Chrysler can always do what any private company could do when it wants more cash, namely go public and do a stock sale. (Why government should be spending billions to bail out a private company is beyond me and this discussion thread!)
I agree with you Sam. GM makes enough good cars and trucks that with enough cutting it should be able to survive. Chrysler, on the other hand, doesn’t have much of anything going for it. At this point, I think the best choice might be to sell off whatever good assets Chrysler has to Ford and GM and let the rest of the company die.
Well, and there’s another problem. I’m about ready to get an Aura, march right in and buy one. I’m not going to until I know what’s going to happen to Saturn.
I agree. Even today, when the cars are most the same, the experience at a big 3 dealership is shockingly bad compared to one at Toyota or VW.
If GM goes tits up, you’ll still be able to find parts for your Saturn, and I’d be willing to bet that there will be a government run corporation dedicated to dealing with warranty claims.
You are not, however, going to see GM simply vanish, unless the entire US government implodes, and were that to happen, you’d have much larger worries than where to find spare parts for your car.
The Japanese companies with operations in the US have stated that they do not want to see any of the Big Three go under, because that will mean the loss of their parts suppliers located here. Don’t forget that GM, both through the parent company, as well as through its various divisions, supplies an awful lot of things to the government. American General might build Humvees, but they use GM parts to do so, and simply supplying military contracts isn’t going to be profitable enough to keep the kind of operations going that provide the parts.
There are three possible outcomes for the situation with GM:
1.) The government steps in, gives everyone a royal bitch slapping and there’s a big shakeup at the company in terms of management and labor.
2.) GM is put on lifesupport until the economy sorts itself out, and then the plug is pulled.
3.) The government props GM until they can find a buyer to take GM off their hands. This seems to be the least likely option to me, as none of the foreign car makers in the US will want to touch GM, so long as the UAW is involved. They work very hard at keeping the UAW out of their US operations, and owning GM is going to make it hard to do this.
I suspect that option one is going to be what happens, with a huge amount of rebranding done to try and get people to forget about GM and its various divisions. The names of the various divisions will be tossed aside, and new ones created, which will either try to adopt a patriotic flavor (Say “Ameripride Motors” or “US Automotive Group”) or they’ll try to have a “hip” Asian sounding name, like Motorola toyed with briefly in their “Hello Moto” campaign.
Ah, Tuckerfan… you are so optimistic. Suffice it to say that I would bet the current Congress/President would eat their own livers before they let an opportunity like GM’s crash slip away.
An opportunity for what, exactly?
Almost anything they want. As long as the auto sector is ailing, they can issue bailouts or whatnot, and use that as leverage for other political goals. If they want electric cars, or more gas mileage, or certain kinds of sales to the poor, or something… they can get it. Plus, it’s an ongoing disaster they can use to distract from any scandals or actual business that might pop up.
Half the Dope probably thinks I’m crazy, but I think in terms of “devious”. And I very much doubt that most Senators or Reps have any interest beyond getting elected and getting rich, and it’s amazing how easily they do both. Big problems like this are a godsend to these people.
My concern is not GM going tits-up, but rather their desire to sell or close the nameplate.
You’ll still be able to get parts for the vehicle, and service can be done by any GM dealer.
If they want…
It seems to me that more than Congress/the President, the ones who want those thing are the customers!
Hybrid electric cars like the Prius are in great demand. And people are eagerly waiting to buy the electric Volt (but for some reason the manufacturer isn’t going to have it to sell for a year or two?). And more gas mileage – customers have been buying the cars with better gas mileage for a while now, even before gas hit $4/gallon. Around here, there are a lot of gas-guzzling SUV’s that spend much of their time sitting in garages. And they sure don’t sell like the economical compact cars.
Customers are the ones driving these demands. If these car companies paid more attention to what their customers want, they wouldn’t be in such trouble. And IMO, Congress is just the followers here, coming along after the customers have made their wants known.
If there is (or has been) a demand, why aren’t there more electric cars on the market? Leaving aside any conspiracy theory type stuff, either the demand really isn’t or hasn’t been there or the technology simply isn’t up to snuff yet…or some combination of the two.
As for GM and Chrysler…not a chance. 
Well, that’s slightly tongue in cheek…my guess is actually since the government will bail them out if it really looks like they are going TU, they will probably survive long enough for the economy to pick back up in a few years.
-XT
Toyota has been cranking out the Prius as fast as they are able, and the other car makers haven’t had a problem getting their hybrids to sell. The truth of the matter is that car makers, by and large, have not thought about fuel economy. Toyota invented the stop/start technology which offers a ~10% improvement in fuel economy back in the 1960s, but no one put into production until the Prius first rolled off the assembly line. Now, it is becoming standard equipment on lots of cars, hybrids or not. Both this and six speed transmissions offer the potential of increased mileage without the added complexity of a hybrid set up, and both of them could have been done at any point in the past few decades. The car makers didn’t seem to think that car buyers would be willing to put up with a slight price increase if it saved gas. (Utterly stupid on the car makers part, IMHO. Who’s going to notice if their new car costs a few hundreds of dollars more? I seriously doubt that folks would turn down a car nearly identical to their present model if it got better gas mileage.) Most people (incorrectly, I’ll admit) believe that the car companies are in bed with the oil companies and are keeping technology to improve mileage off the market. Everyone I know claims to have a “friend of a friend” who knows someone who got a car that had impossibly high gas mileage.
I agree. I hope we don’t lose either GM or Chrysler (Ford can suck eggs as far as I’m concerned. Too many of the things they do just defy common sense for my taste.), but I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t see one of them folded into the other or somehow dramatically transformed into something unrecognizable by us today.
Huh. Ford is, of course, the one company of the three that has not yet felt it necessary to take bail-out money. I suppose that’s a lack of common sense.
Ford was thought to be a goner long before this, which is why William Clay Ford stepped down out the lead position and hired the former head of Boeing to take his place. The reason Ford didn’t ask for money (only a line of credit) was that they’d already amassed a bunch of loans to help them restructure the company into profitability.
Chrysler, at about the time Ford was experiencing a decline, was highly profitable and had just been bought by Mercedes (who promptly sucked all the money they could out of Chrysler before paying Cerebus to take Chrysler off their hands). GM, by contrast, had been losing money on their US operations for well over a decade, while their overseas arms had been raking in the cash.
And if you’ve spent anytime under the hood of a Ford vehicle, after spending an equal amount of time under the hood of a vehicle made by damned near anyone else, will quickly realize that the engineers at Ford have a distinct lack of common sense. (I want to beat the living hell out of a Ford engineer. They have committed crimes against nature with some of the things they’ve done, IMHO.)
Really? Because I’ve heard only good things about the Focus and especially the Mondeo.
Well, not much to worry about (the engine and transmission are shred by Chevrolet Impala). I really like my car-and the shocked look on BMW325i driver’s faces when I blast by them (like they were standing still).
Ford’s problem has historically been that a Ford is running the company. The cars are good, generally, the plants are good, the management is even good, it’s just that Mr. Ford makes weird damn decisions. (Like the front end of the second gen Taurus.) (Or the Edsel in general. Needed another six months of engineering work.)
Chrysler’s problem has traditionally been the plants. Good management, exciting design… but the QC in the plants sucks beyond suck. Mercedes almost killed themselves trying to upgrade it to tolerable, and… failed. There’s a reason they focused on the low-tech hemi. Can’t effing reliably make anything better.
GM’s problem is that in the 70s they decided that management was management and they took a whole generation of management from Proctor and Gamble, and decided to sell product, not cars. And you get things like the current boring GTO, and by extension, the entire faceplate of Pontiac. There are car guys there, and they band together. They’ve (barely) kept the Vette intact, and they created SRT, but they really are fighting the entire management to try to deliver elan.
I’d agree that Ford has done some horrible things in engineering placement, yeah. And, if I had my druthers, all the nameplates would drop a brand or three.
Oh, and the Euro-Focus is an amazing car. Ford Europe makes great small cars. It’s coming to the US… either next year or the year after.
The problem is that they are selling luxury items at a time when people are financially very afraid. The economy has been thoroughly looted of all the spare money. Loans are difficult to get and are expensive . You are wary of making a long term financial commitment. People are going to keep their cars longer. It is a tough market. it is not all their fault.
Ford was given credit for creating the middle class . Higher wages helped create demand for his products. Dropping wages and job insecurity are hurting them badly.