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Seems like this might be a good joint venture opportunity for Daimler and BMW where each has an equal investment that adds up to a majority stake. German government cash would be used to recapitalize the company and minimize Daimler's and BMW's risk. However, it's hard to see that happening without GM becoming a minority stakeholder.

Even if GM is able to negotiate the debt down to a manageable level it'll be a much smaller company operating with much less demand industry-wide. And the products in demand will be small cars or alt fuel cars with little to no margin. Meanwhile GM is on track to borrow something like $39B from the Feds. If GM becomes as profitable as it was in the 90s (which it won't for said reasons) it would take them 10 years to pay the government back. Imagine if they end up borrowing $100B!!! BTW, the payback time assumes none of the profits would be injected back into capital investment. Nor does it account for debt service. Believing that GM in its present form can become a viable business is at best faith-based. At worst, delusional.

Yeah. Think about it this way, though. If you had $50B to start a new business would you plow it into automobile manufacturing? Are there industries with better outlooks and returns? Any sane capitalist would answer NO to the first question and YES to the second. From a strict business standpoint there's probably no reason to continue either GM or Chrysler except in some relatively stable market segments where they are very strong, e.g., full-size pickup trucks.

GM, Ford and Chrysler have managed to kill themselves without any help from nearly-invisible car geek blogs. TTAC can't kill anything -- it only wishes it could. Regarding the Vette: if it doesn't make money it might be a dead duck. Nothing is sacred. See Duesenberg for details.

Where is the money coming from to develop this car? Heaven? Besides, unless these EVs show a definite value advantage to buyers, they won't sell in big numbers. They'll sell at a loss -- just what Crysis Motors needs.

GM only earned about $47 Billion between 1994-2004. Those were good solid profitable years, the height of the SUV craze. We've heard "loan" numbers like $100B needed before GM is back on its feet either through bankruptcy or federal assistance. Clearly, GM is not viable and hasn't been in quite some time. It had a loss 3 straight years prior to the credit crisis. No, at this point it's all about national politics: preserving jobs in a depression and restructuring American industry.

That's basically a good idea on the distribution front. However, the advertising problem remains in that GM still has to spend money to advertise GMC Acadia, Chevrolet Traverse, Buick Enclave, etc. At a certain sales volume, it makes no business sense to advertise because you won't be profitable. But if you don't advertise you won't move the metal. The solution is that you concentrate your advertising and engineering dollars into one brand. So when Chevrolet advertises Silverado, everytime the bowtie flashes up on the screen and "Chevrolet" is mentioned GM is getting residual advertising time for the other models in the Chevy lineup. That effect multiplies when you take Pontiac ad dollars and spend them advertising Malibu instead.

I think something like this is going to happen anyway. There are some very real marketing productivity economics at play here. GM simply cannot keep building more than a couple versions of the same vehicle and expect to grow Chevrolet let alone 3 or 4 other brands at the same time. Toyota and Honda and Nissan have changed the economics of how the volume car building game is played. I have always liked the idea of Buick, but I think GM could make more profits (slightly higher MSRP, fewer incentives) with the same cars styled and badged as Cadillacs (LTS for LaCrosse and TRX for Enclave). With the way the biz is now, the new LaCrosse will not do big volume anyway. Buick dealers in the US can expect more pain. Buicks could still be sold in China. With truck sales going down for good (shrinking economy for years, tougher CAFE) they should phase out GMC light duty products and sell off the GMC medium duty business with all the GMC franchises (even the ones that don't sell many medium duty trucks). It might even make sense to change the name of the company to Chevrolet Motor Company, spin off Opel, and start concentrating on GMDAT designs built in Eastern Europe for Europe. Opel doesn't appear to be in as good a shape as we've all come to believe. No surprise -- high cost production market, lots of competition. Bad combo.

Are you flippin kidding us? Were you even around in the 80s? American cars at the time had very real reliability, fit & finish and durability issues. For lots of reasons. AND, they continued to plod along with old tech: pushrod 4 cylinders, throttle-body FI, 3-speed automatics, 4-speed manuals, solid rear axle suspensions. Toyota, on the other hand, took advantage of this weakness and sold solid, reliable, durable, SOHC, 5-speed manual and sometimes DOHC, 4-wheel disc-braked, 4-wheel independent suspensioned, multi-port electronic FI, 4-valve per cylinder, electronically-controlled 4-speed automatic transmission machines. OK, so you didn't like the way some of the cars looked. But there's a reason why Toyota is the largest auto manufacturer today. The seeds were sown in those "Oh What a Feeling" days. Here's an awesome example:

Who'd want it? Hummer is radioactive in the US. Even the Swedes have said Saab is hopeless financially and has no potential. Saturn's dealer chain might be tempting but there are too many cars out there for sale and not enough buyers. Not even the Chinese are interested in investing funds to sell cars here now. What we're collectively doing as a country is kicking the can down the road with government bailouts in the hope that the future, when it comes, will solve the problem. But it hasn't and won't work. There's too much productive capacity in the auto industry, and some companies/makes/models need to die for the betterment of the entire industry. Some tough love needs to be administered to Chrysler and GM now or Ford is going to find its way to the trough and all three will be at risk. I'd rather see one solid American car company thrive than three that limp along for years like British Leyland/AustinRover/Rover Group/MG Rover did.

So what happens with Pontiac? G3 -- Never happens? G5 -- Delta I stops production in 2010 G6 -- Orion one of the 5 plants to be closed in '09? G8 -- Cancelled in 2011-12? Solstice -- Kappa cancelled in 2011-12? Vibe -- 5 year lifecycle through to 2012? Is Vibe the one Pontiac that remains longest?

Yeah, I don't understand their math. How is it they go from 22% to 20% with the loss of Saturn, Saab, Hummer and most of Pontiac? All four of those brands combined accounted for almost 4 points of market share in 2008. Unbelievable sales from Camaro, Orlando and Cruze maybe? BTW, I think a quick and dirty Chapter 7 liquidation is best for both GM and Chrysler. Put all the good pieces of both companies into one new one and auction off the rest.

Likely the new owner would not buy any plants since the plants that make Saturns also make far more of other GM brand products. So they would be buying the rights to the name/logo and the distribution channel. But why would any automaker want it in a severely down market that may last years? The return on investment is just not there. Even if GM gave Saturn away there would be still fixed administration costs. GM's long-running incompetence and this sorry economy have teamed up together to make lots of losers. One of those losers, apparently, will be Saturn.

I understand the spirit of your comment. However, the Camry, Accord and Altima are among the best selling cars. You can't argue with nearly 1.1M sold in 2008. This basically tells us what the average American expects in the average car.

Unless the SWB EpII can deliver the same interior and exterior dimensions as the Camry forget about downsizing the Malibu. The Malibu is already smaller on the inside than a Camry.

Selling Opels through Saturn was a nice try but doomed to failure. Mass-market European cars just don't sell well in the US and Canada. There are some exceptions, but in general... The good news is that Saturn has been successful in doing what it was established to do: show the GM establishment that manufacturing and customer service could be done a different, better way. It was an expensive experiment, one that wouldn't have been needed had GM not been so successful and dominant for so long.

My guess: If we see a good asset/bad asset organization appear it'll likely be based on a brutal sorting of what makes money in a 9-10M vehicle market and what doesn't. For instance, if Bowling Green and the Corvette are not money makers don't count on it joining the good asset company. Nothing is sacred. Count on PIMCO coming out very well no matter what. They're integral to the trading and administration of government debt and TARP.

This Fiat idea is absurd. All it is is a way for Cerberus to get out from underneath the Chrysler car manufacturing rock while Fiat gets a near-risk free chance at entering the US market. The US taxpayer gets to loan the money to make it happen and maybe we'll never see a dime of that cash back. Did I mention that there's already too much capacity in this market and building Fiats doesn't help the situation? The proposal amounts to the US Government financing foreign competition for Ford and GM, both on the brink. What's wrong with this picture? Worse, these Fiats badged as Chryslers won't sell. Fiat has the worst quality of all the cars sold in Europe except the French according to the Auto Bild Quality Report. 2008 was the first year in seven that Fiat did not place dead last. Wow! Behind VW. Even behind Kia! And Fiat doesn't have a good D-segment track record where Chrysler needs the most help. Sure B and C cars are important, but Journey and Avenger class cars are absolutely the bread and butter of a mainstream car company in the US. So, Chrysler will be relying on a company for production and engineering assistance that has even worse quality and experience in a key segment than they do. The excitement about Fiat among some Mopar fans reminds me a lot of the excitement among some GM fanboys about Holden. Truly desperate times.

The GN and GNX were great cars. But my favorite has to be the Regal Limited Turbos. Yeah, you could order the midsized personal luxury coupe with those cushy seats, a column shift and that turbo. Talk about a sleeper. The GN announced your arrival a mile away to the cops. Johnny didn't even blink twice with the Limited. http://1of1035.com/index.htm

Total 2008 auto sales were down 18% from 2007. GM was down 22% overall. That still makes the G8 a loser from a sales expectations standpoint. http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2009-0...uto-sales_N.htm

That's just Lutz talking in his own world. I hardly see any GTOs in LA.

As this Australian blog points out GM expected to sell 30,000 G8s per year but only sold about half that number. Basically, it was GTO Part Deux. How do you call that a success? BTW, that's not to say the G8 isn't a good car - it is. It's just that buyers are apparently turned off by the nameplate for the price. Or maybe it's the bland Australian styling? http://blogs.drive.com.au/2009/01/america_...ort_blow_t.html

No, not at all. But it just demonstrates that Cadillac is primarily an American phenomenon: big, beautiful, bling. No one else around the world "gets" Cadillac aside from a few oddball German and Dutch enthusiasts who like to dress up like Elvis on the weekends and drive 10 mph in their restored Eldorados. It's because of the cheap price of gas here and our superpower status after WWII. Uniquely American. No one has given up. The CTS is a terrific product. The SRX looks like a winner. It's just that to really put Cadillac in the same league with Mercedes you'd need to spend 10s of billions of dollars cordoning off Cadillac from GMNA as its own organization, with its own engines, platforms, parts and worldwide distribution. While matching the German brands model-for-model. Business-wise, what kind of payoff is there for such an investment? My guess is that it's not high, and it's full of risk -- not a good combo. That would literally be a totally new business venture never attempted by any American automaker in the history of cars. Cadillac should be what it is and what it has always been since WWII: a premium car with style and flash with a value-proposition that shares some components with its lesser cousins. There's everything right with that starting with profit potential. There are many ways to grow the brand and the profits. My favorites include adding a Lambda and an EpII and that very cool CTS coupe. The Converj is another.

Bob Lutz is singlehandedly the one guy responsible for bringing style back to GM cars inside and out. For all the haters: do you remember how lame the designs were before he was hired (Aztek!)? Do you remember how cheap the interiors looked? I shudder to think how much worse the Malibu and Impala could have been had Lutz not been around. He doted on tumblehome angles and wheelwell gaps. Prior to Lutz, GM appeared to have some guy in Legal in charge of that. I only wish his talents hadn't been so spread thin with so many redundant nameplates begging for attention.

Sorry, I meant to type "Saturn" not "Pontiac" in Post #15. However, I went back and looked at the numbers for Pontiac and they're dropping fast. Pontiac sold 267,348 in 2008 while VW also slipped but less quickly to 223,128. Won't be long.