Location: Obama made me join the NRA for 5 years !
Posts: 2,181
GM posts $15.5 billion loss
good gawd
Hello GM I have an idea. Quit making those big ****in SUV's and trucks, and make 10 million small cars that will get 50 mph and you'll jump from worst to last in auto sales and recover quickly.
PS - improve your quality to Toyota's standards, that'll help too
I just bought an Impala for my wife. Very nice car. Priced very well. Fit and finish seems pretty good. It's a full sized 4 door sedan that gets 30 mpg on the freeway... I'm seriously considering a Colorado as my next vehicle. I need a truck...
PS - improve your quality to Toyota's standards, that'll help too
[&o]
My mechanic built an engine for a guy who works for the phone company in the Del Rio area of south Texas. He said the phone company felt that maintenance was excessive on their fleet of Ford F-150's, so they bought 30 Toyota Tundras. According to the guy, none of the Toyotas was still running after six months... Apparently the Toyotas are fine if you're just running back and forth to the grocery store, but, if you actually WORK your trucks, well, not so much... The phone company switched back to F-150's.
Location: Obama made me join the NRA for 5 years !
Posts: 2,181
RE: GM posts $15.5 billion loss
I don't buy that - my experience is you cannot beat a Toyota truck. I've had a couple, and a Sequoia, and Volkswagen and quite a few Gm/Ford products and all the GM/Ford's were crap they really were.
Toyotas are pretty overrated. They have led theworld in recalls for years...except they keep it well covered up. Like the Tacoma frame replacement recall..the Camry sludging deal....the list goes on. Just Google any of it. Their trucks are definitely grocery getters. In fact thats all most companies are building. Has anyone tried to find a regular cab vinyl matted standard shift pickup in 4wd? You have 1 choice...Dodge....the rest have sold out to the people who think a truck is a family car as opposed to those of us who have to have one for work.
GM's problems go way beyond unions as well. The content of their vehicles is crap. People are getting tired of door handles and knobs falling off in their hands, seats breaking, pop can thin metal...etc. BTW...yes I do have a 2000 Silverado and an 2007 Impala so I know what i speak of. The drivetrain in the truck has been good...but the rest of the truck has been a complete waste of time. There IS a reason their vehicles are priced so much lower than the other companies. Its called building on the cheap!
Another of GM's problems is the fact that everything they build is a cookie cutter. They make nice cars of you like 4 door front wheel drive auto tranny equipped boring transportation that neveer gets drove anywhere but the 4 lanes. As far as their trucks...dont even get me started...again...great vehicles if you use em like a car and never work them. If you gotta make a living with them...look elsewhere. Couple all this with the fact that most of the union employees seem to think that GM owes them $34 per hour coffee breaks as well as cradle to grave 100% care and you have a recipe for disaster.
If GM can remain in business it will be a small miracle.
No doubt they have problems--U.S. automakers are outsourcing to different countries, while Toyota is building huge factories here--but my experience with Ford has been very good. My first truck was a (very) used Ford, and I ran the wheels off of it (got it when I was 15). After I totally wore it out, my little brother got it, re-built the engine, and ran the wheels off of it again--it was running fine when he sold it.
Another Ford I owned ran just fine until I fell asleep at the wheel one night, about a mile from home, and totalled it.
The Ford I own now has been used and abused, and so far the biggest repair I've had was the air conditioner compressor.
I once bought a worn out Dodge Ram--it had been a NAPA service truck--that one ran fine for a long time, no problems. My wife has run her Grand Prix in the ground, but she has had to have the transmission replaced.
Over-all I can't complain at all about my experience with American made vehicles. That being said, the toughest little truck I ever owned was an Isuzu. I don't remember how many miles I put on that truck travelling--my dad has owned it the last several years, and has only had minor repairs. I wouldn't trust it for a long trip, but it works fine for him puttering around the farm.
Chad
__________________
"We can have no '50-50' allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all."-- Theodore Roosevelt
A wise man's heart is at his right hand; but a fool's heart at his left. Ecclesiasties 10:2
The last four letters in American..........I Can
The last four letters in Republican........I Can
The last four letters in Democrats.........Rats
GM posts $15.5 billion loss? I always knew they were an ethical company. I wonder how much you save in taxes when you show a 15 billion dollar loss? I wonder if that triggers them to go in a mass hiring mode?
Now if we could only get Exxon Mobile to follow suite the world would be a happy place.
C. Davis
__________________ Am I greedy because I don't want to give you what is mine?
or
Are you greedy because you want to take what is not yours?
Guys, all I can say is I had a toyota pickup that had well over 600K miles on it, trouble freakin free. And I got 600 dollars trade in last year for it. I miss that truck so bad. But it started leaking radiator fluid, needed its 4th set of brakes, and 7th or 8th set of tires and 4th clutch, and figured its time to let it go. I bet somewhere it has 15 mexicans in the back and still runnin. I have also owned 3 tacomas and current one has 110K without problems. With all that said, I am considering a silverado. I have 3 vehicles, one motorcycle, two trailers and a boat. And got to get rid of some of this stuff.
I won't ever buy another American car, because I've owned enough in the past. I'll buy Toyota (my Corolla has 165,000 miles on it and still running strong -- I'm taking it on a 2,000 mile vacation drive next week) or Mazda (had two 626s -- now a defunct model, I think -- both ran great). We now have a Honda Civic that we bought used at 80,000 miles. I will with hold judgement on that car until it, too, has over 150,000 miles. None of the American cars I have owned have had the guts to go over 120,000 miles. My Taurus started bleeding me dry at about 85,000 miles. There just is simply not the same standard of quality, in my opinion.
I do have a 2004 Chevrolet Z-71 Suburban that I like that at 110,000 miles has not been troublesome, with one exception. If I can continue to drive that vehicle to about 200,000 miles without having to do a major engine repair or transmission repair, I will judge that an acceptable quality performance. I planned to use this vehicle for some hunts to remote areas. Might be hard to find a mechanic to work on a Toyota about 10 miles west of Sheridan, Wyoming. The one exception on reliability was the speedometer failed at about 102,000 miles. A known problem, as I surmised when talking to a relative who works in a Chevrolet dealership. The cost to replace this known defective article would have been $550 -- out of warranty in my case -- but fortunately my relative worked this out for me. Maybe Toyota would have recalled that known defective article; Chevrolet says, what the hell, let's just let 'em use 'em until it breaks and then fix it under warranty or let them take it on the chin if it is out of warranty! That's the Detroit way!
GM posts $15.5 billion loss
