Interesting article on GM's financial situation
 

Is GM facing doom and gloom or is it just a matter of managing the global financial crisis? According to this article, it is a matter of both. Some things don't change (old GM ways) and some things they can't control, but overall, GM had an opportunity and they didn't capitalize on it.

In that article Shikha Dalmia stated the the taxpayers will never recover their investment in "Government Motors".

That is just sad. GM recently purchased a stake in PSA Peugot Citroen for $400 million. WTF? Goverment Motors should have given the $400 million back to the taxpayers in my personal opinion...

I don't totally agree wth this article. In general, the bankrupcy and reorganization has been very good for GM...it is far better condition now than just a few years ago. Some of that, of course, is due to UAW cooperation as well. But I do think one mistake was made in the re-organization (something the article really doesn't capitalize on much). The GMC Truck Division, IMO, should have been axed instead of Saturn. All that the GMC division exists for is to sell slightly upscale versions of Chevy trucks and SUVs.....which could easily have been absorbed into the Chevy division. This GMC division is, IMO, almost a complete waste. In return, the Saturn division, IMO, should not have been axed. Instead, it should have been kept, and (more important) returned to what it did so well in the 1990s.......producing reliable, unique, and innovative plastic-bodied compacts. In the 90s, Saturn was considered one of the greatest success-stories in the auto-buisness....mismanagement ruined it after 2000.

GM has learned to use bankrupcy or bailout reorganization to full advantage over the course of it's history. The point of this article is not about what was part of the past process, but what is happening now. The truck division issues are outlined in 2 of the issues stated in the article.

The key question: Is GM just using public money (ie. your money) as cheap financing that can be defaulted on in the next bankrupcy or is it truly inept in managing it's business?

I do agree on the Malibu. GM is in a situation where they need to roll out hit after hit and nothing average. They need to roll out class leading after class leading. They completely dropped the ball on the Malibu when the last model was pretty respected and carved a nice slice of pie for itself.

To me that is the worry since they are a car company to sell cars. If they go back to selling just okay they are in real real trouble.

We need GM and I hope they find a way as they are just a huge company with countless suppliers and their success can really help. I don't see them getting help if they fail again.

GM is ramping up subprime loans again to fluff up their sales figures. They are going to be in trouble again in a few years when people cant pay them.

Not sure if serious. Saturn is not around for a reason, they were overall terrible cars. As for plastic body panels, there is absolutely no point to them, the sub frame rusts anyway, the panels are prone to cracking and breaking, plus the cars were not reliable enough to make the non rusting parts of the car pay off anyway, assuming the metal parts of the car didn't disintegrate.

gm is a giant sinkhole of waste. it's a shame as they have some amazing engineering and manufacturing talent and capability. but the govt bailout and especially the protection of the UAW almost guaranteed GM wouldn't make enough change for the future.

if i were in charge now :p i'd say to gm - each year you don't pay off the govt, you have to give a division to ford, which will do with it whatever they want and all UAW contracts are null and void.

You mean they HAD some amazing engineering. Nothing new from them as far as technology goes in the last couple years. Correct me if I'm wrong.

No offense, but you are incorrect on several counts. The 90's S-Series cars were, according to Consumer Reports, consistantly better-than-average in reliability, which was quite unusual for an American-designed vehicle back then. The space-frames had great strength, and did quite well in crash tests. The special water-borne painting system, even on low-gloss colors like whiteand silver, was like a mirror (a conventional but still-good paint-process were used on the sheet-metal hood/roof/trunk. The cars had great innovative features to make them easy to service, like the quick spin-off transmission-filter and one-piece upper dash. The plastic body panels not only strongly resisted dents/dings, but also corrosion and metal-stress/fatigue. Insurance was very low on these cars because of not only their good safety record (one of the lowest-insurance cars I ever owned was a 1999 SL-2) but because the body panels had very simple accident repair and clipped right on/off the space-frame, arriving from the factory already pre-painted. Whoever designed these cars, IMO, was a borderline genius.

Now, of course, the cars weren't perfect....no vehicle is. The plastic body-panels didn't block road and wind-noise as well as some metal panels. Early Saturns had a rather loud and unrefined 1.9L four (engine noise was much lower on later models in the late 90s). The four-speed automatic was not particularly flexible. Front brake-rotors would often warp a little with miles and heat-build-up. The plastic panels themselves didn't ding or scratch, but paint on them often would if you knocked against it with some things. And Saturn persisted too long with flimsy-feeling plastic horn-buttons on the steering wheel spokes instead of putting the horn in the middle of the steering-wheel where, IMO, the horn belongs. But, overall, great, innovative cars. They did not succeed like they did for nothnig.

And.....you will notice that Saturn didn't start downhill until after the S-Series cars were gone. ;) That's when the company screwed up and started its death-spiral.



So....how does all of this relate to the article/thread-topic itself? IMO, Saturn, IMO, made a lot more sense as a division than simply selling re-badged Chevy trucks/SUVs in the GMC Truck division. But that was the original Saturn...not what it became later on.

the ATS getting raves as being a serious 3-series competitor.
the Verano sets new standards for quiet in a compact luxury car.
the XTS has a seat bottom vibration alert to warn a driver if they're going to back out of a spot into something (pretty cool!)
the Cue center stack may not be there yet, but it's innovative

i'm sure there's more...

Have you sampled a new 2013 Malibu on the road, Mike? I looked a a few of them in the showroom, but have not actually driven one yet. I agree with you that, at least from a static-review, the new 2013 model is a step down from the excellent last-generation model.....although rear headroom was clearly the Achilles heel on the last Malibu/Aura, and that problem seems at least partially-fixed on the new one.

That's all implementation of existing technology, most of them not even designed by GM. The ATS is indeed good execution for a product to compete in.

Ps: a lot of innovation is done by their part suppliers. GM has been the biggest of the big three to "outsource" development of technology to suppliers like Magna. The others at least use related or companies where they have some controlling interest.

Sure is. Have you driven the Chevy Sonic? It is also setting some high standards in the domestic-sub-compact class (much better then its predecessor Aveo), and it avoids the problem that its competitor Ford Fiesta has with its unrefined twin-clutch automatic. The only thing I don't like about the Sonic is its quirky motorcycle-type primary-gauge package.

The Cadillac CTS is now, after years of below-par reliability, according to Consumer Reports, the most reliable 2012-2013 domestic-nameplate car. And Mike and I both seem to feel that the CTS Sportwagon has dynamite looks....but, of course, styling is subjective.

Of course, several of these vehicles listed above are either brand-new or almost brand-new in the marketplace, and, despite good engineering/design/assembly, have yet to be proven in long-term reliability. And I'll never forget the early 1980s GM X-Body cars, and the enormous hype they received (I liked them myself)........only to quickly get a reputation as some of the most notorious lemons Detroit ever produced.

The Magna-Ride electronically-variable suspension, which constantly adjusts shock rates/damping by changing the magnetic angles of iron particles in the shock fluid, is, IMO, a great advance in chassis-engineering. I wish Buick would have made it an option on the Verano, but it did not. Still, you will find it on a number of GM vehuicles......including some versions of the Corvette. Of course, those complex Magna-shocks are (probably) expensive to replace if and when they wear out or fail.