Autoblog

gbh @ Oct 25th 2006 12:29PM

Mr_Oak,

Apparently you missed the last several quarters of GM's financials. (And the last 30+ years of their junk cars).

They sold their soul *long* ago - GM paper sells at junk-bond rates. No one lends them unsecured cash anymore - they have signed away the titles to many manufacturing facilities, and a host of other 'assets'.

GM has no product in the pipeline that is even close to last-gen Toyonda product. Toyonda is already working on the next gen. Are they perfect? No. But thousands of people every day compare, then go buy something other than 'big 2.5' product.

GM's overhead costs have not been reduced to the point where this Q's tiny paper 'profit' will continue. GM, just like Ford will eventually have no option but CH 11 to get out of it's ridiculous UAW contracts. Sorry, screwing together cars requires less skill than working at McDonalds - nobody can keep paying educated-skilled worker rates for assembly work.

They also have a beyond stupid number of layers of white collar mgmt. Most of whom are no more productive for the company than the bums collecting a paycheck for playing cards at a "jobs bank".

Here's the best part, GM is SO FAR in the hole, they would need to make at least 40 BILLION just to get back to BEING BROKE.

As Rastus says, (save for the 'Vette) soul? Junior high school design, crap plastics, crap build quality, crap handling, noisy rough crap pushrod engines? If that's soul, GM has it by the bucket.

All those 'great' high demand cars like the Aveo and Cobalt are currently flooding dealer lots and are heavily tv advertised at $7995 and $9995 respectively.

They still can't push those turds out of the big, stinky, brown hole that is the average Chevy dealership.

Even funnier is the hundreds and hundreds of those "new, best ever" GM pickups I see littering lots evrywhere. They can't move those either. Oh yeah, GM's future looks bright indeed.

Just remember to 'duck and cover' when when you see the final flash.

Oh yeah, Cadillac (the one division I thought just might have escaped the GM corporate cluster) sales are beginning to reflect their sub-par build quality and cheesy interiors once again.

Hummer in other markets? Uhh yeah, selling an extra 10K units a year of those POS goober-mobiles is definately gonna bring in the billions GM needs just to keep the doors open and the lights on.

The new Camaro? Highly unlikely GM will get to this one before CH 11. After 11, it will never happen, since somebody will honestly acknowledge that the thing will never sell enough units to break-even. Let alone be profitable.

Mr_Oak, you are either a shill trying to keep your overpaid GM job going a little longer, or you were foolish enough to buy GM stock and you really think it's a long-term hold. Or perhaps, you just have never driven anything but GM's lower-than-lowest-common-denominator-mobiles all your life and just don't know any better.

I really don't get it. If you can read a P&L, you know GM cannot survive without a major bankruptcy restructure. Non-optional.

Yes, there are Wall streeters playing this stock. They are either chuckleheads (a few) or are running game on the chumps. You think special-K is gonna be in GM long-haul?

Buffett could have bought GM outright and taken it private. It would not have been a big deal to write the check for either him personally, or B-H. He didn't because he knows that GM cannot ever make money until it is completely restructured.