For the first time in history, everybody get’s the GM employee discount! The termination of an employee benefit in vintage ‘corporate speak’, this sales pitch is unfortunately as American as apple pie. Their TV advertisements have evolved in under a week from the discount pitch into spots that showcase Saturn and brag of fuel efficiency and OnStar. After the millions spent on putting a Humvee on my screen every fifteen minutes for over a year, it would appear that the suits may have sworn off whiskey before breakfast. If so, I’m sure that incompetence will still rule the day, but at least they won’t be sluring their words.
Twenty five thousand jobs are going to be cut by 2008, but OnStar sounds like a gizmo that could be usefull once or twice in a lifetime. That may be enough to get the trend addicted American public onto the lot this summer. Two years after this idea is played out and another few thousand jobs need to be slashed, the suits might come up with another idea if we’re lucky. In the meantime they can overstate pension fund returns and put a nice spit shine on the balance sheet, work on their ‘fuel prices and labor costs are killing our profitability’ spiel for Congress, and convince the neocons to apply high tarrifs to foreign cars.
That’s the beauty of being an executive of an enormous corporation in the United States these days. When your incompetence leads the organization towards destruction, just take a page out of the Washington DC playbook and blame everything that went wrong on someone other than yourself. It works. You’ll keep your money, and even if they come to take it away, the estate in Florida is untouchable.
Something’s got to change at GM, and a gimick or two won’t get the job done. What each of us needs to start understanding about these enormous coroprations is that they’re becoming less viable by the year. Other countries are finding ways to do it better while we’re stuck with the same inefficiency year after year. They blame the workers, they blame the cost of fuel and they blame rising health care costs. Workers get laid off, the American consumer pays less for fuel than the rest of the world and corporate lobbyists are too busy pushing for deregulation to complain about health care.
GM is a microchosm of what’s gone wrong in a number of American industries. Incompetence at the top is appologized for and rewarded at the expense of those on the bottom. To the tune of 1000 jobs a year, GM has been operating on a tragic cycle of failure-layoff-reorganization-failure for decades now. The current marketing scheme is all talk, no action. Their plan is to put forth the appearance that the largest concerns with their business model are being addressed, while resorting to a cut in prices that will only limit profits and lead to more job loses.
The design of the TV spots resemble the Wall-Mart ads of this past year, with smiling employees and a voice that lies to your face for 15 or 30 seconds. It’s not about the cars, but instead about image. To the consumer the only message that matters is, ‘our prices are IN-SANE!’ It’s no different than the low budget comercials with your local used car dealership besides the ill-conceived spin job involving the ’employee discount’. All the talk concerning fuel efficiency is what they’re ‘going to have’ rather than what you can buy today. A gadget like OnStar unfortunately fails to bridge the gap, and to a consumer like me it’s only an added source of stress having to wonder why the selling point is a gadget rather than the engine.
To a consumer an automobile is a body, engine, safety features, miles per gallon and a price. GM needs to focus their energy, research and marketing on these five things and stop making excuses. America needs this company to get it right.
Gm’s failure is their own fault. They are stepping on there own toes with their redundant car lineup. The Buick and Oldsmobile lines are the best example of this redundancy which is probably the reason that Oldsmobile is in its last year of production. Another possible reason for there demise is that GM seems content producing “rental” cars. As Howie Carr said the other day, when was the last time someone got out of there Pontiac rental car and said wow I need to buy me one of those. Has anyone seen the interior on the new $55,000 Corvette? The interior of my $30,000 Nissan trumps that of the Corvette. When you buy a car for that type of money one would expect something more than a cheap Delco stereo and similar cheap temperature controls.
Poor car design is another factor in poor sales. Look at the entire Pontiac line and tell me one car that stands out aesthetically(sp).The nicest car in this line is the GTO, which GM’s US division didn’t even design the car, it was taken from the Australian design of the Holden Monaro. Speaking of the GTO we need to talk performance vehicles. How could GM kill off both the Camaro and Firebird w/o replacement sport cars? Well, Ford took this gift and designed the new Mustang which has sparked an interest so grea that the interest is only comparable to the Mustang’s original introduction in the mid 60’s.
The five key factors to a successful automobile they list are a bit misguided, the best two ways to evaluate a product is its effectiveness and efficiency. Look at Honda, there models are not flashy nor are they an eyesore, yet they are a leader in brand loyalty and consumer satisfaction. Why, look at the Element, their small suv model. This vehicle has plenty of room, a reliable engine, low maintenance costs, and a low depreciation rate. This is indicative of the entire Honda line as well as Acura(Sister) now can we can we say this for any GM car.
Mike, you might be right about the list of five things – that was my list. I came up with that on the fly and my reasoning was that the interior was part of the ‘body’ and that effectiveness and efficiency were covered by ‘engine’ and the others. As far as what a consumer is looking for, breaking a few of these things out would be more appropirate.
You’re right about Hondas – the one I owned years back was the most dependable ride I’ve ever owned. Bought it used and took it out to the midwest the next week. Manchester to Nashua everyday for about a year without a single problem.
I wasn’t aware of their phasing out of the performance line. It’s time for them to phase out the Pontiac division. The Hummer thing was a gimick…amateurish management. A company of this size that fails to perform for so many years should not be bailed out by the government. Like the airlines, they need to profit or disappear.
Reading articles for research I read that the 2007 labor contract will have GM pushing for a cut in medical benefits. Why this doesn’t prompt them to scream for health care reform baffles me. As far as the US economy is concerned, health care is the 800 pound gorilla in the room right now. A company like GM is too important to the economy for this problem to continue like it has.
Awesome insights Mike – glad you’re here!
For awhile GM had something going with Saturn, the third door and some other features were innovative. The only other positive at GM is that Buick is the car of the over 55 set. Other than the pontiac Vibe which was designed by Toyota I cannot think of a GM product that is unique. Without SUV’s to bolster profits GM could be in for a rough go.
I j
ust copied this it seems to fit.
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
In May the Bush economy eked out a paltry 73,000 private sector jobs: 20,000 jobs in construction (primarily for Mexican immigrants), 21,000 jobs in wholesale and retail trade, and 32,500 jobs in health care and social assistance. Local government added 5,000 for a grand total of 78,000.
Not a single one of these jobs produces an exportable good or service. With Americans increasingly divorced from the production of the goods and services that they consume, Americans have no way to pay for their consumption except by handing over to foreigners more of their accumulated stock of wealth. The country continues to eat its seed corn.
Only 10 million Americans are classified as “production workers” in the Bureau of Labor Statistics nonfarm payroll tables. Think about that.
The US with a population approaching 300 million has only 10 million production workers. That means
Americans are consuming the products of other countries labor.
In the 21st century the US economy has been unable to create jobs in export and import-competitive industries. US job growth is confined to nontradable domestic services.
This movement of the American labor force toward third world occupations in domestic services has dire implications both for US living standards and for
America’s status as a superpower.
Economists and policymakers are in denial while the US economy implodes in front of their noses. The US-China Commission is making a great effort to bring reality to policymakers by holding a series of hearings to explore the depths of American decline.
The commissioners got an earful at the May 19 hearings in New York at the Council on Foreign Relations. Ralph Gomory explained that America’s naïve belief that offshore outsourcing and globalism are working for America is based on a 200 year old trade theory, the premises of which do not reflect the modern world.
Clyde Prestowitz, author of the just published Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East, explained that America’s prosperity is an illusion. Americans feel prosperous because they are consuming $700 billion annually more than they are producing. Foreigners, principally Asians, are financing US over-consumption, because we are paying them by handing over our markets, our jobs, and our wealth.
My former Business Week colleague, Bill Wolman, explained the consequences for US workers of suddenly facing direct labor market competition from hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indian workers.
Toward the end of the 20th century three developments came together that are rapidly moving high productivity, high value-added jobs that pay well away from the US to Asia: the collapse of world socialism which vastly increased the supply of labor available to US capital; the rise of the high speed Internet; the extraordinary international mobility of US capital and technology.
First world capital is rapidly deserting first world labor in favor of third world labor, which is much cheaper because of its abundance and low cost of living. Formerly, America’s high real incomes were protected from cheap foreign labor, because US labor worked with more capital and better technology, which made it more productive. Today, however, US capital and technology move to cheap labor, or cheap labor moves via the Internet to US employment.
The reason economic development in China and some Indian cities is so rapid is because it is fueled by the offshore location of first world corporations.
Prestowitz is correct that the form that globalism has taken is shifting income and wealth from the first world to the third world. The rise of Asia is coming at the expense of the American worker.
Global competition could have developed differently. US capital and technology could have remained at home, protecting US incomes with high productivity. Asia would have had to raise itself up without the inside track of first world offshore producers.
Asia’s economic development would have been slow and laborious and would have been characterized by a gradual rise of Asian incomes toward US incomes, not by a jarring loss of American jobs and incomes to Asians.
Instead, US corporations, driven by the short-sighted and ultimately destructive focus on quarterly profits,
chose to drive earnings and managerial bonuses by substituting cheap Asian labor for American labor.
American businesses’ short-run profit maximization plays directly into the hands of thoughtful Asian governments with long-run strategies. As Prestowitz informed the commissioners, China now has more semiconductor plants than the US. Short-run goals are reducing US corporations to brand names with sales forces marketing foreign made goods and services.
By substituting foreign for American workers, US corporations are destroying their American markets. As American jobs in the higher paying manufacturing and professional services are given to Asians, and as American schoolteachers and nurses lose their occupations to foreigners imported under work visa programs, American purchasing power dries up, especially once all the home equity is spent, credit cards are maxed out and the dollar loses value to the Asian currencies.
The dollar is receiving a short-term respite as a result of the rejection of the European Union by France and Holland. The fate of the Euro, which rose so rapidly in value against the dollar in recent years, is uncertain, thus possibly cutting off one avenue of escape from the over-produced US dollar.
However, nothing is in the works to halt America’s decline and to put the economy on a path of true prosperity. In January 2004, I told a televised conference of the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, that the US would be a third world economy in 20 years. I was projecting the economic outcome of the US labor force being denied first world employment and forced into the low productivity occupations of domestic services.
Considering the vast excess supplies of labor in India and China, Asian wages are unlikely to rapidly approach existing US levels. Therefore, the substitution of Asian for US labor in tradable goods and services is likely to continue.
As US students seek employments immune from outsourcing, engineering enrollments are declining.
The exit of so much manufacturing is destroying the supply chains that make manufacturing possible.
The Asians will not give us back our economy once we have lost it. They will not play the “free trade” game and let their labor force be displaced by cheap American labor.
Offshore outsourcing is dismantling the ladders of America’s fabled upward mobility. The US labor force already has one foot in the third world. By 2024 the US will be a has-been country.
Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: [email protected]
Karl – The signs of this happening are all around us, and the reason these signs are ignored is because our nation’s elected leaders are often wealthy and legislate from their own perspective. If we have a President who is the product of a wealthy environment, the factors which sustain that wealth will be put on the table before others. Look no further than the cut on dividend taxes as proof of this. While a middle income family spends their tax cuts on groceries and gas, the top earners in the country are treating themselves to ice sculptures of David pissing Stoli Vodka…I know that particular example was bought on Tyco’s dime, but it’s a good indicator of the increasing amount of space that exists between the upper and middle classes.
The American business can still get it done. GM can still get it done. They have to be able to develop better products. Executive salaries are out of control, and most are not tied in with performance at all.
This is why we have a government, to fix problems like this. The only thing this President and Congress want to do though is make things better for those at the top. There’s no ‘trickle-down’ effect…a term I most remember as a child growing up in the Reagan years. It’s a load of crap. How many years do we have to go in this direction before finally understanding this?
I went through high school with a spoiled-brat classmate who’s Dad
owned the local Chrysler dealership. My dislike of him led to a
lifelong commitment never to own a Mopar product if I could possibly
avoid it.
I broke that promise to myself last year when my wife and I bought a
2000 Grand Caravan – its solid as a rock and runs like a top
(especially compared to my 1999 Jetta – don’t ever buy a car in the
first year after a design change). The experience has gone far to
dispell my personal sense that American companies no longer know how to
produce a quality vehicle in a price range that the average consumer
can afford (though I suppose you can give Daimler some credit for that
improved quality).
You’re right – with a few notable exceptions American companies excel
at excessive compensation for incompetent performance and attempting
to promote a commitment to “buy American” or a gadget over genuine
quality.
The world is flat and getting flatter – faced with competition American
companies are going to have to find a solution or plan to get squashed.
All I know is, that with the exception of the Cadillac, I have never looked at a GM car and said, “I gotta have me one of those!” Now blondes…that’s another matter.
From Google Groups:
stork Jun 11, 4:46 am show options
From: “stork” – Find messages by this author
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 01:46:30 -0700
Local: Sat,Jun 11 2005 4:46 am
Subject: Re: GM’s Lack of Leadership, Braincells
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This is frustrating. Everyone seems to bash American car companies
these days and really it is piling on without look at the facts.
The public perception that some in the public have that Japanese cars
are instrinsically better is really not true. Back in the 1970s the
big three changed the kind of steel they used, engine design, shifted
from leaded to unleaded gas, added catalytic converters, and changed to
generally smaller cars, and this many radical changes meant for less
reliable small cars from American companies. But that was years ago.
GM has great front wheel drive and rear wheel drive cars alike.
Generally speaking, rear wheel drive cars are found by many to be more
fun to drive for any number of reasons. People in snow belts often
swear by front drivers.
For 2006.
The new Chevy Cobalt is GM’s new small car to replace the aging
Cavalier. It is highly regarded by the automotive press. For 2006 the
Cobalt comes out in an SS verson that gives you more horsepower.
The Chevy Impala and Monte Carlo are both available with a new multiple
displacement V8. So you can get V8 power with more like V6 fuel
efficiency. These are front driver cars but GM has been fairly good
about reducing torque steer in its front drivers through clever
suspension design.
The new Pontiac G6 is a beautiful car. Pictures of the car do not do
it justice, you need to go to a dealership and check it out.
The Cadillac CTS is in the same league of performance and handling as
the popular BMW 3 series. The Cadillac CTS-V gives you that same
handling coupled with a 400hp engine and the performance of a sports
car. The Cadillac STS and STS-V series prove that Americans can easily
build a car that hangs with the best performance sedans Europe has to
offer, and, as far as the STS-V is concerned, can easily outrun most of
them.
I used to own a 2004 Pontiac GTO. This car is -the- sleeper coupe of
all cars. Unassuming looking, Motor Trend called this car a poor man’s
M3. I drove one to Florida and back over a three day stretch and I can
personally vouch for this cars ability to hold curves tightly as well
as stay easily in control at speeds well over 100mph. Plus, the sound
system (Blaukpunkt) and the seats are easily the best you will get in
any stock car.
Buick consistently wins the JD Powers awards for initial build quality.
Buicks often score higher marks than the Toyota Avalon with which it
competes.
Of course, GM also has plenty of SUVs and crossover SUVs. And GM’s
pickup trucks are sworn by many who work far harder than we do!
That GM can deliver cars this exciting is testimony to how well that
car company is actually run, how well its workers actually perform,
given some rather steep structural disadvantages:
a) Europeans and Japanese keep their currencies artificially high with
respect to the dollar to make their cars cheaper to sell over here.
b) GM pays for its employees health insurance and pension. European
and Japanese car companies do not have to pay for their health
insurance because the costs are spread out in a rationed, nationalized
health care system. Europe simply doesn’t have health insurance
premiums rising by 14% a year because Europeans, for all their other
faults, tell people with minor maladies to either eat chicken soup or
wait in line, whereas in America we spend 20k to give someone an MRI
every time their head hurts.
But despite these competitive disadvantages, disadvantages actually
applicable to all American companies and unaddressed by the Bush and
Clinton administrations alike, GM is hanging tough. All of GM’s
divisions have exciting vehicles to offer: Buick, Pontiac, Chevy,
Cadillac, GMC, Hummer, Saab, and more make some super, super cars.
The General will not steer you wrong. GM has cars Head to your local
GM dealership and check it out.
..
Like GM, Ford is also in the midst of a model changeover. Critics
bashed the Ford 500 and Mercury Freestyle for being underpowered right
until gasoline hit $2.50 / gallon. Ford has generally avoided the
horsepower wars that have consumed the industry, although, if you do
want power, the Lincoln LS V8 and the Ford Mustang GT will give it to
you. And forget Corvette and Viper, the Ford GT is probably the
hottest supercar on the market today. The Ford F-150 redesign has
taken off very well. Jaguar continues to deliver excellence.
And finally there is Chrysler, now owned by Daimler. Chrysler makes
some truly great vehicles, with interesting designs coupled with HEMI
performance. For 2006, Chrysler Pacifica, Chryser’s highly regarded AWD
crossover gets the HEMI. Chryslers’s 300C and its Dodge variant, the
Magnum SRT, get rave reviews. Chrysler 300C is also the Motor Trend
Car of the Year. I just had kids myself, and I can vouch for the
Magnum’s performance. It handles extremely well, and is feature rich.
I honestly do not know what people are thinking when they walk into a
Toyota dealership. Every single Toyota car looks the same. They are
boring and they are slow. Old people drive Toyotas, as they are
designed by a country, Japan, whose people are getting so old that they
have to robots pick up all of their Depends. Same goes for Honda.
Boring, old, ugly. Everything Japanese car companies make looks like
they would park well in front of a funeral home…
Finally, I will mention that the American economy is much better off
when you buy a new American car rather than a Japanese one, even if the
Japanese car is “built” in the USA. Sure, final assembly is done in the
USA, but the engine and transmissions are generally buillt in Japan.
And, Japanese car plants in the USA are non-union.
Reply
Tim Jun 11, 10:17 am show options
From: “Tim” – Find messages by this author
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 07:17:27 -0700
Local: Sat,Jun 11 2005 10:17 am
Subject: Re: GM’s Lack of Leadership, Braincells
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– Hide quoted text –
– Show quoted text –
stork wrote:
> This is frustrating. Everyone seems to bash American car companies
> these days and really it is piling on without look at the facts.
> The public perception that some in the public have that Japanese cars
> are instrinsically better is really not true. Back in the 1970s the
> big three changed the kind of steel they used, engine design, shifted
> from leaded to unleaded gas, added catalytic converters, and changed to
> generally smaller cars, and this many radical changes meant for less
> reliable small cars from American companies. But that was years ago.
> GM has great front wheel drive and rear wheel drive cars alike.
> Generally speaking, rear wheel drive cars are found by many to be more
> fun to drive for any number of reasons. People in snow belts often
> swear by front drivers.
> For 2006.
> The new Chevy Cobalt is GM’s new small car to replace the aging
> Cavalier. It is highly regarded by the automotive press. For 2006 the
> Cobalt comes out in an SS verson that gives you more horsepower.
> The Chevy Impala and Monte Carlo are both available with a new multiple
> displacement V8. So you can get V8 power with more like V6 fuel
> efficiency. These are front driver cars but GM has been fairly good
> about reducing torque steer in its front drivers through clever
> suspension design.
> The new Pontiac G6 is a beautiful car. Pictures of the car do not do
> it justice, you need to go to a dealership and check it out.
> The Cadillac CTS is in the same league of performance and handling as
> the popular BMW 3 series. The Cadillac CTS-V gives you that same
> handling coupled with a 400hp engine and the performance of a sports
> car. The Cadillac STS and STS-V series prove that Americans can easily
> build a car that hangs with the best performance sedans Europe has to
> offer, and, as far as the STS-V is concerned, can easily outrun most of
> them.
> I used to own a 2004 Pontiac GTO. This car is -the- sleeper coupe of
> all cars. Unassuming looking, Motor Trend called this car a poor man’s
> M3. I drove one to Florida and back over a three day stretch and I can
> personally vouch for this cars ability to hold curves tightly as well
> as stay easily in control at speeds well over 100mph. Plus, the sound
> system (Blaukpunkt) and the seats are easily the best you will get in
> any stock car.
> Buick consistently wins the JD Powers awards for initial build quality.
> Buicks often score higher marks than the Toyota Avalon with which it
> competes.
> Of course, GM also has plenty of SUVs and crossover SUVs. And GM’s
> pickup trucks are sworn by many who work far harder than we do!
> That GM can deliver cars this exciting is testimony to how well that
> car company is actually run, how well its workers actually perform,
> given some rather steep structural disadvantages:
> a) Europeans and Japanese keep their currencies artificially high with
> respect to the dollar to make their cars cheaper to sell over here.
> b) GM pays for its employees health insurance and pension. European
> and Japanese car companies do not have to pay for their health
> insurance because the costs are spread out in a rationed, nationalized
> health care system. Europe simply doesn’t have health insurance
> premiums rising by 14% a year because Europeans, for all their other
> faults, tell people with minor maladies to either eat chicken soup or
> wait in line, whereas in America we spend 20k to give someone an MRI
> every time their head hurts.
> But despite these competitive disadvantages, disadvantages actually
> applicable to all American companies and unaddressed by the Bush and
> Clinton administrations alike, GM is hanging tough. All of GM’s
> divisions have exciting vehicles to offer: Buick, Pontiac, Chevy,
> Cadillac, GMC, Hummer, Saab, and more make some super, super cars.
> The General will not steer you wrong. GM has cars Head to your local
> GM dealership and check it out.
> ..
> Like GM, Ford is also in the midst of a model changeover. Critics
> bashed the Ford 500 and Mercury Freestyle for being underpowered right
> until gasoline hit $2.50 / gallon. Ford has generally avoided the
> horsepower wars that have consumed the industry, although, if you do
> want power, the Lincoln LS V8 and the Ford Mustang GT will give it to
> you. And forget Corvette and Viper, the Ford GT is probably the
> hottest supercar on the market today. The Ford F-150 redesign has
> taken off very well. Jaguar continues to deliver excellence.
> And finally there is Chrysler, now owned by Daimler. Chrysler makes
> some truly great vehicles, with interesting designs coupled with HEMI
> performance. For 2006, Chrysler Pacifica, Chryser’s highly regarded AWD
> crossover gets the HEMI. Chryslers’s 300C and its Dodge variant, the
> Magnum SRT, get rave reviews. Chrysler 300C is also the Motor Trend
> Car of the Year. I just had kids myself, and I can vouch for the
> Magnum’s performance. It handles extremely well, and is feature rich.
> I honestly do not know what people are thinking when they walk into a
> Toyota dealership. Every single Toyota car looks the same. They are
> boring and they are slow. Old people drive Toyotas, as they are
> designed by a country, Japan, whose people are getting so old that they
> have to robots pick up all of their Depends. Same goes for Honda.
> Boring, old, ugly. Everything Japanese car companies make looks like
> they would park well in front of a funeral home…
> Finally, I will mention that the American economy is much better off
> when you buy a new American car rather than a Japanese one, even if the
> Japanese car is “built” in the USA. Sure, final assembly is done in the
> USA, but the engine and transmissions are generally buillt in Japan.
> And, Japanese car plants in the USA are non-union.
_____________________________
I’m 41 and have been married for 14 years. Since my wife and I started
dating we’ve purchased six vehicles. Except for one of those occasions
we considered at least one American model among the vehicles we
reviewed before the final purchase.
Three of the total six were US nameplates (The Prizm was manufactured
by Toyota but constructed in Mexico, I believe). The other three were
foreign (2 Japanese, and the VW).
Four of the vehicles were purchased new. Three of those four were
foreign.
I’m all for buying American, but in the $17,500 to $25,000 range the
domestic market is very limited. I haven’t looked at the Cobalt but
I’ve driven the Cavalier and several Chrysler products. They all pale
in comparison to the Jetta and the Honda we’ve owned (both of which
were purchased within that price range.
The Cadillacs are great cars. The Magnum, I agree, is a high quality
vehicle, but the stickers on all of these vehicles are dramatically
more than what I’ve historically been prepared to pay.
Since the purchase of the Caravan (a great vehicle, by the way) we’ve
made a family decision to consider used vehicles instead of new. I’ll
consider American cars in that search (we’re probably going to be
looking for another van), but all of the books demonstrate that the
Hondas and Toyotas hold their value better, and if I can find one in
the price range we’ll set at that point I’ll probably go in that
direction before we go American.
American companies need to make a greater investment in entry to
just-above-entry vehicles.
Tim
Reply
stork Jun 11, 12:34 pm show options
From: “stork” – Find messages by this author
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 09:34:37 -0700
Local: Sat,Jun 11 2005 12:34 pm
Subject: Re: GM’s Lack of Leadership, Braincells
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TJB replied to:
> The Cadillacs are great cars. The Magnum, I agree, is a high quality
> vehicle, but the stickers on all of these vehicles are dramatically
> more than what I’ve historically been prepared to pay.
I got my Magnum V6 255hp for about 25k. That’s not too bad.
Reply
Tim Jun 12, 3:48 pm show options
From: “Tim” – Find messages by this author
Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2005 12:48:31 -0700
Local: Sun,Jun 12 2005 3:48 pm
Subject: Re: GM’s Lack of Leadership, Braincells
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Congrats on your deal, but the sticker on that car is 30+, and the fact
remains that US carmakers have largely ignored this market segment to
their own detriment.
Tim
Reply
stork Jun 13, 9:40 am show options
From: “stork” – Find messages by this author
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 06:40:26 -0700
Local: Mon,Jun 13 2005 9:40 am
Subject: Re: GM’s Lack of Leadership, Braincells
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The sticker on the Magnum SE is 23k, and the Magnum SXT is 26k. Only
the Hemi is an over 30k car.
Pretty much what this boils down to is a choice. Either you buy
American cars and accept that they have about 2-3k less immediate value
than their Japanese counterparts because of the union obligations of
American car companies, and accept that as a price premium for
supporting the union, or, you don’t buy American cars and shop for the
best value that you can, and screw the union.
All that is fine and well if you are in favor of free trade, but, its
pretty disingenous to me if someone says they detest globalization for
what “it” does to workers. The “it” that is damaging workers is the
collective actions of everyone who who shops without regard to the
social consequences of their purchases.
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/conservatism/browse_frm/thread/87b39f9ccdfd3082/6620d87290baed75#6620d87290baed75