shakran

Neither was Chrysler, at the time of the loan

The bottom line is simple. If you make shit, and everyone else is making better-than-shit, and your cars aren't priced significantly lower, you're gonna lose.

The Geo Metro was a shit car but you could get one for a song, so they were all over.

The Honda Civic is expensive as hell ($24,000 for a compact?!?!) but its quality is bulletproof and people know that so they're willing to pay it.

Meanwhile GM is making suburbans that cost freakin' 50 thousand dollars despite being made by one of the worst-quality car makers available in the domestic market, and despite the fact that people have finally figured out that gas guzzlers are bad, and they're scratching their butts wondering why in hell they aren't getting sales.

They made utter shit in the 80's and 90's from a quality perspective, to the point that a few years ago they sent a letter to customers apologizing for making crap and begging people to give them another try.

Well, that only works if 1) you actually stop making the crap, which they've not done, and 2) those customers haven't already found others (Honda, Toyota, even Kia) that they like very much and that have already proven their reliability.

Even assuming every car coming out of GM right now is top notch in quality (not by a longshot) the designs are so uninspired as to make people look elsewhere. Why get a crappy cavalier or the boring Malibu when you can get an Accord - the current design of which is pretty damned sporty for a sedan (especially the 2 door in that electron blue. . but I digress). Why get a gallons-per-mile suburban that costs as much as a Corvette when you can get Pilot for less, that uses less gas, and that will last at least twice as long, AND that will have a markedly higher resale value, all while having better fit and finish than any GM on the lot?

I knew the auto industry was in trouble when they started campaigning on that "buy american" crap. "be patriotic, buy AMERICAN," was the argument, when the argument should have been "Buy American because we make the best products, hands down." Of course, that couldn't be the argument because there are truth in advertising laws.

The bottom line is that GM is merely a symptom of this country as it has been since the Regan administration. We all want something for nothing. Given the choice between a steady business model that will make you a steady $100,000 a year for the rest of your life, and a fly by night model that will make you a million overnight and then crumble due to crappiness of product, most Americans would choose the latter. Americans are lazy, and voluntarily inept, when they don't have to be. GM is simply the proverbial jewel in that crown. There is no reason why Japan should be beating us in the auto industry. We have the raw materials. We have the brains. We have the workforce. What we lack, is the desire for excellence. Selling crap for big profits works short term but as GM and Ford are discovering, it bites you, hard, in the end. Meanwhile, while GM's sales went down by nearly 50% last quarter, Toyota only lost just under 1/4 of its sales. It's still doing fine, while GM wallows in the muck that it created for itself.