JamMasterJ

Having just spent the better part of turkey day eve at the Bowling Green plant, I can say it looks soooo old school union...and that if I had to guess, its the union that will bring it to its knees. The vette will live on, but having seen how little space and people and equiptment is really required to run the XLR, I beleive that will be the style for the vette in the future. Smaller , less costly production lines with activie, interested more productive employees. In the vette/z06 line, each guy has a very limited job and limited time to do it. In the XLR production line, the rteam has more to do, a varied skill set, more interest as the car is not there for 3 minutes, but 18, and looks more ecnomically viable. I think GM will cut some cars, perhaps a name brand, lower production, increase quality, and stiffen prices. There are enough "buy american" folks like me, that to pay a little extra, and maybe even wait a little longer, is well within my piurchase guidelines. Less inv for dealers, less negotiation, better cars, less union ownership of the rules...all things that can begin the staying power GM needs.
For the record, in the few thousand cars I saw at the plant, I only saw one import...a Toyota rental car. Theres enough red blooded american buyers to feed a smaller , more nimble GM, but a leader they will not be.

ZO6R1

Quality and service is something most of us feel we a entitled to. If you can't compete here, then you are bound to go belly up. Now add to this style and comfort, and you are may make a lot of money. What gets my goat is that quality starts with GM, and service starts at the dealers, and the two of them don't seem to get it right. If the cars and trucks are so great why not give a 5 yr/100k war.? It would give consumers confidence in what they are buying. If the dealers **** off the customer when they bring in the car for service, GM looks real bad and I bet the customer is not going to rec. the GM car to friends and family. If GM dosn't convince their dealerships on the idea of treating customers like they feel they are important, then unions,healthcare ect.. doesn't really matter. GM needs to create a new way of treating people like they care about them....get your service depts. on board and you may start to dig yourself out.

CCS

Robert, I see your 28 as you posted your age multiple times in the same thread.
Heres a friendly "heads up" from a fellow 20 somethings with disposable income to spare ...........
You take the time to post, so why post ungrammatically ? Are you trying to make Emory look bad ? Spelling correctly gives credibleness to your posts. If I wanted to be taken seriously I would take the extra time to spell correctly.

Good luck with the MBA

Lerxst2112

Er... "credibleness"?

Credibility.

Sorry, wouldn't have corrected this, except that you were correcting somebody else. What goes around...



p.s. There are no spelling errors in this post! I was the county spelling bee winner a lifetime ago during an unfortunate 2 year stint living in South Bend, Indiana. It's cold there. Then I lost at the state level spelling a stupid 6 letter word (lumber) due to being nervous. Tried to re-spell it properly once I heard what came out of my pie hole, but they wouldn't let me. At least I spelled it "lumbar" which showed my early affinity for both medicine and cars...

boxerperson

I am perfectly aware of the history behind the 70's oil (non)shortage as well. I'm aware of all of that stuff.

That's not the issue. The issue is that within 10-15 years, America will not be the #1 consumer of oil. China will be. And once China has a greater consumer share of oil....oil in the US is going to skyrocket in price. Fact.

The only reason oil isn't really expensive here is because our government essentially discounts it. They can do that because of two things. Economies of scale, and because we are currently the world's most influencial country.

10-15 years from now China's economy will be larger than ours, and it follows that they will carry the mantle of "worlds most powerful country." It's nothing like the military-based power struggle of the cold war. This is an economy struggle, and China is going to win because of sheer numbers, and the strength of their psuedo-capitalist approach to their economy.

With power comes influence. We in the United States are going to have to accept that we will no longer be the "top dog", and some of the benefits we get from that position will no longer be available. Benefits like control over most the worlds' oil supply.


It's not an issue of the WORLD running out of oil. It's an issue of the US running out of influence, and it's coming soon. National pride is a great thing, I'm proud to be American, but pride at the expense of reality only breeds obsolescence.

louieT

China will be a threat.. SOON I am affraid..

headup

Your spelling is fine. Your grammar, sentence structure, and punctuation are however not up to par:
Then does not belong after "It's cold there."
A word is not smart or stupid regardless of how many letters it contains.
A noun belongs before "Tried to re-spell it properly.....".
A period belongs after "affinity for both medicine and cars".

pgeho

I logged back in to read a few posts and was quite amazed to find this post being quite long. Fantastic! It is great to see that we can all discuss this without going over the edge as it were... Ok... my two cents on this whole GM thing is: I believe that the financial troubles GM is in will hurt the vette. As was posted earlier... the vette has faced extinction many times - the C4 being in production the longest because (IMHO) GM was considering it's fate, etc. I think that GM has two possibilities. 1) They will have to increase production on all of the vettes - doing so would drive the price down and make BOTH lines (vette and Z) available to more folks. 2) They will shut the Z06 down as "fluff" in the eyes of the masses and sell the heck out of the coupe and vert. Just imagine if the vette was to come down to the upper $30's. I imagine we'd see a great deal of Lingefelter or MTI conversions on the road. I supposed there is a third choice for GM - and that is to kill any future R & D on the vette - which would truly be a sad end to an incredible dynasty. As far as quality goes? GM I think has lagged in some areas. Porsche, Mercedes, Toyota, Honda (and I've owned two of those) etc perceived quality (and I think that's the point here) is killing the US car market. Granted, pride and pricing are almost synonymous (sp?). The perception that US cars are overpriced and under built (quality-wise) HAS to change. If the US is going to even attempt to regain the lead in the world, our attitude of providing the lowest quality for the highest price MUST change. I'm not saying that you should drop pricing into the basement - because no one should be denied a fair profit, but if that fair profit means my daily driver is held together with bailing wire and toothpicks, then I'm going to buy what will last me the longest. Face it boys and girls, with all of the factors dividing and clashing on the front page these days, we're lucky that any of us have the ability to help maintain the rich heritage the vette has. GM has to eliminate the duplicate lines, get RID of the unions - c'mon, that's so bloody 30's/40's. I would have to wager though that reducing CEO pay from several hundred million to $250k or $350k/year might help a great deal too. It will be interesting to see how GM comes out of this quagmire and interesting to see the final effect on the vette (if any). A bit rambling I know... but my two cents nonetheless.

Tom Steele

That is not what I've always heard. So I checked it and I was right:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...100201315.html

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article....ticle_id=20183

Basically, we tax gasoline, but moderately. Europe taxes the bejeezus out of it as a political effort to encourage people there to buy small breadboxes and put wheels on them with hamsters on running wheels to power them so they will consume less fuel.

The U.S. sees fuel as a nice little tax revenue, but we don't currently have a behavior modification tax on gasoline.

Also, we HAVE fuel, we just aren't drilling for it and we aren't increasing refining capacity right now because of the environmentalists and NIMBY's (Jeb Bush, who I otherwise like.)

We should be CAREFULLY (with huge penalties if you screw up) drilling off Florida and in Alaska to TRULY do what the politicians say they want to do, and that is reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Tom Steele

GM needs to find a way to market that information, because I never would have even known it. I assumed Cobalt was competition for Ford's Escort (whatever they call it now).

Marketing is crucial and sometimes the best marketing is to say, "We've screwed up in the past - we're fixing that. Here's how and here's what people are saying. Come by and see for yourself. We GUARANTEE you will have a pleasant experience, even if you are just looking."

(That last part, they may have to put an asterisk and deny any ability to control it, with some dealers.)

But they need to get the word out if they are really increasing quality.

I'm not one of that generation that would never buy a GM product, but they don't make much except the Corvette that I would even be interested in anyway. When I was a little younger, a Camaro would have interested me (I ended up with Mustangs instead though) but they killed that.

It seems like the GTO fell flat. That could have been a really neat car. They shot themselves in the foot with the SSR. Meanwhile, Ford is running pretty well with the new Mustang. They're all over and I assume (but you never know how businesses find ways to fail!) they are profitable and a success story.

Lerxst2112

I don't believe I said "there are no grammatical errors". Most of them were/are done deliberately in the interest of brevity and clarity of expression via email, which lacks nonverbal cues. Such as me rolling my eyes about now. Egad-- no proper subject in the previous sentence. Or that one!

You're perfectly welcome to read every post I make and reply with a critique; just make sure I get a gold star if everything is to your satisfaction. Ooo, look, proper use of a semicolon! That has to be worth something. I write informal things (email, posts, letters) like I talk, which to me at least seems to convey more personability than a research-paper type document. I've even been known to make up words, but on purpose and they're usually in quotes.

Possibly, if you read enough of my posts, a sense of humor might sneak up on you. If so, let me know, so I can give you *your* gold star. But quit looking at my dangling participles!

christopher04z06

For the young guy with the good job, bachelor degree (I presume engineering), and upcoming MBA, do not let your ego and current success fool you. Many of us here have both an engineering grad degree and MBA, long successful careers, and can tell you the worse can happen to you and/or your company in the future.

Those who propose globalization often feel justified as they are highly educated and succesfull personally and more people should just work as hard and be as smart! I personally feel that intelligence and work ethic come in all races and creeds. This means China, India, and upcoming third world nations pumping out vast numbers of people as smart or smarter than you ,with equal work ethic (likely more), and willing to work for less.

What is your true competitive advantage then? What is your company's? Is it sustainable against cheaper AND smarter knowledge workers and manuf. elsewhere? Long term? The US at some point is going to need to determine what our competitive advantage is, where we will invest, and what our place in the globalized world is. If not, we're destined for low paying service jobs. Except for Medical and Legal which employ protectionism on levels that rival any Union.

headup

Lerxst2112,

I'll be happy to ignore any errors in your posts that may be grammatically incorrect; and perhaps you will extend the same courtesy to the spelling errors that others may make.

Lerxst2112

Since I'm sure others are becoming quite bored with the "side discussion" embedded in this thread, I'll try to be tersely brief.

1. I don't plan to change any actions whatsoever based upon your input. I've been on this board for several years longer than you have, and have done just fine in regard to communicating effectively with others without your assistance.

2. I *don't care* if you feel the need to critique every post I make from here to eternity, and have invited you to do so. Knock yourself out!

3. If you can't see the difference between correcting one word which doesn't exist, versus trying to be an English professor, I can't help you and probably nobody can.

4. My initial correction was intended primarily as good humor, and was done with a smile on my face, as evidenced by the "cheers" icon at the end.

5. You'll note the lack of #4 with this post.

Sheesh.

John Shiels

Foreign cars

They make my skin crawl. I'd rather buy a Kia than a Japanese car.

John Shiels

Wait for the next twenty years and see where we are. The markets are NOT free by any means. Japan and China will not even value their currency properly. You can not open a car plant in China unless they are a partner. On and On goes the list how we get F'ed Wake up! Japan had tons of restrictions on us selling cars there we could never penetrate the market. Couldn't sell finished wood products their as they wanted to do the finishing work. Wake up to reality.

John Shiels

John Shiels

you get a loaner at GM if the repair takes more than one day in warranty situation. How many Audi's do they sell? There will be no line.

John Shiels

Legacy cost is also because they hired many people and now they are old and retired. The foreign companies have not been here that long to develop the problem. There wrok force is younger because they recently started up here.

John Shiels

never heard of anyone making 70 bucks an hour to put a screw in where's that?