I know how it feels to work for a company that is going down the tubes, and would have loved people to step up in the spirit of patriotism and give us their business. Despite the fact we were mismanaged, didn't offer competetive value, had poor customer service, and suffered from poor moral & general laziness amongst the workers, it would have been the right thing to do for all Americans to continue using our business. Sure we were a doomed entity with how poorly we were running, but it would have been the "American" thing to do for customers to continue supporting us & not jump ship. I know they would all have felt better about themselves, even though they weren't getting the best thing for their money anymore with us. But alas, we were all laid off. For some reason, those darn Americans had this crazy idea of trying to find the best product for the best price in this tight economy. It was also quite shocking to find out people wanted good customer service, instead of being ignored after they signed on the dotted line. Where was the love from America? Where was the love I ask?

 

 

GM has noone to blame but itself. 3 year warranty on a 50,000 car? No loaner on a $50,000 car? No paid for maintenance? Poor customer service; poor salesmanship; My buddy just got a Hyundai Sonata. It came with Michelins!! What tire does a cobalt come with? (plus his 5 year warranty..10 year powertrain). All for the princely sum of about 13,000.
My wife is treated like a queen when she takes her audi in for service. (Not to mention interior quality on the 30,000 audi is second to none). GM has to wake up... 3 Buick SUV's? Terraza, Rainer, and some other quirky name.
Its a simple road to recovery:
1.Train salesmen and dealers about product
2. Put customer service first priority
3. Lengthen warranty period to 4 years
4. Cut number of divisions and models
5. Improve service
These are gms problems...not health care.

 

Cool...when your buddies Hyundai or your wife's Audi can actually perform like the Corvette can then let us know.

 

Nice quote Mitch. Many countries around the world pride themselves on restricting the buying of imported goods. Through their own culture they force consumer demands for improvements back onto their own manufacturers.

In America some of us find it sheik to own an import. I'm with you and LS1LT1 (of course I am an American manufacturing business owner). Do a survey.. the majority (not all) of import buyers on this forum are Junior members I would bet.

On a side note I will admit that GMs latest lineup kind of sucks. What's with that new SS? That was a let down... My girl has a 2001 Ford Sportrac and we have just been waiting for something cool to come out for her. She likes trucks. Lucky for us GM looks to have hit a home run with the new Hummer H3!

 

I think the Cobalt could be a good seller, the new G-6 looks pretty good. The GTO is not catching on as well as I think GM was expecting which is a shame cause I think its pretty decent. I'll say this much, If GM would build a high fuel mileage full size cargo van and pick up truck they would sell every one they make. 2006 they will have the Duramax available for the Cargo vans which I'm going to take a close look at.

 

Oh really? Do you get to choose American made televisions/electronics (your example) at a reasonable price if you wanted such? No you can't because you've already LOST that freedom.
Keeping buying import nameplate vehicles allowing Japan and Germany to dictate the markets and see just how many more choices you might lose in time.[/QUOTE]


Well said!

 

Actually, macro-economics teaches no such thing, except for the special distorted case of socialist/communist command economies.

In a free market economy, as in engineering, having all of the small component parts run at peak efficiency is a necessary requirement for the overall system run at peak efficiency. It shouldn't be hard to understand that you can't make a large complex system work well if its component parts aren't operating optimally.

In a free market, there is no fundamental conflict between micro and macro economics. If the economy isn't operating at peak efficiency on the micro level, it can't operate at peak efficiency on the macro level either. This is Adam Smith's Invisible Hand. Without each of us striving to maximize utility, overall utility can't be maximized.

The fact is, fewer than 12% of US workers are employed in manufacturing. Manufacturing is a decreasing part of our economy. This should come as no surprise when you realize that for most of US history manufacturing has run at around 10% of the workforce. The post-WWII boom in manufacturing in the US has to be understood as a distortion which is now being corrected. This distortion was due to WWII. After the war, we tried to maintain wartime levels of manufacturing employment, but that isn't sustainable over the long haul.

Our costs are too high for most of our workers to remain employed by manufacturing. To maintain our lifestyles, ie to maximize our micro utillity, most of our workers have to find work which has more value added than manufacturing can sustainably offer. Put bluntly, we can't afford to be primarily a volume manufacturing economy.

On a macro level, the large margin activities are not in basic manufacturing. Manufacturing has one of the lowest ROIs of any economic activity. Since our costs *are* so much higher than the rest of the world, we have to concentrate on the high margin economic activities which can support such cost structures.

 

GM is screwed up all the way around..There warranty sucks, there cars are plain and boring not to mention the interior is some of the cheapest crap out there and the employee's are for the most part retarded when you try and talk to them about a problem or just cars they sell in general..I can't see them competing with the others without some serious changes anytime soon.

 

Maybe you are correct. Especially if you consider the service writers where I go are more interested in telling me how to respond to the survey than listening to my problems with the car. All that has happened with the survey is the dealers have figured out how to short circuit the system in their favor.

 

Yeah those Corvettes have NO style and are so slow as are the GTO, supercharged V6 models and 6L trucks...oh and those trucks can't haul or tow at all either LOL.

 

USA Today reported some weeks ago that it takes Toyota 27 hours to build a car and GM takes 34. Also reported in the article was the average sale price of a Toyota (including Lexus, I presume. The article did not say) is $6,000 per car HIGHER than GM. Now I know it's easy to blame unions, micro/macro economics, and whatever else, but reality is that GM has been in this funk since the early 1980's, when it's market share was nearly 50%. GM has, for the last 2 decades, done just enough pay the stockholders, producing a bevy of bland, innocuous cars or worse, producing cars with some very forward thinking and then getting it wrong somewhere in execution, i.e. priced incorrectly, underpowered,etc..Witness the Fiero, Alante, Camaro/Firebird, SSR, GTO, etc. Don't forget, it took Watergate-like sneaking around to get the C5 designed and developed. GM line workers don't design the cars, they just build them. Junky plastics, NVH issues with engines, panel tolerances start at the top, with people that hold the research and development purse strings. As for GM's styling issues (Malibu, Impala, on and on...) let the person that penned the Saturn Sky design EVERYTHING. Thanks, I feel better now.

Jimmy