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Smart is a toy for over-monied look at me types here, but in Euro cities is a viable car and seems to be a relative success. Of course, they get a diesel too.
And their GM products are generally nicer too...especially true in the past.
David Barkholz
Automotive News -- September 20, 2010 - 12:01 am ET
Steven Rattner, former chief of the Obama auto task force, said General Motors' corporate culture was dysfunctional when he arrived last year.
"I was completely unprepared for what I saw once I got inside of General Motors," Rattner, 58, said in an interview with Automotive News last week.
"I certainly had read about GM. I assumed there was some level of journalistic hype. And, in fact, it was worse than anything I had imagined."
In Rattner's new book, Overhaul: An Insider's Account of the Obama Administration's Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry, Obama auto task force member Harry Wilson summed up GM simply: "A culture of losing."
The good news is that now, after nearly a year under outsider CEOs Ed Whitacre and Dan Akerson, GM is making significant progress, Rattner said.
Whitacre "sent the message that this is no longer a bureaucratic battleship churning its way through the waters. It has to become more lean and mean."
Rattner said Akerson, who took over as CEO on Sept. 1, "is completely in Whitacre's mold and mentality."
In his book Rattner, a 26-year veteran of Wall Street, relates example after example of an insular, bureaucratic organization that avoided decisions while the company deteriorated.
For instance, Rattner said former CEO Rick Wagoner in 2008 refused to prepare for bankruptcy even though GM was desperately short of cash. The delays ended up costing taxpayers "a lot of money" when GM did file for bankruptcy, Rattner said.
Rattner, who led the task force from February 2009 until he resigned that July, is especially critical of GM's finance department.
"It was stunning to walk in there and realize that the company needed massively more cash to operate than the size of company would suggest because they didn't know where the cash was," Rattner said last week. "That they couldn't tell us on any given day within $500 million how much cash the company had. That's an amazing thing."
Even today, 14 months out of bankruptcy, GM lists financial reporting as a risk factor in its recent registration for an initial public offering. Rattner said last week that it may take another year or so to work out all those bugs.
He said insularity, in which GM lifers dominated management ranks, combined with arrogance to contribute to GM's toxic culture.
"Until this latest round of changes, GM had an incredibly small number of people who had not been there their entire careers," Rattner said. "It was a culture of meeting after meeting and process."
In his book, Rattner writes that then-CEO Fritz Henderson lost points with the board for being "doggedly loyal to GM people and ways. Ray Young was still CFO. [Fritz's] decision to bring back Bob Lutz left many on the board scratching their heads. And when Kay Barclay, the head of human resources, finally resigned, Fritz proposed a GM manufacturing executive to take her post."
Rattner said last week that GM's culture was outwardly friendly and collegial -- "so much that nobody ever wanted to break the glass and say this is wrong."
But now, after nearly a year under Whitacre and Akerson, GM's culture is changing, Rattner said. He helped recruit both Whitacre and Akerson to the post-bankruptcy board.
"Whitacre changed a lot of people," Rattner said. "He changed some of the jobs twice when he wasn't happy with whom he had. He promoted and empowered some insiders who brought in outsiders."
Read more: http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100920/OEM02/309209964/1423- #ixzz1050CYQEI
That's been obvious to me for the past 30 years I've been following the auto industry. Just a few years ago I read a quote from Bob Lutz, "We've been number 1 for the past 75 years, I see no reason why we won't be number 1 for the next 75", when he was asked about GM's standing as the worlds biggest automaker. What the heck was he smoking. Ilaughed out loud when I read that. IIRC it was in Business Week or Fortune, or a similar business rag back in '07 or so.
It ain't fixed until it executes effectively at all levels of operations - design, manufacturing, and workforce. Not the GM story at the moment.
Regards,
OW
China's SAIC may invest in GM's share sale, chairman says
1:36 am U.S. ET, Sept. 21
SAIC Motor Corp. said it may invest in the initial public offering of partner General Motors Co., cementing ties between the biggest U.S. and Chinese automakers. China's largest carmaker will consider investing in GM if “conditions are favorable,” Chairman Hu Maoyuan said. The company hasn't yet made a decision whether to make the investment and is waiting for the details of the share sale, he added. Read More »
Read more: http://www.autonews.com/#ixzz10B05cY2x
They'll bite, though. It's meant to be.
Regards,
OW
even attempt to purchase a controlling interest in GM
when the total market cap was in the $2B range...
- Ray
What's a couple billion here & there...?
$133/share
This tells me that GM will no doubt be a takeover candidate by an off-shore behemoth.
Better set up everything feng-shui at the Ivory Towers in Detroit! Wouldn't want to put off the future owners!
Think ahead, People!
Regards,
OW
We can write pages and pages on how this whole GM bailout, and their business practices are so counter to everything I ever learned 30-40 years ago, that this country stood for. There is a total lack of morals and ethics in our leaders, and an understanding of how government, business, and religion should stay separated.
Anyway - let's see if in 10 years the Chinese don't own most of GM, have any of their technology they want, and Detroit has even more farmland then they now plan on. Has "The Rise and Fall of the American Empire" title been used yet?
The GM debacle is just a symptom of the disease, a mere attendee to the madness.
Remember that in 1979, our current competitors were subsistence economies in China, India, and eastern Europe. There was no such thing as Hyundai and Kia, and Japanese cars were still strange. So the rest of the world caught up to the U.S.a nd in some cases surpassed us. So our consumers gave for years their money to the $3/hr worker overseas rather than the $15/hr Detroit union guy, and Detroit and the unions fate was sealed if they stayed on course.
Then that goes on for 20 years and lo-and-behold the wonder-boy executives in Detroit are surprised when a recession hits (they do periodically) and the companies are bankrupt. 20 years of deterioration and they don't see (or at least admit) they see their demise! Fools! Utimate fools! Or ultimate liars! But the unions and execs were smart right. They made as much as they could for as long as they could, and then stuck the government with the bill! So maybe they were smart? GM's executives were smart not to sell off GM assets to keep out of bankruptcy. It was brilliant of them to keep GM's size up, so then they become "too big tio fail"; at least that's the phoney story they told; and thereofre the "too big to fail" story keeps the cancer of GM still going. Still siphoning $ from the U.S. Treasury to pay for all the union wages, retirees, the new GM multi-million $ execs., and the GM lobbyists who will funnel $ back to the politicians to get reelected.
Buy Ford! And hope a new American car company forms.
Actually, it's really only the last factor that is responsible for the lack of qualified workers. We spent two decades slowly gutting education in the U.S. and well, we're faced with an entire generation of woefully under-trained. Now, to be sure, they are as smart as they ever were. Just without good education, well, what could have been a person with a Masters in engineering or biology, you get a guy who maybe has a BS. And that just doesn't compete in the global economy any more.
We've become complacent and assume that we are smarter and better. But that's only going to remain true if you make your kids smarter and better. I really fear what's going to happen in the next 10-20 years as the older generation dies off and there's literally nobody to replace them as we face a 20-30 year "DUH Generation" in charge.
Exactly. I don't know which is worse. The cast of Jersey Shore or those that watch it:(
They've had nothing but (censored) on the air for twenty years or so.
Back to the topic?
Ever hear of an economic depression? Hard working people have been losing their jobs all over the country. Some people lost all of their money when the market crashed; hard working people that were in the middle class suddenly plummeted into poverty. These people did nothing wrong, and yet are suddenly unable to pay their mortgages or rent, their car payments, their loans, or their credit card bills. They weren't busy hanging out with thugs, they weren't doing drugs, and they made all the right choices, and they still got screwed over.
You are correct, people need to make the most of what is given to them, and they need to to take responsibility to strive to greater things in this world. But you have to take into account all the extenuating circumstances that exist in this world. Do not assume that because a person is poor that they are lazy, drug-addicted low lifes.
Oh, and if the middle class disappears, then we are in BIG trouble. That's the problem in every third-world country; no middle class or a very small one. All the wealth is in the hands of a few. That is what gives rise to anarchy, rebellion, militancy, revolution, etc.
Has nothing to do with cars. And blah blah blah.
Wanna talk about cars now???????
Wanna talk cars now?
Well, not exactly. What happens is that that number also is heavily skewed by the number of people living in urban areas where the costs are several orders higher. If you move out to the country, costs are extremely reasonable. But it means for a long commute. Thankfully, tele-commuting or mass transit can be an option now. Or just working out of your own home.
Consider that you can pay $400,000 for a cheap house in Los Angeles and *maybe* it's not in a gang-infested part of town. Yet move 30 miles farther away and you can get the same home for half as much money. Since (actual) housing costs are about half of take-home pay for many families That 90 hours drops to a 60 hours or so range just by having a less expensive home. Still awful, but far more reasonable.
The "middle class" after WWII really was a generation of engineers, business degrees, and so on - educated people with large numbers of first and post-graduate degrees. Now that that is gone, well, it also is disappearing I wonder how long it will take our leaders to realize that gutting education is also killing the middle class.
note - I think they know it, to be honest, and that's their plan. A middle class is dangerous to those in power and their long-term goals. What you want is a small upper class that you can get power from and/or minimize as need be on specific issues(too few to make a numbers difference) and then throw smoke and mirrors at the too dumb to realize it masses. It's hell for the population and country in general(Mexico is a perfect example of this ideology in action), but it's fantastic for those in power.
The real issue, though, is that the system only works if you close yourself off like Mexico largely has. The U.S. is too spread out and too global at this point to deal with such a middle-class vacuum now that players like China are in the mix and more than willing to take jobs, industry, research, and even education away from us. Without the Middle class being strong, there's literally no safety margin to fall back upon, and so it's terribly easy for other large predators to rip out pieces or your economy. Eventually you're left with a skeleton.(see England's auto industry for an example of 100 years of being nibbled to death by outsiders)
Ugly I.P Center.
Uninspired dash
It does look like of high quality though. Note the zero-glare panel under the windshield, and the stitches above the instument panel.
http://blogs.insideline.com/straightline/2010/09/spy-photos-2012-chevy-malibu-in- terior-caught.html
Cookie-cutter design schools churning out cookie-cutter students that all have the same cookie-cutter designs.
The song "little boxes" comes to mind.
Silence is approval.
Regards,
OW
You may be right, everything is global anyway. The interesting thing to me is all of the different break even numbers being thrown around. I've heard $60 something per share, then $80 something and now what, $133? Either everyone is talking a different profit level like net, gross, marginal (incremental) etc, or there is an awful lot of speculation, ignorance, or confusion. Maybe they all want the latter?
The best thing going for GM is probably all of the Asian recalls lately. Seems like Asian vehicles are getting a little worse, some of D3 a little better - might be pretty similar to each other in a few years. I guess that would be a good thing for the consumer and competition. Toyota seems to have caught the old GM-itis and Honda sometimes sounds like it is beginning to come down with it too - arrogance and excessive cost cutting degrading the product.
Let me know when GM looses it's arrogance.
Regards,
OW
Here's to continued low quality product born from spiteful bedfellows!
Go USA!
Regards,
OW
2- Ford: --------------- 1,439,213 up 21%
3- Toyota: ------------ 1,311,316 up 2%
4- Honda: ------------ 912,436 up 4%
5- Chrysler: --------- 820,220 up 15%
6- Nissan: ------------ 673,701 up 16%
7- Hyundai: ---------- 410,047 up 20%
8- Kia:------------------ 268,024 up 12%
9- Volkswagen: ----- 192,690 up 21%
Chrysler is the surprise and the one to watch. Maybe Ford should have pushed trucks and SUVs more?
(Sept 2010, %gain over 9/2009, YTD 2010)
Hyundai Sonata 20,639 161.3% 149,123
Chevrolet Malibu 16,289 55.4% 163,246
Get used to it. :shades:
Regards,
OW
Wow, I can hardly wait for that IPO! What a great investment us taxpayers made!
:mad:
I think both Ford and GM have gotten a bit aggressive with pricing which may be part of it?
They are the decorated lot and rental queens and quite experienced at that !! :shades: