regfootball

NICE. oh by the way, diesel was a full dollar higher at the pump the other day. I am sure those diesels will FLY out of the showroom now. Side note. Ethanol, 1.34 a gallon. Guess my buddy can keep his Avalanche. screw the beemer.

that will be the death of our country.

has tesla even certified or crash tested any of their designs?

suzuki and mitsubishi i believe have the two best warranties in the industry. However, Hyundai and Kia were the first to press with the 100k tagline, which still sticks with them today.

hyundai. they will think hyundai is the next big thing, a better version of toyota. less cost and more warranty. toyota is the next target for the media jackals.

some things it does not make sense to make here. their transaction price is too cheap and labor cost too high here to do. and then there are things like cars. i would really like to know within the last 5 years of anyone who has suffered catastrophic personal torment in the last five years from owning a domestic product. even as late as 2000 or so, people were still buying lots of domestic cars. the home equity goldmines drove many people into luxury makes, because they were niche players and there were so many brands (too many?) in that end of the market. Most of GM's stuff was blue collar, and the cadillacs were not up to date. Pretty soon trucks are what is keeping GM afloat. Of course you are going to make as many as you can, volume and margin? HELLOOOOOO. going from 2 dollar to 4 dollar gas killed trucks. at the same time, the home bust forced people out of their leased lexus RX and into a highlander. more folks buy import brands for the first and second time. pretty soon there is lots of competition for your dollar. its natural with that many choices for the market to get watered down. What is unnatural is the market place's reward for mediocrity (toyota). And now that is the standard? I actually tend to think most people's opinions against GM are still relative to interiors. People got used to plush Audis and Mercedes and such. GM was putting cost cut interiors in their cars to shave whatever costs they could think of. Most people who can't think for themselves then form their car purchase on a few things 1. status-what will people think of me if i drive a CHEVY? ewwwwwww I'll drive a TOYOTA instead (I'm smarter than you) 2.interiors- especially to yuppies and women, things like panel gaps and plastic gloss took a way too proportionate focus in people's mindset. GM never bet the farm on any knockout interiors 3. consumer reports. we are a country of followers. we want the expert to tell us what to buy because the choices are so many and we would rather go by what the website says and blame them if they are wrong, instead of driving and evaluating everything themselves and taking responsibility for their own choice. CR said toyota was it, and hence, game over. i don't think GM has any ability in the next five years to make a dent on those three things. If people are still pointing to the Corvair and Vega and such for ways to pick on GM, its not anything that will be gone in 5 more years, ESPECIALLY if they declare, then its nothing left.

HYUNDAI, HONDA

well, lets see. if the boomers lose their retirement funds and their children don't have jobs to keep them in the nursing home, then they will love working at culvers. 2 shifts a day, 6 days a week.

smk is more than willing to whore out every facet of our economy to overseas companies.

don't kid yourselves, this is a national security interest to some degree. we just all got done bitching that we are dependent on pretty much all foreign oil. Look where that got us. So why don't we just make ourselves dependent to other countries for our transportation? Car sales are down right now because money flow is tight and there are no jobs. You all honestly believe that the annual rate of cars will stay around 11 million for the next 10 years? Will we be driving less? hardly. Miles=wear and tear= planned replacement of our cars. Sales volume will come back. On average what are going to do, drive our cars 10 years instead of nine? that won't make a dent. If anything it will drive up demand for auto parts as more people attempt to keep klunkers on the road instead of them going to the crusher. The USA will drive so many miles and use so many cars. What people want to have happen is to have foreign countries control the manufacture and sale of our transportation devices as well. We won't have the ability to do that ourselves, to manufacture. Read Angus MacKenzie in this month's MT. They went after your mortgage and your oil and your 401k. Let them have the manufacturing? Do as you wish, your food and your medical will be next. You wanna give that away too? How long before your children are making garments for 1 dollar an hour, not far off if you ask me.

you forgot Boston, Maine, New hampshire, and portland and seattle.

valid question.

government aid to terminate union contracts and pensions? oh, that'd be popular. joe sixpack can then sue the government in eliminating his job.

my exact point. GM can get a loan now, or the government pays big time for unemployment checks and lost tax revenue in the next few years. which costs more?

toyota has no allegiance to the USA. they simply want to vaccum the profit out of it, and send it back to 'yen check cashing inc'.

if they want to bring GM down, then lets do it in grand style. We can all write about it, and cash the advertising checks that pay for our newspapers and web sites. People in the US love to see britney spears style near collapses, and then recoveries. I don't think that sort of binge and bust is healthy. But people seem to want things to fail because its a great story.

the government providing the wherewithal for a large company to dump its unions and pensions? HAHAHAHA, with a democrat president and congress? its a decent idea, but no way in hell the government gets its nose in anything dealing with busting a union. the union would sue the government.

the public thought clinton erased our deficit. UM NO. but in the time he was in office i don't think it went up substantially and it may have decreased some. But to suggest he got us out of the red? NO. NOT EVEN CLOSE. then bush decided to pile on. Bush is fine spending big bucks in Iraq each month but hems and haws at throwing a bone the automakers way to keep them going. Rather odd since bush and cheney's oil buddies are repsonsible for the crash of people's budgets.

pretty much it. i just read where obama and the dems differ from bush. bush will only part with the money for the automakers if the dems agree to free trade with colombia and some other country. if you would have asked me 2 days ago i would have said the loans would come through but now its going to happen that bush isn't going to do anything and Obama won't have the time to do anything. the venom people have for the us auto industry on internet sites is incredible, although i still maintain a lot of it is from punks in their teens and early twenties who probably barely just got their liscense and more than likely have no grasp yet about what it takes to make a house payment and a car payment. but everyone believes everything they see on the internet and all those stories exist because some 'journalist' wants to shock the masses with a human drama. 'big corporate giant fails'. its like they feel like they are doing us all a favor with these endless speculation articles. Hate to say it, but i think they are going to let them all go under and we'll be forced to watch the nasty mess play out. the people want to see this happen. the public is so angry and possesses so much hatred they want to take it out on a big company like GM to get some kind of revenge. But that doesn't solve the issue. Any GM downsizing should be scheduled and planned over time....dealer reductions, etc. to let shutdown occur and the rapid failure of dealers and lost jobs occur in a compressed timeframe is unthinkable. at a minimum the loans would lessen the blow and spread out the transition to a smaller structure. I think if I were the Detroit 3, I would pull the plug on the north american auto show this year as a statement. pay the convention hall for the lights and employees and concessions, but cancel the whole she-bang. send all the journalists home, don't feed em. Donate money to the local food shelters as they will be needing it more than the beat writers. well, it was a nice 100 year run. but it might indeed be best to let public opinion win and have the US, the inventors of the automobile, opt out of the world car market. we will become pure consumers, assuming we have any money left for cars. there is a nice tata nano for you over here, sir. BTW, Angus MacKenzie at MT has a brief fantastic editiorial this month on why we should help them out. Not laden with conjecture like most 'expert' articles. Just simple points of view that appeal to common sense. yup, housing and oil broke the camel's back. don't also forget bushie wushie has problem spending that load money in Iraq every month.....for what exactly? Why bush is so intolerant of providing loans to the automakers when he himself has spent us into oblivion.......?

well how do you figure GM avoiding paying all that healthcare and such for the last how many years?

wow, murphy is a prck. how many vehicles did detroit sell in 25 years? 150 million? that's not 'zombie like'

the 3800 had the stick as an option? i've always wanted a last gen f body firebird with a v6 and stick!

can we recreate the hotel scene in wild things with me and neve campbell and denise richards (back then?)

I am telling you they should have drove the VUE!

the government is well aware that if they let GM file bankruptcy it gives them the ability. the ability to restructure and still lose lots of dealer and supplier jobs. everyone likes to moan about GM having 'too many brands' but that is not the case. Like Mark LaNeve said, there are too many other brands, why should GM's brands be the ones to go? Why should Mitsubishi be here if Buick can't? there ARE too many dealers. But here is the thing. A mass termination of brands and dealers even with bankruptcy will have a terrible ripple ripple effect. Going bankrupt for the purpose of trimming brands makes no sense and look at all the immediate impact of severe dealer termination. The brands are an asset if the product is there and unique between each other, i still feel that. The government helping them out to get them to critical mass point where they can benefit from that will help us all. I think the main thing is a gradual reduction in dealers and consolidation. Myself, I see no reason why Buick/Pontiac?GMC can't be folded into a dealer network with Chevy. Saab/Caddy/Hummer. Saturn is GME in NA, and could even be folded into Cadillac dealer network as well. I don't see proctor and gamble or general mills having to trim brands. likewise, a brand is an asset and Gm does not need to trim brands. They need to get leaner and meaner, but triimming brands is not how you do it. Trimming dealers may need to happen but don't cut half of them at one time. If the economy was good and gas and mortgages hadn't bankrupted families, and sales were at 15mill anual rate or 16 mill, GM would be doing ok. Another reason the govt needs to think hard. 60% of GM sales is overseas. GM goes under and now the US has lost a major presence in one of the biggest trade markets in the world. Not good for economic strategy long term, much less for military strategy.