GM October Sales Down 45.1%; Moves Up Red Tag Sale; Brings Back GarageMate Program

[doh]

Originally Posted by Kennyboy

The good news about this is next year their numbers are going to be back up 30%.

If there is a "Next Year"

[civilzues]

Oh man, does that suck. Maybe my mother will be getting a new car soon! Her lease is up in March...
GM only sold 50K more than Ford....

[windvale]

I'm going to go ahead and move the bankruptcy clock up to 11:58

[Buickman]

what would you expect after GM discount for everyone? even new Silverados for $10,000 didn't help. what now? another Red Toe Tag Sale of course. the madness continues under Red Ink Rick. when you engage in brand destroying marketing and distress merchandising there is no end to the downward spiral. here's an article I wrote three years ago addressing this very issue.

How to Get a Free Vehicle

Did you hear about the customer who went into a GM dealership? He qualified for the following:

AARP
GM Discount
Recent College Grad
Active Military
Olds Owner
Resident of North Central Region
GM Cardholder
Father who was a UAW Retiree
Owned Import
Took Overnight Test Drive
Incremental Allowance
Bonus Cash
Matching Downpayment

Needless to say, the car was FREE. He passed, saying he'd prefer to pay for a Toyota. The sales manager came in for the close and offered Two On Us. Didn't work. The car was already FREE. As a last ditch effort, the manager offered to remove the emblems.

Customer left saying he'd get back in touch.

Who is John Galt?

[neshapop]

Originally Posted by windvale

I'm going to go ahead and move the bankruptcy clock up to 11:58

I am sorry to say, but your timeline seems quite accurate.

[peterj2706]

Originally Posted by Rocket 88

This is so bad I can't even write what I'm thinking appropriately.... Eeeep!

Of course if it was Wall Street, a Bank or Insurance Company, Washington would be telling all of us we had to rush to help them... with say 750 BILLION DOLLARS. But since its GM, scew em. Thanks Uncle Sam.

Sorry but the auto guys are in line too, last I heard was 50 Billion, in addition to the billions that they have been receiving since the mid 1990's (for r&d on all the hybrids they've been rolling out). They just want more, Rick's nest egg isn't quite big enough yet to buy that island.....

[1999 White C5 Coupe]

Last November (2007) I purchased a new 2008 Chevrolet Impala LTZ. There were a variety of thing wrong with the car at delivery and the air bag system malfunctioned at 999 miles. The dealer service was poor.

I often wonder how many of the sales that GM loses are due to the economic downturn and how many are a result of GM customers that experienced previous poor quality and/or poor dealer service.

I am a long-time GM customer and supporter - and I can't believe the problems they now face. Many are a result of their own doing.

[Hitman1970]

Originally Posted by Buickman

what would you expect after GM discount for everyone? even new Silverados for $10,000 didn't help. what now? another Red Toe Tag Sale of course. the madness continues under Red Ink Rick. when you engage in brand destroying marketing and distress merchandising there is no end to the downward spiral. here's an article I wrote three years ago addressing this very issue.

How to Get a Free Vehicle

Did you hear about the customer who went into a GM dealership? He qualified for the following:

AARP
GM Discount
Recent College Grad
Active Military
Olds Owner
Resident of North Central Region
GM Cardholder
Father who was a UAW Retiree
Owned Import
Took Overnight Test Drive
Incremental Allowance
Bonus Cash
Matching Downpayment

Needless to say, the car was FREE. He passed, saying he'd prefer to pay for a Toyota. The sales manager came in for the close and offered Two On Us. Didn't work. The car was already FREE. As a last ditch effort, the manager offered to remove the emblems.

Customer left saying he'd get back in touch.

Who is John Galt?

Ouch. Both funny and sad.

[FenwickHockey65]

Originally Posted by windvale

I'm going to go ahead and move the bankruptcy clock up to 11:58

Wait. Did you account for daylight savings ending?

Heh. Trying to inject some happiness into this thread...


But on another note, GM still sold more cars than Ford and Toyota...our drop just looks worse...

[Member17739]

It's no wonder I got $12K off of my 09 CTS I got a few days ago.

[johnnyl321]

Originally Posted by Buickman

what would you expect after GM discount for everyone? even new Silverados for $10,000 didn't help. what now? another Red Toe Tag Sale of course. the madness continues under Red Ink Rick. when you engage in brand destroying marketing and distress merchandising there is no end to the downward spiral. here's an article I wrote three years ago addressing this very issue.

How to Get a Free Vehicle

Did you hear about the customer who went into a GM dealership? He qualified for the following:

AARP
GM Discount
Recent College Grad
Active Military
Olds Owner
Resident of North Central Region
GM Cardholder
Father who was a UAW Retiree
Owned Import
Took Overnight Test Drive
Incremental Allowance
Bonus Cash
Matching Downpayment

Needless to say, the car was FREE. He passed, saying he'd prefer to pay for a Toyota. The sales manager came in for the close and offered Two On Us. Didn't work. The car was already FREE. As a last ditch effort, the manager offered to remove the emblems.

Customer left saying he'd get back in touch.

Who is John Galt?

Hello JD. Having read Atlas Shrugged just 2 months ago, it all hit me like a ton of bricks. We step back and watch this financial bloodbath unfold before us and realize how it all could have and definitely should have been avoided. Same way as it was then, it is now. Mr. Wagoner will simply continue to sell off everything that isn't nailed down. After that, it's going to be further reduction of employees and salaries. After that, he's going to "retire" and leave the whole mess to someone else. Of course, by then GM will be in the beginning stages of having to declare bankruptcy...but it wasn't their fault. Customers just refuse to buy our vehicles, what could we do??
John Galt was the man who stopped the motor of the world. And like the last line in the book said...."now get the hell out of my way!"

[Ming]

Numbers like this have started losing their impact. But they do need to be held up to all of the others -- take, say, Toyota's performance as the zero mark and knock off 25 points or whatever they were down. Mazda was also down 25%, so it seems reasonable. Even Hyundai was down over 30%.

But 45% is an awful number no matter how you spin it, and points to extreme weakness in GM's product focus/lineup to-date. It indicates a reliance on vehicles popular when times are great (HUMMER, 4-door pickups, etc.), and a poorly marketed B-lineup of cars for bad economic times.

The Cruze should be here yesterday, even if it means using the Cobalt's engine for a year.

On the other hand, if gas prices don't go back up fairly soon, I wouldn't be surprised to see the cool small displacement turbo in the Cruze give way to older Ecotecs - especially if a Chrysler merger impacts the factories set to build it.

[sigma]

Disaster across the industry. Obviously though, it's just a GM problem caused by Wagoner and Lutz as Ford and Toyota didn't post massive sales declines.

[blaksabb]

Originally Posted by Member17739

It's no wonder I got $12K off of my 09 CTS I got a few days ago.

How did you do that?

[squat]

They can't survive huge losses like this for long. At least if GM was close to Toyota in the % down then I would say ok everyone's hurting. But GM is more than 2x as much down compared to Toyota, people are leaving the GM brand and buying foreign right now. Something has to be done, I don't know what, but something.