General Motors has finally lost it!!

[ogopogo]

"As it happens, the top-selling truck in United States, the Ford F-150, is also the most popular truck on MSN, which is determined by the number of visits to its vehicle information pages. This is nothing new. The Ford F-Series has been the best-selling vehicle on this side of the pond for more than 30 years, and while sales of the big truck were off by more than 25 percent in 2008, the F-150 still outsold every other vehicle in America."

I had no idea about the F-150 being the top selling vehicle in North America. Except for the occasional service truck, there really aren't that many of them where I live. The first time I heard this was on "Top Gear" where it was reviewed. The general consensus was that the truck was rubbish.

 

[chickpea]

I won't get into the politics of union wages but suffice it to say I have a friend whose dad worked 32 years in a Delco battery plant. GM pay, pension, etc. all the way. He had some choice opinions about the way the union protected certain "workers" and he used the term loosely.

On the other hand, this whole tripe about American vehicles = junk is just plain silly. I will not debate the small cars which seems to be the most contentious items. I will however defend our 2004 Buick Rainier unabashedly. We have had it for four of it's years of existence and other than brakes on the front, we have done exactly ZERO repair work on it. Oh sure, maintenance, fluids, or whatever but NO breakage repairs. GM and Ford know exactly how to build trucks. I for one would like to see them cede the small car market to whomever and concentrate on what they do best. It is hard for people who live on our Eastern seaboards to comprehend what it is like to have to drive the distances we do out here in cattle country. K.C. to Denver is nearly 600 miles. Try driving his in your Altima. My wife and I owned one till it was totaled by a Jeep Grand Cherokee. The Cherokee was actually pushed into her trunk by another car which rear ended the Jeep. Yep, about 60mph and if that car would have hit our Altima directly it would have made me a widower in about a microsecond. It totaled the Jeep too but the driver hopped out of it with nary a scratch. Sorry, keep your cracker boxes all to yourselves. Give me something with a frame. BTW, it was a Toyota car that caused the wreck. How the guy got out of that one without serious injury is beyond me. The car was a pile of rubble.

As to the Rainier, we bought it when gas spiked four years ago and SUVs plummeted in price. We bought it for about half of it's $40k retail. My only regret is that we will likely not be able to buy another since they are expensive. Oh and mpg? It makes about 16 city and TWENTY ONE highway. That is about four less than the Altima which put my legs to sleep on 180 mile trip to Omaha to visit the zoo. Never again. The Rainier is like driving a baby Escalade. Just heavenly quiet on the road and plenty of room and comfort. The wife loves the heated seats. Again guys, no easy answers but there are reasons other than ego that makes people buy these types of vehicles. I make no apologies for it.

Regards, Todd

Although I am certainly glad that no one was injured (seriously) in that crash, I think it does prove the fallacy that small cars are unsafe. Don't get me wrong, in a 60mph head-on collision between a Smart and a Yukon, I don't think any engineering is going to save the Smart occupants. On the other hand, most fears concerning smaller cars are misplaced. Additionally, our VW Rabbit is wonderfully comfortable on long drives. But I do agree with your larger point, American small cars are absolute trash, and I would never purchase one (after the horrible neon that I was glad to rid myself of) and the big three should concentrate on light trucks and suvs, the stuff that they actually make well.

As for the segway, their are all over the damn place here in DC. Then again, these vehicles were meant as a means of URBAN transport, to replace cars for medium-distance commutes (meaning further than walking distance, but reachable within 10-15 at 5-10 mph). So the idea was never to have packs of segways roaming the freeways (besides that's just psychotic next to Yukons and Suburbans travelling at 60+mph).

 

[burnwood]

This will teach me to watch the news.

exactly.

 

[Kratos]

F-150 rubbish? What brought them to that conclusion? What is their idea of a quality truck? Don't even mention anything British-made.

 

[sol92258]

Anyone for a move to Colorado?




// hopefully not too obscure.

yes, too obscure

Ah, just ignore this post.

what? somebody say somthing?

I guess if GM goes under, I'll have to start riding horses

 

[smoothjim]

Going to be a little tough getting all the stuff we have become accostomed to getting from China if we ever go to war with them. Also if we want to maintain our status as superpower and world leader it would behoove the United States to be a manufacturing based economy versus a service ecomomy. Once again alarmist but we certainly don't wnat to see the loss of the trades that manufacturing requires i.e. tool and die makers, machinists, etc but it seems like that is the direction we are heading and it's going to be awful tough to get our country manufacturing without them.

I agree with you, America needs to have some products of our own b/c eventually they will cut us off! (but for now, I'll let the other Americans buy the GM/Ford/Chrys. cars and I will buy a foreign for the meantime. )

Yeah? Then who's gonna buy all their crap? The Sudanese? The Chinese need us more than we need them, which is little, despite what Mrs. Clinton would have them think.
Let's see. They make our crap for us instead of all of us having to work double shifts making it ourselves, thereby allowing us to spend more time on grooming forums while also working our disparaging, yet higher compensating "service economy" jobs; we pay them (again, less than otherwise).......and they turn around and give us all our money back, and then some, all for a measly 3.5% or whatever T bonds are moving for this year.

It's more important for the US to be a design/creative/innovation based economy than a manufacturing one. Everyone only looks at, and tallies up in trade deficits for, the $50 unit costs of importing finished iPods manufactured abroad, but no one accounts for proprietary value of designing, implementing, and consequently exporting the process.

All those who insist on our needing to be a near exclusive manufacturing based economy than a "service" one, what are you guys going to do with all that tuition money your kids won't need after you send them to their factory gigs?



BTW the reason for GM still being in existence is to run cover for the centrally planned, non market valued economic utopia the UAW represents.

 

[blackfoot]

So if it doesn't fall into the full-size segment, where would if fall? It is not in the small truck category.

I totally agree.


Exactly.

I would still argue the shortsightedness comment. IMO they continued to build what the American public wanted to buy. SUVs and trucks. It is consumers that drive the markets not the automakers.


I agree that the unions have done a disservice to the automakers, but from what I have read it is not the hourly wage that is the dominant failure. It is the mountain of legacy "debt" and the "job banks" (which supposedly have no been discontinued) that raised the employee cost.




I agree. According to MSN:
As it happens, the top-selling truck in United States, the Ford F-150, is also the most popular truck on MSN, which is determined by the number of visits to its vehicle information pages. This is nothing new. The Ford F-Series has been the best-selling vehicle on this side of the pond for more than 30 years, and while sales of the big truck were off by more than 25 percent in 2008, the F-150 still outsold every other vehicle in America.



I seem to recall reading that as well. Though I can't tell you any numbers.


Not true. They have not counted in on the federal government bailout only because they took out their loans before the credit crunch which caught GM and Chrysler. They are suffering the same losses in sales as all of the other automakers, foreign and domestic. They have also not ruled out completely that they will not ask for bailout money.


Not even combining sales of the Tacoma and the Tundra. The F-150 had @400k (units) vs Toyota's @235k (units).

I do agree that the duplication of efforts just doesn't make much sense going forward.

IMO, GM ruined the SAAB, and Ford may be doing the same with Volvo.

Why rush to build the Volt? Check out the current dealership situation with the Prius. The American buying public is fickle. No automaker should be building vehicles that are not going to sell immediately.


No, it's not, see above. As for the Tundra, the Japanese aren't building them, they're being built right here in Texas.

I don't remember any anger. Heck the VW Beetle preceded those vehicles by a decade. I will say that both Nissan and Toyota would be best served by remaining in the small truck market. They've built the Frontier and Tacoma a bit too large now, and with their powerplants they are not fuel efficient at all.


Badgineering I agree.


It's a done deal. Suzuki rebadged the Nissan Frontier. Slight cosmetic modifications is all I can tell. I looked one over last October at the Fair.

Cory would be very proud!

 

[Phog Allen]

Although I am certainly glad that no one was injured (seriously) in that crash, I think it does prove the fallacy that small cars are unsafe. Don't get me wrong, in a 60mph head-on collision between a Smart and a Yukon, I don't think any engineering is going to save the Smart occupants. On the other hand, most fears concerning smaller cars are misplaced. Additionally, our VW Rabbit is wonderfully comfortable on long drives. But I do agree with your larger point, American small cars are absolute trash, and I would never purchase one (after the horrible neon that I was glad to rid myself of) and the big three should concentrate on light trucks and suvs, the stuff that they actually make well.

As for the segway, their are all over the damn place here in DC. Then again, these vehicles were meant as a means of URBAN transport, to replace cars for medium-distance commutes (meaning further than walking distance, but reachable within 10-15 at 5-10 mph). So the idea was never to have packs of segways roaming the freeways (besides that's just psychotic next to Yukons and Suburbans travelling at 60+mph).

Bryan, I certainly respect your idea about small car safety and I won't say it/you are wrong. I will say however in that particular case, it would have been ALL wrong. The ONLY reason my wife is still alive is the fact that a SIX THOUSAND POUND BARRICADE with a Jeep badge on it was between her and the Toyota. The guy in the Toyota is one of those "miracle" survivors you see on world's dumbest drivers shows. Try it 99 other times = he's dead. As it was, the Grand Cherokee was about two feet into the Altima's trunk. This from a dead stop. They were stopped in a left turn lane on a busy four lane road when the guy in the Toy popped over the hill. I absolutely shudder to think what the consequences would have been if he had hit her directly. In this case, might made right.

Regards, Todd

 

[Beast]

Yah...and it's FUN. I wasn't really a tourist, it was just an interesting thing to do with a awesome, cute girl I'd met.

They take some getting used to, and they work amazingly well. Still, there are just soooo many things getting in the way that they never had a chance to gain mainstream acceptance and widespread use.

They also rent them to tourist in downtown Austin.