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Lemko! GM needs a million more customers just like you, except that they need to buy a new GM car every three years, not drive ones that are 20 years old!
The problem is... too little, too late.
After they go bankrupt and have to re-do things:
1: fire 50% of the management. Get new blood in. Doesn't really matter who, either. Just different ideas.
1A: Don't hire new car designers from the major art and design schools. They are infected with massive amounts of group-think. Think less jellybean and more Dodge Charger or similar.
2:Drop all brands. All brands become one "GM". You have a GM LaCrosse, a GM Vibe, a GM Malibu, a GM Solstice, and so on. Maybe keep Cadillac. Everything else gets melted together. *note* - this doesn't mean you kill off viable singular examples like the three remaining Buick models. Just rebadge them as GM and move on. This is what Toyota does. 20+ cars and two main brands to cover them all.
3:Drop all cars that are more than 50% sold to rental fleets and corporate sales.
4:Make everything RWD again. If it's not RWD, then it's AWD. Nobody likes front wheel drive cars. Stop selling refrigerators and start selling cars that you lust after. A dozen hot cars are better than 50 lame ones. Just look at the new Porsche Panamera. It's jaw-dropping. And goes like a cruise missile. We need cars that are great and wonderful and well, have an attitude a lot like Carls Jr.
Carl's Jr. a couple of years ago said "screw the yuppies... we're going to make food that tastes good and who cares if your arteries clog up!". No, really. And they consistently rank near the top of the fast food chains. GM needs a lot more of this attitude and a lot LESS of the oatmeal cereal blandness.
****
The idea here would be simple - take the 2-3 good vehicles from each make and take the resulting 15-20 cars and presto - you have a new "GM" make filled with unique and viable designs.
This is the simplest way to solve the problem, because if you are only selling the cars people want, and only to people, and not rental companies, resale value stays high and people actually DO buy your vehicles.
And you can get all of his done with 100-200K employees. Just by pruning the dead weight.
There are many of us here who feel they make some decent products also; though not that cheap for the material quality you get. The problem many of us have with GM or the other domestics is that they can't manage their business, and we're tired of hearing their childish whining, arrogance and incompetence.
The product is not that bad; it's everything else.
And GM keeps mentioning that they can't go CH11 or CH7 because no one will want to buy a new car from a bankrupt company. Well news-flash Mr. Wagoner - we know you're close to bankruptcy already!! and this already affects many peoples' decisions.
I would factor into any decision whether to buy a car from the Big 3 that the warranty may be void within a year. I would consider the voiding of the warranty to be worth about 10% of the value of a vehicle. So I would want to see this taken off any Red Tag price and rebates. I would think of getting a Vette if GM goes under, but without a warranty, the ones I see now around $41K had better be closer to $35K.
Some of us like and even prefer FWD. The last thing I want is RWD, unless it's a Vette perhaps. A transmission hump would bug me in just about anything else.
New designs are good, but while you like Chargers, I like boxes. I admired the previous "purple eggplant" Caravan design (although not the ones that actually were purple).
Different strokes, which is why you see Toyota making Priuses and Tundras.
GM has to get beyond the quality perception and has to get financing available to buyers. And they have to stay afloat while doing so. Not an easy set of circumstances.
is more desirable than this:
or this:
Regards,
OW
The Aztek U-Tube video is quite corny-cool.
I forget who it was who posted GM needs to pare down their lineup to their most successful products. Say GM cuts back to their 10 best; and by best, profitable must be included. They'll need to go bankrupt though to get rid of all the dead-weight legacy costs they have. Then GM continues with 1 division with their 10 best products.
Either that or have 1-2 badged as a Buick, Pontiac, Saturn, a few Chevys, and a few Cadillacs all available at GM dealers. Eliminate the divisions but keep the names. Also, stop the duplications (eg. Pontiac Torrent, Chevrolet Equinox). No one needs so many choices for relatively few buyers. Possibly make GMC the truck name, but no Chevy Tahoe and GMC Yukon. Another words, great;y SIMPLIFY.
I agree with them going Chapter 11 and thus be forced to do a major reorganization, rather than paying lip service to it. This will also allow and force a major re-negotiation with the UAW.
If we just bail them out with "x" amount of dollars, it's only going to perpetuate and prolong the inevitable same consequence of failure.
My 1985 VW Jetta (22 years ago) was quite good. It got 38mpg on the highway, handled well, had fuel injection, and took me 143K almost trouble-free miles. The Big 3 comparable car was a Ford Tempo, not sure about GM.
My wife's LS400 will be 20 years old next year. It still runs and Looks good. If she found a car she likes better she would buy it. Even the leather looks good. Car makers can build quality cars if they put their minds to it.
Because you didn't buy a Cavalier, Celebrity, Lumina, Cutlas Calais, Pontiac 6000, Omega, skylark's, etc. None of these were good cars and I'm sure I've left some out. With the cars you bought, GM's full size sedans were pretty good and not the problem, other than those weren't what the masses wanted. GM's small/midsize cars from the 70's-00's are where GM's lost market share and ruined their reputation.
The top one is much more desirable. Where can I get one?
--regards, Keith.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
You did not keep it parked in the garage? No paint can hold up 20 years out in the weather. Do you think your new Caddy will last as long as your old ones? I would not bet the new Lexus will hold up like the first ones built. Too many electronic gadgets and sensors to go bad. I guess only time will tell.
My wife's LS400 will be 20 years old next year. It still runs and Looks good. If she found a car she likes better she would buy it. Even the leather looks good. Car makers can build quality cars if they put their minds to it.
Heck, I drove to work this morning in a car that's 30 years old! In fact, I think it just turned 30. I'll have to check the doorjamb sticker, but I think my 5th Ave was built in either October or November of '78.
Not all of the 1970s-80s midsizers were bad. I thought the 1980-87 Buick Regals and Oldsmobile Cutlass Supremes were beautiful cars. Who could forget the awesome Grand National? The Century wasn't bad nor was the Cutlass Ciera. A little too small for my tastes, but I know a lot of people who had great success with both. Heck, I had a friend who had a 1980 Chevrolet Citation 5-door hatchback that went 195K miles! The 1978-83 Malibu wasn't a bad car. Liked the 1978 era Monte Carlo too. The styling got a little heavy-handed after 1985.
We had an '85 Skyhawk (Buick) that is a great small car. Traveled very well. Comfortable. I recall it as the forerunner of a Civic except the seats were comfortable on long trips; it was agile, but felt good driving around semis at speed on the interstates. 1.8 L GM motor made in Brazil.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Close...it was built in June 1976. It's not running right now though. The battery in my truck died, so I swiped the one out of the LeMans. I figure with the weather getting colder and nastier, that thing's not going to be venturing out of the garage much, so it doesn't need it.
Do I think the new Caddy will hold up as long as the old one? I don't know, but all the electronic do-dads concern me. As long as they don't go all wonky, I'll be OK. That's what I love about old cars - they're beautiful in their simplicity. I don't even use 1/2 the stuff in my new car. They're cool things to show your friends when you first get it, but after that, so what?
Those were very nice cars, but I didn't mention them cause they were generally good cars. Well, the 3.8v6 was junk, at least everyone I knew that had a 3.8 of that vintage were not very happy with them (Turbo models were fun, don't know if they were any better reliability wise). The v8 models were a nice running car. I used to really dig the '87 Hurst Cutlass. The main problem with those is they got stolen left and right. My MIL had two cutlass' jacked and a buddy of mine had his '87 Buick Regal T-type last 5 minutes at the mall.
The very fact that we are discussing GM cars from the late '70's through 80's that weren't bad is the issue. I was a young kid in the early 80's, so all I can go buy is what my family and neighbors drove. I remember a neighbor with a Citation and it was junk. My dad had a '79 Caprice Classic that stopped running at 7k miles then basically broke down every 10k miles after that. Best friend's mom had a Cutlass Calais that the power steering would only assist when turning right. I could go on and on with all the bad GM FWD cars from those times.
Yes, GM had some good cars. My grandpa had an 83 Olds Delta 88 that was good and he replaced that with an 87 Caprice Classic Brougham that was a good car. His '92 Roadmaster was okay (not my type of car, to much of a marsh mellow suspension and ugly IMO), then his '97 and '00 Park Ave's were probably the worst cars he had owned in over 30 yrs. Overpriced, poorly built, cheap materials, and unreliable from everything ranging from head gaskets, bad intake, to electrical gremlins like non functioning fuel gauge, and wipers that wouldn't turn off and all of these problems developed under 70k miles.
My grandpa is probably turning over in his grave at the thought of GM going under. I believe he was a steady customer since Studebaker folded up.
I would love to have a 1994-96 Buick Roadmaster with the LT-1 derived V-8 engine!
My Grandpop was a Chevrolet fan right to the end. He had a 1964 Biscayne, 1967 Bel Air, 1974 Impala, 1980 Impala, and a 1989 Caprice Classic Brougham. I believe his first car was a 1941 Chevrolet Master Deluxe. He may have had a 1958 Impala, but that was before I was born.
Well, there are always exceptions, for what ever reason it was mainly carb. problems. I remember it being about 4 mos. old and getting towed away from the house. For what ever reason, the dealer could only keep it running for about 6 mos. then it would start all over again. I think my dad finally found a local mechanic that got it straightened out. It was a massive oil leaker by the time he got rid of it in '85
Yeah, those when would have been the one to have. I remember my grandpa's 92 with the 180hp 5.7 being less than impressive. Nice highway car though.
Just out of curiosity, do you remember what made your Dad's Caprice stop running? FWIW, I've heard that the best examples of these cars tended to be the '77-78 models. 1979 was a bit worse, 1980 a bit more worse, and then in 1981, when they started putting a bunch more electronic controls on them, they went way downhill.
Those downsized GM cars were probably among the best cars of their era in the late 1970's, but they weren't without their faults. The Buick 231 V-6 was junk, like you already mentioned. The Chevy 305 and 350 tended to have weak bottom ends, and crankshaft failures were fairly common. I'm not sure if the 267 V-8 also shared this trait, and I think the 200 and 229 V-6 variations were actually spared this malady. Pontiac 301's were junk...tended to spin main bearings, and the whole engine was just TOO lightweight given the manufacturing capabilities back then, and that just made them fragile. "Gentlemen...we have the technology". Umm, no, we don't!
Pontiac 350's and 400's were good engines, but didn't take well to emissions controls, so California banned them. Buick and Olds 350's and Olds 307's were good engines as well. So was the Olds 403, although I think it had siamesed bores. I don't think it was quite as willing to take abuse like a Pontiac 400 could, or the B-O-P 350's.
Transmissions could be another iffy point. If you got a 350 engine or a 400/403, you'd get either a 350 or 400 transmission. And oddly, the 250 inline-6 used in the Chevies had the 350 transmission. But with the 231 V-6 and the smaller V-8's, I think it was often a coin toss as to whether you'd get the 350 tranny or the lightweight 200C.
The worst GM car I ever owned was a 1982 Cutlass Supreme coupe. It had the Buick 231 V-6 (junk...pretty much shot at 73,000 miles) and the THM350 transmission...which despite being one of the sturdier ones still had to be rebuilt. :sick: In its defense though, the car was 11 years old and had about 61,000 old-lady miles on it when I bought it. It was driven pretty gently, but I don't think she kept up with maintenance. It was a shame that it didn't hold up. I thought it was a really nice car. It was that "jadestone" greenish blue with color-keyed rally wheels. It was comfortable too, and handled well. That engine was sluggish from 0-60, but out on the highway it was a pretty good cruiser with decent power.
I had the transmission rebuilt, but when the engine went I gave up on it.
It it was fuel delivery problems. The problems ranged to not starting to having a max speed of 30, bucking, popping, and puking black smoke everywhere. He kept taking it back to the dealer and it would run fine for 5 or 6 months and the problems would start all over. After a year and a half or so, he found an independent mechanic that finally fixed it and Dad at least got 2-3 years reliable service out of it. Regardless, that was the last GM car my dad has owned. Been all Fords for him since then.
It was a real dog that year, too. CR clocked it at 0-60 in 15.4 seconds, although that was still quicker than the St. Regis's 15.9!
Yes, it was a Caprice Classic wagon w/ 305 2bbl. It even had two tone paint. LOL
It was a real dog that year, too. CR clocked it at 0-60 in 15.4 seconds, although that was still quicker than the St. Regis's 15.9!
While I never drove it I do remember one time riding in it on a 90 degree day with 8 people in it with the a/c blasting and my dad complaining that it wouldn't get out of it's own way.
Those 0-60 times are real sad. I couldn't imagine driving anything that slow these days. Granted when I'm towing my boat our camper, my 0-60 times probably are around 20 seconds, which makes for challenging merging scenarios, but after I drop the trailer or boat, the Expedition feels like Mustang GT. LOL.
Sad about those late '70s and early '80s cars when you think the glorious muscle car era was a mere ten years earlier. Dang government meddlers,eco-weenies, and OPEC scumbags! Wonder what American cars would be like had this triumvirate didn't conspire to destroy the auto industry? Somewhere in a parallel universe is a factory 465 hp 1978 Dodge Magnum that lives up to the name!
Yeah, I bet. Question: Do you put on a helmet and strap a parachute to the back of the DTS after driving the Brougham? LOL. Might be dangerous to make that transition!
Frankly, the way the domestic auto industry was going even before 1970, we would be driving cars worthy of an Ayn Rand dystopia by now. :sick:
All recent bad press has been about the "GM" corporation, not the Chevrolet or Cadillac brands. To go forward with cars branded GM would be a huge mistake.
Believe that top 2 GM brands are Chevrolet and Cadillac and should remain. These are still golden in spite of GM problems today. Buick, Pontiac, GMC brands are irrelevant. People buying these brands today will still buy GM if only Chevrolet and Cadillac are the remaining brands.
After bankruptcy, Chapter 11, then GM presumably has no obligations to dealers. But, still too many of them. A town in my region has a Chevy dealer and a GMC/Buick/Pontiac dealer. These are about a mile apart. One is redundant. Will these dealers somehow work out an arrangement between themselves and GM?
Buick Lucerne and Enclave can be rebadged to Chevrolet. Old people buying Buicks will still buy a Chevrolet Lucerne. Nothing worth saving at Pontiac brand. GMC trucks already covered by Chevrolet. Don't need GMC Acadia or Chevy Traverse. Saab and Hummer are an extravagence.
What about Saturn? This is an oddball brand that was a failure, compared to its intended competitors (Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla) from the onset. Recall reading that GM lost lots of money developing and shoring up Saturn.
Make everything RWD again. If it's not RWD, then it's AWD. Nobody likes front wheel drive cars. Stop selling refrigerators and start selling cars that you lust after.
RWD cars are ok if living in southern U.S. But, in "real" weather northern states, FWD is huge advantage in driving in all types of weather (snow, slush, ice, freezing rain, rain). RWD cars such as Mustang, Corvette, 3 series, etc., are reduced to girlie type cars in bad weather. Some people with these fragile cars have FWD cars to get them through the winter. For everyday driving, 365 days/year, FWD is best setup. AWD is unnecessary and only adds extra weight and reduced gas mileage.
And for dry weather driving, FWD cars of same weight/power can handle (measured performance) just as well as RWD on "public roads". But, would agree that RWD performance type cars (M, Mustang, Vette, etc) will outperform FWD on closed circuits driving at the edge. Nobody should be responsibly driving on public roads at "racing" levels.
I believe you mean Pontiac Astre which was a rebadged Chevy Vega.
That's one thing I fault the "Big 3" for, that's rebadging of cars. (Yeah I know, Toyota and Lexus do it to some degree with the Camry/ ES350's.) It was and is still rampant with the Big 3, however. Redundancy and repetitiveness have cost them money.
Good point.
GM Said to Study Shedding Saab, Saturn, Pontiac to Win U.S. Aid (Bloomberg)
This led to all the above symptoms- GM eventually ended up footing the bill on some of these 305 equipped cars.
I beg to differ...grab the Solstice. Question is, whether to make it a Chevy or a Cadillac? Or just leave the Saturn Sky version, but that depends on whether you bother keeping Saturn in the first place. Personally, I think the Solstice might make a nice entry-level Caddy.
Saturn's also got the Astra and the Vue that are unique to the brand. Take the Vue, make it the new Equinox (The Vue is the "redesigned" version, while the Equinox is the "old" version). Not sure what to do with the Astra...it hasn't been well received. Then they can drop Saturn too.
Saab could go here in the US and I guess they could find a buyer for the European part or just build Saabs for outside NA.
Pontiac would be a tough one because it is so integrated into the GMC/Pontiac/Buick dealership groups (notice Buick/GMC not mentioned in article). Perhaps they could rebadge the Solstice into Buick, G8 into Wildcat, drop G5, G6. Upgrade Vue into a Buick. This would leave premium models between $20k Chevys and $40k Cadillacs. Today average age of Buick(due to Enclave) has plummeted to 55, just a few years older than Honda.
"the average age of shoppers choosing a domestic vehicle was 49.4 years old in 2007 — older than the average 42.5-year-old buyer of Asian cars but younger than the 50.6-year-olds choosing European nameplates. The average age of Toyota shoppers was 46.6 years old, while the average age for Honda shoppers was 51.2. the average age of a Buick shopper last year was 55.2 years old, considerably younger than the average 63.6-year-old Mercedes-Benz shopper."
Looks like the Kia and Hyundai buyers really bring down the average Asian age while Honda is getting a lot of older buyers. Wonder if Honda and Buick will cross in the future?
http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2008/01/down-economy-mo.html
Buick Bengal (solstice upgraded)
Buick LaCrosse (new EPS II version, replaces G6)
Buick Wildcat (G8)
Buick Lucerne
Buick Enclave
Buick XXX (Vue upgraded)
And I would drop the next version of the GMC Lamda. Just have GMC sell the large Pick up and SUV.
As an alternative: drop Buick, keep Hummer for military vehicles, keep GMC for trucks only, and sell Saab. The other divisions should eliminate the duplications and greatly decrease their number of models.
As an alternative: drop Buick,
Drop Pontiac rather than Buick. Pontiac is removable.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,