Not the greatest of news for GM employed factory workers:

GM Plans to Cut 25,000 U.S. Jobs by 2008

 

Typical band-aid fix to bounce the stock value back up in the short term. This will settle the major stockholders down for now.

Of course, none of the big executives are going to offer to cut their salaries and probably will give themselves raises as soon as the numbers look a little better.

 

Somewhat related.
In last sundays paper they listed the 10 to exec in Orange County.
Pacificare, health care, had three in the top ten, their 2004 salaries totaled $$$ 39 million . Thats a lot monthly preimums.

This country's mfg is in real trouble. It started with electronics and has now spread to the steel and auto industry. Since we do not have tariffs on imported goods these big international companies can close plants here and move the operations overseas.
In doing so they eleiminate environmental costs,health care costs, pensions, and all the rest of the related costs to having employees in the USA. Plus the hourly wages are about one-tenth of what they are here.
End result, they dont lower their prices but the net profit skyrockets and the shareholders are elated. What the shareholders dont realize is that the taxes on their shares go to pay welfare for the now unemployed workers.
Health care costs is why GM went to Canada, with socialized health care the Canadians pay their own health care costs thru income taxes and its a non-issue in union negotations.

 

Yup, it's just cheaper to have things *built in other countries
these days

* or should I say have the work done in other countries

 

Let's face it, you need to blame their crappy new cars.......that's the ultimate factor here....

Plain and Simple......GM does NOT build the same cars they used too, nor do they do an effective job marketing their cars.......

 

I don't think it's really a question of quality. It's more an issue of size and fuel economy.

GM, Ford & Chrysler all jumped on the SUV/Truck bandwagon and have been focused on producing large gas guzzling vehicles for the last few years. Now that gas prices a have shopt up, consumers are now rethinking what they want to drive.

Bob Lutz also feels that building hybrid economy cars is a waste of time and wants to produce large hybrids. However, that won't be in full swing until 2007 or 2008.

In the meantime, Toyota is leading the way with the Prius, which is selling like crazy (I can't tell you how many of those I see on the road everyday). Toyota also produces more fuel efficient trucks and SUV's.

 

Only one solution! EXPORT IMPORTS!

 

I agree with Bret.

Here's a typical conversation between a GM customer and somebody in charge at GM.

Customer: Hey GM, listen to me. I want a RWD passenger car or any form of a RWD vehicle besides a new line-up of huge SUV's and trucks. I guarantee you will make money if you start building cars like you used to, when they were exciting and creative.

GM Rep (Lutz): Oh loyal customer, I wish I could help you.... but I want to cut Zeta. I want to rid people of a possible chance of a new gen Camaro and/or Chevelle, I want to forget anything RWD at all unless it is a huge truck or SUV. Ford is kicking our asses with the Mustang, Dodge is bringing their heritage into their current line-up and doing quite well, Toyota is making faster, smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, Hyundai is catching up to us, and we're desperately losing our #1 spot to Toyota.... hmm.. I have an idea... hey Jim, how about we produce more gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs because that's what the people want... right?

GM Rep (Jim) (While counting his 6-digit paycheck), uhhh... yeah sure. Sounds good to me.

And that's the story of GM

 

I'm too am pissed that they GM killed off the Zeta platform. I guess you missed the rest of the message regarding the future of RWD platforms from GM. I'm excited about the upcoming Kappa platform. I just can't decide which I like better, the Saturn Sky or Pontiac Solstice.

Lon

 

I think that GM is going through some motions of trying to deliver what people what but they have hurt themselves in the past with their own vehicles competiting for the same market share. I think that is why Pontiac and Chevrolet in particular are finally going to have a pretty different line-up rather than every vehicle in each fleet having a sister car.

 

GM has built crap for years, the late 70's and early 80's were the worst. It is just that their crap is better then Chryslers crap.
It has nothing to do with quality of product or type of product, the big three still cannot keep up with demand for SUV's and trucks.
Hybrids are still a cute toy. They are not economical over the long haul.
Electric cars are not the answer either. If enough of them hit road our limited electic power plants will show you a energy shortage that will make the 75 and 82 gas shortages look like a surplus sale.
To quote Chryslers GM, to make electric cars affordable sell them "battries not included". Battery life is short and expensive.
And Americans are wierd, they won't buy a American brand economy car but will jump all over a Asian economy car. Duh.

 

Then I guess we're all driving crap and have a car club based on crap.

Quoting the article:
"Wagoner revealed the cutbacks as he laid out a strategy to invigorate GM's North American operations, its biggest and most troubled, amid lackluster sales of its highly profitable trucks and sport utility vehicles, which have been hurt by high fuel prices."

This is close to how Bob Lutz feels. In his opinion, hybrid economy cars don't make much sense. Econo boxes already get good fuel mileage and by making a hybrid version, all that happens is the car becomes more expensive to purchase with a small boost in fuel economy.

This is why Lutz wants to build full-hybrid trucks, SUVs and sedans. He feels the return for the consumer will be better.

GM tried the electric car with the EV1. They decided it was not worth pursuing on a larger scale. The batteries are too expensive and there's the whole environmental issue of disposing of used batteries.

Still, there's a bunch of EV1 users crying to get their cars back. Let's see, their range is short, batteries would be expensive to replace and the biggest problem — there's NO surplus parts! Why these people are carrying on to get the car back puzzels me.

This comes down to marketing and public perception. Most people equate "affrodable economy car" with Asia. GM, Chrysler & Ford need to change that perception. Ford has done okay with the Focus, so that's a start.

With the tuner market exploding, the Big 3 finally decided to get in the small car game. Only time will tell how well they do.

 

I have a flyer depicting a Monte Carlo available in 2006 ...5.3 eng. rear wheel drive, there most likely will be other options.
At least it's a start.

 

06 Monte Carlo is FWD, as is the Impala SS.

 

RWD ? I was hoping but couldn't find any indication here so I assumed it was still FWD.

http://www.chevrolet.com/montecarlo06/

I would think that would be headline news if it went to RWD, then just add the LS2 & 6M and you got a winner!

 

I sure hope that GM can get its act together. I hate to lose more American manufacturing. We have lost enough already. Allen

 

I know something about that from personal experience. My last 3 manufacturing jobs went out of State or off-shore. I lost any desire to look for another, which is why I'm self-employed now.

Lon

 

Its still fwd

 

The American cars are not the best they could be, any of them. Part of the problem is styling, the Europeans, at least up thru the mid 80's, changed body styles every 10 or 15 years, that leaves a lot of money to develop better quality, and the Europeans demanded cars that lasted over 100K miles. In the late 60's German cabbies were switching to Opal Records "because a Mercedes doesn't last as long as they used to".
To quote my father, who was in Cleveland from 1906 to 1943 and did a lot of driving (for those who dont know Cleveland was secondary only to Detroit in the early car days), "the well built cars couldn't survive against the cheaply built cars. The best made cars fell to the wayside while Chevy, Ford and Studebaker forged ahead. "
Like now people are willing to settle for less quality if its cheaper, Walmart is the best example I can think of.
American car makers have made numerous economy cars over the years only to have the market either kill the product or turn it into a muscle car such as the Nash Metropolition, all Ramblers, Mustang, Tempest, Barracuda, Corvair, Fiero, etc. But the Asian econo cars continue to thrive. Duh.
Admittily the Corvair and Fiero had problems, most due to lack of testing in order to get the product to market, and with GM's speed at fixing problems, the bean counters have to determine if the fix is profitable first, by the time the car was fixed you couldnt give them away.
And as far as RWD is concerned, the FWD's are so much faster to assemble and less parts, RWD is not a profitable option. GM FWD is not conductive to speed parts. I belong to a Grand Prix club and the modded W body owners are constantly replacing drive shafts, transmissions and differentals. Most reinstall with wing nuts to speed up R&R.
Eventually, probably not in my lifetime, but maybe not much longer, is throwaway cheap cars. The Greenies want that (get rid of old polluting technology), the Politicos want that (more new car taxes), the car makers want that (make and sell more cars), and, I believe it's Singapore, no vehicle can be driven thats over 7 years old. And this months C&D states that the last TTA has been imported into Australia.
Whew........

 

6 digit? try 7 digit.. he earns over 3 million a year.. Bob Lutz i mean

 

This is loosly related,
Missouri needs to loose 2000 jobs like I need more HP ( I've been there that State is hurting. Just what amount of smog do they expect to cut by putting cats on gas powered yard equip. In most of this country yard equip is used 4 months a year.
Greenies need to get their heads out of their a$$;s.


http://start.earthlink.net/article/n...06102013649963

 

dont know if anyone caught CNN Money report today...

"GM auto sales up 41% for the month of June, due largely to the employee discount for everyone plan"


damn 41% is a HUGE increase, now all they need to do is discount their cars(not employee discount) a little more and their sales will continue..

 

Heh..... and people thought incentives would kill off GM's profit.

 

The sales are up, what is the status on profit?