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236 Comments
- JustinNoland, on 06/01/2009, -5/+72That's what happens when you fail to innovate.
- serobill, on 06/01/2009, -8/+75When almost every other technology in the world is evolving to become cheaper and better, there is no place for auto makers who have essentially been giving us the same product at an increasingly higher cost over the past 30 years.
- felman87, on 06/01/2009, -5/+55And the people responsible for driving it into the ground walk away with millions while thousands of honest and decent hard working Americans are given the boot.
- kylere, on 06/01/2009, -3/+51I grew up in Flint Michigan, the problem with GM rests on the shoulders of three groups, Management for failing to innovate, Labor for demanding more than a fair share and protecting the bad employees and the shareholders for demanding return at the cost of research and workmanship.
- ILoveBoobies, on 06/01/2009, -0/+47From the article earlier today. Spot on imo:
GM's failure after 101 years is an indictment of American management in general. It highlights the damage to our economy that results when finance becomes the tail that wags the economic dog. And it shows what happens to any company that rests on its laurels and fails to adapt to change. - Mullinator, on 06/01/2009, -2/+48This is what happens when you rely so much on your old reputation that you neglect the present.
- BradBrown, on 06/01/2009, -0/+23Urine take note.
- inactive, on 06/01/2009, -9/+31Don't forget to thank the auto workers union! They're the brains behind higher costs and prices.
- bluehouse, on 06/01/2009, -9/+29You have no idea how disappointed I was when I found out this story wasn't about Limbaugh falling down a flight of stairs
- damnshoes, on 06/01/2009, -3/+23nobody can stay #1 forever.
- tgc1, on 06/01/2009, -4/+22What a disaster. I mean the company, not the situation. They made this happen themselves. You'd have had to be a complete moron to not see the wave coming from the imports that were 10 times better and cheaper than the crap you were selling. For GM not to have kept tabs on the competition is laughable. They knew what was going on all along, but they kept repeating their mantra, which i'm sure you've all heard. Because it's been bashed into your head for 100 years. "Buy American" they shouted.
Whenever you'd dare to question the quality, the workforce, the competition doing much better... they'd cry again "Buy American." -- Nowhere along the line did I EVER see GM take the lessons they could have learned in stride and actually innovate. They have pushed out the same garbage for decades. And now they should pay for it. But instead, the American people foot the bill. How wonderful.
There's no way to sugar coat it folks. GM sucks and they should have been allowed to fail. Just like those big banks who took insane risks on credit default swaps and all that other risky ***** that was dirtying up the market. Those banks, with their incompetence, should have been allowed to fail as well. Because it's not like if someone bankrolls their future on lottery tickets, or a night at the Casino and ends up losing everything -- they don't get a ***** bailout, millions in bonuses and a golden parachute just in case.
***** this whole situation. Obama can sugar coat it all he likes. But this is the dumbest god damned thing to ever happen in America. This is a theft from the people of EPIC proportions. - erikerikerik, on 06/01/2009, -4/+21fall of an american giant?
how about nothing can grow forever. period, end of story.
Also having the HUGE union and over paid workers I bet didn't help anything at all.
lets not foret "quality," sucked... - inactive, on 06/01/2009, -2/+19sorry, but those cars don't apply to about 90% of the population.
- inactive, on 06/01/2009, -3/+18And build a crap product. Not so much now, but in the 80s and 90s they did and turned many off to American cars.
- kukurio, on 06/01/2009, -6/+19For the life of me, I cannot understand the universal antagonism towards unions on Digg. I recognize that most unions are corrupt, self-serving entities, but at the same time, so are most corporations. Fundamentally, a union is just labor's equivalent to a corporation, and I don't see people bashing the latter. Unions are responsible for the rise of the middle class in this country more than any other factor, and their decline has resulted in the middle class receiving none of the GDP gains that the country has made in the last 30 years.
Since Reagan's presidency, the middle class's standard of living has been built completely on debt. Trickle-down, my ass. - ILoveBoobies, on 06/01/2009, -20/+33Oh, and ***** the UAW!
- inactive, on 06/01/2009, -1/+14And you know what the weird thing is : Most auto workers that were laid off/saw a cut in their pay will fight you teeth and nail about the UAW.
- kingmanic, on 06/01/2009, -0/+11Against inflation all cars are about the same percentage of the average income with many more options on the low end than in years before. It's not exactly the same product and neither is the cost increasing relative to other goods.
1960 avg cost of car: ~$2,600
1960 avg income: ~$5,300
2004 avg cost of a car: ~$20,000
2004 avg income: ~44000
There is innovation in many areas. A cheap car in 2009 can out perform some of the "sports" cars of ages past. Compare a low end 2009 Nissan Altima with a 2.5L engine (175 HP) vs a 1979 Ford mustang with a 2.8L engine (109 hp). both cars occupy the "economy" end of cars while the Altima isn't even a "sports" car. It's a sporty sedan. - yeahright, on 06/01/2009, -0/+11Yeah, those late 90's and on Cavalier's were just top-notch, weren't they
- wacked, on 06/01/2009, -0/+11This is what happens when a company is driven by quarterly results based purely on the demands of shareholders, instead of having a focus on the business itself. Thank you Wall Street for undermining the business that made all you ***** rich in the first place.
- offrdbandit, on 06/01/2009, -12/+22Congratulations to the UAW.
Here's to looking out for those workers you "represent" who now have no job. Browbeating your employer into bankruptcy was a BRILLIANT idea. - brad3378, on 06/01/2009, -3/+13And company management.
- inactive, on 06/01/2009, -2/+12wrong.
- Gauthic, on 06/01/2009, -3/+12Microsoft competes (when it does have valid competition), listens to its customers and continually improves its products at a fairly reasonable price. Their operating systems are secure and stable (now), and their consumer products are taking shape.
- asgardshill, on 06/01/2009, -10/+19Whoa. IMO, that's a pretty broad brush you're painting with there. While there have been bumps in the road for the auto industry as a whole, Ford, Nissan, Fiat, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, et al. don't seem to be having that much trouble keeping their doors open. Perhaps the bulk of the problem lies with this one massive company, GM, that consistently builds expensive fragile crap that nobody wants. Hence THEIR pink slip being handed over to the US Government.
- inactive, on 06/01/2009, -0/+8Regulations that apply to all major manufacturers, most of which have been able to figure out how to effectively mitigate them.
- kvgirard, on 06/01/2009, -1/+9ive been raised knowing nothing that gm is king and ford can suck a fat one, but when gm is compared to their foreign competition over the last decade, their main line-up of vehicles have just been pretty bland and for a price that was a bit too high. i love ya gm, but you screwed up. now its time to face the facts.
- Goochman, on 06/01/2009, -2/+10Ding, Ding, Ding - we have a winner.
Of course all three of these are blaming the other 2 - Eorster, on 06/01/2009, -0/+8I think you have clued into the corporate formula for disaster.
- Procure, on 06/01/2009, -2/+9Also, the LS-series engines are well-regarded in the automotive performance world as one of the best engine families of all time. Low weight, high power, great gas mileage, etc. True feats of engineering.
I hope GM still makes engines, if nothing else. :-/ - Rikkochet, on 06/01/2009, -0/+7Microsoft Excel and SQL Server are also phenomenal products, but people who only use Windows and IE have plenty to bitch about.
- Sparky9292, on 06/01/2009, -0/+7You know, I honestly wanted to buy an american car. I searched all over Consumer Reports Used Car vehicle guide, and NOT ONE of the american 4 door sedans had a good repair history. I was hoping that Saturn would be the savior.... HA!
GM and the Big Three automakers have killed competition like Preston Tucker's (see the movie Tucker).
Frack GM and frack the dealerships... It's time we put our money into the new American car manufacturers like Tesla Motors... - jocab64, on 06/01/2009, -3/+10FTA - “I never ever could have believed that one day this thing would go that way,” said Jim Wangers, a retired G.M. executive."
That's exactly the point. It was a complete lack of foresight. You weren't looking down the road at all. You lost your hunger and will to make great cars that people wanted to drive. You started turning out crap and are now shocked people are no longer buying your product. What did you expect? America, above all else, is cheap. Show me 2 equal cars, and people would buy American every time Show me a car that gets better gas millage, looks better, runs better, and is cheaper, and it's a no brainer. We show no allegiance other than to the dollar. - brad3378, on 06/01/2009, -2/+9Probably just a fraction of what we spend subsidizing foreign owned automakers in the Southern Republican "Free Market" states.
I wish their subsidies (which are not paid back) got half of the publicity that the American Automaker bailout (Loans) receive. It's ***** when states like Michigan effectively subsidize others by paying more in federal taxes than they receive back compared to all the southern states that (in some cases) receive more than TWICE as many federal dollars than they pay in taxes: http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/266.htm ...
Is it really too much to ask for a level playing field? - s0krat3z, on 06/01/2009, -0/+7Don't forget that a company will never grant you something it doesn't have. I worked for a Fortune 500 company with a USWA union for several years. The contracts consisted of a pie distribution of what the company had to offer. Nothing more. It's really just common sense. You ever tried to take something from somebody that didn't even exist?
- offrdbandit, on 06/01/2009, -4/+11"Fundamentally, a union is just labor's equivalent to a corporation..."
Except no one is forced to buy into or work for a corporation.
"Unions are responsible for the rise of the middle class in this country more than any other factor..."
Doubtful and complete speculation, but unions are certainly responsible for the demise of more than one industry.
"their decline has resulted in the middle class receiving none of the GDP gains that the country has made in the last 30 years"
Not even close. Both the decline in union pervasiveness and a lowering middle class are caused by the same thing: you need more education to make a living these days. Gone are the days an illiterate individual can earn $45 an hour turning a wrench in Detroit. Unions were designed to "protect" unskilled laborers because they are, for all intents and purposes, expendable. Unskilled labor leveraged their majority position to artificially inflate their earnings. They've subsequently left themselves high-and-dry as their employers close up shop. It should be no surprise that someone with only a GED can't find another gravy job after being laid off from a car plant. - publiclurker, on 06/01/2009, -3/+10I think that's his point. GM has basically been producing the same junk for the past 30 years while the other companies have been innovating at least to a limited degree.
- sinurgy, on 06/01/2009, -0/+6Sad thing is it didn't have to be this way but they got greedy. The execs, the unions, the shareholders...all of them. The one group they neglected, the consumer, is the one group that bit them in the ass. I'm not a hater though, I hope they all learned their lesson and come back strong.
- kryptikcomic, on 06/01/2009, -3/+9German car FTBW!
- kingmanic, on 06/01/2009, -0/+6GM and chrysler had problems but the reason they failed wasn't poor design. Some lines from GM were very interesting (ie. the 2009 Corvette ZR1). The problem they had was relying too much on a single market segment and being so huge that they frequently competed not only with other companies but also themselves. When the SUV market started to dry up and the industry itself shrank 40%: GM couldn't cope. There was some very poor management decisions and some very poor long term planning but they did make some okay cars.
PS. I am not an American and actually don't really like GM cars. - Jlaugh, on 06/01/2009, -2/+8It's not the line workers fault when a company goes to ground they don't make business decisions. Only a moron would blame the troops when the Generals loose the war.
- HCProgramr, on 06/01/2009, -1/+7The ZR1 I'll give you. The rest?
The Camaro? BFD. I'm able to reliably get 25mpg out of my car 'with over 300 Horsepower', 27-28 if I nurse it, and it's almost 20 years old. 4mpg over 20 years isn't innovative, it's pathetic.
The Cadillac? Mitsubishi had Active Suspension on a road car in 1987, and it as invented by Lotus. Next.
Onstar I'll give you, though it's loved or hated depending on whom you talk to.
Catalytic Converter? Invented by Engelhard Corporation in 1973.
"Fully" Automatic Transmission? First to mass-produce, but the initial research into fluid-actuated transmissions was Chrysler.
About the only clever thing I can think of GM doing that wasn't listed above was 'Displacement on Demand'...and I don't know if they invented it, just that they were the ones touting it. - Eorster, on 06/01/2009, -1/+6The delusion continues.
- inactive, on 06/01/2009, -3/+8You're not going to start crying, are you publiclurker? WAAAHH!!!
- Bermygoon, on 06/01/2009, -3/+8
The real reason for failure doesn't have a lot to do with GM or Chrysler actually. The reason for these failures is the same thing that has caused the housing crash; cheap and easy credit created excess capacity and distorted the market place. When that credit was taken away these companies were not able to weather the dramatic change.
That is the boring answer though, much more exciting (and sells more papers or clicks) to blame...the American worker, the American executive, the American Culture..etc.
- diggopolous, on 06/01/2009, -0/+4No CountryTyme lemonade in a glass pitcher?
And Remember the old Chrysler jingle:
They go together
in the good 'ol USA
Baseball, hot dogs,
apple pie and chevrolet. - Geheg3D, on 06/01/2009, -0/+4Why bury this? He's exactly right.
- curtisag, on 06/01/2009, -0/+4The spirit of America is best served when mismanaged companies are punished and excellent companies are rewarded. Any deviation from that is not in keeping with the spirit that made this country great. The mechanic in his garage shop who creates an engine capable of 100 MPG deserves the money to expand while GM deserves nothing.
- DreKor, on 06/01/2009, -0/+4GM was a bank that failed. Their revenues came from their finance wing, not their automotive sales. They took losses on their vehicle sales so they could sell the much more lucrative financing options.
Conspiracy theorists all have the fatal flaw of give people too much credit. Smart people didn't destroy GM, stupid ones did. - Eorster, on 06/01/2009, -0/+4I find it disingenuous or abhorrently ignorant to not recognize that plenty of people knew this would eventually happen. No, I don't mean for the last six months, but ten years or even longer. Everyone knew these large US car companies could not bear the weight of high wages, benefits and health care in the long run. Coupled with one of the worst recessions in the last hundred years, It was a forgone conclusion that this would occur. And all that "bail out" money was nothing more than a shock absorber so the economy did not take a huge unemployment hit before people had an idea what to do about the situation.
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