General Motors June 15, 2005, 09:33:56 PM whats up with them,,?i was on the way to my parents in ky and the news broadcast said GM was laying off tons of people and outsourcing the work. Dad said thier stock bottomed out recently as well. Quote Selected
Re: General Motors Reply #1 – June 15, 2005, 10:45:25 PM GM sucks that is all there is to it.Well most of them any way. That way there aren't any employees to get a discount so we get the same disocount as them NONE. Quote Selected
Re: General Motors Reply #2 – June 15, 2005, 11:01:30 PM From what one of my friends said they are laying off and shutting down a whole factory that just makes Chevy Tahoe transmissions, that and thier stock is bottoming out. Quote Selected
Re: General Motors Reply #3 – June 16, 2005, 01:28:30 AM Sales J. And this was from two weeks ago.QuoteDETROIT - Auto workers in Oshawa will be laid off temporarily next week, as General Motors eases production in response to slowing sales being experienced by all major domestic automakers. GM announced on Thursday it will lay off 2,500 workers as it idles the Oshawa plant that produces the Buick Century, Buick Regal and Chevrolet Lumina. Another 1,000 will be laid off at the plant in Baltimore where the Chevrolet Astro and GMC Safari minivans are made. CAW workers in Oshawa will receive 65 per cent of their pay during the layoff. Their U.S. counterparts will get 95 per cent. U.S. sales of GM products are down nine per cent for the first four months this year, which includes a 16-per-cent drop in April. Sales for all major domestic automakers have been sliding for seven months. Quote Selected
Re: General Motors Reply #4 – June 16, 2005, 01:38:19 AM I think that killing the f body was a mistake. I mean there are just as many of those on the road as mustangs. And dare I say it they are (were) better cars. Yes they cost more but no stock mustang beats a stock f body. Its all good when you use a detuned Vette' engine. Only problem I hear from them is something that plauges all GM vehicles. Poor interior panel quality, Look inside one of them and something will be broken. Also the door pin issue.Best article about it I could find. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/12/weekinreview/12gregg.html?ex=1119326400&en=cb4725115434ca09&ei=5099&partner=TOPIX Quote Selected
Re: General Motors Reply #5 – June 16, 2005, 09:15:51 AM I would have to agree with the f body comment, that was a big mistake. But their real problem is their health care and employee benefits. They said that for every GM car you buy, $1500 goes for their employee health plans. Last year GM spend $5.2 BILLION on employee health care! :eek: So they are going overseas where they pay people less. Quote Selected
Re: General Motors Reply #6 – June 16, 2005, 09:24:03 AM GM has been having some serious financial problems, but they have little or nothing to do with the F-body, which never sold enough to make a difference on the bottom line. GM's biggest problems (and they are indeed big problems - some say they could actually bring GM down) are:1) The Fiat fiasco. A while ago GM bought a portion of Fiat, and in an example of incredible stupidity, GM agreed to either buy more Fiat or pay Fiat two billion dollars to get out of the deal. GM recently paid Fiat the two billion dollars. $2,000,000,000 checks have a big effect on the bottom line. This will probably go down in history as one of the stupidest automotive deals ever to happen. GM was duped.2) Pensions/Medicare obligations. All those years of promising the world to its unionized employees are now catching up to GM as those employees reach retirement age. GM does not have the money to meet those obligations - this is the single biggest cloud over GM's future. Quite simply, GM wrote checks it couldn't cash when it made those promises. To be fair to GM, the unions held a gun to GM's head in order to get those promises...3) Dwindling truck/SUV sales. With Ford and Dodge building better trucks, and now Toyota and Nissan joining the party, GM's remarkably boring truck line has been hammered in the marketplace of late. Its aging SUV fleet has been flailing as well. It's the sagging truck/SUV sales that are responsible for much of the layoffs you're hearing about.4) A spectacularly bad model lineup. GM has too long said "It's good enough" when developing cars. The G6/Malibu is a perfect example. Compared to other cars in the marketplace, the G6 is inferior in just about every respect. This inferiority is driving people to superior cars such as the Altima, Camry, Accord and even the Sonata in droves. GM needs to pull their heads out of their asses and build cars that will sell well on their merits, not cars that sell well because they've been deeply discounted. They finally got it right with the Cobalt; now they need to get it right with the "bread and butter" cars.These problems are bad enough when taken individually, but when combined they really could bring down the giant that is GM.And don't think Ford is immune - unless Ford does something soon it will be in the same boat. Mustangs alone are not gonna keep FoMoCo afloat, and the Five Hundred was not "good enough" when compared to the competition. If it wasn't for the F150 Ford would've been history long ago. Quote Selected
Re: General Motors Reply #7 – June 16, 2005, 10:20:46 AM And one more reason...5) Too many cars and too many divisions. GM's cars actually cannibalize sales from ITSELF. You don't see that happening at any other car company. Everyone else's divisions have at least a general purpose and game plan to make sure they're not stealing sales from themselves. GM is more than happy to market 2, 3, even 4 nearly-identical cars in the same segment. Well, if one isn't good enough, how could four be?I think this restructuring will eventually turn out to be a good thing. It's something they knew they'd have to eventually do, just didn't want to until there was no other choice. I really feel bad for all the people whose jobs will be displaced because GM never had the foresight in the first place. And that is why I will never own a GM car. They are truly the Dark Side.And please, for the love of God, let the powers that be at GM kill off Buick already. Wouldn't mind Saturn and their dipshiznit cars going either (all respects to Carm, of course). Quote Selected
Re: General Motors Reply #8 – June 16, 2005, 10:27:46 AM I believe that buick pontiac and saturn are all on the chopping block, if im correct i feel that they will cut saturn first then buick and lastly pontiac. Quote Selected
Re: General Motors Reply #9 – June 16, 2005, 10:30:30 AM of all the wars we have experienced in the past,, including the cold war,,i call this the Silent War.Much of the USA marketplace and property is owned by the middle east and the orient. It was estimated at last count broadcasted by CNN that China owns about 41% of our Core and Entertainment resource in the US. The is good news,,Companies are finally starting to realize the financial impact outsourcing has that was previously thought to be a low risk known. The risks were not computated completely and now they employ more lawyers than ever, at an outsourced rate but 200 times more previous to 1990, to combat patentfraud and counterfits, not to mention the costs building up regions which 10-15 years ago were rice fields or poverty struck.Lou Dobbs had the head of the AFLCIO on a few weeks ago and he said: "the Lure of outsourcing is so great and its effects are similar to gambling, they constantly think next quarter things will get better"Our short and long term fix to this would be to reduce outsourcing to about 15-25% gross, increase our trade with cananda and mexico to about 75%while we admit fault that we have let other countries walk on us and break every rule in the book to get products imported while other countries allow our tankers to sit off their ss rejecting our product except for scap metal and paper.anyone who really gives a should become a member of the below site. If you ever wondered how to contact anyone in congress ect ect , or have your say directly to your senator,, then have a look. I recently circulated the Social Security Petition in my community and got 600 names just in my town in a two week span. People do want things better but sometimes they just dont know how to go about it and this site really takes you there.http://www.workingamerica.org/home.cfm Quote Selected
Re: General Motors Reply #10 – June 16, 2005, 10:40:56 AM Pontiac is pulling out cars, and while i personally think theyre sharp looking, i know they wont sell, they have a rather bland appearance, and performance will be rather tame, as most pontiacs are nowanother problem, GM has no real "flagship" cars, Chevy has the Corvette, Pontiac has the Solstice (which will probably die out, very goofy looking), what about Buick? Saturn has the Ion Redline, but none of their top cars are advertised much, no one truly knows anything about them, because they try to target only a certain price range, and not many are running aroundi remember being younger, and id see a top of the line sports car, and i knew id never own one, but id always want to own something along the same line of it, people who could buy a corvette could buy an f-body for example Quote Selected
Re: General Motors Reply #11 – June 16, 2005, 12:39:19 PM Have we mentioned market share yet? GM has slid in market share consistently since the 1970s. They have excuses, they always do. But this time they're either gonna get their shiznit straight or go belly up. Would be nice if the government would do something about the healthcare crisis to help. Last I heard Dubya told the US Automakers they are on their own. Considering all the tricks the puppiesanese do with currency manipulation for Toyota/Honda/etc, you'd figure lowering healthcare costs would be just common sense. Quote Selected
Re: General Motors Reply #12 – June 16, 2005, 12:47:46 PM Quote from: EricCoolCatsAnd one more reason... 5) Too many cars and too many divisions. GM's cars actually cannibalize sales from ITSELF...*snip* ...let the powers that be at GM kill off Buick already. Wouldn't mind Saturn and their dipshiznit cars going either (all respects to Carm, of course). Truer words were never spoken. GM has got too many divisions. In the past they could get away with it for a few reasons - one, there was not nearly as much competition; two, the cars were actually different from each other; and three, there was such a thing as "brand loyalty". You started with a Chev, traded up to a Pontiac or Olds (depending on your taste), traded up again to a Buick, and retired in a Caddillac. Nowadays people start with a Chev and decide they'll never own a GM again. GM should pare down to two or three divisions:Chevy could sell bread-and-butter cars, trucks and SUV's, like ToyotaCaddy could sell the luxury stuff, like LexusAnd, if GM could actually pull it off, Pontiac could sell youth-oriented stuff, like Scion GMC, Buick, and Saturn should all disappear. Saturn was an interesting experiment, but GM "GM-ified" the entire lineup and tossed all lessons learned by Saturn anyway, so it's now redundant. Saturn cars were once unique and shared nothing with other GM cars except their Delco-supplied electronics. They had their own engines, trannies and chassis. Now Saturn is nothing more than a rebadged Chev/Pontiac/Buick (and really, just a replacement for Olds). This is only part of the problem, though. The big problem is that GM simply does not build good, desirable cars. They simply cannot stop doing things the "old way". After 40 years of playing catch-up with the imports, GM is still playing catch-up. Had they done it right they would have not only caught up, but passed, the imports long ago. The first thing GM has to do is toss nearly all of its powertrains and come up with something modern. Pushrod engines, no matter how impressive they may be, are obsolete. People don't want to hear about LS-this and cubic-inch that. They want ovehead cams, variable valve timing, multi valves, etc. No matter how "modern" you try to make an ancient engine design look, it's still an ancient engine design. People dropping vast sums of money on new cars do not want old, coarse, obsolete designs, they want cutting edge. The imports provide this, and the imports are gaining market share for it. Quote Selected
Re: General Motors Reply #13 – June 16, 2005, 01:14:43 PM QuoteI think that killing the f body was a mistake. I mean there are just as many of those on the road as mustangsWhile I agree that killing the F-body was a mistake I have to point out that even when it was around the Mustang out sold it heavilyForr the 2002 Model year Mustangs: 142,404Camaros: 42,098Firebirds: I can't seem to find an exact #, but many sources say under 20,000Fact is the toal combined sales of Camaros AND Firebirds combined was under 100,000 combined from 1996 on to the final run in 2002 even in the 96-98 model years when the F-body was absolutely handing the Mustang it's A$$ on the track and street performance-wise.GM had a winner in it's stables and I always seem to remember commercials for their more bland cars, almost NEVER an F-body commercial on TV during the last body style (I can only remember 2). GM has not paid attention to something it should have.....The competition whether it be Ford, Chrysler, Honda or Toyota. Quote Selected
Re: General Motors Reply #14 – June 16, 2005, 01:47:53 PM F-body is a red herring, it means absolutely nothing in the car biz. When the F-body got the LS1 in 1998, the V6 Mustang outsold both the Camaro and Firebird COMBINED. Now if the F-body was a better more modern design (taller, bigger back seat, bigger butt, etc) it could be reaping the success of the new Mustang. But that would require GM to actually invest in its product. And that's a big no-no in GM-land. Quote Selected
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