GM

The General loses $3.3 BILLION in First-Quarter

Published by G

I don’t really know how to react to this bit news today. Part of me feels like this is a classic story of Retribution, while the other feels sorry for the good blue-collar folks that might be losing their jobs because GM execs are complete retards. Retribution because of all the garbage, we as consumers, have purchased in the last few decades with our hard-earned money. The excessive rebadging, the sea of cheap interior plastic, poor MPG and substandard designs on all their line up has essentially caught up with GM. It’s not to say they aren’t trying, but I feel that damage has been done and recovering from it is going to take a long of time.

I am not be a GM executive nor do I play one on this blog, but I can tell one thing I do know: I’m consumer and I haven’t been very crazy about their line up for some time. As a matter of fact, outside of the Corvette (which still suffers from poor interior design) and maybe the Australian G8, I don’ really like any of their cars. Less Americans buying American, now THAT’S an American Revolution folks!

Here is the complete story from The Los Angeles Times

How can GM fix this? Lets start with better lease rates!!! Such horrible lease programs tell me one thing; you don’t even want your cars back, so why would I want to even buy it? Build better cars, cut back on rental fleet sales to improve residuals (yup, I don’t want the same car next to me be a rental from Enterprise). Then work on more innovative design and alternative fuel vehicles. They’ve made strides with Saturn, Cadillac and maybe even GMC but there is plenty of room for improvement.

Edmunds Forecasts April Auto Sales

Published by G

Gotta love Edmunds. They are my primary source for invoice pricing whenever I shop around. It is very educational, if you want to spend all day reading all the information they provide, its well worth the time. Anyway, here’s a story that popped up yesterday on Businesswire regarding April Auto Sales forecast.

If you read the article and pull up the numbers up, you’ll notice that only Toyota, Honda and Nissan experienced growth in the month of April, compared to the same month last year. Now I don’t read too much into Nissan’s double digit growth since the bar was set rather low due to poor sales last April. I’m actually more surprised with Honda and Toyota’s achievements, even modest gains at their level is a great accomplishment.

In any case, this only mean a couple of things; American automakers keep on losing ground to the Japanese, and they still don’t get it. With crummy lease incentives and rates, I’m sure most people who want lease, still opt for imports.