GM rebirth watch

This is just from the top of my head, but is GM’s only wagon offering the $40k+ cts wagon? (not counting compacts/hatchbacks)

I hope they dont base the “american appetite for wagons” off of those sales which go right up against BMW/Audi wagons who have established themselves there already.

I would buy the USA version of that opel wagon, or i would at least want to buy it :smiley:

Yeah. I would definitely buy that wagon used in 3 or 4 years.

GM has been opening new storefront dealers all over Seoul this year. More than any other brand. A new one pops up every week. The advertising and PR budget alone is more than any other campaign being advertised (subway, TV, Radio, Internet and especially print). But the reality on the road tells a different story.

All the new models that are actually being purchased and driven on the streets of Seoul are Kia, BMW, and the Daewoo brand equivalent.

“Shebrolae” is how the are telling Seoulites to pronounce the brand. GM/Chevrolet is all dressed up but has nowhere to go in Seoul.

They got rid of the Daewoo brand?

Daewoo is still a middleweight on the roadways of Korea. However, I see more and more Chevrolet branded cars on the roads here in Korea everyday. Particularly the Chevy Spark vs Daewoo Matiz in the sub-compact category.

I read last night that Chevy will sell around 4-5 million cars this year. If Chevy was independent, that would put the Chevy brand as the sixth or seventh largest car make. The Cruze has been a huge success, estimates are 600k in sales for 2011. That put its it in the global top 3 (Focus, Golf, Cruze).

Also, the successful products are coming from Korea. The Cruze was largely developed in Korea and there is a new small car in the works there.

GM stuck with the Suburban Crowd ?

As I work my way through Maximum Bobs lovely new book a lot of questions pop up.
I’ll indulge in some of them later, but what got my head wandering
this night was the question: "What ever happenned to the Volt?

Well, it certainly isn’t selling all that well…

Looks like they are unable to reach even the modest sales task of 11.000 this year.

http://green.autoblog.com/2011/06/03/chevy-volt-sales-whats-going-on/

They shift tripple the number in Subarbans alone. Looks like the “leftist elite crowd”
as Lutz is calling them, just doesn’t shop at the General, snapping up Prii and Leafes
instead.

Is this a technical or psychological problem?

mo-i

I believe it’s partly due to the fact that they’re very expensive (right?) and tough to get right now (also, right?)

I don’t see many people flocking to the Leaf, though.

There are 14,000,000 (that’s million, with a big M) unemployed Americans right now … who is supposed to be buying these things? I’m guessing it isn’t the average working-class family with an average income of $40K or less, or even the average middle-class family with $60K (that’s GROSS income).

With an MSRP of $41K on the Volt, and $37K on the Leaf (which are basically makes-me-feel-good town cars) … throw in an essentially non-existent electro-car infrastructure and it isn’t too hard to understand why they aren’t being snapped up. Is it?

The Federal tax credit should be helping sales, but to be honest, I don’t think that is too honest to begin with. The Federal gubamint is already spending way too much, on way too many services, projects, bailouts, etc. to be supplementing a privately offered product that should either stand on it’s own, or fail.

mo-i: Bob was worried about this happening. The knee-jerk reaction of the average American to a good product from GM/Ford/Chrysler is “What are they hiding?”. There is a lot of built-up (and somewhat well-deserved) ill-will to the Big 3 in the US/Canada. Think of Audi in between '75 and '95. They were building better and better cars, but everyone thought they couldn’t. Finally, it all clicked one day and Audi jumped into the Mercedes/BMW conversation.

The good part about the Volt is that GM has an answer now. The next time someone challenges the GM CEO or President over the environment, they can mention the Volt. Before their answer was long and complicated talking about the small improvements they were making across a broad product line. It didn’t fit into the caption underneath the photo, therefore, no one read it. Now the newspaper can print a photo of the Volt with the caption “GM pushing ahead with super clean Volt in spite of poor demand”. Oh…the self-sacrafice! What angels!

As Lew said too, the Leaf is bombing. It’s a demographics/economics thing. When things were going well, middle class families invested in a Prius in place of a Camry or entry level Lexus. Now, those families are buying Cruzes, Focus, Elantras. They are buying the same size car, but as cheap as possible. That’s moved the game onto Fisker and Tesla. Perhaps the millionaires will be willing to take a chance on an oddball electric car at the $100k-$150k price point.

I only came back to consult with this thread of now, and I must say your answers make a lot
of sense to me. Didn’t know that the Leaf was endagered species as well.

Thanks.

mo-i

Anyone seen the new Cobalt today? What markets is it for? Europe? Really?

I believe the Cobalt is the Cruze (at least in NA…) right?

Sorry, no it isn’t. It is something, that I can’t categorize. I am not sure
if it is a Corsa or a Spark underneath:

That must be a halloween trick that arrived late.

Re: electrics

Nissan moved 1,031 Leaf electric vehicles in September slightly ahead of GM’s Chevrolet Volt, which delivered 723 units. Overall, the gap between the two mass-market EVs is closing.

Year-to-date, the Nissan Leaf has delivered 7,199 units with the Volt checking in at 3,895.

Auto sales were generally strong across the board, but electric vehicle sales remained sluggish relatives to more conventional cars.

Toyota also noted that sales of its Prius continue to decline. The company said it delivered 9,325 Prius vehicles, down 18.2 percent from a year ago. For the year, sales are off 10.2 percent.

The recent data indicates that EV demand is lumpy to say the least. Nissan’s Leaf sales of EVs slowed sequentially as GM’s Volt units picked up. Nissan’s Leaf units in August were 1,362 to 302 Volts. In July, Nissan moved 931 Leaf vehicles to GM’s 125 Volts.

from: http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/smart-takes/nissan-leaf-tops-chevrolet-volt-in-september-sales-but-gap-closes/19588

GM posts record profit 2 years after bankruptcy…
…GM’s results show the impact of changes made during the bankruptcy process in the summer of 2009, when it closed plants, won changes in labor contracts, and shed weaker brands and dealerships. The moves allowed the company to be far more profitable even though sales levels are still below pre-recession levels.

However it’s not all good news:

GM has repaid loans it received and the Treasury got most of the proceeds of its record initial public offering in November 2010. But Treasury still holds about a third of the company’s shares, which are trading below its IPO price, and GM has yet to return $25.5 billion of the money it received.

Shares would have to roughly double, to above $50 a share, for taxpayers to break even on the bailout. Taxpayers fell about $1.3 billion short on the Chrysler bailout.

$25 billion…that’s the annual budget of the White House janitors. Who cares…

Also noticed that each union employee gets $7K in profit sharing from that. I’d take a $7K bonus, anytime.

I do! Our situation is a symptom of habits that extend to all the little things. We need to cinch up the belt!

On one hand, $25 billion to save 200,000 jobs (directly, probably 3-4 times more with suppliers) sounds high ($125,000 per job).

On the other hand, this is a US based company with strong ties to keeping many jobs in the US. It’s revenue for 2010 was $135 billion. Also, it’s level on imports/exports, unlike Apple which is a huge importer and only slight exporter.

I think doing anything but saving GM through a significant restructure (shedding 80% of its debt, etc.) was the only conscionable thing to do. Letting it fail completely would have cost probably a year’s unemployment benefits for 600,000 people. If we take an average wage of $60k, 36% would be $21,600 in unemployment, over a year it would amount to $13 billion. When one considers the long term economic decline of the workers, the macro effects would be staggering.

Another way of looking at is that $25 billion is .7% of US budget for one year. Hefty, but almost insignificant. To put it in the perspective of an individual, it would like $280 to someone making $40k a year.