GM admits it flucked up big time

Thanks. And thanks for partially answering your own question.

 

Oooh. A Silverado Crew.

 

No need to feign being impressed. I'm not.

 

Japanese cars in the 50's, 60's, 70's, and even the 80's were not
particularly high quality. In fact, they sent over some real junk. And
although GM might not have improved quality as much as Toyota, it is
impossible for you not to admit that GMs cars of today are far better
than GM cars of the 70's and before.

I don't think the reputation is deserved - on either side. The
difference in quality between the current average GM car and the
current average Japanese car is insignificant.

You ignored my point (and deleted what I said). Maybe devoting a lot
of production to SUVs and trucks was a bad decision, but Toyota,
Nissan, Honda, and almost every other car company selling vehicles in
America made the same decision. Toyota upsized almost every vehicle.
Toyota and Nissan entered the full size pick-up and large SUV market.
Even Honda started building pick-ups and SUVs. If GM management was
wrong about this, so was the management of almost every car maker
operating in the US.

I have no opinion on this comment.

Oh, you mean like Mercede's and Porsche's engineering? Both of those
companies use what is essentially the same technology in some of their
engines.

You have to be kidding. Saabs from that era were junk! In 45 years of
living at the same place in a rural area, exactly one car has broken
down in front of my parent house - a Saab 900. One of sister's friend
bought Saabs in the 70's and 80's Not one made it to 100k miles. The
Saab 4 cylinder you like so much was originally a British Leyland
design. Saab was going to buy engines from BL, but the quality was so
bad, they had to build them themselves.

GM has been saddled with all sorts of Government mandates. The latest
financial panic is a direct result of bad decisions by the Government.
The Government allowed the UAW to have what constituted an auto
manufacturing labor monopoly for decades. Foreign competitors to GM
frequently receive assistance from their Governments. I don't like
bailout either, but it is not fair to GM for the Government to screw
things up and walk away from a mess they had a large hand in creating.

Toyota has the Japanese Government they can ask for money any time
they need it.

Ed

 

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/gm-death-watch-223-pianos-and-pinheads/

When I was growing up in Rhode Island, the state was run by the mafia.
Politicians, police, priests, judges, juries, firemen, trash
collectors, teachers, unions– anyone who had power owed that power to
Raymond L.S. Patriarca. Period. In the last forty years, the mob’s
stranglehold on the Ocean State has dissipated– even if the stench of
corruption remains. But it’s too late. The mob-controlled unions and
their corrupt enablers destroyed Little Rhody’s industrial base. The
state will never be a locus of, well, anything. And yet people call
talk radio and wax lyrical about “the good old days.” Justice was for
sale. Racism endemic. Violence systemic. Priests buggered little boys
with impunity. “But at least you could walk the streets without fear.”
This, Detroit, is your future. And you can thank your godfather, GM.

You can almost feel the anger coming from Detroit these days. The
sense of betrayal radiates from hometown journalists like heat off a
desert parking lot. How could Washington turn its back on us? How
could they treat us like goombas? Don’t they know who we are? Yes,
they do. And they don’t care. Why kow-tow to yesterday’s boss? But
that’s not really the point. Detroit’s anger is fully justified.
Something bad has happened. Something that could have been avoided.
Should have been avoided. But this animus, this furious indignation,
is entirely misplaced.

It is GM that betrayed Detroit, not Washington. Instead of sorting out
their business, GM’s capos spent the last four decades dining at fancy
restaurants, smoking fine cigars, flying around in Gulfstream jets and
doing… nothing. And then, when they finally grasped the fact that
their goose was cooked, they ran to Uncle Sam and said, “Let’s do a
deal.” GM CEO Rick Wagoner faced the Senate and told Dodd et al that
he’d agree to anything to secure the bailout bucks. Oversight? Car
Czar? Deadlines? “I think we would could live with that.”

As a friend of ours likes to say, there is no honor in this. GM’s CEO
should not have come crawling back to D.C. in a Malibu hybrid to beg
for a taxpayer handout. At the very least, Wagoner should have
resigned after his first, disastrous Congressional appearance. Either
that or he should have poured bankruptcy expert Jay Alix a stiff
whiskey and told him to file for Chapter 11. Wagoner would have spared
his employer the final indignity of watching Congress and the
executive branch remove GM’s ability to determine its own fate.

“But no one will buy a car from a bankrupt automaker.” Excuse the
profanity, but who the **** cares? GM is bankrupt. Its liabilities
currently outweigh its assets by a factor of ten. A government loan
will simply add another creditor to a long list. Head of the line,
back of the line, big whoop. The fed’s $13b will keep GM on life
support for what? A month? Three? And then what?

As there’s nothing GM can do to generate the profits it needs to cover
its overheads, as any real turnaround would take over $100b and at
least five years, sooner or later, GM is headed for more public
humiliation. How much more of that can GM take?

It’s one thing to get steamed at a politician for pissing away $700b
of your hard-earned money for his or her best buds on Wall Street. All
you can do is not take out a loan from TARP-blessed banks (that won’t
give you a loan anyway) and/or vote the offending politicians out. You
know; later. But if a carmaker is blowing your taxes, retaliation is
easy. You don’t buy their products. You want my business? Sorry, but I
gave at the office.

Mark my words: if GM uses taxpayer money to stave off bankruptcy, and
then comes back for more, executive haircuts and public equity stakes
won’t do squat to mollify an enraged public. There will be a consumer
backlash that will make bankruptcy seem like a J.D. Power Award.

Meanwhile, GM and its camp followers are dazed and confused. Just like
the little old ladies who used to promenade up and down Atwell’s
Avenue without a care in the world, they don’t understand why things
have changed. They will never understand that they sat atop of a
pyramid of abusive exploitation. In the same sense, GM’s customers
subsidized Detroit’s sense of wealth, safety and entitlement by buying
shoddy vehicles. But only because they had to.

As soon as they didn’t have to, they didn’t. And then it was only a
matter of time before the old corrupt system collapsed. Reform? The
man who could have created life-sustaining change for GM through C11
(albeit three years ago) is in federal custody. Powerless. Someone
somewhere else is large and in charge. Depending on your perspective,
you might even call it progress.

GM is a corrupt mafia and it deserves to be put down like a mad dog

 

F-650.

http://www.f650pickups.com/indexb.html

 

No more or less than you do.

Here's a quote of the original post:

I suppose "difference in the amount of imported oil" and "amount of
oil" aren't the same thing, but it's not worthy of raising an
objection.

Actually it was, because you weren't referring to things that are
definitely unprovable opinions, like the beauty/ugliness, intelligence/
stupidity, or virility/wimpiness of SUVs, even though everybody knows
that a big SUV driven in sunny LA is ugly, stupid, and wimpy.

Show where I've represented my opinion as fact. I haven't. But when
you said that replacing all the cars with SUVs wouldn't change our oil
consumption, you weren't merely giving an opinion, despite your claim
otherwise, but were presenting facts, even though you weren't certain
of them. OTOH if somebody said that today's SUVs could be made to
use as little fuel as the average car, then that would be an opinion.

 

Only if everybody keeps the doors closed.

I'd rather park where there's a motorcycle instead of a Hummer in each
adjacent space.

 

Even Dubya doesn't have to cover up that much inadequacy.

 

I haven't heard Americans say that Japanese cars get better fuel
economy when size is considered. OTOH a lot of Americans won't buy
small cars that aren't Japanese or German because, let's face it, the
typical Saturn, Cobalt, or Caliber isn't as good as most Corollas,
Golfs, or Civics.

Americans do tend to think Japanese reliability is better, and the
numbers tend to bear this out, especially after the cars are a few
years old. But polls of Americans show that they don't think all
Japanese car brands are more reliable, and Nissan and the smaller
Japanese car makers haven't fared better than GM/Ford/Chrysler.

So if a company produces just one model and it gets better MPG than
75% of GM's models, is that company inferior to GM in this respect
simply because GM has more models? And should GM's closely related
models, such as some Pontiacs and Chevys, really be counted
separately? If so, why not lump the Toyota Matrix and Pontiac Vibe
twins together, even though their brands are from almost completely
separate firms? My point is, counting the number of models of a
company that achieve a certain goal is silly. Even counting the
percentage of models that do so is almost as silly because different
manufacturers can have different market niches, e.g., BMW isn't
interested in producing economy cars.

Yep, plus their factories weren't designed to handle changes in models
as well, and development costs for new models have been higher .

But truck buyers wouldn't mind if their vehicles got 10 MPG better
fuel economy, at no extra cost to them, of course.

And Toyota, despite its disaster with the new Tundra, can much better
afford low truck sales.

Or Japanese car executives are just as stupid about the bias for big
size.

 

Holy shit. That silver one looks like the Space Shuttle...

 

heh - there was one profiled in diesel power magazine a few months back
where the guy had installed six dvd players and various gaming systems.

IIRC, he still got around 15 mpg on the rig with the various tuning mods
he'd done, and of course, he ran veggie oil or bio.

 

I bet for a while there you were pretty glum.

As long as they didn't interview you crying about the price of fuel.

Everything is relative. A large fuel cost increase really bites you in the
butt, but whereas I have been driving fuel efficient cars all my life, it
even bites me in the butt, too. I'm used to filling a tank <$20. I put $58
in my Supra one day.

But then, who cares? I have other cars. If I were worried about the fact
the Supra gets 22 MPG overall, it would have a for sale sign on it.

It doesn't.

When it bothers me, I drive one of the cars that gets 30+ MPG instead.

 

Everyone needs one of those!

I *REALLY* don't want to hear the owner of one of those crying about fuel
costs! ;P

 

LOL!

All he has to do is *DUCK!!!*

 

Damn, you *ARE* starting to sound like JSB...

 

Sounds like "Pimp My Ride" Lol

Not a bad MPG. Have any idea what it weighs? I haven't even heard of the
F-650 until you posted that link.

 

They do the same with Kenworths, Internationals, just about any truck you
want.

The mileage isn't bad, because you're taking a truck designed to get ~12
MPG hauling 45,000 lbs and hauling nothing with it. They reach up to about
21 MPG.

http://www.sportchassis.com/

http://sportchassis.com/brochures/2008_brochure.pdf

 

NO.Bullshit, absoulte, and with no denial. "Reputation" and "facts"
are not one and the same. Facts cannot be disputed. Reputation can be
debated, and worse, can be manipulated, as has been the case in the
dissing GM products have been for nearly 30 years.


Consumer Reports, Edmonds, USA Today, and other media outlets have
slammed American nameplates for years.


Common catch-phrases are "reliabilty" and "fit and finish", among
others.


Realy not any stasitical data to back these assersions up.


Of course, no real need to, if the news says it is so, it MUST be so.


Forget about checking out things on your own, it takes a little
effort.

Disagree, and while you are at it, bring out some valid arguements to
prove it. And yes, it IS the point.

US autos have been of high quality for MANY years(check the highways,
what do you see more of, early 90 model GM's or Toyotas-your eyes wont
lie to you!)

They got as good as, or better than, fuel mileage, even back then.

Don't take my word for it, check it out.

YES it is!!! Why do you argue this??? It is so important for the
preception that a 2008 Toyota Camry gets better gas milege than an 08
Gran Prix, or Impala, when if fact,if equiped with a V6, gets WORSE.
These are FACTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Check it out.

More bullshit.


The surveys show that, comparing Japan to US auto manufactures, the
gap in quality is "stastically insufficient"

Pardon the spelling, but that means the cars are the same. quality-
wise.

If you are dumb enough to argue that Japan gets better gas mileage
than American, then I'll ask YOU to prove it. Give me REAL numbers.
Dont compare the Prius to the Corvette.


Otherwise, I am sure that you cant prove that Japan DOES NOT have
better gas mileage, over all than American nameplates.

You know the point, but I'll repeat it again/\.


Reputation, and reality are two different things.


Really hate repeating myself.

NO. the words "more", and "30 mpg" are petty strait-forward.


Take away the tax credited supported Pruis out of the equation, and I
am not even sure if Toyota could even ENTER this gas mileage
discussion, but guess which company has the "percecption" of being the
gas mileage king????



?

Quick quiz, Bozo.


What was the biggest selling vechicle in the US last month???????

And the month before????????


And the month before that????????????????



And the month before that????????????????????


And before that???????????????????



And EVERY SINGLE MONTH, except for ONE, for the past THIRTY
YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Yes, those, "no one wants to buy them", and "trends are saying people
are not wanting them anymore" are full-size PICK UP TRUCKS!!!!!!


They are the top sellers, even when sales are down across the board,
so spare me the bullshit that no one buys them anymore.



Even today, people buy more large vechiles than they do cracker box
size cars.

There are a lot of reasons GM is going bankrupt, but "making products
no one wants to buy" is at the VERY BOTTOM OF THE LIST.


Like I said earlier, please throw the script away and come up with
something new when bashing GM.



And while you are at it, feel free to take a hike, son.

 

I just cant understand this.


Have many times does the phrase "customer not buying" is used before
you realize that it is absolute Bullshit.


Why do you fail to understand that GM still sells as many as, or the
the very worst case, nearly as many cars as Toyota?????


You DO think Toyota sells cars, so you????


So it is logical to assume that if THEY sell cars, then, GM, who sells
about the same amount of vechicles, could also logically be accused of
selling vehicles, also???




So. please, trash can the cliche that "no one buys GM"


It is old, and makes you look stupid, to boot.