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GM shares have been rising on hopes of more bailout money, but 2/3 of retirement eligible workers don’t like GM’s buyout offer.
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21, Unfounded perception of added safety? Ever heard of Newton’s Second Law of Motion? I’ll be glad to take my truck up against a “smart car” like a Prius any day and see who can walk away from a high speed collision.
26, The Japanese do not have a patent on quality. It all comes down to business decisions.
GM gets parts from the same suppliers as Toyota.
You don’t think GM doesn’t buy their competition’s vehicles to see how they’re built and what price point they’ve got be selling at? You don’t think Toyota does the same?
On top of that, GM has owned a lot of foreign companies and there’s always been a sharing of tech.
It’s not a matter of whether or not GM can make a quality vehicle because they can. GM’s battle is changing public perception which is lagging behind reality (partially their fault) and to decide what level of quality they want to give you for a specific price point.
Now if you want Cadillac quality at a Yaris price point, then you’re dreaming. Toyota won’t give you Lexus quality at a Yaris price point either. Hopefully when you do a “comparative analysis” you do an apples-to-apples comparison.
That being said, I’ve owned my current Chevy for over 11 years, it has over 165k, and it has survived hitting a deer at full speed on the highway. My truck will easily reach and surpass 200k. I have no complaints.
Always backward looking.
Cars are retro. The future is mass transit.
3-4 threads today showing how assbackwards our society really is. No wonder we are tripping on our pet notions or individualistic anarchy and refusing to plan for our own futures.
Our kiddies will scratch their heads and wonder.
You can split the companies up all you want. Product is what draws people to the dealerships, and people just aren’t flocking over to these guys.
There is a lot of options available to people nowadays, as well as used cars that run perfectly fine that people are buying as well. You can buy a decent used car that’s a few years old and slash the price tag by half, on some of these models. There is no reason why people should be buying, “brand new” cars nowadays. Unless you really like that “brand new” car smell.
30, Okay a few things.
I’m indifferent as to whether or not GM sinks or swims. But I do think that saying GM can’t or doesn’t make high quality is for a very narrowly defined group of vehicles.
Bang for the buck is a totally different argument. We were talking solely on the merits of quality and/or initial build quality, as well as perception or so I thought.
Although I’m not a car guy, but didn’t the Cadillac win a Motor Trend Car of the Year last year? And didn’t Motor Trend also give rave reviews on the new Malibu last year?
GM is shifting gears from focusing on Trucks and SUVs to their smaller cars given the current state of the economy. But it takes time to do monolithic changes like that while there are large inventories of vehicles sitting on car lots. It doesn’t happen overnight. Heck, how long have the Volt and new Camaro been under development? And people really want those vehicles. GM is doing the R&D on those vehicles as quickly as they possibly can.
Toyota and others do not have a patent on quality. It all comes down to price point. I understand that ties in with your bang for the buck gripe, but that has nothing to do with quality. GM might be wise to be a little less greedy in that regards so as to move inventory.
Reliability is tied into quality, but it’s really a category all its own. I’ve seen “high quality” stuff break down when they shouldn’t have. And since GM offers a 100,000 mile warranty for all their vehicles, it seems to me that regardless of perceived lack of quality (or reliability in your case), you are covered.
The big three have already known how to make quality products; the fact that they dominate the truck and SUV markets are proof of that. And they implement it well (when they want to). They CAN do the same for their compact or smaller vehicles. It’s not voodoo, but it takes time to redesign and relaunch products. Their new Malibu / Lucerne and G6/G8 are the first salvo, but I think the shifting of gears has begun. Time will tell.
“And they implement it well (when they want to).” /// Didn’t you or somebody say they were an engineer and fought management/unions all the time to make changes?
Anyway, this sounds like RNC chair Steele saying he tricked Limbaugh into ripping him a new asshole. One can only imagine how much worse things would be if our governmental and corporate masters weren’t so smart and competent.
35, I did not make the engineer comment, but I have had my battles with unions. IMHO they served a purpose in our history, but I personally think they’ve outlived their usefulness.
Unions impede productivity and protect far too many useless workers. Don’t get me wrong, there are some really good workers who are members of unions (whether coerced into membership or not). But when it comes to trimming the fat, performance and skills take a back seat to seniority within the unions.
When GM collapses and China makes all the products we used to make, do you think they might convert a few of their plants to make a few airplanes and tanks for us when we have to confront their take overs.
Madtruckmen,
The responsibility is NEVER on the hourly workers. Never. It is the responsibilities of upper management and department teams to make it work. If it doesn’t work, the only reason and answer is because the teams don’t want to implement the changes; changes that have already been proven for most manufacturing environments.
We’re talking about the basics of not wasting a single sheet a paper to improving the assembly line for higher output in addition better quality. Oh well…
Thanks for your reply…
#36–Guyver==I agree mostly. Still, given the history and the unwillingness of government to enforce laws, I think the threat of unions does keep management more in line than they would be otherwise. Expensive and wasteful to do it that way, but maybe the best realistic balance.
37, Hard saying. COTS was a good idea for businesses in general, but when you throw it into national defense tech it doesn’t pan out so well.
We already use a lot of their stuff in our military and the military is not happy about the matter.
DARPA is already looking into kill switches and backdoors for many products we rely on that have parts from China.
The PLA are big believers in assymetric warfare and are actively looking for ways to exploit a technologically superior military. Cyberwarefare is a growing concern with the U.S. military especially since things are going very network-centric with FCS and UAVs.
But alas, China is the next big thing and anybody and everybody doesn’t want to be left out of the Chinese revolution. Businesses will make a deal with the devil so to speak in order to make tons of money at the expense of everyone.
Hopefully China will implode from all those Chinese wanting to look at Western porn and/or find out about things such as Darfur and Tiananmen Square through their great firewall of theirs.
39, Perhaps but mandatory membership in the unions is a requirement for employment in many states and the Union does do some sneaky petition tactics to establish a presence in other places of employment.
Not to mention them singling out members who don’t support certain causes by trying to eliminate secret ballots. What’s democratic about that?
I agree that there is a huge lack of enforcement on existing laws. For whatever reason our law makers feel it’s necessary to simply make more laws to supplement the laws that just aren’t getting enforced. Go figure.
The union could be a good thing, but I think the UAW at GM has clearly shown, people would rather see GM go belly up in these economic times and lose their job rather than compromise one bit.
21: The problem with this theory is that it’s the equivalent of saying “Fuck New Orleans, let Katrina take its course. Those that survive the hurricane can rebuild their houses, piece their lives back together, and start from zero. Let some other enterprising citizen move in and try their luck at making a city on the bayou.”
Darwinistic, yes. But hardly a humanistic or humanizing philosophy.
How so? Because tons of people lose their jobs? That’s what “release the labor pool” is all about. The competition has proven in the market that they have a more efficient way to employ labor to build cars. Once GM is gone, that entire market segment is waiting to be filled by the competition. So guess who suddenly needs more factories with more employees to pick up that market share? And wow, suddenly here are whole teams of people that know how to build cars, looking for work!
So yes, people lose their jobs for a time, but the market adjusts and new jobs open up for them, usually in the same or similar lines of work. That’s the natural laws of the market at work; you can’t repeal those laws any more than you can repeal the laws of gravity.
What’s the alternative? Keep those people in those jobs forever? You can’t. Else we’d be living in a pre-industrial state: we’d still be paying buggy-whip manufacturers and employing thousands of stocking-makers. Go read up on what happened with stocking-makers at the dawn of industrial England.
Occasional layoffs and job hunts, even painful ones at times, are the price we pay for a higher standard of living. My advice: Plan for it. You know that’s what you should be doing anyway. Save money, get food storage, be prepared to be without a job for a year.
Or, should we try to maintain the unsustainable situation we have now? Taking money by force from reluctant customers (i.e., taxpayers) to feed the GM monster that can’t pull in enough revenue to keep the bloated pension system running?
When most companies are under threat from competition, they adapt: find or invent new efficiencies, invest in new equipment, whatever it takes to give their product better value compared with the competition. But now, with bailouts, GM gets to skip that step. The government is subsidizing GM at our expense. Your hard-earned money goes to GM even if you’re not buying their product!
You can’t get a more “humanized” system than the free and natural marketplace. Yeah, it’s not perfect, but perfection is impossible. Every attempt at perfection hurts people far worse.
#42–jack==”You can’t get a more “humanized” system than the free and natural marketplace. Yeah, it’s not perfect, but perfection is impossible. Every attempt at perfection hurts people far worse.” //// gee whiz. No market is free or natural, those are just marketing terms for dull witted consumers or purveyors of various stripes. I could let that go as verbal diarrhea but then you continue with:
“Every attempt at perfection hurts people far worse.” /// Yea, those child labor laws, workplace safety laws, workers comp schemes, minimum wage, overtime pay are far worse than the free market rules that prompted their passage.
Idiot. Plane and simple.
#34
30, Okay a few things.
I’m indifferent as to whether or not GM sinks or swims. But I do think that saying GM can’t or doesn’t make high quality is for a very narrowly defined group of vehicles.
Agreed
Bang for the buck is a totally different argument. We were talking solely on the merits of quality and/or initial build quality, as well as perception or so I thought.
I guess we were having two different discussions then. For me quality is initial build quality and lasting quality which equals value.
This is my gripe with JD Powers ratings they only seem to get coverage on initial build quality
Although I’m not a car guy, but didn’t the Cadillac win a Motor Trend Car of the Year last year? And didn’t Motor Trend also give rave reviews on the new Malibu last year?
With past Motor Trend Car of the Year GM winners like the Vega, Monza and Citation just to name a few dogs, that award is meaningless to me and many car buyers. As far as I can tell Motor Trend is more interested in add revenues than car reviews. As for the Cadillac CTS it looks nice but I’m not sanguine about its reliability we’ll have to wait and see. And there’s the rub if they wanted me and buyers like me to think they have quality cars today they needed to be building them in 2004. By 2014 if what they say now is true now I’ll consider them. Lots of people think that Malibu is up to snuff I would never badmouth it has 4 or 5 very good cars with stellar histories to compete with.
GM is shifting gears from focusing on Trucks and SUVs to their smaller cars given the current state of the economy. But it takes time to do monolithic changes like that while there are large inventories of vehicles sitting on car lots. It doesn’t happen overnight. Heck, how long have the Volt and new Camaro been under development? And people really want those vehicles. GM is doing the R&D on those vehicles as quickly as they possibly can.
Only now shifting gears is my issue they should have seen this coming since the 70s its there focusing on profits over production for decades instead of taking the long view that burns me. Now they need my tax dollars and want me to buy a crappy car so they to not fail. Yes make a Camaro make a Silverado heck even make bucks off a stupid Hummer H2 there is a sucker born every minute to buy one. But make a Cobalt that competes in every aspect with a Civic, Mazda 3 Focus, Corolla ect.
Toyota and others do not have a patent on quality. It all comes down to price point. I understand that ties in with your bang for the buck gripe, but that has nothing to do with quality. GM might be wise to be a little less greedy in that regards so as to move inventory.
My point exactly. They know what it takes and choose not to, then extort us with from a big to fail position.
Reliability is tied into quality, but it’s really a category all its own.
Not to many of us in the car buying public they are one in the same.
I’ve seen “high quality” stuff break down when they shouldn’t have. And since GM offers a 100,000 mile warranty for all their vehicles, it seems to me that regardless of perceived lack of quality (or reliability in your case), you are covered.
We don’t want a warranty repair as much as we just want it to work repairs are a hassle.
The big three have already known how to make quality products; the fact that they dominate the truck and SUV markets are proof of that.
I’ll put my wife’s 2000 RX300 up against any thing they have in 2009 and its 9 years old.
And they implement it well (when they want to). They CAN do the same for their compact or smaller vehicles. It’s not voodoo, but it takes time to redesign and relaunch products. Their new Malibu / Lucerne and G6/G8 are the first salvo, but I think the shifting of gears has begun. Time will tell.
Lets all hope so. I want to want there cars. They have told us NOW we are doing it right to many times before for us to just take there word for it.
GM’s UAW contracts build in hundreds of billions in costs which add up to several thousand dollars per vehicle OVER the cost of Honda and Toyota’s US plants.
So… for the same profit and to sell for the same price as those Toyotas, GM has to cut those thousands from the vehicle itself. Cheaper seats, cheaper engines, cheaper electronics, cheaper designs, older plants, fewer new designs. It’s a testament to the genius of the GM and supplier engineers that GM can compete at all, given the handicap of those embedded labor costs.
No wonder GM management wanted larger, more expensive cars and trucks, they lost money on every small car the UAW built. Large profitable vehicles were the only things paying those UAW benefits.
Fire 100% of management and salaried workers and GM still can’t afford those UAW contracts and the damage they have built into the brand.
For over 50 years, my family proudly had GM iron in our driveway. That ended abruptly in 2002.
The reason: since 1966, we have always had an honest-to-God station wagon. It’s by far the vehicle that is the most practical, economical, useful, and comfortable for our lifestyle. We wanted another GM wagon because the Impala that died lasted us 23 years!.
We found that there was absolutely no car in the GM lineup that was suitable when we really needed one. A gas-hungry and bulky truck-based SUV was out of the question. It’s impossible to get in or out of a minivan without a stepstool. Even the latest used Caprice wagons on lots at the time were at least six years old and had too-high mileage. Dealers wouldn’t sell us back-of-the-lot cars in great shape only because they had more than 100k miles on them and refused to offer any warranty.
Our only option was to buy a used Ford Taurus wagon. GM had nothing serious to offer us.
GM let us down. GM would have gotten our money if they only had what the customer wanted.
Those SMART cars are the right car at the wrong time. The problem is that they are getting creamed by Toyota and Honda hybrids. A Prius gets better milage that a Smart 2 seater, has 4 seats and more room. They also costs less. Unless space is an an issue, the buying decision is a no brainer.
You do realize that unions are more of a problem than just health care, pensions and wages? They also have put in place a large contract with detailed job classifications and work rules. Toyota has more flexibility at their plant, giving them more productivity.
43: “Every attempt at perfection hurts people far worse.” /// Yea, those child labor laws, workplace safety laws, workers comp schemes, minimum wage, overtime pay are far worse than the free market rules that prompted their passage.
Idiot. Plane and simple.
Who said anything about repealing child labor and workplace safety laws? I’m talking about the gov’t forcibly taking your money to prop up a failed company whose product we chose not to buy. GM must be allowed to fail. Failure is integral to the market system, just like success is. The impossible “perfection” I’m arguing against is the attempt to free us all from the possibility of failure. That’s all.
Yours is a classic “straw man” argument: claim I’m arguing for something I never even mentioned or implied, then ream me up and down for it.
Bobbo: Idiot. “Plane” and simple.
/It’s “plain,” not “plane.” Doofus.
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