[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

[94bird]

Regarding GM cutting brands, they've already said they want to sell Hummer and Saab, and are studying whether they want to sell or shut down Saturn. Pontiac will become a niche brand. That will leave them with Chevy, Buick, GMC, Pontiac and Cadillac. They've also announced they will reduce their dealerships by about 2000 (approx. 33%). This goes a long way, but GM has said for a long time now, their main brands to focus on are Chevy and Cadillac. That begs the question why they're not proposing to cut more brands. For what I've read, the main reason is, Buick, GMC, Pontiac are traditionally under one dealership. This gives a dealership a reasonably full line of products to sell, no matter what the market trends are. If GMC was disbanded, for example, this dealership would have no trucks or SUVs to sell. GM wants to keep Buick, as this is a very strong selling brand in China and older people here also gravitate toward's a Buick design features. Buick has also topped the quality charts with JD Power for a few years now.

So, a BGP dealership would have some family cars and a crossover with Buick. They would potentially have cars like a G8 and Solstice with Pontiac. They would also have SUVs and trucks through GMC. That's a viable dealership, albeit missing a fuel sipping car, like an Aveo, Cruze or Astra. That could easily be rectified through the Pontiac brand.

Chevy is already a full line dealership and Cadillac is doing quite well, so not much change is needed there.

I understand the logic stated above, but I think it's short sighted thinking again. It will be hard to just drop down to Chevy and Cadillac, but I think it needs to be done. Saturn has failed as a brand, but some of their products like the Astra should be folded into Chevy I think. GMC just is not needed. Chevy trucks and SUVs basically duplicate their whole product line. Buick is the only brand with a good following in the BGP group that would be hard to get rid of, but I would still do it.