Posted on 06/18/2011 8:22:54 AM PDT by SteveH
Are GM sales in the tank??
Is GM in big trouble??
I walked by a GM dealership today. A few months ago I had been checking out a Chevy Volt, and the dealership seemed a bit odd, but basically OK in appearance.
Now the dealership site is a mess. Evidently the lot went from being a new Chevy-GM dealership to a generic warranty pre-owned car lot.
There still is one Chevy Volt there. There are many pre-owned GM cars there along with the usual sprinkling of non GM used cars that one would normally expect.
What caught my eye is that a lot of new GM cars are sitting on the lot without their new car stickers, either ripped off or covered with other stickers. This includes Camaros, Tahoe SUVs, crossover SUVs, and even a couple of Corvettes. Many of the cars are darker, unpopular colors, but some are white. There is a truck canopy in front of the lot, but there are only GM compacts underneath the canopy. There are a couple of 2wd 4 door Silverados sitting further back in the front of the lot.
The sales building is evidently undergoing remodeling, and generally looks like a mess. It is not clear if the remodeling is continuing or has been abandoned.
The service department seems almost empty. Next door, the Honda service department of the Honda dealership is humming with activity.
This does not look normal to me at all. I have never seen such such disarray with a GM (or any other major brand name) dealership in the past. This would be the second GM dealership to go under in about 2 years, if appearances reflect a dealership loss.
I hang out with a somewhat savvy crowd and they shun GM cars.
What makes this scary is that I am scanning FR for GM news and I do not see a lot that signals big problems. Yet, new GM cars should not be hanging around a lot that lost its new dealership franchise... especially the Camaros IMHO... they should have been shuffled off to other new GM dealerships if my understanding of how dealerships normally work is correct. Market pressure would dictate that this happen.
Anyone know how well or poorly GM is doing? Perhaps I am just uninformed (possible since I have just returned from an overseas trip).
I hope they go down. Declare bankruptcy. Break the union contracts. Start over and do it better, cheaper, with less union BS.
I think it’s a sign of the poor economic state of the country. GM cars and trucks are pricier than they ought to be, because of the burdens of the UAW.
That said, GM cars and trucks are still popular with the American public - they just can’t afford to pay the extra freight right now, and are going next door to Honda.
Some Dealerships claim they were bought out by GM. Hall Chevrolet in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin is one of those.
I agree.
Screw them and their taxpayer subsidies.
Furthermore there was a recent article about this in the WSJ — they will get 45 BILLION dollars in future tax breaks from us. Don’t let anyone tell you they paid back their debt to us (federal taxpayers). It’s just starting.
It’s UNPATRIOTIC to buy a GM car.
Who is John Galt?
I have a friend who is the service manager for a GM dealership and he says he’s been twiddling his thumbs most of the year.
Business is dead.
GM is now run by the UAW. No wonder they are so disorganized and unprofitable.
“GM is offering stock to the United Auto Workers for at least 50 percent of the $20 billion the company must pay into a union run trust that will take over retiree health care expenses starting next year.
If both are successful, the government and UAW health care trust would own 89 percent of GM stock, with the government holding more than a 50 percent stake, CEO Fritz Henderson said in a news conference at GM’s Detroit headquarters.”
I haven’t paid close attention to this subject, but I thought Obama recently said that the auto bailout was a success, that GM and Chrysler were profitable again, yadda, yadda, yadda. Did Obama not tell the whole truth????
Is Obama reviewing his car sales figures every month? Just how well, or poorly, are these companies doing? We taxpayers have skin in the game, as Obama tells us you have to have skin in the game on various subjects. So then we taxpayers deserve an honest accounting of this.
Sort of like Bosnia,
Who gives a damn???
Actually Ford and GM have done a good job of improving quality over the past decade. Chrysler not so much.
Ford actually beat Honda out for the highest customer retention in J.D. Power this year.
Keep in mind the goons who are running GM don’t necessarily know how to run the business or deal with dealerships. They closed down some of the more profitable and savvy dealers for affirmative action reasons. There is a lot of incompetence out there.
Hey Barry (or Steve or whatever your name is) - are you going to mandate that we buy GM cars too?
I notice lately all the Dept Homeland Security and Border Patrol cars are Tahoes and Suburbans, mostly white, with Green stripe on the side. ATF and DEA have the same vehicles, black with blackout tinting. There is a big increase in the govt fleet in TX and NM.
Yep, and who was left getting the short end of the stick?
The original GM stockholders — I think I read they only got 10 cents on the dollar.
It was Obamas objective to create a “government motors”, but needless to say under those tenets, failure is obama-guaranteed. The dude wanted to take over the whole economy so his empire could tell us what to do.
Silly thing is he doesnt know economics. Nor people. Sure he knows muslims, but not Americans.
This sandwich will pass.
Go to zerohedge.com. - they have articles about GM’s massive channel stuffing.
I believe that GM has just about another year to muddle through. When Obama is gone though, there will be no one who will stand up again for this dinosaur. The Govt is basically giving speculators another chance to short this stock.
It’s understandable. GM, its union workers, government backers and dealers can choke on their cars. I’ll never buy one again.
They have been dead to me from the moment they embraced the National Socialist business model.
>>Who is John Galt?<<
Precisely. We are watching the last third of the book play out before our very eyes.
I fully realize that Ford is entirely different from GM.
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