General Motors Is Headed For Bankruptcy -- Again - Forbes ... To help understand why GM keeps losing market share, let’s look at the saga of the Chevy Malibu. The Malibu is GM’s entry in the automobile market’s “D-Segment”. The D-Segment comprises mid-size, popularly priced, family sedans, like the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord. The D-Segment accounted for 14.7% of the total U.S. vehicle market in 2011, and 21.3% during the first 7 months of 2012. Because the D-Segment is the highest volume single vehicle class in the U.S., and the U.S. is GM’s home market, it is difficult to imagine how GM could survive long term unless it can profitably develop, manufacture, and market a vehicle that can hold its own in the D-Segment. This is true not only because of the revenue potential of the D-Segment, but also because of what an also-ran Malibu would say about GM’s ability to execute at this time in its history. GM is in the process of introducing a totally redesigned 2013 Chevy Malibu. It will compete in the D-Segment with, among others, the following: the Ford Fusion (totally redesigned for 2013); the Honda Accord (totally redesigned for 2013); the Hyundai Sonata (totally redesigned for 2011); the Nissan Altima (totally redesigned for 2013); the Toyota Camry (refreshed for 2013); and the Volkswagen Passat (totally redesigned for 2012)..,,
Hmmm, I'm not sure I totally agree w/the author's thesis, but time will tell. Do note that the article contains a link to Bob Lutz's reply. I'm sure you can imagine what he thought of it...
The new GM is the old GM, less some of its pension obligations and now with a cheaper labor force. The root problems of a moribund executive and pitiful workforce remain. Unfortunately GM is far from alone.
The Fed is GM & GM is the Fed. Maybe time for a rename . . . how does Fed-Em sound. With such nepotistic relations (and closed ties to the Fed Reserve) and the legal right to demand more fake paper money be printed, I don't see how they can fail . . . . at least not until we grasp that there is no more real money. .
"... Just five years ago, leading the midsize segment wasn't that difficult. It was pretty much a two-car contest between Accord and Camry, with the Altima a distant third. Camry and Accord still lead, but in the past few years, other car companies have upped their games. American, South Korean and German rivals are chipping away at their sales. "Honda and Toyota can no longer take it for granted that this is going to be a two-horse race," says Jesse Toprak, vice president of market intelligence for the TrueCar.com auto pricing service. "It's a remarkable change, how competitive the segment has become." Read more: Honda looks to silence critics with new Accord - seattlepi.com
i'd say the most remarkable is vdub. an amazing turn around since my experience with the rabbit. they were pretty similar to american products in those days.
Forbes has two replies itself Chicken Little's Second GM Bankruptcy: The Gold Medal For Silly Op-Ed Pieces - Forbes and For GM, Bankruptcy Talk Is Its Own Fault - Forbes
It is said here that GM is bleeding their European operation dry. They use their ideas and ship them across the pond such as the Insignia which became the latest Malibu, but don't give the European arm the investment they need. Car sales are on the up over here. All manufacturers are selling significantly more vehicles than last year. Well, all manufacturers bar one. Any guesses? Yep, Vauxhall which is the UK version of GM. Why? Because their cars are dreadful. They're unreliable, they're not finished off in that you can see they've been made to a much reduced budget. Reliability is heading southwards year after year. Vauxhall even offer a lifetime warranty on their vehicles! but still people avoid the cars! Car Makers Premier League June 2012 Ford and Vauxhall were the two big sellers here 20 years ago, in the same way it's Ford and Holden in Australia. But Ford are going from strength to strength, Vauxhall just seem to be losing the plot year after year after year. Is it the workers? Doubt it, the Japanese plants here are all renowned for quality and are expanding at an alarming rate, so I guess it must be the management of Vauxhall? Why are they poor? Maybe GM use the Pyramid of Sh*t technique?
The european car market is a mess. GM should have sold opel as part of the bankrupcy, even at a huge loss it would have been better than this http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/business/global/europes-auto-industry-has-reached-day-of-reckoning.html?pagewanted=all
I guess it's difficult for me to class the UK within Europe as we're so different and I often forget that whilst things are bad here, they're much worse over the Channel. Think it's all the workers rights and protectionist practices they have that brings us down with them?
TTAC had this response and brings up a lot of good points: Ur-turn: GM Not Going Bankrupt – For Now | The Truth About Cars
After reading all the comments from the same topic on the big GM forum... Forbes Commentary: General Motors Is Headed For Bankruptcy -- Again ...I added mine below to my blog. Long story short, watching this unfold hasn't been much of a surprise. It hasn't been the "recovery" that had been hoped for. For continuing to point out the efficiency product-gap and slower than planned plug-in progress, there some here that choose to shot me as a messenger, rather than actually address the financial situation. Fortunately, the dismissal of goals and blatant effort to shift focus won't change the message. The requirements of business are often claimed as pencil-pushing efforts that undermine the spirit of automotive enjoyment. But reality is, there's still a major business burden to deal with. Those outstanding 500 million shares of stock should make that obvious. The unclear plans for the future should confirm it. We're seeing some of the same problems from before the bankruptcy emerge again. The biggest was the heavy emphasis on monthly sales, rather than judging from an annual perspective. The next was the disconnect between need & want, basing success on hope without regard to the market itself. Remember the mess Two-Mode became? What a massive waste of resources. All that time, money, and talent devoted to something few would benefit from. Volt fell into that same trap. Had there also been a lower-capacity choice or a no-plug offering, things would be different. Instead, there's a major dependency on tax-credits for a limited audience. What happens when those expire? What happens if cost cannot be reduced enough to be competitive? What about the rest of product-line? For that matter, how will further research & development be funded? That's a lot of risk during a time when risk cannot be afforded.
I suspect that a 'boat load' in this context means enough money to underwrite subprime loans again. Sound familiar ?
GM is a dead man walking. GM has no hybrids. Volt is a limited production car to meet regulatory formula. GM would need to look like Ford or Toyota with a solid core of hybrid and EV vehicles and technology and plants to build them. GM has none of that.
It just doesn't make any sense hill. You do a LBO if your stock is undervalued and some bank is willing to put up the cash, to pay off shareholders. After that you raid the cash and pension plan. GM just came out of bankrupcy, and the pension plan has been suitably raided. It needs cash to handle the rivers of red ink coming from european operations, and to develop new cars. Plenty of cash to not go bankrupt, but definitely not a LBO candidate. Now if they had gotten rid of opel in the bankruptcy, the balance sheet and income statement would look much better.
Sure they have hybrids, albeit not many good ones that people want to buy though (eAssist is pretty lame and Two-Mode is too expensive on too bloated a vehicle in the first place). Per July 2012 Dashboard | Hybrid Cars, from a quick glance, they appear to be #2 in hybrid sales and have passed Honda. BTW, you should try telling the above to some of the GM fanboys (mostly anti-hybrid, based on myths, FUD and misinformation or excluding depreciation when it comes to TCO) at places like Cruzetalk...
