Is General Motors Worth Saving?

[EstebanTrabajos 7]

I bought a brand new civic for the wife and it is a piece of #######.

If you were expecting a 4x4, with fog lights on the top, all-terrain tires and space for a deer in the trunk, I understand your concern, and you should've bought a jeep

[Heracles 417]

Taxes will solve everything!

RIGHT

Yes. Supply and demand.

The problem all started with the suburban sprawl. People just went out further and further and no one stopped to ask, what happens if the price of fuel goes up. Then when you have people driving gas guzzling trucks that got bigger by the year, like some sort of trophy of success, the demand for fuel shot through the roof. Taxes fix stuff like this.

Edited November 13, 2008 by Aficionado

[Craneman 2]

The U.S. government is in the Insurance busines, the Banking business and you want the government to be in the Auto business.

I think somewhere we will run into a conflict of interest.

But I could be wrong.

[Heracles 417]

I'm saying no-one is immune, not even your beloved Toyota.

GM's troubles started earlier, is all.

GM and Ford are also profitable overseas. It is only the US division that is suffering. The Aus government just allocated $6 billion to GM, Ford and *Toyota*.

Edited November 13, 2008 by Aficionado

[IAMX 3,055]

Let the companies like Toyota and Honda that "get it" succeed.

Toyota's profits are down 69%, despite the fact that they "get it".

I wouldn't be surprised if Japan had to "rescue" them too.

Mind adding the other list of auto manufacturers to the list who are taking a nose dive in profits? It might be due to some other factor. Hmm...

I'm saying no-one is immune, not even your beloved Toyota.

GM's troubles started earlier, is all.

Toyota isn't going down. Neither is Honda.

Maybe profits are going down across the board, but those two are still the best sellers. So indeed, they do "get it", while Ford is playing catch-up and GM is clearly left behind.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Don't buy a VW. Damned expensive maintenance.

I freaking hear you, you should've told me 4 years ago!

Yeah - it wasn't the best choice.

Worse than average depreciation too. Not only does it cost more to fix - but the thing is more or less worthless after 3 years.

[Mononoke28 135]

Don't buy a VW. Damned expensive maintenance.

I freaking hear you, you should've told me 4 years ago!

Yeah - it wasn't the best choice.

Worse than average depreciation too. Not only does it cost more to fix - but the thing is more or less worthless after 3 years.

Mine turned out to be a piece of ####### after a year. Brand new too!

Diana

[EstebanTrabajos 7]

Don't buy a VW. Damned expensive maintenance.

I freaking hear you, you should've told me 4 years ago!

Yeah - it wasn't the best choice.

Worse than average depreciation too. Not only does it cost more to fix - but the thing is more or less worthless after 3 years.

Now, shooting for a new Civic EX, damn starter broke down on my jetta and cost me 240 bucks to fix it. I wanted a GTI, forget that sh!t

Damn u VW! and I'm not talking about Virtual Wife

[Heracles 417]

I have the solution. We need to get the middle class back into the cities, as is the case abroad, and ship the poor to the outer suburbs; with the benefit of them living in big new houses. This way it is a win win because they will have nice new house for their families with 6 kids and their 6 spouses but will not be able to afford to drive into the cities. They will also not be able to use public transport either to come into the cities as no one bothered building any out there.

Edited November 13, 2008 by Aficionado

[Craneman 2]

What does a broken starter on a VW have to do with GM and Ford bankruptcy, or am I completely missing something?

Don't buy a VW. Damned expensive maintenance.

I freaking hear you, you should've told me 4 years ago!

Yeah - it wasn't the best choice.

Worse than average depreciation too. Not only does it cost more to fix - but the thing is more or less worthless after 3 years.

Now, shooting for a new Civic EX, damn starter broke down on my jetta and cost me 240 bucks to fix it. I wanted a GTI, forget that sh!t

Damn u VW! and I'm not talking about Virtual Wife

[lucyrich 20]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daBx_PBrvSE

We bailed out Chrysler in 1979. It wasn't without controversy. At the time, Chrysler had been producing behemoth cars of poor quality, and were hit hard by the gas price increases and foreign competition (sound familiar?). But they had a plan. Their K platform was coming on line, which gave them new small efficient front wheel drive cars, and the minivan which became a huge hit. They returned to solvency quickly after the bailout.

This time, I don't see a plan for solvency. It seems like they just want to make more of the same, big SUVs, Hummers, Tahoes, Yukons, etc. One definition of insanity is repeating the same experiment over and over and expecting different results.

If they understand the mistakes they made that got them where they are, and if they have a financially realistic plan to address the problems and get back to business, maybe the taxpayers should provide a little bit of temporary help to get them on the road to recovery. But the taxpayers should be treated at least as well as any other investor, if not better. Any other investor would demand a share of the profits, and would demand to see a good workable business plan before plunking down the money. And any other investor that plunked down that kind of money would probably want a seat or two on the board to be able to control his investment.

[EstebanTrabajos 7]

What does a broken starter on a VW have to do with GM and Ford bankruptcy, or am I completely missing something?

shut up noob,

you dont know us!

and yes, to answer your question, you are missing like 2-3 pages of posts

Edited November 13, 2008 by TävôLuDô

[NickD 203]

Strange how GM and Exxon were in bed together in the 60's and early 70's to buy up public transportation, shutting it down, and forcing people to buy cars and gas to get to work or whatever. Oh yes, these was against anti-trust regulations, they got fined a whole 5,000 bucks for each occurrence. So what's going on today between these two lovebirds, sounds like Exxon is screwing their fellow bed partner, but not in the way GM likes it, well along with everyone else. But Exxon certainly has the bucks to bail out GM and would be in their interest to do so.

I do not like GM management, but with closer ties years ago, was told that GM owned 48% of Toyota stocks, more obvious is that GM does not just make cars here, but is a worldwide organization. Eight years ago, Ford had enough petty cash to buy out Honda, but Honda was not for sale.

One major reason that the price of vehicles is so high is because of government agencies dictating every move, not only in emissions, but in performance, and believe me, hours were wasted in trying to figure out what in the hell they were talking about, none of those idiots could have survived in a profit making organization. Plus limits in how vehicles were manufacturing, had to switch to all water based paints without proper development first, they are pretty good today, and had to dump all electroplating for such important things like switch and connector contacts. You don't know the other side of the story. Can't really blame them from moving a lot of their manufacturing to China, our government forced them to. Health insurance also went up drastically, are we getting that much better care? Our government treats our manufacturing segment as the enemy, and they sure in the hell aren't there to help us, the dirty rotten bastards. And instead of working together, our jobs are now in China, also thanks to our government. Somebody in the government is getting rich.

Toyota and Honda was the laughing stock of the automotive industry when they first started, with the slow down in the automotive industry after the energy crisis, they came here to hire American engineers to show them how to built a decent car, so if you love Toyota's and Honda's you can thank me for one of them. Not that I liked working for them, but better than starving at the time. A really major crime and again our government, is that we have an open door policy to Japan for them to apply as many patents as they want to, the ratio of patents granted to the Japanese as oppose to those granted to US car manufacturers is on the order of 350 to 1. But our doors for us to apply for patents in Japan are completely closed. So they can tie up our technology but we cannot tie up theirs. Who in the phuck in our government is selling us out to the Japanese, and now China?

Another thing I hate about American manufacturing, everything has to be instant profit, can't even look ahead a few months, but our government is the same way, zero long term thinking.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daBx_PBrvSE

We bailed out Chrysler in 1979. It wasn't without controversy. At the time, Chrysler had been producing behemoth cars of poor quality, and were hit hard by the gas price increases and foreign competition (sound familiar?). But they had a plan. Their K platform was coming on line, which gave them new small efficient front wheel drive cars, and the minivan which became a huge hit. They returned to solvency quickly after the bailout.

This time, I don't see a plan for solvency. It seems like they just want to make more of the same, big SUVs, Hummers, Tahoes, Yukons, etc. One definition of insanity is repeating the same experiment over and over and expecting different results.

If they understand the mistakes they made that got them where they are, and if they have a financially realistic plan to address the problems and get back to business, maybe the taxpayers should provide a little bit of temporary help to get them on the road to recovery. But the taxpayers should be treated at least as well as any other investor, if not better. Any other investor would demand a share of the profits, and would demand to see a good workable business plan before plunking down the money. And any other investor that plunked down that kind of money would probably want a seat or two on the board to be able to control his investment.

Well said.

[mawilson 2,133]

Let the companies like Toyota and Honda that "get it" succeed.

Toyota's profits are down 69%, despite the fact that they "get it".

I wouldn't be surprised if Japan had to "rescue" them too.

Mind adding the other list of auto manufacturers to the list who are taking a nose dive in profits? It might be due to some other factor. Hmm...

I'm saying no-one is immune, not even your beloved Toyota.

GM's troubles started earlier, is all.

Toyota isn't going down. Neither is Honda.

Yet.