pg318

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/business/31ford.html
I was a never, never, well hardly ever, and now I don't. Bye bye, 13mpg Dodge! It was good when gas was 90 cents a gallon. I hired a pickup for the one job in the last year when I needed a pickup.

c2vette

Yeah, I tried the renting / borrowing, and that got old very fast, absolutely not practical for me, gave it a good try though. On the other hand, I commuted with my truck this last week, and I could never go back to that on a full time basis either (12 mpg and boring).

esmarkey

During one of the last big snow storms I had to drive my full size truck in as the SS just couldn't handle it. I had the same experience... Poor mileage, poor handling, poor ride, no XM, etc. etc.
I used to drive this truck as my daily driver back when diesel was about a buck a gallon....

ChevyMgr

Everyone that wants to blame GM for their own failures has some validity in their posts. But GM didn't ruin this economy, Sub Prime Lenders and Wall Street who bought the loans f'd us. GM's problem right now is the same as Toyota's. NO ONE IS BUYING!

If you say GM is at fault for building SUV's that people wanted to buy, then you need to think about that statement and relearn supply and demand theories.

Here is another prime example of the banks/lending institutions still sticking it to us. Now they are doing it with OUR money that WE bailed them out with. While GM is cutting pay they are rewarding bad business decisions. Just food for thought.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29137662/

solman98

I'm not going to argue with you there. But there is the other side of that coin IMO. GM didn't put a lot of effort into small cars either. I know several in the business and they all tell me they hated it when someone came in to buy a Cobalt, no money. Now if Honda can make a Civic that still sells well and makes them money, why can't GM do that with a small car? Granted this economy is hurting all of them. But some are better off cause they at least played both sides. For every GM car commercial I see, I can think of 10+ for trucks. Last decent car commercial for GM I personally remember is when the Cobalt first came out and they showed all 3 (LS, LT & SS) models doing some sort of chase. What came next, the jogger running into the '90's Cutlass (Malibu commercial). Daewoo bombed out at least twice in the US, what does GM do, buy them out and bring in the Aveo? With the Cobalt and the HHR being good models, but what was the last add?

They also should have left Saturn as the "import fighter" instead, it blew up into more than it should have with SUV's and crossovers.

esmarkey

Just one comment to ponder....

If GM should have learned from what all the foreign car companies were doing (making small cars), why did all of the foreign companies come out with SUVs or pick ups themselves? And just in time for $4 gas.

solman98

They did that to get some of the truck market. No doubt there. But the differance is they kept on with what had been doing with cars. It's wasn't there main seller.

At least IMO......

pg318

No other country has what are called 'full size' pickups here and since rubber mats, vinyl seats and bare steel disappeared from inside the cabs here, the Big 3 found that we'd willingly pay so much more than they cost to make that even their business models would work - almost. Too attractive to the new entrants who actually make a profit even on the little cars, the margins on the big vehicles would mean obscene profits.
Maybe work versions of pickups will appear once again.

VictorySpark08

True. People who should be getting the blame is Wall Street and Banks. Its hard to be in the Car business and know what people are going to want in 4yr's let alone in 6months.

You can't switch a assembly line in 1 month and set supplier's and everything else up to build a completely different Vehicle. Kinda hard to go from building a Silverado to a HHR.

Only reason Toyota took "over" the market was due to lack of Quailty and cheap parts Gm used in the 90's.

Cokeybill

This is the correct issues with the economic downturn. I can't believe how many people think that it is something else that has caused the downturn in the economy. There is only one reason, " THE BANKS ".