Is GM going bankrupt?

[Dinner]

RAV4s are worthless as a truck or SUV plus they get worse gasmilage and handle worse then a car so what's the point of buying one? They are the ultimate in style over substance except their style seems to only appeal to tiny girls who can barely see over the steering wheel.

Or at least most of the people I see driving them are tiny women who looked like they needed a boost chair.

[Lancer]

Probability of an Asian chick liking the RAV4 = 92%

yeah

except their style seems to only appeal to tiny girls who can barely see over the steering wheel.

yeah

[Ted Striker]

Oerdin you don't see any Filipinos in the NBA do you??

[Lancer]

Ted, it's funny, Filipinos love basketball and all the corporations have a team that plays for the PBA, Philippine Basketball Association. Each team is allowed only one foriegner, so you see one 7+ foot tall NBA washout running around with all these short Filipinos.

[Adam Smith]

GM's going the way of the buffalo.

They have way too many platforms as a result of the outdated Sloan system.

They never got the continuous quality improvement thing down.

I wonder how much of those liabilities are pensions for previously laid-off workers?

Plus Toyota is opening two new US assembly plants in 2006 (San Antoino for full-size trucks, plus somewhere else) and looking to open two more by the end of the decade.

By 2010 Toyota, not GM, will be the world's largest auto maker, and they could do that without even counting on faster growth than GM in Asia.

[Lancer]

I would much rather have bought American, however GM quality is the pits, Crysler, ditto, and Ford screwed me. I had 3 Fords in a row and was a loyal customer, but...I refuse to be screwed and keep prduct loyalty.

[Dinner]

GM is actually growing very quickly in China and is now the sales leader in that country. The Chinese are normally buying their first car ever though so they aren't very demanding customers. GM could be in trouble in 10-20 year there when everyone has owned a car or two and is now looking for quality. For now though China is a big plus for GM.

In an event the company won't die though at worse it will kill a few divisions and fire some management. Toyota and Honda's biggest advantage is they don't have 100 years worth of employee pensions to pay for while the big three do but each passing year brings those costs closer to parity. My guess is GM will have to kill Pontiac or Buick in the next decade and it won't be able to keep both GMC and Hummer once the SUV crazy dies out especially since Chevy also sells a full line of trucks.

Eventually the board of directors will figure out that it is best to have engineers and car guys who know about cars run a car company. Olds was run into the ground because they had a series of marketing types and accountants who used to make consumer goods like toasters and microwaves instead of people who knew what it took to make desirable cars. There is no passion when people buy a toaster but buying a car is both an emotional and a logical decision for people since it is the second largest purchase most people ever make (after their house). The Pontiac G6 shows how designers can come up with a great design but the details will get attacked by the accountants and the middle men until the finished product is a third rate car. On paper it still looks good but sit in one and it looks and feels cheap. If they got some management who had balls to go after risky but high reward design and they cut the worthless middle men out of the decision making process GM could make some great vehicles. The current management is to hide bound to corporate tradition to do that though so the sooner they're gone the better.

[Saras]

Good riddance. Yanks have been too long in the grip of crappy cars.

[Ted Striker]

DAMN

Doesn't even look like a Beamer, and actually a little phallic, but I really like it.

[Saras]

THAT'S a sixer for ya

[Ted Striker]

Re: Is GM going bankrupt?

Originally posted by DanS
You heard it first here. It looks to me like it is.

The company's $300 billion in debt is about to be cut to junk status by the ratings agencies, dramatically raising its cost of money. The market seems to be pricing in something like a bankruptcy, since the market capitalization for the entire company is only $15 billion.

But more importantly, GM's lineup of cars are ****ty. I rented a Chevy Malibu over Christmas and it felt like I was getting into a brand new $20,000 piece of trash. Maybe these are very reliable pieces of trash, but there you are.

Does anybody have any countervailing evidence?

When the **** hits the fan, this one's going to be really ugly in the business and political worlds.

DanS I've been predicting their demise for over 10 years now but for some reason this behemoth seems to float along and even reinvent themselves.

Nobody buys their crap here in Cali (except those annoying Hummers, which are EVERYWHERE), but apparently in the heartland they still sell very well.

Pontiac has had the crappiest quality of all the GM brands, but this year they actually have two good good looking models, the GTO and the Roadster.

Although, these two models both look like "me-too" copies of the Nissan Maxima and the Z.

[Ted Striker]

Also interesting that Chevy introduced the Cobalt, which looks like it's designed the compete against the Honda Civic (by trying to be a Honda Civic with more horsepower).

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Saras
THAT'S a sixer for ya

I'd hit it.

[Boris Godunov]

What, this doesn't turn you on?

[Saras]

BACK AT YA!