R.I.P. General Motors (1931-2006)

Go to this site.
http://www.bridger.us/2002/12/16/CrashTestingMINICooperVsFordF150

 

Like I said, I was a mech at a toy dealership and the bays were full all the
time. Head gasket problem, head warpage, steering problems, control arm
problems, worn cam shaft lobes. I can go on, the Honda accord that we owned
had worn lobes at 50,000 miles, fixed it and got rid of that piece of shit.

 

My father owned a shop that rebuild engines and reconditioned heads (valves
jobs, surfacing, etc.). He got a lot of business from a Toyota dealer as
well as the GM and Ford dealers.

Some dealers are not very good at major engine work, and try to get the
costumers to take their cars to other dealers. I suspect that Toyota will
not put up with that kind of crap from their dealers, though.

Toyotas have problems as well.

Jeff

 

A big difference with imports is they keep them in the home markets for
several years before exporting them to us. The locals suffer with the
new build bugs.
The Honda Fit is just coming to Canada, that's 4+ years after it was
available in Japan.

I've suffered a few times with new mechanical design on NA cars.
Thanks to the internet info, which now makes it easy for me to avoid
significant new mechanical design for at least two years.

 

thus the problem for American car makers

the Japanese cars are styled by west coast kids.
The US cars by older Detroit suburb residents

and the US cars have to drag along the UAW and the retirees

 

Mostly true, but compare the Chrysler 300C to the German Audi A8.
Kind of a similar styling theme EH!
Well at least not those oldie Detroit stylists.

It's those laid off who get paid to do nothing for several years that is
sinking GM and also affecting Ford.

 

Is Mike Hunter and razz the same person?

 

Toyota has a design and R&D facility near Detroit. However, it bigger one in
the US is in CA.

The Ford Contour, Focus and 500 I believe were designed by Ford in Europe,
not the US.

and the health care.

Jeff

 

More Trouble Than I Thought at GM

GM will sell 51% of their GMAC financing arm really brought home to me
how bad things are at GM. I had assumed that GM was facing the same
type demographic bomb as the airlines, fat and underfunded pensions and
retiree health care benefits promised when times were good and US auto
makers didn't face much troubling competition.

GMAC is reported to make about $2.5 - 3 billion a year in profits.
This might tend to imply a value of at least $25 to $30 billion, which
is confirmed by the fact that GM just sold half for $14 billion. But
GM as a whole has a market cap of just under twelve billion. This
means that their entire manufacturing business is valued in the market
at roughtly -$16 Billion. Yes, negative sixteen billion. Another way
to look at this is that if instead of selling GMAC , GM had instead
sold all of their automotive manufacturing, brands, designs, etc. to
someone for $1, and became a pure financing business, GM shareholders
would be richer by $16 billion, the equivilent of raising the current
stock price from about $21 to about $49.

 

Plus, retirees now live longer, meaning that there is more retirement to pay
for, health care costs are skyrocketing, and with automation, it takes fewer
man- and women-hours to build a car or truck.

It means that their entire manufacturing division plus their pension and
health care libalities and other problems are valued at $-4 Billion. In
other words, their plants might be valued at $5 Billion and thier
liabilities at -$9 B.

Not really. Because they would have to pay someone to buy their automotive
manufacturing plants, health care costs, pensions, etc.

Jeff

 

they would have to pay someone to buy their automotive

They will not pay

They put it to the government to pay for the health care and pensions

The shareholders will not get anything

At the moment management is busy getting their hands on bonuses etc as
long as they can and are allowed to fool everyone

 

Spam Hater wrote:
[snip]

So it's NOT the UAW and their ridiculous wages for unskilled
workers, absurd medical and retiree costs? It's just those laid off
and sucking money that's the problem? Interesting.

 

They will not pay

They put it to the government to pay for the health care and pensions

The shareholders will not get anything

At the moment management is busy getting their hands on bonuses etc as
long as they can and are allowed to fool everyone

Many of the shareholders have already sold their stocks and thousands
more are selling their stocks every day. It's my guess that the value
of GM stocks will keep getting lower and lower and lower.
I doubt that any foreign car company will buy GM since they don't
want to get stuck with the costs related to health care and pensions.
Jason

 

NEVER BUY A FORD...THEY ARE ALL RECALLED AND ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR
MILLIONS OF MOTORIST FATALITIES....FORD IS A SCAM

 

@#@

Your full of shit. Gm is the biggest scam artist going.

Ray

 

Nice to see that the old Ford/GM rivalry has degenerated into a race
to the bottom.

 

If this keeps up, GMs sales may drop by the millions. Perhaps even all the
way down to the level of Toyota or Honda sales numbers. I doubt GMs sales
will ever go THAT low, since the largest current recall is from Toyota for
several million cars that can lose steering control.




mike hunt

 

Hey Mike, did you see the May sales report?

Here are the highlights


May 2006 Vehicle Sales
(thousands)

cars trucks total
GM 126.9 208.5 335.4
Ford 99.3 161.7 261.0
DC 52.0 139.2 191.3


Toyota 144.9 90.8 235.7
Honda 84.9 56.9 141.8

Analysis (and some more facts):

Mike likes to say how much GM outsells Honda and Toyota combined. Hey
Mike, do the math; it wasn't true in May. Look how close Toyota is to
Ford in total vehicles. If the May trends were to hold up, Toyota
would outsell Ford in 2007. Toyota would outsell GM in 2008.

Now that won't happen because Toyota doesn't have the capacity... yet.
And we can't be too serious about extrapolating from one month's
sales, but it sure was an interesting month.

The number one CAR maker in May is Toyota. Honda is closing in on
number three (Ford). Trucks are rapidly losing their attraction as
gas prices soar. (cars sales up 6% in May, trucks down 7%.) Honda
car sales were up 20%. Toyota +25% Ford +6% GM car sales were DOWN
16%.

A lot more of the trucks that are being sold are from Honda (+9%) and
Toyota (+7%) rather than GM (-10%) and Ford (-7%).

GM total vehicle sales are down 8% YTD vs. 2005. Recall that those
2005 sales were so bad that GM ran the biggest fire sale in history.
No doubt that major sell-off (and the prospect of another one) is
depressing GM and Ford sales now. In the short term GM will cut
production. If that is not enough, another fire sale may be in order.
In the long term, GM will have to contract their business or go out of
business all together. That is when Toyota will pass them.

 

Re-read the post. There is not doubt GM and Ford are loosing share of the
growing market, but they still are outselling any import brand.

mike hunt

 

Why does anyone here waste their time talking about General Motors, Ford or
the fact that when you buy a Mercedes now you get a Chrysler trasmission
and/or engine? This is HONDA! Talk about HONDA. They make world class
vehicles that are heads above GM, Ford & DC. These 3 do not sell squat
outside of the US and the only thing that keeps them afloat are fleet sales
for pickups and SUVS that have 1950s technology. Let's keep the discussion
to HONDA here. If you want talk about GM, go to GM's newsgroups. There, you
can discuss the Hummer and all their other 1950s pickups and SUVS.