So apparently talks are off between GM and Chrysler, who now is being courted by Hyundai.

Ford and GM also released profit reports today.

FORD: We ain't great, but we're gonna be okay.

GM: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To quote John McElroy:"GM now only has a little over $16 billion in cash reserves. And the company needs a minimum of $13 billion to keep the lights on and the assembly lines humming."

If someone had told me that Chrysler was in better shape than GM two days ago I would have laughed. My how things can change in a mighty quick hurry.

im laughing..........all the time..........ahahahahahaha


stupid gm



swapped, supercharged, intercooled, 2.9, fun

so what you are saying is Ford is still in its rebuilding phase and going to be ok, Chrysler may be bought out by Hyundai, and GM is screaming to be saved?
links?

Chrysler/Hyundai

GM in deep doodoo

GM still in deep doodoo

Basically it's like this: GM has 16.2 billion dollars in cash reserves, but must default and declare bankruptcy if it goes down to around 13 since after that it won't even be able to pay it's employees or the electric bills for it's plants anymore. Never mind paying for warranties on the cars It's sold or the retirement funds for the people it works for. And since GM is spending around a billion dollars a month (some people say a lot closer to 2 and maybe even 3) they don't have years before they go under. We're talking months.

Their announcement makes sense in this context. They're utterly desperate at the moment and have nothing to lose by announcing how deep in sh!tter they are.

This is the weirdest turn of events. It's like watching someone get mugged then miraculously wrestle the gun away and demand the thiefs wallet.

As I understand it, Chrysler actually has a hell of a lot less debts and about 11 billion in cash, and is closer to being in the black than all of the Big 3 automakers. Cerberus is the problem, they're investors by nature and get nervous when they're not making 800% profit.

What a week eh?

you guys really think the government is going to let GM, crysler, OR ford go under?

i dont think so. they are far too important to the american economy, people AND transportation infrastructure.

one way or another, all three will stay afloat somehow.



failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

^^^ agreed



maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow....... but some day

the problem is that our gov't can barely sustain itself let alone those companies



LE61T PTE6262 Powered

If the government bailed them out would they just give them money, or would they try and find a way to make GM profitable again?

^^ well considering they just gave wall street and friends 700 billion to 'stay afloat' i would say a handout would probably happen.

i dont fully believe in the bailout but i do think some should be given to companes as important as these.

and granted, GM could stop producing so many new vehicle's and just stick with the ones that sell decent and would probably be ok. that and well... i think its time to ditch some of the smaller wings of the company. like maybe saturn and izuzu?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edited Saturday, November 08, 2008 7:30 AM


failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

scary times for the domestic auto makers that is for sure!


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the money to bail them out might be coming out of that 700 billion package... But in all seriousness, whats it going to do, ensure them another year? There really isn't a light at the end of the tunnel for GM now... they missed every chance they had to avoid being in the state they're in. When does someone finally just say "sorry, but thats business" and let them fall. The only problem with that is then you're talking about hundred of thousands if not millions of jobs, and thats just for GM itself... how many parts warehouses or contracting companies that do GM's farmed-out work wind up going under as well. If you guys ever wondered what it was like to live in 1929, well, pay close attention to the next few years...




Arrival Blue 04 LS Sport
Eco
Turbo
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'Nuff said

It is my belief that going under is all part of a twisted plan. I can see them dumping off billions in pensions, warranty obligations..... SO on so fourth. My aunt made the RIGHT move recently and took a buyout offered.



My Cav
I give up...
i'm buying a VW those people love trees, so they should love eachother too... "Andy"

Well, the thing that a lot of analysts think is that GM taking a header wouldn't neccesarily be bad for the auto industry, or even for the economy for that matter. In the short run it would help the 2 remaining domestic car companies to thrive even in these bad times and in the long run it will help the last two American companies thrive and grow.

GM truck, rental or fleet buyers will just buy Ford or Chrysler afterwards so that's nearly half of the company's sales being "given" to the other Big 2. Boosting their sales significantly. As for the jobs, the parts suppliers at least wouldn't be lost for long since again Ford or Chrysler would take up the slack and Toyota and Honda and BMW and Mercedes also build cars here. As for the production jobs, like I said other companies will need extra manufacturing plants to compensate for the vacuum left by GM so I wouldn't worry too much.

And like I said, someone else would buy GM and "restore" it. It's probably end up being just Chevy/Caddy/Pontiac, but it wouldn't die so easily. GM sold too many cars and has too many contracts worldwide to not interest SOMEONE in a takeover bid.

z yaaaa wrote:you guys really think the government is going to let GM, crysler, OR ford go under?

i dont think so. they are far too important to the american economy, people AND transportation infrastructure.

one way or another, all three will stay afloat somehow.

Exactly. One of the big 3 goes down its just not the peopl whoworked for them that will le their jobs but also the people that work for companies the sold parts to them. If one of them went the way of the dodo so would over 1 million peoples jobs. GM and Ford is too big and Important for the gov't to let die, Chrysler on the other hand is not and I don't see the gov't giving them another handout since they didn't really learn from the first one.

Stupid piece of @!#$ emchines keyboad. damn thes things are cheap chineses junk.

just because GM or Ford goes bankrupt doesnt mean they disappear. it means theyll get bought out and pieced out to their competitors. the vacuum will be filled with other companies offering the same products. so while there will be plenty of people laid off and out of work because of it, it wont be nearly as many people as what most think.

No the big problem as i see it is the people that have retired from GM. If they go bankrupt what becomes of all the people who held up their end of the agreement and worked for GM for 30+ years to get their retirement packages? If they get to write them off there will be allot of people hurting from loosing their retirement packages.

KevinP (Stabby McShankyou) wrote:
and I'm NOT a pedo. everyone knows i've got a wheelchair fetish.

I honestly think 1 of the big 3 will go down.

I honestly think our country needs it.

The government already split 25 billion between the big 3 about a week before it made the 840 billion dollar bail out plan (don't @!#$ with me on numbers, go do some research)

That was only about a month ago ish, and GM is already on the verge of broke again?

This isn't just bad news, the goddamn airplane has flown into the side of the goddamn mountain.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit, and truly it's a case of where do we want our money to go? (And I say "our" money because Canada has a stake in this too.) We can either pay towards bailing out the big 3 or pay towards dealing with the havoc of them going bankrupt. Either way it'll cost us something.

I think GM should be bailed out, but should also be forced to trim down it's operations to manageable size. Hummer and Saab should be sold off ASAP. GM doesn't know what to do with them anyway, so what's the point? The rest of the lineup has been trimmed as far as it can go really, though the company could stand to get rid of a few SUVs like the Avalanche. As much redundant fat as they sed to have, it's all been trimmed now. The problem doesn't lie there, but in it's inefficient inner workings. GM is still making cars like it was 1988. It needs to modernize or die.

One big thing is that they need to do something like Chrysler did with the LX/LY platform where the Charger/300/Challenger are all built on the same assembly line. That way they could build the Corvette, XLR, Solstice, Sky, Opel GT, CTS, G8 and Camaro all on the same line and save money. These are all low volume cars and having different plants for each is extremely costly, Chrysler has the right idea.

I dunno, whatchall think?

Here's another thing to think about:

Quote:

The point of the Democratic bailout is to protect the unions by preventing this kind of restructuring. Which will guarantee the continued failure of these companies, but now they will burn tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. It's the ultimate in lemon socialism.

Democrats are suggesting, however, an even more ambitious reason to nationalize. Once the government owns Detroit, it can remake it. The euphemism here is "retool" Detroit to make cars for the coming green economy.

Liberals have always wanted the auto companies to produce the kind of cars they insist everyone should drive: small, light, green and cute. Now they will have the power to do it.

In World War II, government had the auto companies turning out tanks. Now they would be made to turn out hybrids. The difference is that, in the middle of a world war, tanks have a buyer. Will hybrids? One of the reasons Detroit is in such difficulty is that consumers have been resisting the smaller, less powerful, less safe cars forced on the industry by fuel-efficiency mandates. Now Detroit would be forced to make even more of them.

If you think we have economic troubles today, consider the effects of nationalizing an industry of this size, but now run by bureaucrats issuing production quotas to fit five-year plans to meet politically mandated fuel-efficiency standards -- to lift us to the sunny uplands of the coming green utopia

So even if the car companies are bailed out, they may be watered down to something none of us would recognize as the "original" General Motors or Chrysler or Ford. Granted, shedding some pounds and selling cars that are more fuel efficient wouldn't do the big three any harm, but I would still like variety in my menu. Not just super expensive hybrids that drive like a$$ and are impractical for everyone except city folk who don't know anything about cars and just want an occasional alternative to public transportation for the days when they absolutely positively have to get to the slam poetry night in record time.

Quote:

One of the reasons Detroit is in such difficulty is that consumers have been resisting the smaller, less powerful, less safe cars forced on the industry by fuel-efficiency mandates. Now Detroit would be forced to make even more of them.

What a load of BS. That entire quote stinks of reef political nonsense.... now it is the 'democrat' bail out plan all of a sudden? someone sounds sour that their man lost

and as for small cars being the reason detroit is in this mess --- WHAT!? that guy definitely has it backwards. it is years of producing large, gas guzzling, cars and truck with poor build quality compared to their competitors that has gotten them into this mess...... if they actually gave the market what they wanted 5-10-15yrs ago.... small affordable fuel effecient vehicles with good build quality then they wouldnt be in this mess


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Where I work: HP
What I take for Memory and Focus: Focus Fast

wheres cockstain mouse at?

im sure he'll chime in about saving gm

he's filling out more congressional save GM forms in all our names

The unions are what are killing the big 3. They keep demanding more money, more healthcare packages more of everything.

Also GM is killing itself with all the brands that it has. You cant offer 1 truck under GMC and 1 truck under Chevy that are almost exactly alike but have a few differances which in turn cost millions when they re-tool machines. They need to get rid of the cross market advetiseing and ither have just GMC sell yukons and denalis and get rid of the pickups and have Chevy sell jsut the Pick-ups and get rid of the tahoe and other look alike vehicles.

by cutting these brands they will save money as they wont have 2 plants making almost the exact same car/truck with a differnt name.

Go back to the roots of GM when each brand was its own brand and all had there own car/trucks.


Thanx Charles