Shantanu

No I think GM products are fine. I just don't like Bob Lutz making apologies for them, in a pitiful effort to try to attract import buyers.

Are you being sarcastic, or have you bought into this rubbish too? What makes you think that 4 years from now they won't run another apology campaign, like they're doing today, and like they did 4 years ago?

http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=2501639 Detestable import fanboys having a field day over Bob Lutz's GM deprecating comments. Back in 2002, Bob Lutz came out with that "apology" campaign in newspapers, wherein GM essentially said that its past products were $h! but consumers should give it a new look because the new GM is changed. So I actually bought into to that and convinced my family to get a CTS at the time. 4 years later, it looks like we've come back full circle. "Just wait until you see our new products just around the corner, they're nothing like the junk we peddled in the past." The spin is exactly the same: in the past we sucked, we admit that, but take a look at our new products! We've changed! I mean, what am I supposed to think? Am I chump for believing them the first time, and now finding out the "New GM" was no good, but that if I should need another car I can look to the "New New GM"? Pisses me off.

I think that's a pretty good review, overall. Keep in mind that Mercedes, BMWs, etc. don't have quite the cachet in Europe that they do in Europe, because those brands also sell a lot of small, cheap cars. A lot of rich Europeans are looking for something similar to what Americans are: something with a foreign badge, that few other people have.

The people in the media are still clinging to this old line that "SUV sales are going to plummet any day now... Yup no more SUVs sold in America", like they've been doing for 10+ years. Lincoln may come back someday, but based on its future products that I've seen it will not be anytime in the next few years. Those vehicles are mediocre at best.

Rick Wagoner got in as part of the old WASP hookup. His rich Daddy promised him that one day he'd get to have his turn running General Motors, and so he did. Back when GM had 50% market share and the economies of Germany and Japan were in shambles, it didn't really matter much who ran GM. But today GM is being squeezed, and Rick Wagoner needs to go.

There's no mystique in Japan for Lexus. The people there know that they are just Toyotas and they are not fooled, like Americans are.

The whole company is starting to look exactly like Enron. I wonder if we'll find out that Rick Wagoner, Lutz, etc. have been secretely skimming money off the top for years. Wouldn't surprise me. It would be funny to see Bob "Born with a silver spoon in his mouth" Lutz die penniless in prison.

The accounting scandal alone is enough to throw this guy out the door.

That's because Rick Wagoner is a pussy. He never stands up to anyone, sending a 5 feet tall old lady to fight his fights for him, and still backing down afterwards.

The problem is that Rick Wagoner should have obviously been dumped several years ago, or in fact never allowed to have become CEO. The board is reluctant to pull him now, because they've invested so much of their own reputation in propping him up. They are too afraid to admit that they made a mistake.

You can't blame all of GM's problems on legacy issues. Rick Wagoner has done a mediocre job overall of running GM; I don't think there is anyone out there who doubts that. And if he is replaced tomorrow, you're right that nothing will change on March 19, what with it being a Sunday and all. Or even on March 20. But these changes are seen in terms of years. And with Rick Wagoner we have got a mediocre record going back several years. It's really hard to imagine GM doing much worse than they are doing right now. GM needs change, and much of that change has to be a change in people.

I'm going to agree with you that people have been fired at other companies for far less than what Rick Wagoner, Bob Lutz, etc. have done.

Why was the fuel tank placed in the middle of the trunk? Why couldn't they have tucked it onto one end, so you get more continuous storage space? Also that water draining apparatus should definitely be something that's bolted in, because if you can just pull it out a lot of people will accidentally.

If you want a shifter on the floor, why not just buy the Corvette that has the manual transmission? Paddle shifting is like those "manumatics" they have in other cars, where you can stick your transmission in a psuedo manual mode for a while, and change gears up and down within some range. The only difference is that instead of tapping up and down you tap paddles on the sides. It's not meant to be a manual transmission because it's not. It's an automatic that gives you some input in what gear you want.

Commercials are amusing the first time you see them. It's not going to save Volkswagen in the U.S. though. Their product is overpriced, and their unreliability has caught up with them. They can't make a name for themselves with gimmicky, youth oriented marketing like the did in the 1990's. The American people won't be fooled again.

Man if GM can give that kind of attention to detail for interior styling in such a low volume product like this, why don't they do the same for something like the Malibu?

Here's the problem though, with a dealer based strategy: Now I'm not saying that good salespeople don't help, because they do. But the problem is that salespeople are a shared and tradeable commodity. Toyota can just as easily look at what GM is doing in terms of dealers and salesmen and copy it, or they can just hire away the good salespeople. That's why a salesman based strategy like Buickman suggested won't work, because the average salesman is just out there to sell cars and has no particular loyalty to GM.

The pensions, health care, and even the salary of the workers are a fixed cost, that's the problem. And profitability in the auto industry is generally low all around (even at Toyota, in terms of the revenue they pull in), because the business is too competetive. GM's best bet is to maximize the revenue so they can pay off their obligations, until they start to decline next decade. Those UAW workers will make $60,000 a year no matter what, and eat up $40,000 in benefits, whether or not they are making cars. So from GM's POV, it makes sense to have them working, even if the cars that they make are unprofitable. It's all about the marginal revenue exceeding the variable cost or something, I'm beginning to forget my basic economics.

With the consolidation of the GMC-Buick-Pontiac dealerships, I wonder if GMC could be folded into a new division called "Chevy Trucks", that's basically the same as any Chevy Franchise, but they only sell the truck line, or basically the exact same products that GMC sells today. GM could save a lot of money in marketing. GM's advertising bill is what, $3 billion a year? GMC has got to be eating up at least $400 million of that or so.

Interior by Fisher Price, and an exterior that resembles a child's toy. Who would want to be seen in this thing? It's a polarizing vehicle, and I think in the first few months it may have it's share of early adopters. But I don't see this thing becoming a mainstay of Toyota's lineup. It's too much of a "me too" Hummer/Jeep kiddy wannabe, without the cachet of either of those brands to get legitimacy amongst the off-road crowd, which helps to feed sales amongst the average Joe suburban consumer.

The Buck Lucerne looks fantastic from the outside. That is a car to be seen in!

When 1 Euro was worth 90 cents, Volkswagen could compete in America. With 1 Euro being worth $1.20, they can't compete. Not as much of a problem for the German luxury brands because they have bigger profit margins.

Damn straight. GM needs to be putting the nail in the coffin of Suzuki, Subaru, Fiat, and other unreliable partners that kept it down in the past.

GM has done really well in China, but in India which is also growing very fast GM is not a big player. Maruti-Suzuki which is a joint venture between Suzuki and the Indian government is the biggest car maker in India, so as a result of that GM has stayed out of this fast growing market because they own a chunk of Suzuki, and they didn't want to compete against something that they own a piece of. So in this instance, GM's partnership has held them back from expanding in an important market. I'm not North America centric. I think a GM comeback will also be based on putting the import brands on the defensive on their own turf. But any overseas success will have to be based on the China model, where GM did their own design work and only collaborated on the manufacturing aspect with other companies.