ellives

If he is, he obviously has company....

Apparently the last time you went to school was when they were using the abacus. "Revenue" is simply referring to "sales" as in "They sold $16B worth of product." It has nothing to do with whether the company made or lost money during these transactions. Those numbers are referred to as "profit" (or "loss") which is the actual result of being in business.... you either make or lose money on an investment. Typically, when companies are acquired, the price paid is some multiple of their most recent "profit" number. Since the article didn't state anything about profit, which is probably by design since the profit is probably buried in GM's overall financials somewhere, we're left to speculate. I have to disagree with XLR-V also... just because a company loses $10B on $100B definitely does not in most cases make a company worthless. It just means they lost $10B. What makes a company worthless is when their liabilities exceed their assets. This is why Ford mortgaging all their plants and equipment is so scary because they're basically betting the farm on the turnaround. Once (if) the borrowed money is gone, they'll certainly be in this situation and be forced into bankrupcy.

Not exactly. The article says $2B in "revenue" which is what they sell. This is not a profit number. The price is probably really good considering the profit is probably more like $400M (estimating it at somewhere like 20%.)

All of the US-based readers of this forum should be calling their congresspeople and voicing their opinions. There is nothing good about CAFE standards for anyone. It accomplished nothing the first time they were passed and nothing will happen now... at least nothing good for the domestics and certainly won't accomplished the intended goal. As is so typical of everything in congress today, they're meddling in things they don't understand so they can pander for votes. As I've said before, if they want to slow down fuel consumption, they should do it by raising the gas tax. Doing so will not hurt any particular manufacturer and will accomplish the goal.

I don't agree it's not relevant. It may not be the complete answer but it's certainly relevant and symptomatic of the overall issue the big 3 struggle with... how to regain profitability in the face of daunting financial obligations. Think of it terms of the real estate market... if you bought a house for $300K when the market was high and the market value of the house is now $225 and you owed $250K on the mortgage, you'd give serious consideration to walking away from the house and letting the bank foreclose on it.

.... or lower price for the SAME equipment.

How about sharing the source of this information?

People do what they have to do to get the product out, figuring the solution will be over the horizon. Management can be blamed for a lot of things and probably should however I wonder how many are still there. Senior management tends to move around a lot. If they haven't, they should and a good purge would probably help. In the end management is ALWAYS at fault since they're steering the ship. The problem with continuing to harp on the cause of the problem is that it's not helpful in finding a solution. The problem in front of GM is their costs are crippling them. The CURRENT management MUST do something to change the direction of the Company and this means cutting costs somehow. They can't cut their way to prosperity - nobody can.

We don't need any more information. It's none of our business as consumers unless we happen to be stock holders. This is part of the problem with being a public company and trying to fight a union. Too much information is public knowledge and the union will use the numbers to their favor. GM should do what Walmart does only in reverse. When one of Walmart's stores in Canada went union, Walmart closed it down. *POOF* GM should drive a program to de-unionize their plants and when the vote happens, if it's not in GM's favor they should close the plant. Why prolong the agony?

I'd get away from the comparison of 0% financing and $4K rebate numbers to cost numbers. Your trying to compare BS salesman numbers to hard costs. You can give $10K in rebate if you just bump the sticker price up. Not very helpful. The problem with "being within minutes" in certain plants is this is not overall efficiency. In the overall efficiency numbers Toyota dominates. The resolution to this is to get rid of inefficient plants or make them more efficient by investing in them. GM doesn't have the cash to invest in plants to make them almost as efficient as Toyota. They need to be MORE efficient to gain anything back. I just detest this mentality of being "almost as good as" or "competitive." Even Mark LaNeve did it recently during an interview. When are they going to get it? They need to be somehow better to entice a buyer to plunk down their money on a GM product. No one is going to do it when the salesman says, "it's almost as good as a Toyota." If you tell me that I'm going to ask why shouldn't I just buy a Toyota?

Keep in mind the Union is at least 50% responsible for the "medical benefits they have AGREED to cover." I love that phrase. It's more union spin trying to shed any blame for the current situation. That words "agreed" and "obligation" I see all the time. Again, the implication is that it's GM's fault for agreeing to the terms of the contract when they had no choice. So now when things are ugly, it's a lot of "they" stuff but when the contract is being negotiated it's all about "we." Well guess what? It's "we" still, and I *do* expect wholesale concessions. In fact I expect the Big 3 to go for the UAW jugular. I am not expecting "parity" with the imports. I'm expecting a competitive labor advantage. This will have to come from somewhere. In fact I'm hoping the negotiations go badly, and GM shifts all their manufacturing elsewhere. It may be the only way they'll be able to survive the current predicament. The only other real option is to file for bankrupcy and use it to get itself out from under the mountain of financial burdens it is currently forced to carry. I'd rather see this than a "death of a thousand cuts" which is what they're doing right now. It's going to take some real balls to get through the next few years and a vision to get them there. I hope they can do it. The Toyota juggernaut doesn't seem to be slowing down or even taking a breather any time soon.

Not really. Toyota and Honda get by just fine without a union.

"... including temporary wage cuts." Are they kidding? The UAW is in no position to negotiate or dictate anything. The big 3 should be dictating the terms - no if's, and's or but's. Don't like it? There's the door ---> Come back and see us when you've unionized Toyota.

I should do that. I'm only about 30 miles from there as a write this. It would be an excuse to get my '76 road worthy.

Absolutely agreed.... FWD effectively sucks from a driver enthusiast's perspective.

This is pure revisionist history. It is in fact one of the ways in which GM was being innovative which is lost today. It lead the way for a great deal of modern automobile design today where vehicles are FWD where none of it was back in the mid-60's. Much of the complaints about FWD today were known when the technology was developed. The problem GM has (or any other manufacturer for that matter) is aligning the timing of technology developments and deployments. I am referring to the concept of traction control addressing the void in traction performance between FWD and RWD design. Traction control is one of the reasons RWD has become acceptable because it puts RWD on an even footing wtih FWD. This caused the manufacturers to rethink their ideas on drive train design. Of course, Toyota had an advantage when designing the LS because they were late to the game and understood RWD would be the platform of choice for luxury cars by then.

The "sideways" motor design was accomplished in these cars by using chain drive... something that would not be accepted by today's buyers I'm sure.

OK - so you can get ALMOST the best for a little less money.

LMAO - (Well only if the Lex dispenses Merlot, Cabernet and Pinot Grigio.)

There's always gotta be one in the crowd....

OK - correction - they're not about being the biggest or most displacement, etc. There's always the bragging rights - after all, we're car guys. What else is there?

I can accept the argument that SOME number is enough... BUT.... GM needs to tell us and PROVE to us why! Why is 6 or 7 in a DTS as good as (or preferably better) than 8? This is where Cadillac was always the leader..... Remember when Lincoln had the 460 CI engine and Cadillac had the 472... and then the 500? You can't tell me these were any better/faster/quicker than the 460. It was just bragging rights... now obviously times have changed and luxury cars aren't all about bragging rights any more but you can't tell me any LS owner isn't going around telling his friends at the country club "it has an 8-speed transmission you know..." When you plunk down that kind of money on a car, you WANT to have something to brag to your friends about. There is nothing class-leading about the DTS. This is the problem Cadillac must overcome.

Beautiful isn't it?

One couldn't complain? The LS 460 has an 8-speed right? Where's the leadership in a 6-speed in a flagship product? My hope is they've forgone the revolutionary CHANGES to the DTS in favor of a total replacement of the product with at the very LEAST 6-speed and RWD. Even with this it's tough for me to see why it's revelant in a sea of products in the same market category. Why would I buy it over a 7, LS or S? THAT is the definition of relevance.

That's not saying much other than GM-speak for "it's good enough."