CARBIZ

It's a good reply, but other than venting your spleen (and making yourself feel better), it will fall on deaf ears: there is one man who has already sold his soul to the Devil. GM and Ford are in a conundrum: the more that the winds of adversity blow against them, the more workers they must lay off, which then plays into the hands of their competitors and makes Detroit increasingly irrelevant. For example, how many talented workers that GM and Ford have been forced to offload have been picked up by their competitors? Eventually, GM and Ford won't employ enough people to matter to Washington and they will simply be allowed to die. It's sort of like Russia laying off all their nuclear engineers and weapons designers. Where did they end up? Russia lost them and their 'enemies' got them. Lose-lose. Snowball rolling downhill, and all that. There are too few people that can see (or give a damn) where all this is heading, smallchevy.

South of the border, the invoice price has become meaningless. Since the price is posted all over the internet, clearly the manufacturers have found another way around it. Who actually gets screwed are the salespeople, since most are paid as a percentage of 'profit.' If there is no profit, then the commission sucks. The dealer still gets money somewhere. :AH-HA_wink:

Westmorland says: "“We did that to get them in here, to create the jobs, to create the taxes, to put economic development into the area.” Is this man really that stupid? If the imports are hiring in his district than that means they are selling cars and that would follow that GM/Ford are going to be selling LESS. Ontario follows that sort of logic, by wooing Toyota wiht $120 million in tax breaks, Toyota hires 900 people while GM & Ford lay off 2,400. THERE IS THE MATH, PLAIN AND SIMPLE.

A time waster. The usual dead horses to flog: Edsel, Pinto, Aeroflow, Pacer.... Some that I took exception to: They bitched about the Model T, for Gawd's Sake. Why? Because is put America on wheels; therefore, global warming, all the dead whales - everything is the T's fault. #21 The '71 Imperial LeBaron. Shocking, since we are running a fuselage thread elsewhere on C&G. Their insults are just that, insults. I think the fuselage was the pinnacle of Chrysler's design. Perhaps not engineering, but certainly design. #22. Pinto. Okay, so the tanks were prone to explode, but it's not like they were exploding all over the place! And the idiots posted a photo for a clearly post-'74 Pinto under the caption of '71. More great reporting. '76 Chevette. At least they had the decency to mention that it's best attribute was it was hardy. GM sold millions of them and many are still on the road today. I"d like to see a shoot out between a '76 Chevette and a' 76 Civic. Time is re-writing history again. #41. '95 Explorer. Agian, the eco-loonies at Time can hardly contain their disdain for all things automotive. Their prime complaint against the '95 Explorer? It's popularity launched the SUV craze. They should stick to what they know best: who Britney is boffing these days.

You too? My dad had a '66 300 4 door hardtop, then a '69. I always thought the 4 doors had the better roofline in the fuselage, but not in the pre-69s. My mother had a '67 Newport 4 door and a friend's family had a '68 Newport coupe: that body style looked better in the coupe, IMO. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I would be scouring the mags and auctions looking for a nice '69 300 convertible or loaded 4 door hardtop. It is difficult finding them with the right equipment: vinyl bucket seats with floor console, like my dad's. So many of them were sold with the column shift and the split bench. My 2nd lottery choice would be the '68 300, either in a convertible or coupe form. My favorite Imperials are the later fuselage ('71 -'73). The 300s had the nicest dashboards in the late '60s, IMO. The Imperials (as with all the high end GM products of the day) suffered from the fugliest looking wood MacTac. Even the New Yorker was ruined by the appearance of the fake, glued-on wood in '68 and newer. If we jump into our time ships and go back to '69, one has to admire Chrysler's designers for their flat black, set back dash design with toggle switches and rollers - very Star Trek and very high tech for its time. Sadly, this design got more and more watered down through '70 and '71. I was an unabashed MoPar guy (my first 3 vehicles were Dodges), until my '91 Caprice made me turn to the Dark Side.

Not really, but the media is. Herd mentality rules the roost. I'll bet most of the media types out thee spend half their day watching the competition's news and then regurgitating their version of it.

Exactly: the 'new car departments' are the loss leaders that drive business for the service department. Any dealer that only sold new cars and had no service department would not last. I have seen stats that show nearly all dealers 'lose' money in the front end. It's service and used vehicles that keep the lights on. You didn't think that paying '$500 over' was going to keep that 40,000 sq ft building operating, did you?

... and the point of getting funds from Washington would be? I thought the point of asking for funding is to AVOID bankruptcy. If GM is 'forced' into bankruptcy, why get the bridge loan? Am I missing something?

These are not necessarily conspiracies. They are the product of corruption and laziness. For example, the modern convention is that global warming is going to destroy humanity; just like a generation earlier it was famine or pollution or whatever other cause du jour the media could come up with the sell papers. Do you think half the nitwits that are writing in the press about the car industry or about the actual cars know anything about them? Do you think most of these folks are capable of a single original thought? I venture to say that in many cases, these hacks get their ideas from reading other like-minded hacks and then expound upon their opinons as thought its their own. That certainly explains the dolts at Consumers Reports anyway.

Thanks, FOG, now I won't be able to sleep tonight. You forgot the military-industrial complex and the law enforcement industry, two other prevailing powers that fight for ascension and $$$. It could be worse, FOG: you could live in Canada where you have to put up with the poverty industry and an actual national party called the Green Party.

This is the crux of the matter. We are seeing an influx of one or two generations where entitlement is the norm. I will give a very good example: who here has ever pirated a VHS movie, DVD or has an illegal decoder box for cable? It has almost become socially acceptable to steal intellectual property, but it is a slippery slope. I used to own 2 video stores and friends of mine would openly brag about copying movies off their satellite and freely distributing it to their friends. They saw nothing wrong in that. One woman sniffed that she couldn't 'afford' to pay for cable, so she had a pirated chip. WELL, IF YOU CAN'T AFFORD IT, YOU DON'T STEAL IT! That used to be common sense, but apparently not any more. Now those same people are in postitions of power and feel 'entitled' to do what they please. If your neighbor owned an electronics store and you need a new TV and were offered a 'hot' one at a really good deal - would you take the deal? Would you do it, knowing it was affecting your neighbor's job? Could you face this man/woman while you were out front, washing your car? We need to take a hard look at ourselves and the choices that we make. Their are no free lunches out there.

Can't say I'd argue that point, but under the category of 'If You Can't Beat'em, Join'em,' Detroit has had to fight back in the low-price field with their own made-in-Korea products. However, at least the DNA is GM and the profits (such as they are) can come back to us. OnStar, XM radio, the engine technology can come from America, not entirely Korea. How much R&D does Hyundai do in the States? How many engineers, chemists, etc. do they employ here? That is the battle ground; not where 'final assembly' is: that only makes the accountants and taxman happy. As a Canadian, I am further incensed by Hyundai and Kia because they employ ZERO people here, other than a couple parts warehouses and their few dozen or so dealers. Everything else they do is imported.

It would seem that a certain GM dealership that courted me last year and then changed their mind is in serious financial straits. We were told several months ago that they were on a "COD basis" at the auctions and for dealer trades, then the rumor went around about a month ago that the dealership was in receivership. I have been informed today that they will be closing at the end of this month. Not to blow my own horn, but perhaps if they had not listened to certain people with vested interests, then I wouldn't have had to tear several hundred customers away from them. Still, it's bad news for GM because with all the dealerships that have closed in this city, there are huge gaping holes where people now have no choice but to buy imports because there is nary a domestic dealer in sight. I mean, I live downtown and if I were considering a new purchase, I would be very unsure of what to do because there are no GM dealerships in the entire core of the city. It's one thing to drive across town to make a purchase; quite another to do that for warranty work and servicing.

And the point still stands: on the alter of Choice we are slaying our entire way of life, or are people not aware of the sudden, unerring slide into oblivion our way of life is going? Service jobs are not going to make up the difference for the high paying, value added jobs that we have shipped over seas. No amount of spin is going to change that. I cannot believe that out of the 100+ models that Detroit builds, not one single vehicle would have sufficed. But that's fine, those who won't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And if everyone who goes out and purchases a foreign nameplate thinks they are somehow not part of the problem, well, all I can say is whatever helps you sleep at night. The whirlwind that is coming is all our fault and, frankly, we deserve it.

If a company opened up in the town where you live that built devices that sucked people's homes into a black pit and 75% of the parts for those devices were built on another contintent, would you accept a job working there? The recruiter offers you a good paying job and assures you that these devices are only going to be used to destroy 'other people's homes,' not yours - would that make you sleep better at night? Would you feel right, accepting a paycheque, knowing that what you were helping to build was going to wipe out people's homes in towns just like yours, but in another Province or State? Just wondering, is all. Because there is no free lunch. All those manufacturing jobs in North America have been lost in a 3:1 or more ratio. (That is, for every 1 job created by an off-shore plant, 3 jobs are lost from domestic companies that used to employ people here.) But don't worry: keep convincing yourself that those are Americans feeding their families. Take a long, hard look at the Depression the entire world is sinking into and ask yourself, how has this happened?

Isn't it odd that it requires being pushed over a cliff for the media to begin to respect gravity. I want to paper Rosedale with this article. (Rosedale is Canada's richest neighborhood and fully 80% of the vehicles there are Lexi, Audi, BMers, etc.) Guess what, boys and girls: there are consequences to our ongoing selfishness and that is going to be a Depression. I use that word now because we are only now seeing the layoffs start. Just wait until that momentum picks up steam in the first quarter of 2009.

.... and you get to send a Korean worker's family to college! What a bonus! Hope your kids will be able to go to college one day, too.

... and one company has 2 workers for every 5 retirees; one company is the largest health insurance provider in the U.S.; one company has older factories that don't get a DIME from their local states; one company has a transparent, open system to contend with.... and I could go on. GM's failures TODAY have little to do with its business decisions of the past 5-10 years and more to do with what happened before that. In the National Post today, their editorial (although it was, over all, quite balanced) basically said the CAW needs to 'give up' its benefits so GM and Ford can compete. Now I like a good anti-union joke like the rest of us, but is that what all this Globalization $h! is about? Middle class people must 'give up' wages and benefits so our companies can compete with people who will work for food in other countries? Is that progress? This is a serious question: IS THIS PROGRESS? I see companies falling left and right that had the audacity to pay their employees what they were worth - and now those companies are folding. Eaton's was Canada's largest department store for 100 years. They paid their employees, on average, about double the going rate for retail service. GONE. What does Wal-Mart pay? This is not progress. This is avarice and sloth.

We all know GM has been fighting a mult-front war and losing many of the battles; however, let's lay to bed a few of these myths: I am quoting from mid-2008 total registrations in the U.S. In the very imporant large P/U market (1,137,782 registrations in SIX MONTHS), GM commands 34% of the market. Toyota = 8%. This is the most profitable and most loyal market. WOULD YOU SUGGEST THAT GM JUST LAID DOWN AND PLAYED DEAD IN 2005 WHEN THE MARKET WAS MUCH LARGER? Remember, $4 a gallon came long after the money and resources were allocated for the '07 GMT-900 program. In the very profitable large SUV market (207,827 units in 6 months) GM commands 2/3 of the market! THAT IS TWO THIRDS IN ENGLISH. In the volatile mid-size SUV market (also very profitable), GM commands 25% of 307k units sold in 6 months. In the CUV market (reputed to be the fastest growing), GM has 19% of 416k registrations. The mid-sized SUVs, GM has 17% of 562k registrations. In the covetted luxury SUV market, GM commands 18.4% of 311k registrations. These are all important and profitable products. Toyota, Nissan, Ford and even Chrysler have launched full frontal assaults on those individual markets in the past few years. (Remember the 15 year product cycles of the pickups in the '60s, '70s, '80s?) Now, let's look at the unprofitable but very important entry level market (1.086m registrations in 6 months), GM has 15% of that market, AS AGAINST 15 OTHER BRANDS (not models) BRANDS! If all 15 brands competed equally, then GM would have only 6.67% of the small car market, yet it has more than double that. I HARDLY CALL THAT A FAILURE. Yet, these peons go on and on about how GM builds nothing competitive and has ignored the small car market while plowing money into trucks. BIG F'ING DEAL, I SAY. That is where the money is, and if the hyprocrites in Washington and in Hollywood can't see that, then they should keep their f'ing mouthes shut.

Well, Nissan is the illegitimate offspring of the Japanese Army born to build tanks, trucks and guns in Manchuria, using slave Chinese labor, but I doubt somehow that you will see that on their website. As long as our media is lazy, North American businesses benefit from their collusion with Japanese multi-nationals, and our political leaders incompetent, nothing will happen and we will all just skip down the road to oblivion and historical irrelevance.

A slow news day. I won't even bother to comment.

I don't understand. Did I just drop into a bad Rod Serling episode? ABS is standard on the LT Cobalt for '09, as are 16" wheels and a host of other features. Considering you can buy the car for under $15k in Canada, I find it hard to believe you can't do a lot better than that in the States. Am I missing something? And the march toward THIRD WORLD status continues.................

In the Greater Toronto Area, GM still has about 36 dealers to Toyota's 22. Guess what: Toyota is moving more metal than we are these days. In fact, Toyota stores are selling more in a weekend than ANY GM dealer in this city moves in a month. You do the math. We could drop to 15 dealers to serve this city of 5 million and it would be fine. However, the unfortunate problem is that where the dealers are closing is a problem. For example, Honda, Toyota, Chrysler (?) all have dealers in the downtown area of this city (which is growing, believe it or not - 50 story condos are popping up everywhere!). GM does not. IN fact, there are no GM dealers in the entire 'center' of this city any more. Consequenty, in my neighborhood (downtown) roughtly 80% of the vehicles I see parked over night are imports. Jeep seems to do well downtown, though - go figure. I can't speak for the U.S. From the figures I've seen, 150+ units per month is normal in the States. No domestic dealer in Canada has seen those kind of figures in 5,10 years. The dealer I used to be at (50+ years in business) would normally sell 400 cars a month in the '80s and early '90s; by the turn of the Century it was down to 80+. When it closed: 45 a month. Franchise laws are a funny thing, but if a dealer becomes 'insolvent' or if it can't afford to carry sufficient product for GM's business-case, then the dealer can be closed down. However, with the way things are going with GMAC (Bill Gates wouldn't get bought these days), a big chunk of the dealers will go down on that point alone. It's bad enough people are scared to buy GM, but if we can't get the banks to buy the paper, we may as well close our doors. If I had to guess, probably 50% of the dealers need to go, but that would have to be done on a city by city basis. One of GM's strengths has always been that it has (had?) more dealers than everyone else combined. This is what hampers newcomers like Mitsubishi: no presence. This could also play into Japan Inc's plans, too. As GM/Ford dealers give up prime locations, the imports fill the void. It really is the boy with his fingers in the dike syndrome.

Yes, but if Saturn wasn't sucking up development $$$, the original Intrigue may have been better, and then any monies gone into the Aura/Vue, etc. could have gone to a 'new' Intrigue circa 2003. Hell, even an extra few $$$ spent on the last Aurora could have hit it out of the park. People always assume that many of the designer/engineers at GM are incompetent, but I suspect it has more to do with spreading a diminishing development pot of money around.