gta289

my girlfriend works for Lexus and directly next to her dealership is a chevy dealer, she told me that a lot of the chevy dealers are closing down becasue there not making money. My question is, does this mean gm is going out buisness, ive been looking at there stock shares and its not looking to promising,, WTF? if its true than good

TattooTears

GM's stock dropped about 48% in 2005. Between now and 2008 they are closing 8 or 9 plants and laying off 30,000 employees. And lets not even mention the billions of dollars they have lost this year. So to answer your question, yes they are definitely going downhill. I work for Toyota as well, so I'm contently doing research on the automotive industry and there really isn't much good happening with GM now with the exception of the Corvette. As for them going out of business, I think they are too big a part of the nation economy for them to just go out of business like that, but I could be wrong.

Oh and by the way, I hate to say it but Ford isn't really doing that much better right now. Toyota has already surpassed them as the second largest automaker and should be taking GM's number one spot within the next couple of years according to all the automotive analyst.

gta289

agreed, just like u said with the corvette in chevys department doing well, the mustang is fords upkeep. I will agree that none of the big three are doing fantastic, hell im even going out to buy a acura in a little while, but all issues aside, i have two mustangs, and thats iin my opinion one of the best ford products, truthfully i really dont like ford chevy or dodge trucks..... my mom and dad both own two Ford trucks, and i hate them both. IM really into the honda ridgelines for some odd damn reason but even the toyota trucks arent all bad.....is it bad to be crossing over into forbidden territory and starting to like the jap cars?

TattooTears

Although they are Japanese companies in the case of Toyota the majority of the vehicles they sell here in the states are also built here. Whereas you have GM who purchased Daewo and is building vehicles in their Korean plants.

tinman

Toyota is still a Jap company doing business here. If they didn't do it that way not many Toyota's would be sold because the American company's would get the gov't to put import quotas on them and you know it....
All the 'Vettes ever sold are not even a tick in GM's giant clock, Ford is probably being held up by the truck sales more than anyone can realize...
BTW, I own some Ford stock and it's not setting any record either but at least it's not doing like GM.I think when we wake up some day and hear that Toyota has taken over the operations of GM, GM will have brought it on themselves........

HaV

A HUGE problem with GM is the amount of labor cost that goes into their vehicles. I toured the GM plant in OKC for a college design project.. a guy putting in a carriage bolt in each and ever single vehicle was getting paid 30 bucks an hour.. he did nothing but the same thing over and over and over and over. There were lots of examples of that, but that one was the most striking example of it. GM is killing its dealers with all the incentives.. they arent making much at all off of their new vehicle sales because of all the rebates and so forth.. but they cant stop giving out rebates because the cars were just not selling before they started that... Untill they cut cost of manufacturing down.... there screwed.

Lee Willis

I would not get too concerned about GM going under. It takes a long time for a big company to actually sink and few do. Every company in the industry has its ups and downs, usually, as is the case with GM now, mostly due to self-inflicted problems. Remember, Chrsler was near bankruptcy in the early 80s: only a government loan saved them and it took them a long time to turn around. Ford was on the ropes in the late 80s with quality and production cost issues and really has only turned around completely in the last several years. And several foreign companies are in deep stuff: Mazda and Nissan aren't doing that well and Mitsi is possibly headed for bankrupcy. I expect GM will soldier on and take a good 10 years to get its act together, and never regain its market share or glamour.

Chevy dealers are not closing down that fast from what I hear. GM is paring smaller, less profitable dealers and consolidating others, but the bigger dealers seem to be doing well. But they have some models that are selling quite well (the Impala, believe it or not) and they will last into the future, no doubt.

ByPopularDemand

How is it that all these car companies are having trouble.

Lee Willis

I imagine part of the problem is that there are two many companies trying to sell to too few buyers (even though there are alot).

GM has pure business problems: its labor and pension costs are too high, it has higher production costs than its competition. But it also has some lousy products, poor product planning (the SSR is a fun car, but only an idiot would have brought it to market like that, there just isn't enough demand) and too many lines and models (even after getting rid of Olds, it still has too many brands -- I vote to nix Buick. Mitsi: well it must makes too many cars that are too much like too many other companies' cars - why buy them?

Anyway, there are car companies that are doing very well. Porsche is making so much money they bought 20% of VW-Audi, at one time a much much larger company. BMW is doing well, and Ford is coming on strong. One thing all thoise companies have in common is a commitment to cars, whether it is making good sports cars, or sports sedans, or just good cars for the market (Ford). It seems to me that is what distinguishes them from companys that GM, where upper management used to think (and still does, I fear) that if you put some ribbed plastic rpocker panels on it and scoops and spoilers and call it a Gran Prix SSR Super Omalogato or something, people will buy it.

TattooTears

Hey Lee, I didn't realized you where a member over here....
...Anyhow what Lee said is one of the biggest parts of GM's problems, they have been making vehicles that nobody wants and that's there is no demand for. On top of that their reliability ratings have been in the garbage. In the new issue of Consumer Reports they recommended 31 vehicles. Of the 31 29 were from Japanese auto makes 15 of them being from Toyota and only 2 of the 31 coming from domestic companies. According to the 2005 annual issue of Consumer Reports Toyota is the No. 1 company in the world for reliability, and no only are they No. 1 but they are also No. 2 and No. 3 (Scion, Lexus and Toyota in that order). In my opinion it is the reliability of the product that is really pushing Toyota ahead and a big part of what is bring GM down. Anytime I have customer coming in with 300 and 400 thousand miles on their cars and telling me they didn't have any real problems out of them.