Someone linked to this site on another board, and apparently, it has a regular feature entitled “GM Deathwatch.” I don’t know how accurate his comments are (though I suspect he might be right), but with comments like
It’s an entertaining read.
When GM shut down the Oldsmobile line, they went dead in my eyes.
When GM shut down the Oldsmobile line, they went dead in my eyes.
Despite their ads to the contrary, Ford is the US leader in light and medium duty pickups and vans, and from what I heard on NPR a week or so ago, it’s only a matter of time before Toyota takes the championship belt as largest auto producer in the world. GM is a giant with feet of clay.
In 1976, GM was approaching 60% of domestic market share. In 1999, the Big Three had about 63% of the domestic market. Now the Big Two are at about half of the domestic market. They are way less than half in states with the most population growth.
My Mom is a stingy woman. She went to buy a new car, money is no problem, but she wants a deal. She got the Consumer Reports books, she annoyed salesmen at every possible off-brand, Nissan, KIA, perhaps used Daewoos. She bought an Impala.
Congratulations, The General can now beat KIA on price/value.
Apparently, GM is dead in both his eyes… 
When GM discontinued the Chevy Caprice, they cut out most of their fleet business. The Caprice was the #1 choice for police cars and taxicabs (at least in the New Orleans area) for years. I know several cab drivers and they’re grumbling because their Caprices are getting so old and have been rebuilt so many times, they’re having to retire them and switch to Ford Crown Vics.
BTW The #1 problem with the Crown Vic in New Orleans is that the streets are so bad that the suspensions fall apart in a matter of months. This problem may not exist in cities that actually maintain their streets.
Anyway, so I don’t think GM makes ANY full size RWD car anymore, except maybe the biggest Cadillac which is not really marketed towards fleets or people who don’t have a lot of money.
Then they also seem to have discontinued the Camaro/Firebird/TransAm. This leaves no RWD sportscar other than the Corvette which is out of most peoples price range (and this is another car that can’t practically be driven in New Orleans on a daily basis with the 3" ground clearance in the front, you’d lose the ground-effects the first week).
So all they have left is trucks and vans and a bunch of middle of the road economy type stuff. I haven’t seen anything I was impressed by come out of GM since the first few years of the Saturn and even that seems to have gone to hell.
I was driving through Jeddah last night with an old friend. Two fifty-year-old guys. We could name the Toyota lineup, but had no idea what the heck GMC is making nowadays. Toyota always has a Corolla. GMC has replaced the Cavalier with the Cobalt.
It is a sad, sad story of ineptitude.
Take a look at Buick’s lineup.
Two cars, which look about the same. Three SUV’s. They all look alike.
Time to kill Buick.
It’s my name in real life.
Huh?
Whoa! How’d that get posted in this thread???
I thought I was posting it in a completely different one.
<<sigh>>
Gee, and I was just about to use Google to find all the Dr. Buicks in Wisconsin so I could figure out where you live.
What’s worse is the Mid-East was the market for big GM cars, but when GM introduced the “Lifeboy” model Caprice’s, it started to dry up (because the damned things looked like a bar of soap). and then GM killed their big rear wheel drive cars. Considering where you are, if folks there don’t know what the hell GM’s building, it’s a very dark day for the company.
Given that GM drove Studebaker, Packard, and possibly Tucker under (not to mention totally screwing up several of their best models [I don’t care what GM says, that car they’re selling is **not** an Impala]), I’m not going to shed any tears at their passing
General Deathwatch! Pleasure to meet you, sir!
As a car-industry watcher for a couple of decades, I’ve watched the slow decline of GM. It used to be a running joke in the industry that “GM has the best engineers and the worst engineering.” It’s scary how institutional that became at the company. I remember a story (whether true or not, it’s instructive that people told it) about a young up & coming car designer, who won a huge, prestigious national design award in the U.S. coming out of school, and the prize included a job at GM. Everyone raved about how original and fresh his ideas were, and how significant he was going to be in the industry. So he went to work at GM. At the very bottom rung, lugging clay or something. Because that’s how it worked at GM, no exceptions. So, Nissan, looking to make a push into more North American cars, offered him a job: run a US-based design studio. “You pick the place, tell us the budget and we’ll get it done.” The first result from that venture? The Nissan 300ZX Turbo, arguably one of the most original GT designs in 30+ years.
GM faces some daunting hurdles: a dwindling marketshare, image problems, staggering healthcare and pension loads, obsolete technology, ancient tooling that will require billions of dollars to get current, vanishing capital assets (too much capacity with outdated tools makes for lots of scrap metal) and a rigid management structure that defies any logical attempts to rationalize or improve it. Cap all of that with a long, bitter, pitched battle that’s yet to really get wound up with organized labour, and it’s easy to see that things are going to get much, much bleaker at GM before they get better. The company is likely too big to actually die without someone in power actively pursuing that course, but the pain and bleeding has barely started. Of course, spinning off GMAC as some are rumbling about is a Good Thing for investors, but may well be the death knell for keeping the company from a Great Bankruptcy Debacle.
Hope he doesn’t tell his patients his real name.
Ooh, General Deathwatch has a nice ring to it!