Tuesday, February 12, 2008
You Go, Detroit! (Pt. 2)
Not content with the title of "Most Miserable City," Detroit seems ready to take the next step into economic oblivion as General Motors announced a $38 billion loss for 2007. More remarkable is the news that GM is offering a buy-out to all of their US workers.
As I have opined before, GM's problems were not primarily caused by those workers-- This debacle was mostly caused by the decision of management to design and engineer too many crappy cars, cars that were never intended to be a good value, fun to drive, or generally worthwhile. The Cadillac Cimarron pictured here is one example, but if you don't believe me, rent (for as brief a period as possible) a GM minivan. That should do it. Yes, they can make good cars, and do, but it is madness to make an overly-broad product line which is pockmarked with stinkers. Drive a Cobalt, and you will probably never think about buying a Malibu.
At least they can still afford to have Mitt Romney DJ their parties.
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Of course, the loss was mostly a paper loss due to fancy bookkeeping. Helps with taxes, etc.
But the headlines are awful, so as usual, GM is being too clever by half.
I rented a GM produced Hummer a few weeks back and was not really impressed. I expected something a lot more interesting and luxurious for the money those things cost.
But the headlines are awful, so as usual, GM is being too clever by half.
I rented a GM produced Hummer a few weeks back and was not really impressed. I expected something a lot more interesting and luxurious for the money those things cost.
# posted by 
: 10:54 AM
: 10:54 AM
There is an amazing book entitled COMEBACK about the industry.
In it there are many examples of this kind of thing, but my favorite was the Pontiac fake sports car.... Every single one of them just sort of seemed to spontaneously catch on fire after a while. and GM did not even acknowledge or admit to the problem for years.. Instead they left the dealers to deal with it...
Such a dumb move, but even more weird is that this car was called the Pontiac Fiero... which of course means, "Fire."
Don't Hummers cost like 120K? Its totally worth it, though, you never know when you might need a winch to get out of parking lot at the mall....
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In it there are many examples of this kind of thing, but my favorite was the Pontiac fake sports car.... Every single one of them just sort of seemed to spontaneously catch on fire after a while. and GM did not even acknowledge or admit to the problem for years.. Instead they left the dealers to deal with it...
Such a dumb move, but even more weird is that this car was called the Pontiac Fiero... which of course means, "Fire."
Don't Hummers cost like 120K? Its totally worth it, though, you never know when you might need a winch to get out of parking lot at the mall....
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