hi Did you stop no I just drove by Kept on pursuing to the next stop I busted a left and I'm heading to the next block The block was dead Yo so I continued to A1A Beachfront Avenue The 5.0 also made a nice appearance in Menace II Society when Cain stole this other dude's ride cause he had nice rims Don't you miss those days when people bought Fords and GMs before they knew how crappy they were?
my bad I thought you were talking about sports cars and young racers. I am not in the auto industry and Ford will always be around so feel free to drive whatever you want when we have 15% unemployment.
Ford lost 3 billion dollars last quarter dude. Granted they are in better shape than GM because they have adapted to manufacturing in China, but they also need help in the bailout. Did you ever know anyone who worked for Ford, corporate? I did. A friend of mine's first job after getting an MBA. He was all about Ford dude, got himself a nice car from Ford. well, four years later, he's not there and it was his choice to leave. There's a reason why the big 3 are in trouble. its similar to the financial institution, leadership.
These are the numbers that stick out the most to me. 460,000 retirees you are paying benefits on?!?! That's over 4 times as many production workers and the production numbers are staggering compared to Toyota. Those numbers are the ones that contribute to the huge increase in labor cost differences. Fix that and you'll go from a BK company to a survivor. I'm not sure how you get out from under paying 460,000 retirees (especially under UAW) but I think laying off 1/2 of your production workers would be a start. Yes it would hurt but no more than C laying off 53000 people in addition to the 22000. Then I'd tell the 406,000 that their benefits just got cut in 1/2 and remind them that 1/2 is better than 0. If the workers strike then hire scabs as there will be 1000s that would love their jobs in this economy.
Here's a jerk who probably doesn't have one, but we could just confiscate half of his retirement accounts (preferably when he is too old to earn more) and send it to the national debt and remind him 1/2 is better than 0. The sheer unfeelingness of these conservatives can be breath taking despite years of reading these posts.
Uhhhh - any particular reason that you feel the onus should fall on the workers? Neither the UAW or GM are blameless here, but good lord the above certainly is skewed... I'll tell you this though - if GM gets a bailout, I'm never buying GM again. Ever. Let them go chapter 11.
uhhh on one hand you refuse to support a bailout of anykind but on the other hand you do not want the workers to get screwed. WTF do you want?