[sgarnett]

The Senate, UAW, et al, just gave up (ie failed) on reaching a compromise a few minutes ago.

I don't know how GM will come out after bankruptcy (they just hired the bankruptcy lawyer), but the stock market futures are looking ugly tonight. It actually held up well through some dismal recent employment numbers, but I suspect tomorrow is gonna be ugly. Rebuilding my retirement is going to mean austerity and no new cars for a very long time, and I suspect that will be true for many others. That can't be good for any automaker.

I'll admit I wasn't convinced that bridge loans to March could solve the problems for GM, so I don't claim to know what the right answer was. Nevertheless, this is going to be a big kick in the teeth for the economy.

This post has been edited by sgarnett: Dec 12 2008, 04:07 AM

[00 Trans Ram]

A little info on the Buick, GMC, Pontiac dealership position.

When I bought my G8 earlier this year, I thought that Pontiac was a HORRIBLE match for a Buick-GMC dealership. Pontiac is trying to sell cars to a younger generation. But, every dealership I went to was filled with the all the ambience of a mortuary. They'd have a couple of $20k Buicks on the floor, plus a couple of GMC trucks. Then, some lone G8 would be off to the side.

No wonder I don't see more G8s on the road. This, despite the fact that my friends (owners of an Audi RS4, Audi S4, BMW 550i, BMW 328i, and BMW 750i) all said that they thought the G8 looked just as good as any of their cars, admitted that it outperformed all but the RS4, and cost less than every one of them.

GM not only has financial problems, they have image problems. Even when they innovate something new (like the Volt), people assume that they are following someone else's lead.