thegriffon

You're complaining you got fired for a little petty embezzlement?

Morgan never died, they just withdrew from the American market. This Duesenberg is the latest iteration. The previous Duesenberg Motors company folded and the assets were acquired by this new company, Duesenberg Coachworks. The Murphy Roadster is carryover, the Estate Car is much improved. The licensor, Duesenberg LLC, remains unchanged. If GM were to build a Maybach and Rolls-Royce competitor (and the feeling is there is not a big enough market), then licencing the Duesenberg name would work well.

Well, for one thing it's not a V12. http://www.epindustries.com/pdx_engine.html

Stocks aren't issued "during" bankruptcy. If things go very well there may be a small return for investors, but whe the company emerges from bankruptcy the old shares are almost always cancelled and new shares issued to a new set of investors. The decline in GM's share price highlights why it may be a very bad idea to have pension obligations funded by your own stock. The stock declines, your unfunded pension obligations increase, causing your stock to decline ... and you find yourself in a vicious cycle. If you're going to invest in any auto company it should be toyota, with steadily rising profits, increasing dividends. The stock is around $45 per share ($90 for the ADRs sold in the US), with an annual dividend payout of around 56c per share. With a market cap of $162 billion, the pension fund (said to be some $90 billion) could buy a very large chunk and demand a higher dividend. A total of 120 Yen ($1) per yer share annually would be high but not unreasonable - just over a third of net income.

THe CAW has fewer concessions to make than the UAW needs to. Ultimately the UAW will have to choose between preserving jobs and wages for active workers or defined benefits for those on layoff or retired. If they refuse to concede they could lose both.

They plummet for a reason. In most bankruptcies the current shares become literally worthless, which is why trading is suspended. Even if shareholders do get something it is usually just a few cents in the dollar in new shares. If you bought before the bankruptcy you'd be lucky to see any positive return for many, many years. Most of the "new" stock will go to creditors and key executives.

Spring Hill could easily be sold to Honda or Toyota at some stage, but I doubt they've thought of that yet. I fact it would be tempting to switch it to a JV like NUMMI, but with Honda, if you could decide on a joint project, perhaps in small and midsize crossovers.

They returned from WWII, but didn't survive the socialist government's policies of economic levelling. Some were nationaliszd and forced out of the luxury car business, the rest were driven out of business by punitive sales taxes on larger cars. In Germany by contrast, all the surviving car companies had state support. Those that didn't faced difficulties in raising capital to finance development. Much of the UK and French car industry was acquired by Chrysler and eventually sold to Peugeot. SIMCA (previously Ford SA) and Panhard were also acquired by Peugeot. Specialising like Alvis in armored vehicles Panhard was recently put up for sale. Peugeot was still selling models badged as Talbots in some markets a little more than 10 years ago, and still renews some of the old trademarks. GM is less a victim of globalisation as it is of legacy costs, the jobs bank and ballooning healthcare. If Toyota, Nissan and Honda hadn't enetered the market and set up plants in the US, then other companies would have replaced Studebaker and American Motors. Most people change employers several times even if they don't get laid off. It's timepeople found new work. Plenty of new suppliers have opened shop in MI, and they could always have moved south, escaped the midwest winters and started work for Nissan or Honda or Toyota. People like working there so much they don't want to join the UAW. Maybe the CAW needs to start recruiting stateside.

Never say never. with escalating health costs, diminishing market share and potentially enormous pension shortfalls it could be inevitable unless a radical deal is made with the UAW. Rather than playing hardball with GM they should be lobbying government for a solution - whether it be a $1000 surchage on every new vehicle sold in the US or a broader restructuring of corporate pesin plans.

Derham made a number of Series 75 limousine bodies post WWII. I can't remember the last true custom Cadillac body (before modern "custom" cars), but I think it was a 60 Special. After Fleetwood was acquired by Fisher Body to ensure a supply of custom bodies for Cadillac, they continued to build bodies for other manufactures including Lincoln and Packard, but the design dept. was soon integrated into Harley Earl's Art and Color. After a brief period in their own Detroit factory after moving from Pennsylvania Fleetwood was essentially merged into Fisher operationally. For a while they were just more opulent Fisher bodies, but with expansion of the Cadillac model series they were reserved for more expensive models such as the 60 Special and Series 75, and with the discontinuation of the model numbers eventually just a model name. It would be good to see GM re-establish Fleetwood as an in-house be-spoke customisation unit for Cadillac, much as Jaguar, BMW (part of M GmbH) and Mercedes use. E.g. unique interiors, low-volume off-catalog body variants (a short run of very-expensive STS coupes for example) - an adjunct to the V-Series.

Errr, not quite. The Fisher Bros. did start out building coach bodies before they switched to auto bodies, but it didn't work how you say. Eventually the companies building cars settled on the BOF design system, with the frame, chassis, engine etc. combined into a "rolling chassis". While many eventually had their own body shops there were hundreds of other firms such as Fisher, Brewster, Weymann, LeBaron, Derham, Hooper, Mulliner, Ghia, Touring etc. who created their own bodies, often for several manufacturers. For expensive cars like Bentley, Rolls-Royce (who eventually aquired their own in-house coachbuilders) and Ferrari this continued through the '50s and '60s. The same model often had a range of alternate bodies from different coachbuilders. Fisher became part of GMin 1919, producing most of the company's bodies. Early bodies however were largely wood and fabric, just like coaches, but Fisher I think developed the first all-steel body. The all-steel body required larger capital investment and therefore volumes than smaller coachworks could handle. The all-steel Fisher body became a marketing point for GM, but not all GM products had a "Body by Fisher". Many Cadillac models instead had a Fleetwood body, another coachworks that bought by GM. Although initially you could get a range of either Fisher or Fleetwood bodies, by the '40s standard Cadillacs had a Fisher Body, and the more expensive models were usually Cadillac-Fleetwoods (there were more than one for many years), although you could still get a body from another firm (so a Series 75 Cadillac was usually but not necessarily a Fleetwood).

Ah, but there is no "Astra" sedan at all.

It's only 276 hp, VW America doesn't know the difference between metric and US hp.

How do you go from Pahla to Paula?

Merriam-Webster does.

I'm with Croc, it should be Im'Pahl-a, but Im'Pal-a, with the short second vowel is also common. the final a is an undifferentiated vowel sound, but the first is either long as in father, farther or far, or short as in fat, cat, bat, or hat. I don't knoiw why anyone would rhyme it with paula, (melon-) baller, taller or caller.

Don't blame Miller Jmore, you have to do the best you can with the cards you're dealt, and in Miller's case there is nothing else to do. The assumptions behind defined company benefits were flawed. Very few companies survive more than a generation. Entire industries change and even disappear entirely. That's partly what happened to Bethlehem, that's what's happening to Delphi and that's what's happening to Ford and GM. That's why so many people now are called for a sales tax to fund healthcare and pensions, since it would be independent on the status of a person's current or former employer. Miller is just an employee too, and the owners, many of whom are indirectly the line workers you refer too, will probably lose everything. It doesn't enrich the owners at the employees' or creditors' expense. It works the other way around. The owners give up all or almost all in order to save as much as possible to pay their obligations to the creditors and employees. Miller is playign hardball, and so is the UAW, but if they can't negotiate an agreement, or accept the ruling of the bankruptcy court the company will shut down, and the employees will only lose much more and bring many other companies and employees down with them.

It was bigger than the current RAV4, but much smaller than the new NA model. Compared to the Japanese/European model the NA version has been stretched with a longer wheelbase and longer rear overhang to make room for the third row, and a slightly different nose to allow for the V6 engine. The new Daihatsu SUV previewed by the D-compact in Frankfurt and the narrower Be-go (Japanese version) in Tokyo is slightly bigger than the GenII RAV4. Toyota may consider the Daihatsu too small for the US market (the RAV4 sold half as well as it's larger rivals), although earlier compact Daihatsu SUVs have been sold as Toyotas.

They did something similar with the C6 Corvette remember, so they they know what to expect.

Sounds fishy to me. Why is the plaintif's law firm taking it to court before they collected evidence she was wearing a seatbelt? Unless there was no evidence to begin with. I'm not familiar with crash investigation, but I wonder what marks on a seatbelt could be removed by a grease rag. I thought you normally examined the victim to determine whether they were wearing a seatbelt.

46,000 employers in manufacturing of which there are more with no employees than there are with more then 500. However there are also nearly 40,000 "manufacturing" companies that are non-employers. Some will be small family businesses, but many aren't, so "manufacturing" may be a very loose concept, with actual assembly done by other firms in other states or even countries. Not much is actually "made" in Silicon Valley anymore, and manufacturing in general has been leaving California for many years due to a wide variety of higher costs - not only wages, but land and taxes etc.

Don't expect to be able to get a full-size GM truck for compact-truck prices for much longer. GM will cut production in order to increase margins when the GMT 901/902 arrive in '07. The GMT 800's are in run-out and you won't see these prices in future.

Don't forget the I5 is being bumped up to 3.7 L. Along with other upgrades that should increase power to be competitive with Nissan's 4.0 L V6, and more than Toyota's. The diesel is waiting for a reasonable NOx solution, currently a urea additive which the EPA doesn't think people will bother topping up (frequency would be similar to an oil change). H3 and Colorado models built in South Africa and Thailand don't have to worry, but will probably get a more powerful version of the current 3.0 L. A V8 SS model for the Colorado and a V8 H3 Alpha will come, probably with DOD to keep fuel economy low.

The RAV4 in Frankfurt was smaller, 5-seat and only had 4-cylinder engines. The North American model has been stretched substantially.

Karmann has a lot riding on this. If they can't get it to work well they'll lose a lot of future business to CTS, Pininfarina-Webasto, ASC, Heuliez etc., and not just from GM. In going for such a large folding hardtop they may have bitten off more than they can chew. If the Astra TwinTop works well I would think CTS would get the nod next time, but they will probably be looking at the Eos and Pininfarina's Volvo C70 as well. The Cabrio will make up the bulk of sales, so they are probably working hard to make it work.