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Old 12-15-2008, 12:14 PM   #26
chkltcow
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Originally Posted by Wagon Of Fury View Post
Ermm, plenty of people are buying their cars, it was only this past year or so that they ceded their #1 sales position to Toyota, and only by a few thousand units.

The real problem with GM (as I have stated ad nauseum) is that they are operating as though they still had 50% market share, when its really 25%.
Which brings us to the labor cost argument. If they're selling so many cars, why are they hemmoraging money?
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Old 12-15-2008, 12:33 PM   #27
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Originally Posted by Wagon Of Fury View Post
Ermm, plenty of people are buying their cars, it was only this past year or so that they ceded their #1 sales position to Toyota, and only by a few thousand units.
Deep, deep discounts, fleet sales, decent international sales, and calling shipped vehicles "sales" is part of what is keeping the big 3 in those numbers. It's a lot of obfuscation, but the reality is that less and less Americans are buying their cars every year. And this trend is not reversing
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Old 12-15-2008, 12:43 PM   #28
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Originally Posted by chkltcow View Post
Which brings us to the labor cost argument. If they're selling so many cars, why are they hemmoraging money?
Read this again: The real problem with GM is that they are operating as though they still had 50% market share, when its really 25%

I'll elaborate:

There are consumers who will always buy domestic, regardless of quality/value/whatever. This is what sustained The Big Three through the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Call them "The Core". The Core has been shrinking, so now even if a company (GM) is producing good-value, quality, price competitive products, they are still burdened with production overcapacity.

What happens when you make 10 cars, and the public only wants six ? You have all these sunk costs, you have to get at least some of them back. OK, some can go off to fleet sales, you can have fire sales on the rest, just to get them off the lots. Problem solved. But now you've created two new problems. People perceive your brand as "the rental car brand" and people who rent are usually getting the low-end stripper model, so two negative perceptions there. Problem #2 - those price reductions ? Sure they moved inventory off the lot, but at zero profit, PLUS you just screwed over early adopters and "The Core" in terms of depreciation. Do that every year in a row for ten years, and you won't have many Early Adopters left willing to take their financial beating. Everyone will just wait for the Fire Sale.

OK, so now the armchair CEOs chime in: Roll back the production lines. Well, the UAW has certain levels of production work contractually guaranteed to them. If GM can't provide the work, the workers go idle and still get paid (yay Jobs Bank). Is it retarded ? Sure. It's also one of the things they've just given up on after years. Like the unions themselve, the idea of a jobs bank started out as a good one, where it keeps skilled (*ahem*) workers "in the family" when production numbers are cut, lest they leave the Company for good. Better to idle a skilled experienced worker for a month or two rather than give the boot and have to hire/train his replacement. Obviously, there have been abuses of this system.

So what to do with overproduction ? This has two faces. GM has the capacity to build (fake numbers) say, 300,000 Cobalts. Well, the market seems to only want about 180,000 of them. Dump some of them in fleet, but that goes back to the earlier problem. Here's where it gets murky: Some (not all) dealers want to be "full-line" even though it conflicts with their own brand image (nobody ever said dealers were smart). Take a hypothetical Pontiac dealer. During crisis times, nobody is buying G8s or even G6s, meanwhile at the Chevy dealer down the road, Cobalts are flying off the lot. Pontiac dealer wants a piece of that, so you get the G5, a rebadged Cobalt. (Even better example of this is the recent rebadging of a Daewoo econobox as the "G3"). That would be the pull side, dealers want to be a "full line". The flip side is, all of those Cobalts have to go somewhere. Even if a dealer doesnt want them, hey "you're a Pontiac dealer, you want some <good selling model> ? You'll have to take some G5s too".

Lather, rinse, repeat for 20+ years, and this is the mess they are in.
Even if UAW agreed to work for $0/hour, it would only effect prices about -10%.

Last edited by Wagon Of Fury; 12-15-2008 at 12:50 PM.
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Old 12-15-2008, 12:49 PM   #29
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Originally Posted by LastResort View Post
Deep, deep discounts, fleet sales, decent international sales, and calling shipped vehicles "sales" is part of what is keeping the big 3 in those numbers. It's a lot of obfuscation, but the reality is that less and less Americans are buying their cars every year. And this trend is not reversing
Agreed, although I never heard about the bold portion. The real shame is that both Ford and GM are producing some of the best products they've ever made, but there are less and less folks willing to give them a shot. Similar to Oldsmobile, right before they got the flush. Aurora with V8 ? Hawt.
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Old 12-15-2008, 12:49 PM   #30
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Jumpy will always have a place in his heart for the vette.


This is mah song for you, sweet sweet vette.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGC003Xz3CY
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Old 12-15-2008, 12:53 PM   #31
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I was just there. Nice place. And did you say finally shelve the pushrod V8? I believe that's an oxymoron here.
What's the pointy thing on the roof?
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Old 12-15-2008, 12:53 PM   #32
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LS1s will go on sale for half price, and every mod will swap them into their Miata's!
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Old 12-15-2008, 12:59 PM   #33
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Agreed, although I never heard about the bold portion. The real shame is that both Ford and GM are producing some of the best products they've ever made, but there are less and less folks willing to give them a shot. Similar to Oldsmobile, right before they got the flush. Aurora with V8 ? Hawt.
Yeah, at Chrysler, channel stuffing is occurring right now. Dealerships are basically strongarmed to buy vehicle they know they can't sell

If GM could cut their product lines, brands and dealerships by 70% they'd be golden. But it's such a crap shoot right now.

The door handle just ripped off my truck door, it's got rust spots, has 170k on. I'd buy another GM truck, but only if it's 12k or less. I figure in 6 months, they'll be there.
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Old 12-15-2008, 01:00 PM   #34
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What's the pointy thing on the roof?
The building is constantly erect due to the sexiness exuded from all the vettes being build inside.
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Old 12-15-2008, 01:08 PM   #35
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They'd probably sell off the brand, just as Dodge is looking to do with Viper.
Omg how many rental car corvetts will there be up for rent now if that happens ?
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Old 12-15-2008, 01:23 PM   #36
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The building is constantly erect due to the sexiness exuded from all the vettes being build inside.
I chortled.
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Old 12-15-2008, 01:27 PM   #37
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I know it's been said, but bankrupt <> closing.
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Old 12-15-2008, 01:31 PM   #38
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This has been bugging me for a while now. The Corvette is GM's oldest model, and has a customer base that will not go away. The cars are built at a separate plant in Kentucky, by technicians who excel over their counterparts in other areas of GM. Would GM cancel the Corvette and shutter the plant? Could the workers buy the line outright and have it be a separate entity from GM? Maybe source different engines and finally shelve the pushrod V8? I dont think they make alot of money on the cars, and they are a niche vehicle, but they have come so far in the engineering, build quality and performance of the marque it would be a crying shame if they killed it.

Plus, someday I will be able to afford a Corvette, and I would love to be able to take delivery in Kentucky after watching my LeMans Blue Z06 being built....

YOU! Out. Now.

*Points to door*

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Old 12-15-2008, 01:36 PM   #39
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Omg how many rental car corvetts will there be up for rent now if that happens ?
Um... all of them.

this is me making fun of you, yet again, for not being able to form a coherent sentence.
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Old 12-15-2008, 01:37 PM   #40
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It gets 80% of the fee, because it's their pimp ride.
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Old 12-16-2008, 07:49 AM   #41
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do people really think that GM is going away?

Im not sure, but I know what I see on CNN, and I see whats happening at the dealership level. A good friend of mine is the finance manager at a Cadillac/Pontiac dealership. Nationwide, GMAC is doing audits and basically looking for reasons to close the stores. Its very scary for these small dealerships that are family owned and run. This one in particular has been around since the 50's and they dont have a good feeling about things right now.

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Ppl with a dumb, oversimplified view of the world do...
Maybe. I know theres more to it than what I know. I know that my former company had to lay off a couple hundred people (including me) due to GM and Chrysler not paying for an order of over 6000 new forklifts we had already built for them, among other things, but this was the nail in the coffin. We at least got a deposit from Chrysler, but the order for GM was filled on good faith due to them buying/leasing units from us since forever. We paid tons of money in overtime, did tons of custom work and engineering, made custom overhead guards to fit into particular doorways at particular plants, and when we were ready to ship, GM said no. This was almost a year ago, so GM has been in trouble for a while it seems.

Quote:
Originally Posted by WhiteKnightSTi View Post
YOU! Out. Now.

*Points to door*

Meh. The LSx motor is a gem of a motor, but I still really like a DOHC V8. Toyota's V8 engine with more factory support could be a world beater. The little 4.7 in my Tundra can rev its ass off, sounds nice, and has a good bit of power without any drama.

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Originally Posted by markman View Post
^ Yeah, that pushrod LSx motor is the best thing Chevy has ever made. Why shelve it? With that motor they make power comparible to the best European multi-valve/multi-cam engines, with generally better fuel efficiency and better reliability thanks to so many fewer moving parts and a tried/trued design. And it can hold up to ass tons of HP.

That engine should be in every car they make. Cobalt included (as long as it's RWD).
Pushrods are neat, until you bend one. Over rev a pushrod V8 and get ready for expensive noises. A DOHC V8 would be perfect for the Corvette. Plenty of low end grunt, nice and civil in traffic, but you can wind that sucker out to 8 or 9k rpm and really have a screamer.

Keep in mind, teh last pushrod engine I had was a 327 in my 68 Corvette. So take what I said with a bit of salt. The LSx series are freakin awesome, I love the motor in my Dad's C6. But I do have bad memories of a buddies Pontiac 400 engine he just rebuilt. He and I had just put the thing in, got it running and did an easy break in over the period of a week. All new parts, block hot tanked, roller rockers, etc. On the first drive where he got on it, he missed a shift, redlined it, and bent a bunch of pushrods.

I come from a Corvette family. My Dad has had one since before I was born, the longest we went without one was just after I was born until 1974 because there wasnt anywhere for me to ride, so he had a 68 SS 396 for that time. We have stuck it out thru times when the the Corvette was a total piece of junk. My Mom had a "Crossfire" 1981 model that was an abortion of a car, and we skipped the C4 completley because my Dad hated the digital gauges and the clamshell hood. The new Corvettes are really a fabulous machine. Well built, great engineering, and a really nice car to drive and enjoy. I dont want to see them go away.
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Old 12-16-2008, 08:00 AM   #42
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Bank of America is one of the banks that bought the "failed" banks (Merrill Lynch, in this case). Still, they're saying they expect to cut 30,000 jobs in the Charlotte market. If that counts as "knowing what you're doing" over one of the big banks, we're ****ed.
Bank of America is cutting 30,000 jobs because they bought Merrill Lynch for it's brokerage business (financial advising) but that came with a lot of other business departments that already exist at BoA.

They're trimming down the redundant positions. I'd say that's an excellent example of 'knowing what you're doing'
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Old 12-16-2008, 08:02 AM   #43
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Originally Posted by Obnoxio View Post
Im not sure, but I know what I see on CNN, and I see whats happening at the dealership level. A good friend of mine is the finance manager at a Cadillac/Pontiac dealership. Nationwide, GMAC is doing audits and basically looking for reasons to close the stores. Its very scary for these small dealerships that are family owned and run. This one in particular has been around since the 50's and they dont have a good feeling about things right now.

I've personally seen it locally as well.
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