GXT

It is insane, isn't it? $700 Billion seemed like so much and now over 1/5 of it is earmarked for one company.

GM is worth negative 60 Billion and it sounds like they have just a few months left without a government bailout.

I grew up on Chrysler products. My wife on GM. We don't drive Honda products now because of CR. I had never heard of CR when I bought my first Honda. No, we drive them because we drove Chrysler and GM products. I can't express to you how many times I took that peice of crap Alero in to get fixed. It was made worse by the incompetent dealer (or were they on the take?) that took three visits to solve almost every problem. We must have had it in three dozen times in 4 years. It was in so often I don't think we ever had to take it it just for regular maintenance. Ironically, we only bought it in the first place because her other not-too-old GM was already starting to cost a fair amount of money and she wanted something more reliable. I remember when her grandpa (long time domestic buyer) heard that she was using her e-brake (it was an MT) and he warned her not to because it would break. I just laughed. Sure domestics break easy, but don't use the e-brake? That's silly! Would you believe that both the older GM and the Alero had their e-brake handles break? Twice on the Alero! They were complete garbage. Her accord is just about as old as her Alero was when we managed to rid ourselves of it. She has had NO problems with the Accord. And I mean NO problems. Even I didn't expect that. As for resale, she paid about as much for her accord as her alero. The black book on a 4 year old version of her accord (even in these "challenging times") is $13,150 so we could probably get $14,000-15,000 on a trade and perhaps a bit more on a private sale. Dealers in my area are selling them with twice as many KM for $15,500-$18,000 I believe we ended up getting rid of her Alero for ~$9,500 on a PRIVATE SALE after months with no interest. I think only two people even test drove it. Perhaps we got lucky with our Honda's and unlucky with our GM's. Perhaps CR is wrong. Perhaps conumers are ignorant. Perhaps you actually believe the incorrect pricing information you usually give. Perhaps. Or perhaps GM has tended to make crap product with high depreciation and you can only fool consumers so many times before they move on and that is why GM is going bankrupt and can't survive without welfare. Just leave my tax dollars out of it.

Of course that is not true. The civic has been the number one selling in car for I don't know how many years (near a decade?) in Canada and resale is still very high.

I love you too. But there was no option "No, I've owned GM products before."

It is worse than that. Apparently they need ~12Billion to operate. It sounds like they only have a couple of months left unless they can get someone to give them some money.

I don't work for any automaker. I'm just a consumer with a grudge. My wife that bought a new GM product and we suffered horribly with the reliability and finally the depreciation of it. Perhaps I should let it go, but rest assured my anger at GM is because of their own crappy product. As for nothing positive... I'll give credit when it is due. I've made some positive posts on the CTS and the Lucerne. I "trash" the Volt because when GM first displayed the concept... which we now know had a detergent box and two standard automotive batteries under the hood... so many on this board claimed that GM had just jumped ahead of Toyota. Reality was plain... the Volt was nothing but flash and Toyota et al recognized the problems with the Volt and had left it quietly in the lab where it belonged. GM had nothing on anyone except for commercials and desperation based on incompetent product and decisions in the hybrid market. What do you think should terrify me about it? The high cost? The loss per vehicle? The watered-down design? The flawed concept? The way GM is rushing it to market without the usual checks? The potential for disaster? GM's complete lack of knowledge of the longevity of the battery? The shrinking of the range? The lowering of the ICE fuel economy? The trivial and nonchalant way in which Toyota (and apparently Chrysler and Ford) could match it at will? The only thing terrifying about the Volt is how the faithful are blind to the reality of it. GM never would have done it if they didn't have a giant case of Prius-envy. The Malibu is a great step forward. My criticism regarding it has been limited to GM's misleading comparisons with the Accord. But they don't "prove that GM is worth saving". There is lots of product just as good or better backed by financially capable automakers.

NEP

That isn't the issue. GM is a zombie. Just because there is a heart for transplant doens't mean that GM should get it. They'd still be dead and the heart will be wasted. I don't think you are being realistic about GM's situation. I am sure that Toyota, Honda, Nissan, etc. are still getting financing. GM lost $54 billion in equity in one year. I can only imagine how much worse it will be tomorrow. At the same time their revenue is shrinking rapidly. It is a horrible investment. The banks know it, and I suspect you probably know it as well. I'd appreciate if you would stop suggesting that the government waste my money.

Exactly what I was thinking. This was the purpose of the Volt after all.

GM is a business, not a charity case. It might be different if they had a reasonable chance of coming through this. But they don't. There is NO reason that Canadian tax payer money should be given to GM to pay off Chinese debtors. Really? What happens to the loan guarantee when GM is bankrupt or in restructuring? Perhaps I don't understand the concept, but I believe the "guarantee" part means that Canada is out the money. So in this case there is no difference. Actually, the real problem is shrinking market share, shrinking profits and rising debt. We'll see the real effects tomorrow, but even in the relatively health Q2 GM's sales were off some 20% YOY. In Q2 2007 GM's equity was NEGATIVE $3.7Billion. Q2 2008 it was NEGATIVE $57 Billion. They will almost certainly never recover from this. Assisting them now would leave us less able to clean up the mess when they are gone. No thanks.

GM is sinking under the weight of their debt and shrinking market share. Giving ANY money to GM is a COMPLETE waste of money at this time because it will go straight to any number of non-Canadian debtors and there is pretty much no chance of getting paid back. We may as well just give the money directly to the ex-GM employees for retraining. Alternatively, we could use it to bring auto-makers that have a chance of surviving. I'm already annoyed that we didn't take the recent opportunity to get our $300 Million back from GM due to breaking their word.

Yes, Obama will have a tough time digging the US out of the hole that Bush and the Republicans have created. It is possible that the US is already several years into a decline from which they never will recover. On the flip side, Bush has set the bar so low I really doubt that even your most horrible made up stories would put Barak at his level.

We better kill this 80MPG rumour right now so to as avoid the head-smacking "Prius sucks... it only gets 50MPG" reaction later. The new Prius will not get 80 MPG. It will probably be very similar to the current model. My opinion is based a slightly improved hybrid drive offset by a bigger engine. Also, the 80 MPG rumours seem to stem from years past when Toyota was talking about using a Li-Ion battery. But yes, GM's hybrid offerings are not very competitive. The two-modes seem to show good results but are very expensive. The cheap (yes, I intentionally didn't write "inexpensive") assist systems in the rest of GM's hybrids are good for only a couple of MPG. In real-world tests they often don't do as well as competitor's non-hybrid 4cyls. For comparison: Vue Hybrid: 25/32 $28,625 Escape Hybrid: 34/31 $29,305

The Volt wasn't affected because it is GM's main leverage to get money out of the government. I'm not sure what your definition of "complete" is, but as far as I know there is not even one single complete prototype.

Source?

Since 10Billion is several times GM's market cap (not sure if Chrysler is added in... but I get the impression that you don't sell Chrysler so much as you pay someone to take them from you), the US government should then own GM/Chrysler. Rename it to USA Socialist Motors (USASM). Resume making average cars that wouldn't exist without the Socialist USA backing it. The US government could use all their finance and insurance firms to sweeten each vehicle purchase. If that doesn't work, change the US laws so that everyone in the US is obliged to own at least two of them. Call it the God-Bless-USA-Is-The-Bestest-Country-In-The-Universe act. If it doesn't pass, roast your opponent in the next election with it, "My opponent voted against God Blessing America and against the USA being the best country in the universe 100% of the time.". So does true capitalism actually exist anywhere in the world? Is it safe to say that socialism has "won"? Not that I object... the US' aversion to it seemed to me to be the rich fleecing the poor.

The numbers came from their on-line site. As I recall, I took those numbers from those R&T "data sheets" that contain all the detailed numbers from their reviews. I believe it was a 6SPD TL-S.

They are losing billions and, as I recall, even last Q they were already worth negative billions. The only real value they might have is the brand, and currently the brand isn't worth much either. So technically even at their current market cap they are still over-valued. That, and there is no way they will be able to avoid restructuring/bankruptcy. Stay away from this sinking ship.

They bought a Malibu, didn't they? J/K (kind of) So what did you give them on their trade, Carbiz?

There are a number of cars that overlap the Lucerne's price range as much as the Lucerne overlaps the price range of many of the vehicles you have listed. e.g. Accord, Camry, Altima, etc. They offer the same level of "luxury" as the Lucerne (or certainly are more comparable than many of the cars you listed) and outsell it easily, sometimes several times over. That is as fair a comparison as what you are doing. I can't imagine the BMW 3-Series being considered a direct competitor with the Lucerne. I'd love to see the stats, but I imagine the number of people seriously cross-shopping a BMW to a Buick are non-existent (like the RL's sales). Perhaps some people who would buy a Buick got lost and wandered into the BMW dealership, but BMW owners are not generally looking at Buicks. I think of Cadillac as comparable to some of those cars. But Buick is in the same league as a Honda/Toyota... just for older people. For example, I will consider a BMW 3 series for my next car, I will even consider a CTS, but Buick isn't even on the radar.

How the mighty have fallen. The USA is going the same way as GM. But who is going to bailout the USA?

You cast a pretty wide net with the Lucern starting at $28K-3.5K cash back. A number of those cars start at 50% more than the Lucerne and some of them are almost 100% more. You may as well have thrown in the Corolla for comparison. I will give props to the Lucerne exterior. It was the first non-ugly sedan that GM had made in years. I assume that was the Hand of Lutz in action.

One good thing about this is hopefully we won't see any more rants by FOG (or anyone) about the Japanese government helping Toyota. Socialist USA apparently does so as well.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "see". Prototypes? Probably. Production? I believe it is widely accepted that if they have any for sale by their Nov. 2010 target they will have done very well. Based on a couple of timeline slips that we already know about they are several months behind. So no, don't expect any in 2009. Don't expect any before 2011 and don't expect to have a reasonable chance of getting your hands on one until a year or two after that.