Filed under: Trends, GM, Nissan
Kerkorian: Merge GM with Nissan/Renault?
Kirk Kerkorian may have found a way to get Carlos Ghosn to work for General Motors -- merge Nissan/Renault with GM.
The billionaire investor and head of Tracinda Corp., a GM shareholder to the tune of 9.9 percent, sent GM chief Rick Wagoner a letter proposing "that General Motors' Board of Directors establish a committee to immediately and fully explore, together with management, a possible opportunity to join the partnership-alliance between Renault, S.A. and Nissan Motor Co., Ltd." In a filing, Tracinda also indicated that it had been in contact with Ghosn regarding Nissan/Renault's interest in taking a minority stake in GM.
[Source: Associated Press via ABCnews.com]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Ajay 12:05PM (6/30/2006)
This does not seem like a good idea for Nissan... first they uplift the company from CA to TN, now this is in question? What the hell are they doing?
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Ryan 12:06PM (6/30/2006)
If you can't beat em' join em'
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Gardiner Westbound 12:06PM (6/30/2006)
Merging with Renault will be the kiss of death for General Motor's already lousy quality.
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arnie 12:09PM (6/30/2006)
Ohh yeah this is going to solve all problems. Mergers always do. This is what you can call tackling problems head-on. Kerkorian, you're a genius! What an original idea! Let's merge two lame duck companies and see if we come up with a winner.
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JC Whitless 12:10PM (6/30/2006)
Why doesn't Ford and GM get in together? Heck, it couldn't hurt at this point...
/waiting for Toyota to buy one of them lock/stock/barrel
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Anonymous Coward 12:12PM (6/30/2006)
Nissan has come out with great cars with rather lousy quality lately (I own a 350z and love it, but hate the GM-like quality), and the customer service has been about as lousy as I had with my Chevy (Blazer). This could only help GM (when you're missing design AND quality, getting some of either is gonna help), but can't do much good for nissan.
It's really too bad Nissan had to cut quality to put vehicles out at the price points they did, but now that Toyota is starting to make exciting vehicles (FJ cruiser... All they need is an affordable MR2 and a Supra halo car) again that are cheap, Nissan is in real trouble IMHO... Time will tell...
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Thomas 12:18PM (6/30/2006)
I wonder how many of the people who complain about quality from GM on this site have even driven one in the past 20 years. I don't own one myself, but my parents have had trouble free experience with their Buick. I drove the car the other day; it's now 4 years old and feels like it's brand new. Most of the quality scores you guys quote on here measures quality during the first 90; I don't give a rat's a@$ about the first 90 days. I care about the 20th 90 days! If my biting remarks don't sway you, just ask someone who has bought an Avalon in the past few years how great Toyota's quality is these days.
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Ryan 12:19PM (6/30/2006)
"but now that Toyota is starting to make exciting vehicles (FJ cruiser"
It should read:
"but now that Toyota is starting to make exciting *vehicle* (FJ cruiser)*
Other than the kicks of off-roading, I do not find an SUV exciting. I wonder if the SUV will go down as the "minivan" of the late 90's/early 2000's?
The FJ itself is pretty cool, not for me though, It looks as if it should be in an African Safari on the discovery channel, but thats not bad.
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joe 12:21PM (6/30/2006)
GM is now JAP CRAP. HA HA HA HAHA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
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storm9 12:24PM (6/30/2006)
Nissan already has a halo car comming the skyline, toyota hasnt announced one yet.
I also dislike the Nissan car models, Maxima Looks fugly,
make it look nice and it will sell more.
The only nissan i would buy is the Murano.
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Alan 12:40PM (6/30/2006)
Renault actually did a pretty decent job turning around Nissan. When they took over a few years ago, Nissan was a basket case. Now it is actually doing better than Renault. In recent years, GM hired Renault's top designer. Renault has also designed some acclaimed small cars (e.g. Clio), an area where GM is very weak (unless the re-badged Daewoo counts as a strength). This is an interesting proposition.
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Nathan 12:46PM (6/30/2006)
#7: I'd count myself as those who HAVE owned and driven a GM product in the last 20 years and count them as total junk. My parents also have owned GM products for 30+ years. Each of their cars are 13+ years old and pushing 200K miles.
That said, while the drive train of the GM cars have been nearly bomb proof, the interior, electrics, suspension, and structual integrity of ALL of the GM products are pretty much in steady decline by the 90K mark. My GM experience was the same.
My European car with 115K miles and 7 years of time is still as flawless mechanically, structually, and otherwise as the day it was purchased. It has at least another 150K miles in it and runs like it was brand new. No GM product can come close with the same age/mileage in my experience.
I was burned once by GM, have seen my parents sufferings, and won't go down that road again until I see changes which will keep history from repeating itself in my garage. The only thing keeping my parents out of a foreign car is price. GM products devaluate so fast they come right into my parents price point much earlier than the foreign makes.
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Zlivruquok 12:47PM (6/30/2006)
Hmmm... the last time a U.S. automaker merged with Renault, we wound up with forgettable crap like the Alliance, Encore, Premier and Fuego.
But that said, putting out a more limited number of forgettable-crap models might, for GM, be an improvement... zliv
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john 12:59PM (6/30/2006)
have any of you Renault-bashers driven a Renault recently? The Clio and Megane are quite good--better than any small or medium-sized car from GM, Ford or Chrysler (excluding the Fords they get in Europe but which we can't get here). I'd buy a Renault if they were sold here in the states.
And Renault has a leadership position with modern diesel engines. So it's not such a wacky idea. OTOH, why would Renault want anything to do with the US portion of GM? They've already got Nissan as an entryway into the US market if they desire. So that part eludes me...
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Brian 12:59PM (6/30/2006)
RTFA guys, 'significant minority ownership' is not a merger. and a significant minority ownership is not what renault did with nissan either: I doubt either has enough to cough up the 44% of what renault did for nissan. I'd see it as probably matching kerkorian's stake in the partnership.
regardless, this is only exploratory right now. and that's all that GM needs to help them negotiate with the unions. They can say, "give us some concessions now, and we'll bring Ghosn and schweitzer in on the board of directors, introduce a technology partnership, and gm will keep jobs in the states for a global market."
what nissan/renault gets out of this is the ability to globalize the kappa platform. The solstice is the hottest thing that GM's got going for them right now, but it's a small market/high profit platform here in the states and in europe. bring it to japan, and you have the next Silvia.
And those of you hating on nissan's quality, sit in the new interiors of the versa, sentra, and altima and read about Doug Betts.
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jeff.55 1:16PM (6/30/2006)
So how will adding brands, production capacity and employees help General Motors?
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DarkKnight67 1:16PM (6/30/2006)
This is about the dumbest idea I ever heard of. Renault has been out of this country so long, they couldn't even compete when they were. Given Nissan's recent reputation, I wouldn't even consider joining up with them. Kerkorian, mind your own damn business!
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Daggy 1:17PM (6/30/2006)
Renault bought AMC in the late 70's. As a result they brought us the Alliance, voted "Car of the Year" in 1983, later to become "Dud of the Year". Then AMC Renault brought us the Jeep Cherokee, so successful that Chrysler bought AMC just to get hold of the Jeeps.
AMC disappeared and Jeep remains part of Daimler Chrysler Group.
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Puff Chippy 1:22PM (6/30/2006)
Hmmm, take one part top U.S. car manufacturer, add one part bottom tier Japanese company and a pinch of French engineering mastery, and what do you get? A Chevy LeCar? A Peugeot Impala? No thank you.
GM is well on their way back to auto market domination so why in the world would they be looking for the quick out? Oh, right, so Kerkorian can cash out. Nevermind.
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Tom W 1:30PM (6/30/2006)
This reminds me of the movie "Wall Street" with Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen.
Stock price manipulation. That's all it is. If you look at GM's stock chart, there appears to have been a couple days of accumulation before this news came out. Then a big selloff this morning. See here:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v615/natural_selection/GM-1.gif
It must be nice to be able to make almost 10% on an investment in a few days just by leaking some "news".
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