SimonDavid

The 2008 Vue and the Opel/Vauxhall Antara are the same vehicle The Chevy Captiva that's just gone on sale here in Europe is the same bodyshell but lower spec interior and different front clip All engineered by GM Daewoo on a modified SWB Theta

they should export this - it's beautiful

Tax in the UK is not displacement based. If you receive a company car paid for by your employer you are taxed on the perk based on The price of the car x a percentage determined by how much the car pollutes, specifically the grams of CO2 the car emits per kilometre (I am not making this stuff up). The figure for deisels is loaded up by 15% I think to reflect soot. So all car makers in the UK now advertise that CO2 figure. The lowest figure is Toyota Prius at 109g/km. But a BMW 525d which is kind of te standard middle management car is only 185g/km. Not bad at all. I am very sad that I know all this stuff... http://www.vcacarfueldata.org.uk/

Sounds Great! Although I'm still not quite sure whether the CTS is meant to be a 3 series or 5 series competitor. Here in Europe the larger size relative to the 3 series is an actual liability. Also, dont want to sound like a broken record, but deisels needed. The Opel/SAAB 1.9 is probably too small and the new V8 is probably too big. Biggest selling BMW in the UK is the 320D.

Sorry I've got a bit lost in all of this : - Is the next gen EP2 Lacross going to be shared with China? - If BPG dealers are going to be more integrated in future then - - what happens to the G6 / Lacross overlap (both on Epsilon in future)? - where does the talk of large RWD Pontiacs fit in?

Here's an idea If the next ion is an imported astra, why can't it just keep its deisel engine? Im not an engineer but would it be that difficult to adapt a Euro IV compatible deisel to the US?

By true hybrids I meant dual mode not light hybrid via a BAS I guess they dont get middle east news in Detroit, the papers here in London are full about how a massive regional conflict is only about 2 years away

So in summary No diesels and no true hybrids in passenger cars for the rest of the decade

They need this in the Malibu / Aura class asap It worries me that DCX is building the FWD version

I see this as a link car - last of the non global GM midsize products. Its clear from the shots that its no Opel - its a G6 with an Opelesque front clip and a moderate interior upgrade. No 6 speed on the base model and the steering wheel looks cheap. But still the probably best GM NA midsizer, will carry them through to the EP2's

Gents I'm a CPA. I have not reviewed GM's filings in detail, but a few points : 1) Profit is very different from cashflow, for any company. Spending on capital items is not an expense and therefore does not create a loss in terms of reported earnings / accounting profit. It does however remove cash from the bank. Examples of capital items - employee buyouts - spending on plant and equipment - purchasing shares in another company some of which GM has been doing alot of recently - may well explain the cash outflow. Another possible explanation - suppliers tightening credit terms, because of ratings downgrade Again this causes cash outflow but does not actually affect reported profit 2) Cashflow, not profit, is what is relevant to bankruptcy A company is bankrupt if it cannot meet its obligations as and when they fall due, not because it is unprofitable. Typically a small business that goes bankrupt is usually profitable, but suffering a cashflow crunch because its customers aren't paying on time 3) With GM it is infinitely more complicated because of their pension / health liabilities I understand GM's pension fund is worth about 80 billion - which is about 5 times the market cap of the company. The health liabilities are much greater. GM only needs to recognise a pension expense when the actuaries predict that the growth of the pension fund over the next 40 years is not enough to meet - that's when GM needs to contribute more. During the boom stockmarket of the late 1990's GM got away with not putting a dime into the pension fund for I think 5 years because the returns they were getting were so good. So in a sense their reported profitability during that time was flattering GM - I mean how realistic is it to run the biggest company in the world with zero pension expense? I suspect these are the sort of tough questions York has been asking at board level. GM is facing a cash crunch for the next couple of years, and in a cash crunch reported profit becomes almost irrelevant. The cash is going out the door due to big capital spending on the GMT900s, credit ratings downgrades and cost of all those employee buyouts.

Yes cash and easily saleable assets like short term investments Tbonds etc This is the point Mr K and Jerry York were making forcefully - GM is chewing cash. Apart from the trading losses, all those buyouts cost money. Sure they payoff in the long term but that is no consolation if the company can't make it through the next couple of years. Given that they need about 10 billion in working capital just to run the business there is not a hell of alot of cash left. Fuel prices or a general economic downturn could really push them close to the edge - as could a strike. (Though I still think theyre in a much stronger position than Ford)

The Vectra Wagon is currently about the most boring Opel there is! But the Astra Tigra and new Corsa small cars are hot

I like it alot Looks Camry sized to me, and clearly front drive So Malibu takes on Camcord, RWD Impala takes on 300, Saturn/Opel takes on VW Sounds good they just need some more hybrids

I think alot of it is also driven by the capacity reduction GM was pumping fleets because it needed to keep all those plants running now it's going to get smaller but profitable

It may be that Ghosn is simply looking for US production capacity. GM is planning to shutter quite a few plants over the next few years. Selling them (and their already trained workforce) to Nissan instead could save alot of money for both companies.

They still don't have their global product planning sorted out if Holden needs to pitch it to head office after it's been introduced in Australia But yeah I'd think Commodore as a Pontiac, Statesman as a Buick. So the BPG cars are low investment niche imports, and Camaro and Impala are US designed high volume models of their own with unique sheet metal. Though Australia is an increasingly high cost source - the resources boom is continually strengthening the Australian dollar

Professional but not a great step forward, IMHO The large car market in Australia is VERY conservative, and this is obviously playing to those tastes Also Holden has never actually designed a full car, not since the early seventies at least. All the commodores until this one were based to some extent off Opels

Crazy idea - Maybe Nissan wants to buy a brand or two?

I love it, especially the interior, but it does seem heavy for a non BOF truck, they would have to slim it down for the Lambda minivans This makes the Saturn version look a bit ordinary - I think Chevy would be better off with that one

It's his job as CEO to represent the company It's his job as Chairman to represent the shareholders In some situations the two can be in conflict, which is why it's considered best practice for the roles to be split. The interests of the shareholders are not identical to those of the company's current management team.

They're meeting - that means it's serious. It is not just speculation and it is not just Mr K talking up the stock. And the whole board approved the discussion taking place. But I agree with Tracinda - it's a conflict of interest - Wagonner will want to keep his job

Evok I usually love your posts. In fact on anything related to product or (non financial) strategy I see you as a total authority, the absolute final word. But on this one nothing personal but I think you are out of your depth. Let's take the points one by one : If this deal were to actualize, the world’s largest automaker on volume will control less than 20% of the newly formed mega company at today’s market value. Capitalism 101 - success is determined by profit, not volume, and GM isn't making any. There is no great achievement in selling high volume at a loss - if there were then everyone could go into business selling 10$ notes for 9$ and become successful. There are many large organisations that have gone broke because they couldn't make a profit, including the Soviet Union. - 20% of something is better than 100% of nothing, which is what shareholders could be facing otherwise. Any such deal, financially does not benefit General Motors or their share holders except one. This is very confused. In a 3 way merger all shareholders are offered the same price. Therefore they all benefit or lose equally. The only way Mr K could benefit alone is if he sold out privately in a sweetheart deal at above market price. In which case he would surely not have gone public with the information. (Or if he negotiated a priviledged class of shares for himself like the F*** family) Currently Nissan and Renault are at their high in terms of financial performance and stock value. GM on the other hand is at a low and the assumption is GM will go up and the other two will go down. Capitalism 201 : just because it's gone down doesnt mean its going up. Otherwise everyone would have made a fortune buying shares in the airline industry. Even the UAW has publicly admitted that this is way more than just a cyclical fluctuation - it's a structural challenge to the whole basis of the industry. Remember this is a cyclical business, besides the usual drama, all things pretty much are equal over time. It is a cyclical business, but the competitors have been consistently gaining profitable market share at GM's expense for the last 30 years and if anything the trend is accelerating. Let us say, GM recovers its value in 2 years in the newly formed company and the other two drop. The shareholders will have to weigh that up when deciding whether to accept whatever offer is put on the table. It is after all their company. Personally I think GM's comeback has been 2 years away for the last 20 years. GM historically had a market value at about 32B USD Capitalism 301 - the value of a commodity today is whatever the market damn well says it is. Oil historically had a market value of 25$ a barrel until very recently, but go out and try getting takers for it at that price today. If GM dilutes the stock, a Renault and Nissan equity infusion for 20% of GM at about current stock prices is worth 3B USD. Is that really significant when GM has the pending GMAC deal worth 14B over three years once the deal is finalized? I agree GM sgould fight a hard bargain - maybe hire some FIAT's negotiators! But 3 billion is alot of money if you don't have it and if GM really can get it from somewhere else they should. But I suspect they can't. Let’s face it GM is the worlds largest auto company on volume, how much more savings can GM take out of their system that they are not already in the process of doing with their own global operations. GM isn't the world's largest car company - it's a collection of small regional ones. Lutz has said so himself. It's had decades to become a global entity but it hasn't happened yet. What's relevant is not the savings they can take out, but the savings the actually DO take out. So who gains? Of course Nissan and Renault gain. This would open GM up for all sorts of benefits for those two companies. This contradicts what you said earlier. If Nissan / Renault can exploit economies of scale then why isn't GM doing it already? If they didn't think they could run GMmore efficiently then there would be no economic case for a merger. But let us get down to who really benefits. Kerkorian! Let us face the facts, GM’s market value is cheap for a company of its size and for reasons that I do not know, Kerkorian most likely wants to bail out of his long term investment in GM I don't think a guy becomes a billionaire by deliberately buying high and selling cheap - if he thought GM was cheap he'd be buying more. As above, the size is irrelevant - it's profit that counts. On pure financial analysis the market has valued GM's car business at zero for several years. GM's market cap has always been roughly the value of GMAC less any unfunded pension liabilities. If GMAC is gone then the rest of the business is basically worth zero unless they can do a Delphi and move onto a whole lower cost base. And given that the only way to get to that lower cost base may be via chapter 11, it's not really worth a shareholder gambling on. Speculation and press drives up the stock price where Kerkorian can sell his GM shares to Nissan and Renault at a slight premium. You are suggesting that Mr K is misleading the market - which is illegal. There are stockmarket rules covering this. Tracinda has detailed what it is doing in a public filing with the SEC. This is not lighthearted discussion. And Nissan have passed a board resolution authorising negotiations. What does GM get out of it in this case? A new large shareholder to answer to! Now they have to answer to Nissan and Renault. Uh, let me see, survival? Avoiding a collapse of the USA's largest pension fund? Salvaging at least some jobs from the mess? A large shareholder is exactly what GM has always needed. The problem is that noone effectively owned it - it was a quasi public sector beauracracy run for the benefit mainly of the UAW and the dealers. The tragedy to me is that the government didn't let this happen 25 years ago to Chrysler - the UAW would have been broken and the shock would have galvanised Ford and GM. Instead the tough decisions were postponed.

GM's market cap is $ 15 billion, Nissan's is 60

The report on the front page of the London Financial Times said that Nissan would propose offering cash for NEW SHARES in GM. ie a recapitalization, with the cash going to GM. If they are just buying existing shares they don't need to talk to the GM board at all - they can just stand in the market.