MattyG

Unfortunately, your bank account is just one customer's dollars. There obviously isn't as much demand for a cushomatic soft rider as there used to be - not in sedan form. Most of those buyers have migrated to big crossovers.

Look at the Lacrosse numbers and you can see the dramatic decline in buyers. It is just not feasible to build the Lacrosse without using it as a world platform.

http://gmauthority.com/blog/gm/buick...sales-numbers/

The Oshawa plant closing is being hyper-reported by the main media sources with an implied, "it's closing right away with Christmas right around the corner". These workers have a year to adapt and get ready for it. Just a few years ago these semi-skilled assemblers started at $24/hr CAD and ramped up to full pay in just six years - $34/hr CAD. Under the concessions made by the union in bargaining a two tier scale was created.

Under the amended deal, they started at $20/hr CAD and can reach the full $34/hr in 10 years. I can't imagine in what universe a relatively unskilled high school grad with minimal experience/training gets to make $34/hr plus benefits.

The vast majority of them are at full seniority, a very pricey thing for GM given the product they make has to be exported to the US and quite a few of these units don't sell well. These vehicles can be assembled by anybody in Mexico or China. And of course, do we see any Japanese cars (which sell very well) in US/Canada made by the UAW/Unifor?

Unions in this day and age are very important aspect and much needed in the labor market but some of them are anachronistic relics which tend to look at the new economy with the lens of the past: you work at the same place for 30 years and make a lot of money and retire with a fat pension. Not happening anymore.

tex2670

You are losing the forest thru the trees here. You may think this is "dumb", but GM isn't flipping a coin here. They have done the research, and GM is willing to dump many sedan-only customers, in order to shed costs to put back into more development in SUVs. Clearly they think that there is more growth there to offset those customers that will only consider large sedans. The Lacrosse, Impala and CT6 are all getting the ax. That's a pretty astonishing admission for Caddy that they are dumping their well-acclaimed flagship sedan before the full life-cycle of the first generation is complete.

Think about it like people being upset if Motorola stopped producing pagers to focus on cell phones. It's all about where the growth is--and between Ford and GM, clearly these companies don't see growth potential in sedans.

mmarshall

Well, as for the trees, I'm not the one chopping the trees down...GM is. I am well-aware of the Lacrosse's recent poor sales-history, and that of other large GM sedans. In fact, I have written about it myself, several times, on Car Chat....and it made the actual factory-ordering of my car more difficult (which turned out to be a mess, for several reasons, for both me and the dealership, which I won't go over in detail again here).

But that doesn't necessarily mean that the car has to be dropped. Look how long Dodge kept the Viper in production for years in what was clearly a tiny niche market for it....and Dodge didn't suffer or go out of business because of it. Toyota keeps the Land Cruiser in the North American market despite its relatively low sales, especially by SUV standards. Maserati keeps the Quattroporte here in the U.S. despite its very low sedan sales. Jaguar sedans aren't selling very well in the American market, but Tata Motors isn't yanking them from this market. Let's face it, folks (and there really isn't much hiding from it)......GM does a lot of things very well, but the marketing of their own vehicles is not one of them. They made similar mistakes when they abandoned the full-size rear-drive sedan market and left it to Ford, with all of the Crown-Vic police and taxi sales, they dropped Hummer just as it was reaching its peak (and the Hummer H2 and H3 would have come in handy in today's SUV market), they still, today, have two different divisions selling essentially the same Chevy/GMC trucks and SUVs, and they completely ruined both their Saturn and Saab divisions through gross mismanagement.

Don't forget, that's the kind of "research" that eventually got them into bankruptcy. It started with the conversion of the Arlington, TX plant to all-truck / SUV production, dropping the big RWD sedans. Things went steadily downhill for GM from there.

Frog98

I won't be buying any vehicles made in Mexico or China of any brand period.

tex2670

Dodge Viper -- irrelevant comparison of a specialty vehicle sold in crazy small numbers. You can't possibly compare the Lacrosse to a Viper.

GM bankruptcy--they were not alone. Chrysler got hit too; along with major financial institutions. 12 months before the Lehman Bros bankruptcy, no one would have thought that Lehman would ever go anywhere.

GM's stock price was up 4% today--so SOMEONE likes this move.

mmarshall

No, not an irrelevant comparison. Recent Lacrosses also sold in very small numbers....mine just happened to be one of them.

Chrysler, though, after the Age of Iacocca and Wagner, didn't necessarily bring its misfortunes on itself. They were owned (and dictated to) by a series of foreign companies....First Mercedes, then Cerebus, and now Fiat. History also showed that the dropping of the Plymouth and Eagle divisions didn't help them very much.

Sure.....the people driving Silverados and Tahoes.

Toys4RJill

riredale

Another article said they were killing the Impala, Volt, and Cruze.

Surprised about the Volt, as it was a well-regarded plug-in. Never cared for the styling, though.

Toyota/Lexus is in a very good position, I think. Any time they want they can adopt their hybrid drive across the entire product line--beautiful engineering, bulletproof reliability, costs dropping, significant mileage boost.

Now to just dump the spindle.

mmarshall

I understand what you are saying, but I think you are overlooking three things. First, it's not chump-change to empty and re-tool plant for another type of vehicle....that costs a lot of money. Second, GM, by UAW agreement (at least as I understand it, though I could be wrong) pays the same hourly wage and benefits as the UAW workers at Ford, Chrysler, and other UAW plants in the U.S. get. Third, GM is complaining that Trump's tariffs on imported steel drove up costs. If so, that's GM's own fault, not Trump's. Like I said earlier, both here in Car Chat and in the Debate forum, the tariffs were meant to get American manufacturers switch to American-made steel, which, without tariffs, would be cheaper. GM didn't, although common sense dictated that they should have, and are now paying the price.

Can't really blame Marry Barra, though, for most of it. She came to power in a corporation that had been grossly mismanaged for decades, and, once in power, up to now, she has generally made good decisions. The only ones I really question are this latest one axing the sedans and in not consolidating Chevy/GMC truck and SUV production into one division instead of having two divisions sell essentially the same vehicles. Some GMC SUVs also essentially compete with the ones that Buick sells.

mmarshall

They are all built in the same Detroit/Hamtramck plant as the Lacrosse and CT6. Why the Volt is built there beats me.....

The newer, all-electric Chevy Bolt (not Volt) has stolen a lot of the Volt's former thunder, as have other plug-in hybrids from other manufacturers (such as the Plug-in Prius) that are catching up.

Hey.....what do you want, a miracle? LOL

LexBob2

This could be a blessing in disguise. Who knows, maybe you'll enjoy your next car, whatever it is, as much or more than the Lacrosse. You never know.

mmarshall

Thanks for your concern. Yep...the Lord sometimes works in strange ways. I've been surprised more than once in my lifetime. I'm really devoted to this car, though.....just like I was to my big Buick in college.


I've liked the way big Buicks drive ever since I was in high school..and that was a long time ago LOL. I didn't drive them, though, after the 1970s because of declining quality and crappy interior materials. The Verano, though, in 2012 (actually a rebadged Opel) brought back respectability to the nameplate, and this 3Gen Lacrosse, IMO, finally brings back respectability to the flagships, though mine has not been issue-free. So then, what does GM do, now that they took 40 years to finally get the big Buicks right again?...they ax them.

I won't be getting another car for a while yet, but I'm going to take a look at the 2019 Lincoln MKZ tomorrow....though it doesn't seem to have changed much from the 2017 refresh. There are a few 2019's in stock right now in my area......the 2019 Genesis G80 and Kia Cadenza (also possibilities) have not arrived yet. Alex Dykes, in his video, explained why Genesis is having trouble shipping the 2019s. I'm not going to buy a car in the immediate future (the one I have is less than two years old)....but I always start looking at least a couple of years in advance, even though some of those designs may change in the meantime. IMO, GM blew it by axing the big FWD sedans...they simply aren't going to get my money next time, unless the Lacrosse returns.

MattyG

That's not in dispute at all. GM invested $500 million into the Oshawa plant to build the Silverado/Sierra but it appears they can build those elsewhere closer to their core customers. The hourly wages equal out in terms of currency rates, but you do have to remember that Canada has an inefficient but still workable socialized medicine system - unlike the US where it's all pay when you show up at the hospital or clinic. That's a big factor for older people. In the US medical benefits are calculated in a much different way vs Canada.

Well, it didn't work. But GM hasn't said anything about tariffs. If anything, the tariffs could affect the Mexico factories, but even then a Mexican auto factory worker makes between $2 - $5/hr. That's basic math done by the bean counters. You can have the cheapest steel or aluminum you want, but if your Canadian plant is running at 1/3rd capacity, what does that tell you about where your customers have gone?

Because GMC/Chevy have a younger buyer demographic and image vs Buick. Buick has made all sorts of attempts to use young good looking people in its ads to promote their crossovers to make sure that the "old man's" image is banished forever. But you sure don't see the Lacrosse in those ads.

Remember how they tried to use Tiger Woods in Buick ads a few years ago. He wasn't in a Lacrosse, it was an Enclave. Certainly you are a passionate defender of your car and Buick but it's just reality. Not that different from the yelling and shouting about the new Supra from people who loved the 4Gen Supra.

Sulu

What happened to the rule of thumb that you do not announce worker dismissals prior to a weekend or holiday? Weekends and holidays (especially the Christmas-New Year holiday period in North America) are supposed to be happy, family times, but being dismissed from work (actually dismissed or having notice of a impending dismissal) just prior to the holidays ruins all of that happiness and goodwill.

That said, this is not a surprise, following on Fiat-Chrysler's and Ford's earlier decisions to stop production of most of their sedan (car) models in favour of pickup trucks and light trucks (sport- and crossover utility vehicles); and following on long-whispered rumours that GM would close its Oshawa plants (its Oshawa truck plant already closed a few years ago). This has nothing to do with the imminent bankruptcy of GM, unlike a decade ago, so it has nothing to do with the high cost of union wages nor high cost of pensions (which were solved post-bankruptcy). The wages of non-unionized automakers (including Honda and Toyota) are similar to wages in unionized plants; if not, the non-unionized automakers would not be able to attract workers.

Sorry, Mike, it looks like if you want to stay with Buick in a few years, you will have to decide which crossover you prefer; the end of Buick sedans in North America is nigh. I cannot even recall seeing this current-generation Lacrosse here in the Greater Toronto Area of Ontario; needless to say that the current-generation Regal is a no-show also. The average Joe or Jane on the street would probably say that Buicks are no longer sold in Canada.

mmarshall

It tells you that your products are not being marked well enough, and that you need to go get them back, not necessarily stop building the product.

That's because IMO the Lacrosse and Enclave are the only true Buicks left. The others are all rebadged Opels, except for the Chinese-built Envision. And that's where I don't agree with that image......one does not have to be old to like traditional Buick comfort. I did, even as a teen-ager.

The Enclave is a true Buick.....it is basically an SUV Lacrosse.

Its not Buick's fault, though, that Tiger Woods cheated on his wife, ruined his image, and ultimately didn't do image of the company (or that of the PGA) any good.

I'm not a "passionate" defender of any car. The Lacrosse is not a perfect machine (it has faults and limitations) and mine has not been totally issue-free. But, for the money (35-40K), I haven't found anything more comfortable on the market...and I doubt that I will. Yes, the Lexus LS460 and Mercedes S550 beat it...but for two and three times the price.

However, IMO those people were correct. The old Supra should not have been pulled from the American market when it was. Yes, like its RX-7, Stealth, 3000GT, and 300ZX competition, it had gotten too expensive to buy and insure, but the solution was not to not to wield the ax. They should have simply decontented those cars some, made them less expensive, and continue their sales. In fact, it is worth noting that Nissan and Mazda did essentially that when they replaced them, several years later, with the less-powerful RX-8 and 350Z.