Political DiscussionA place to hold political debates and general discussion. Please remember to always respect the opinions of other members and above all else, be civil.
correction, all american auto makers are in the hole. while they offer 'employee' bullshit, the imports are taking over with the better gas mileage part as the big role. gm won't die cause they are the biggest car company on earth, they have 200 countries they work in. its nuts ok. i say ford will go first. or at least i hope they go cause i hate them. but i have to say, gm needs to re-structure its whole platform and drop the crap, like oldsmobile and hummer. and GMC, they already have all that crap in chevy models.
that you are wrong. gm may be the largest auto manufacturer.
but they have bad management. and when shareholders lost faith. the company can mean nothing if they start dumping the stocks.
ford is well better off than gm does. ford is not losing $$$ on every quarter for the past 3 quarters like gm does.
General Motors, Ford and Chrysler spend more than $8.5 billion each year providing health care for employees and retirees. General Motors alone covered more than 1.1 million people at a cost of more than $4.8 billion in 2003. That's $1,400 for every vehicle it built in the U.S., at least double what its non-U.S. competitors spend. Those health-care costs climbed to $5.2 billion last year, and are forecast to rise to $5.6 billion this year, General Motors said on Jan. 13.
Yup, this is what's going to drive them to restructure and change the law (and the union) as I said before. You see, in times of plenty they offered all these benefits (as did the airlines) but now, when money is tight and competition is even tighter, they find themselves in a bind (no pun intended).
This is a normal part of any business that allows itself to become too big. Look at the government and how they have restructured retirement and pension plans. Big businesses must do the same (Wal-Mart is smart and understands this and that's why they don't offer much benefits to their employees) if they want to survive. When labor is hard to find (in good economies) they must promiss benefits to entice the workforce to choose them but, when the economy takes a downturn, they find themselves with highly-paid workers who are generally drawing their bank accounts down with the benefits they incurred in the good economy.
What can they do? File for Chapter 11, restructure, and be competitive again. They have to adapt to the times and, it's sad to say, the ones who will pay for this are the stock holders and the employees.
GM will never go out of business as they're too diverse (I don't really mean never, but it will take some huge changes for this to happen). They have plants and cars all over the world and, so long as people still drive, they will always be able to produce a product. They might get pushed into a niche market, but they'll survive.
Maybe what they should do is focus on the small cars (such as the ones that compete with our Civics and Scions) and make them more reliable. When was the last time you saw a reliable small American car? The Focci suck, and so do the Cobalts and Cavaliers. They need to focus on these cars as they could possibly bring them their bread and butter. Forget the SUVs, work on the "people's" car.
man am i glad my grandpa is dead. he worked for ford in michigan for 35 years dipping chrome. he had an awesome retirement then died before all this news came out. its too bad alot of us will never have that opportunity to work for a company and get a nice pension not 401k and die.
Maybe what they should do is focus on the small cars (such as the ones that compete with our Civics and Scions) and make them more reliable. When was the last time you saw a reliable small American car? The Focci suck, and so do the Cobalts and Cavaliers. They need to focus on these cars as they could possibly bring them their bread and butter. Forget the SUVs, work on the "people's" car.
There's a lot that GM needs to do. However a lot of the automotive marketplace is driven to think "power, size, stability", and to sacrifice good milage, affordability or economy.
Part of this is just the American state of mind... we think "bigger = better". That's been the way of thinking of Americans for more than 100 years. That's why our navy would build huge numbers of battleships (when the battleship was the ultimate naval vessel) and almost nothing else... because we didn't think about having a balanced naval force, we cared about having the biggest one. We build the most expensive jets, subs and aircraft for our armed forces. Nothing is economical.
And this has filtered on down to the populace itself. Now we need to have more room in our SUV, it needs to be higher, and it needs to weigh more. It needs to have more power.... not for any practical purposes, but just to feel superior to others. And because of all that, we have these dinosaurs on the road that jack up gas prices because they consume huge amounts of the non-renewable resouce.
GM has focused on this, and this is what they are banking on. However it's a short-term solution to their finances... and the SUV boom is just about bust, due to the increasing gas prices........
GM has focused on this, and this is what they are banking on. However it's a short-term solution to their finances... and the SUV boom is just about bust, due to the increasing gas prices........
At least I hope so.
Yes, I think the SUVs drove the gas prices above what the SUV owners want to pay. It's kind of a vicious circle, in a way. GM is going to keep their niche, like I said, probably with the muscle car enthusiasts and the truck lovers such as rednecks, but they will have less and less vehicles on the roads as time goes by.
It's interesting, the three big American Car companies mindset when it comes to the large SUV:
Chrysler: Make the SUV smaller and more economic
Ford: It's all about Hybrids, investing tens of millions of dollars to try to make hybrid SUV's
GM: Just keep making the large SUV's, no need to change at all (yet)...
And we'll see where it leads them. I think GM isn't forward-thinking enough while Ford is right on track (they aren't changing their pick-ups, which is smart). Chrysler, well, they'll eventually go bust.
GM needs to eliminate the small cars from their inventory (except for Saturn), drop the Buick and Pontiac lines entirely, and focus on the Chevy and GMC truck side.
