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pete240z
pete240z Dork
5/27/09 6:02 p.m.

It seems that GM is on its last legs. Who would have thought?

Will they make it?

What do I do with the stock I own? (99 shares)

Will my father-in-law continue with his cushion retirement? (now on his 21st year of retirement bennies)

Will I ever buy a GM car again?

Will I be saying hello Honda?

What about youse?

P71
P71 Dork
5/27/09 6:35 p.m.

Stockholders are getting jack nothing no matter what happens. SELL SELL SELL!!!

2002maniac
2002maniac Reader
5/27/09 6:54 p.m.

Sell while it's worth SOMETHING! I'd be happy to get $100 for it because soon it will be worth nothing.

Strizzo
Strizzo Dork
5/27/09 6:59 p.m.

"SELL! SELL! They're selling? then BUY! BUY!"

ReverendDexter
ReverendDexter HalfDork
5/27/09 7:01 p.m.

It's a shame.

If I had the dollar to vote with, I'd love to have a G8 GXP.

I wonder which automaker is gonna realize how much money could be made from a simple, lightweight, high power:weight RWD car? A company like GM could manufacture something along the lines of a Caterham-like chassis, power it with an ecotec and sell it at a profit for less than $15k. Give it a jeep-like top and doors to keep weight and costs down, and don't even offer a stereo. I can't be the only one who'd jump at that.

pigeon
pigeon Reader
5/27/09 8:01 p.m.

GM will be filing bankruptcy June 1. Sell while you can still get something for your shares. Your father in law's retirement benefits will be cut a bit, but he's still the last of the non-government employees to live large on company-supplied retirement benefits.

ignorant
ignorant SuperDork
5/27/09 8:45 p.m.

so I asked

"will GM make it to the magic 8 ball?" and I got this..

someone else try

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~ssanty/cgi-bin/eightball.cgi

Wowak
Wowak Dork
5/27/09 8:50 p.m.

Honestly I will never buy a new GM or Chrysler product as long as I live.

P71
P71 Dork
5/27/09 8:52 p.m.

Brust
Brust Reader
5/27/09 9:17 p.m.

I just hope the corvette survives. I'll probably never own one, but it's the best example of a US carmaker doing something really right. Now if they would just apply the same strategy across the board, they might make it.

carguy123
carguy123 Dork
5/27/09 9:21 p.m.
Brust wrote: I just hope the corvette survives. I'll probably never own one, but it's the best example of a US carmaker doing something really right.

You call the huge butt on the Vette as doing something right? Now what was that song about big butts?

Type Q
Type Q HalfDork
5/27/09 9:28 p.m.

IIRC GM's North American operations were insolvent about 15 years ago. it was on the European arm of the empire that kept the lights on. I remember a friend of mine at the time who had a pretty clear view of what was happening commenting, "In about 10 to 15 years there is a whole layer of middle management and union leadership that will be retiring. There will be a window where either the company is going to turn around substantially or it will go out of business. I don't know which."

I don't know either.

NYG95GA
NYG95GA Dork
5/27/09 10:44 p.m.

Scroom.

wherethefmi
wherethefmi HalfDork
5/27/09 11:38 p.m.

I'm not likely to buy a new GM product, unless it's a v6 camaro. Though I will me buying a new ford product in about a year, once it's available and I get back. On that note I believe it's too late the UAW and middle management have screwed the pooch beyond repair. It's unfortunate. That's a lot of jobs lost due to the ineptitude of the few.

Brust
Brust Reader
5/27/09 11:56 p.m.
carguy123 wrote:
Brust wrote: I just hope the corvette survives. I'll probably never own one, but it's the best example of a US carmaker doing something really right.
You call the huge butt on the Vette as doing something right? Now what was that song about big butts?

I like them, and I cannot lie.

ddavidv
ddavidv SuperDork
5/28/09 5:24 a.m.

We have become the British car industry of the 1970s. I don't buy new cars, but given the choice, I'd certainly take a Ford over Government Motors offerings. ChryCo has nothing that interests me until the Fiats arrive.

So glad we spent all that TARP money to get us to exactly the same place we were 6 months ago.

How's all that Hope and Change working out for everyone?

ignorant
ignorant SuperDork
5/28/09 6:06 a.m.
ddavidv wrote: We have become the British car industry of the 1970s.

I'll take that one step further and say we need to watch out or we could become all of british manufacturing..

Dashpot
Dashpot New Reader
5/28/09 6:16 a.m.
ddavidv wrote: We have become the British car industry of the 1970s. I don't buy new cars, but given the choice, I'd certainly take a Ford over Government Motors offerings. ChryCo has nothing that interests me until the Fiats arrive. So glad we spent all that TARP money to get us to exactly the same place we were 6 months ago. How's all that Hope and Change working out for everyone?

Better than torture, corruption, fear & loathing? The subject's been beat to death already, but I applaud the govt. attempt to retain a manufacturing base in the country. We're becoming a country of accountants and salesmen.

John Brown
John Brown SuperDork
5/28/09 6:28 a.m.
ddavidv wrote: So glad we spent all that TARP money to get us to exactly the same place we were 6 months ago.

I think you are wrong Dwight.

We are no where near where we were 6 months ago.

From where I stand it looks as though we are about $50,000,000,000 short of where we were six months ago.

z31maniac
z31maniac Dork
5/28/09 6:35 a.m.
Dashpot wrote: Better than torture, corruption, fear & loathing?

We don't have a ROFLMAO smiley do we?

alfadriver
alfadriver HalfDork
5/28/09 6:48 a.m.

They'll survive. Bankruptcy will not be fun, but they will get through it. It's not like they have no product or nor sales- it's the fact that they have saturated the market, and can't sell their product at enough of a price to make any decent money.

All of us were on the hairy edge, and once the credit freeze stopped all revenues, it pushed us all over the edge. Some of us were prepared better than others.

To keep saying that nobody buys thier product is laughable- remember, it was headline news when Toyota out sold them in worldwide sales- so they do make a desireable product. It just needs to make more money on that product.

It's also amusing to see so many pan the govenment intervention- it IS a loan- lest we recall that the two times Chrysler use the Bank of Congress- they paid them back both times. I suspect that it will happen again.

The core question is whether this cleaning out will cut out enough middle, indecisive, management to allow the core company to create products that make lots of money- I think they will.

Anyway- it will be tough, many of my good friends will loose their jobs, but in the long run, it may have needed to happen anyway. This way just forces it to happen a LOT faster.

Eric

speedblind
speedblind New Reader
5/28/09 7:20 a.m.

70% gov't owned

20% UAW

10% Shareholders

As far as the stock price, this quote from the WSJ sums it up:

“GM's market capitalization has plummeted to about $873 million from $19.5 billion at the end of 2008 and $17.4 billion at the end of 2006, making it the fourth-smallest company on the S&P 500.”

I'm more interested in what Ford's going to do. All their worst case scenarios are built around 10 million cars and the industry is tracking below 9 right now. They're in a temporarily better position, but it won't last. Bad times indeed.

Xceler8x
Xceler8x Dork
5/28/09 8:16 a.m.
Dashpot wrote: We're becoming a country of accountants and salesmen.

I know! WTF?

I'm really not trying to sidetrack this thread. But when our public schools view vocational education as where the dummies go, all while preaching the merits of working in finance or other non-material producing industries, we're going to keep going in that direction.

Adrian_Thompson
Adrian_Thompson New Reader
5/28/09 8:52 a.m.
speedblind wrote: I'm more interested in what Ford's going to do. All their worst case scenarios are built around 10 million cars and the industry is tracking below 9 right now. They're in a temporarily better position, but it won't last. Bad times indeed.

We may be at below 9 million right now. But most people still see the economy picking up in the 4th Q. and early next year. We (Ford) can easily survive that, we're already mostly out of the low profit fleet market and have been offer less rebates than the competition (inc Foreign).

Supposedly the base demand of the market is 14 million units just to replace existing vehicles going off to the scrappy every year. Once credit opens up the latent demand will come back and vehicle sales WILL increase. You do the math, 10mil units for profitability and a 'market' of 14 mil units.

Note. I'm making no comments on the accuracy of the 10 mil units and I'm not making reference to anything that isn't in the public domain.

carguy123
carguy123 Dork
5/28/09 9:23 a.m.
speedblind wrote: 70% gov't owned 20% UAW 10% Shareholders

Where'd you get your ownership numbers? The last one I saw showed 55% UAW

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