Volt TV commercial

there's a big green billboard here in town near a chevy dealer that says

"from gas friendly to gas free"

or whatever that cheesy motto was. build the damn car already! cripes!

With GM profits in the toilet, loss of their #1 manufacturer status, Hummers, poor SUV sales, layoffs & plant closures, one would think they'd quit wasting Ad dollers on E85 cars (that get worse mpg), Hydrogen cars (that won't be ready for another 10years and costing a million dollers), and concept cars. But that doesn't seem to be their business model.

If the car is humming, does that mean that someone left in on by mistake? Are those kids about to become hood ornaments?

Volt TV commercial?

Isn't that sorta like Rock Hudson advertising "VIP"?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hill @ Sep 22 2007, 11:46 AM) [snapback]516185[/snapback]</div>

Seems to me there has been much criticism on PC over the years from you and others about GM never thinking about the future. Now they are putting incredible amounts of energy, money etc into the future and you still criticize? I know GM is really the evil empire so they can do nothing right in your eyes.

Keep sending your dollar overseas, just don't complain about your standard of life or your neighbors, or your schools, or your local government, or your state government, or your federal government.

This fellow does not seem to know what the MPG is... can he just drive the Volt and tell us what it is or is the car shown just for show with nothing under the hood othe than a speaker that humms. :blink:

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Sep 26 2007, 08:36 AM) [snapback]517899[/snapback]</div>

We aren't supposed to send our money overseas... but it is OK for GM to do it for us? Surely you jest.

Let me guess... What's good for GM is good for America, right? Why the hell are they building cars overseas then? Collaborating with the "enemy" as it were.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(darelldd @ Sep 26 2007, 11:07 AM) [snapback]517915[/snapback]</div>

What are you talking about building cars overseas? What cars for the american market does GM build overseas other than the aveo?

I have 726 GM vehicles in stock at three gm dealerships right now and 14 were built in Korea. That Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Buicks, GMC's and Cadillacs.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Sep 26 2007, 12:18 PM) [snapback]517927[/snapback]</div>

For Starters
Chevy HHR (built in Mexico)
Chevy Avalanche (built in Mexico)
Pontiac Grand Prix (Built in Ontario)
Pontiac Torrent (Built in Ontario)
and GM has 2 plants in Mexico that also do some of the Silverado's

(my source is wikipedia.org)

What about the Pontiac Vibe which is nothing more then a rebadged Toyota Matrix and built at a plant in the USA that is essentially ran by Toyota and mostly builds Corollas. The plant formerly built the Geo / Chevy Prism which was also identical to the Corolla.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(morpheusx @ Sep 26 2007, 11:57 AM) [snapback]517945[/snapback]</div>

Give me the ground rules, do you include only the US in the numbers? Remember Toyota counts all of North America in their 38,000 employees etc.

You guys ( and toyota) always want to point out the midgets and giants. I have over 300 silverados and sierra on the ground and guess how many were built in Mexico? 2. Remember GM is the largest seller of vehicles in Mexico( as they are in the top 10 unprotected markets in the world), so ,especially after NAFTA, it makes sense to have some assembly in Mexico. The silverado's built there are all 2wd reg cabs, which there is a much larger market for in Mexico.

You still cannot escape the fact that Toyota motor corp of the US imported over 1.4 million vehicles from Japan last year. The higher the content of the vehicle the higher the likelyhood it was imported from Toyota City or some other Japanese plant.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Sep 26 2007, 01:07 PM) [snapback]517953[/snapback]</div>

My point is that the US Auto Industry sold the american laborer down the river years ago. Whenever I hear about a plant closing it is always here in the US. I never hear them say that they are closing a plant in Mexico. Why because that was their strategy, lets start building plants in Mexico and then when we train all the labor to meet our expectations we can start knocking off these US plants. Last time I looked Canada and Mexico didn't count in our Gross National Product, but I guess to GM and Ford I may be wrong.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(morpheusx @ Sep 26 2007, 01:07 PM) [snapback]517994[/snapback]</div>

Do you know GM's US labor force is 20% of what it was in 1990?(about 90,000 down from 350,000) Do you think that is because they built one or two plants in Mexico? I know the media(partially fueled by toyota press releases) loves to place their focus on that. Maybe it had something to do with the fact in 1990 toyota sold about 1 million cars and trucks and this year it will be between 2 and 3 million. The percentage of vehicles sold by the Detroit 3(remember the big 3) is hovering at about 50 percent. The majority of those vehicles are imported, and the ones not imported are very often assembled here of mainly foreign parts.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Sep 26 2007, 02:13 PM) [snapback]517997[/snapback]</div>

but aren't most of the Big 3 parts also outsourced from at least 50 % foreign parts.

Like for example the Ford Fusion the car I almost bought instead of my Prius, Final Assembly Mexico and made of more than 50 % foreign parts. Tell me how that would have benefited the country more then my Prius that was built in Japan. In my eyes both are built outside of the USA therefore neither are a domestic vehicle. You are right though about GM, I've done my research, most of the cars they sell here are built here in the US, and the majority of their plants that are overseas are to supply those territories.

That was cheesy.
The spokesperson seemed dumb.
Wow, I can go 40 miles without a drop of gas. Woo Hoo. Where the h*ll am I going to find a 40 mile extension cord?

And all those kids leaning on the car. GET OFF MY CAR!!!
Seriously... it's humming at them. It's waiting to run them over. They will never hear it coming. Huge monstrosity.

Several sources show data on average domestic content of cars, weighted by sales. Data count Canada as "domestic" (sorry, Canadians, thats how the available data counted it).

Domestic content of the big three is about 75%.

Domestic content of Japanese-badged vehicles in the US is about 50%.

European makes have, on average, almost no US domestic content.

Data shown here (on an advocacy website, but some papers by the US Federal Reserve and elsewhere seem to show similar figures):
http://www.levelfieldinstitute.org/domestic.htm

Presumably the origin for cars at any one dealership may reflect location and the resulting transport costs. The data cited above are US sales-weighted averages.

So on average 75% of the Big 3 sales dollar goes to purchase US/Canadian-made parts, while only half of the Japanese-brand sales dollar does.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hill @ Sep 22 2007, 10:46 AM) [snapback]516185[/snapback]</div>

Hey, if they know there's no future with the gas guzzlers they're currently pumping off the assembly lines then at least that's a start.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Sep 26 2007, 09:18 AM) [snapback]517927[/snapback]</div>

Ah. So a *few* are OK then. Good to have all the rules for this "Only buy American" stuff.

You make it sound like we consumers should take all the blame for buying Japanese cars. Could any of the problem have to do with the Japanese building the cars that we want to buy? As my one small example... I wanted to buy an electric car. I was leasing GM's version, and they took it back and crushed it. Toyota - with all their flaws and warts and sales of gas-guzzling trucks - sold me their version of the electric car. And today I'm still driving it. So if I don't have an option to buy the type of car I want from an "American" mfg... what do I do? Blindly buy something that pollutes just so I can support America in its never-ending quest to rule the world in oil consumption?

Ra!

Thankyou. I couldn't care less how much of my car comes from USA.