GM's Problems: Who's To Blame? You Tell Me

[tgagneguam]

Originally Posted by Buickman

one guess who I blame for the Red Ink (....)

You slay me.

And it's nice to know you drive a Buick Enclave; good choice.

[TruckMan]

It's got to be the leadership. I don't know if you can say the current leaders, but whoever made the decisions that got GM into this boat. I'd have to imagine things were bad way before these guys got into office. Maybe they're doing the best they can with the cards they were dealt? I can't say.

The UAW is to blame somewhat, but that is still managment's responsibility for allowing those leaches to suck GM dry. And don't give the UAW too much credit for improving manufacturing. Any worker can make suggestions to make their jobs easier and improve quality, not just union ones.

But the biggest thing GM failed to do was plan ahead. They failed to see beyond truck/suv sales. GM is constantly trying to react to the market instead of being proactive and leading the market (one of Toyota's greatest strengths is being proactive). That puts GM at a 3 to 6 year disadvantage to every market trend. That's unaceptable - especially if trends change faster than you can react.

[SlySy]

Why do people always look for someone to blame. Here's an idea, they should forget the past and work towards a profitable future. Blaming management, workers and Asians don't fix what's wrong. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

[61BelAir]

Originally Posted by VCDJ

Billions because of those trucks they made crapy cars. SO as a corporation they lost billions and that is something that you know too.

They ignored cars because there was money to be made on Trucks and SUV's. You know yourself that GM's loss came from other circumstances and not because of trucks and SUV's.

[slowinthefastlane]

Originally Posted by Hurricane

3). Is it America's love affair with trucks and SUVs?
On the one hand, we demanded the big rigs and GM gave us what we wanted. On the other, it wasn't until gas started surging that we moved out of SUVs and into cars.

This doesn't matter. Consumer tastes change - sometimes overnight. GM needs to be ahead of consumer trends and be able to build what the customer wants now and not what they wanted yesterday. Macy's would be struggling if they continued to sell clothing that was no longer in style.

[skylark68]

I blame Dubyah and unfair trading practices among our rising sun friends.

We have a very free and open market and our so called allies do not.

[FierySolstice]

Its the leaders. They sat around in the 80's on thier high horses and didn't care about their products all the while the Japanese companies were hard at work on their own products. They need to know what is going to be the new trend before the trend happens, just like in fashion. Nissan did it with the Murano crossover and Toyota did it with the Prius. They did have one before everyone else with the Pontiac G6 convertible, but that isn't a high volume seller. Look what they are doing with the Camaro. It is taking entirely too long to produce this car, Dodge is already out the with Challenger and the new Mustang is already in the works. Their crossovers are too big and they are relying too much on SUVs and trucks. The Cobalt needs to be completely redone, the G5 is horrible, and the Astra doesn't have a enough power. Plus, the Aveo is a joke compared to the Fit and the Versa. They need to develop Pontiac into something more than just a performance Chevy. Buick needs to get more refined, but they need to do it quicker. They need to finish building Cadillac to compete with the likes of BMW and Mercedes. Where are the large and smaller Cadillacs? They should of already been here by now!!! What are they waiting for? Chevy and Buick don't need large cars, they should be sold at a smaller volume. No large car is a fantastic seller, the exception might be the Maxima. Not even the Avalon is all that great and Honda doesn't even have a large sedan. Man what I wouldn't give to work for GM and guide them!

[FierySolstice]

Originally Posted by skylark68

I blame Dubyah and unfair trading practices among our rising sun friends.

We have a very free and open market and our so called allies do not.

I definitely agree with this as well!!!!

[GMC-70]

Originally Posted by VCDJ

Who ever is running that company is reason for gm problems. They had 10+ years to make gm profitable and they failed. They lost 10% of market share. Closed down so many factories sold everything that was there to sell and they are still loosing billions. Now gm market cap is 9 billion and toyota is 154 billion. GM focused of truck and suvs for so long and even then they could not make a profit and you would think that they would change their plan and maybe focus on builiding cars so that you have good future. You can not tell me that those two idiots at gm did not expect gas price to rise. Plus gm still is behind in quality. Honda, toyota, ford, nissan they all make higher quality cars then gm. Again another management failure. This is why when gm produces one good car it does not sell well. IT is because gm burned so many people with poor quality cars that people do not trust them any more. Again who is to blame for that? IT is gm management. Those two idiots must go or gm will be history soon.

Thats strange becuase my entire family has purchased mostly GM cars since the late 60s and the only GM car that gave us serious trouble was a 1989 Cavalier that my now wife purchased from a rental company back in 1991. Other then that all of our GM cars have served us well. This talk about all past GM cars being crap is blown way out of proportion. There were some crappers (as all manufacturers produce every so often) but people need to stop the BS with the all old GM cars were crap BS--its really getting tired.

[GMC-70]

Originally Posted by FierySolstice

No large car is a fantastic seller, the exception might be the Maxima. Not even the Avalon is all that great and Honda doesn't even have a large sedan. Man what I wouldn't give to work for GM and guide them!

Isn't the new Accord now classified as a large sedan??? If so theres your large seller for ya

[Kennyboy]

I can't really blamed everybody and everything at GM for the negative perception they have today. The oil crisis, the inability to produce a small car, too much focus on large suvs, lagging in hybrid technology, the unfair trading practices, foreign gov't support of their local industries, etc., have all have their place on the current situation in which GM is in today. But never mind what happen in the past, but move forward and looking towards the future.

[t-rex]

Let's not forget Detroit shooting itself in the foot by trying to take the easy way out.

Rather than design and produce good small cars, which late 70s/early 80s customers wanted, they urged Washington to forge a "Gentleman's Agreement" with Japan, limiting sales of Japanese cars here to 1.8 million per annum beginning in 1980. That year, the market shrank dramatically and those 1.8 million cars represented a substantially larger slice of the market.

The artificial lack of supply led to high prices for even some rather lowly imports, cementing their image in the public mind as being superior products. Not that Detroit was producing anything of remotely decent quality (in comparison) in those days.

Then we got doublespeak out of Detroit's Execs that was straight out of an Orwell novel. Ford most vehemently led the pack supporting import restraints, yet claimed it wouldn't produce small cars because the public didn't want them. Well if the public didn't want them, why are you begging to have their sales artificially capped? Chrysler simply rebadged Mitsubishi products while GM avoided small cars altogether.

Then of course we had the "Reagan Revolution" where Joe American became completely ignored as a political system began to systematically dismantle this country's production base, and shifting our economy to what effectively became a huge numbers racket. Of course to obfuscate the public's realisation that this was happening, they were spoon fed a media diet of every panic-inducing scare imaginable: AIDS, the homeless, and let's not forget heating up the Cold War, funneling trillions into a bloated military (and just who profits from that?) while our steel industry collapsed completely and the family farm went the way of the Dodo. Of course Joe Q. Public let it all happen, since he was oblivious to reality, instead getting an artificial warm fuzzy patriotic feeling from joingoistic hokey Lee Greenwood songs.

It's not GM management's fault. Nor the UAW's. It's the fault of the bulk of American people who, for all reasons not-practical, bought Detroit's festering piles of **** for so many decades. Flag-waving Midwesterners, defacing import cars with eggs and other sundry goodies, most vehemently stuck to the notion of the superiority of the raggedy Detroit junkmobile, and representing a pathetical mentality that still pervades to this day in most of the country: the fat, lazy, notion that instead of getting off your a** and producing something superior, you simply outlaw the superior product so you can continue producing garbage. Funny how the most ardent flag-waving "Amurricans" most closely parallel the Soviet mentality of how things should be produced.

Okay so Red-Ink Rick and his twirling band of merry fartknockers surely have done their perfunctory job of dismantling GM bit by bit, slowly enough that nobody'll notice, while their Ivy-League brethren make fortunes on the desiccation.

But they couldn't have began this process had the American people not allowed them to do so. And specifically I mean the bulk of you "GM Fans" who vehemently stood by a company that didn't give a **** about you, or their cars, in the first place.

GM's no more than a shining example of the pathetic insane asylum that America, thanks to its people, has sadly become. This country can once again become great, but it won't happen with the line of thinking that's pervaded for the past half century.

[VCDJ]

Originally Posted by t-rex

Let's not forget Detroit shooting itself in the foot by trying to take the easy way out.

Rather than design and produce good small cars, which late 70s/early 80s customers wanted, they urged Washington to forge a "Gentleman's Agreement" with Japan, limiting sales of Japanese cars here to 1.8 million per annum beginning in 1980. That year, the market shrank dramatically and those 1.8 million cars represented a substantially larger slice of the market.

The artificial lack of supply led to high prices for even some rather lowly imports, cementing their image in the public mind as being superior products. Not that Detroit was producing anything of remotely decent quality (in comparison) in those days.

Then we got doublespeak out of Detroit's Execs that was straight out of an Orwell novel. Ford most vehemently led the pack supporting import restraints, yet claimed it wouldn't produce small cars because the public didn't want them. Well if the public didn't want them, why are you begging to have their sales artificially capped? Chrysler simply rebadged Mitsubishi products while GM avoided small cars altogether.

Then of course we had the "Reagan Revolution" where Joe American became completely ignored as a political system began to systematically dismantle this country's production base, and shifting our economy to what effectively became a huge numbers racket. Of course to obfuscate the public's realisation that this was happening, they were spoon fed a media diet of every panic-inducing scare imaginable: AIDS, the homeless, and let's not forget heating up the Cold War, funneling trillions into a bloated military (and just who profits from that?) while our steel industry collapsed completely and the family farm went the way of the Dodo. Of course Joe Q. Public let it all happen, since he was oblivious to reality, instead getting an artificial warm fuzzy patriotic feeling from joingoistic hokey Lee Greenwood songs.

It's not GM management's fault. Nor the UAW's. It's the fault of the bulk of American people who, for all reasons not-practical, bought Detroit's festering piles of **** for so many decades. Flag-waving Midwesterners, defacing import cars with eggs and other sundry goodies, most vehemently stuck to the notion of the superiority of the raggedy Detroit junkmobile, and representing a pathetical mentality that still pervades to this day in most of the country: the fat, lazy, notion that instead of getting off your a** and producing something superior, you simply outlaw the superior product so you can continue producing garbage. Funny how the most ardent flag-waving "Amurricans" most closely parallel the Soviet mentality of how things should be produced.

Okay so Red-Ink Rick and his twirling band of merry fartknockers surely have done their perfunctory job of dismantling GM bit by bit, slowly enough that nobody'll notice, while their Ivy-League brethren make fortunes on the desiccation.

But they couldn't have began this process had the American people not allowed them to do so. And specifically I mean the bulk of you "GM Fans" who vehemently stood by a company that didn't give a **** about you, or their cars, in the first place.

GM's no more than a shining example of the pathetic insane asylum that America, thanks to its people, has sadly become. This country can once again become great, but it won't happen with the line of thinking that's pervaded for the past half century.

I agree with everyting that you said. Plus to add to that. Those so called patriots are purchasing mexican made gm product over American made japanies cars. YOu are right, how can anybody support a company that does not give a s**t about you. Why would you buy their product. Or when they tell you Buy American hhr that is made in mexico? why would i do that? i will rather buy American made honda. GM will go out of business soon. Because of idiots who keep buying crap like aveo and cobalt. IF they told gm we will never buy this junk from you. GM would produce superior product. But they see there are idiots who will buy junk so why make anything better?

[Hurricane]

Originally Posted by skylark68

I blame Dubyah and unfair trading practices among our rising sun friends.

We have a very free and open market and our so called allies do not.

Yes, because GM certainly gave 110% effort in trying to sell world class cars in Japan.

[Uzzy]

#1 UAW/CAW

#2 Dealer Network

/thread