85 Cutlass Brougham said:
What honestly do they offer the average consumer that can be considered good? None of their small and midsize cars are leaders in their markets, and neither offers anything truly fuel efficient. Both concentrated on large trucks and SUV's for far too long and only produced cars grudgingly as if to punish those buyers for not buying a truck. Lack of market diversification is what got them here, and if that is not fixed with brilliant products across the board, a merger does them no good. They need good small cars that are designed in house, not pawned off to Daewoo. Ford is about to bring it's universally acclaimed Fiesta to this country, where is GM with a competitive Vauxhall or Opel product? Anyone can make a nice expensive car, but it takes a really good company to make a nice affordable car. If they can't figure it out, they might as well just stop building cars and become truck companies. After all, it seems that is what they wish to be.
I agree that this merger isn't a good idea, and that unions have helped destroy the auto industry, but disagree with the rest of your statement.
To say that GM did this to themselves is ridiculous. This is the result of the hypocracy and stupidity of 95% of american consumers.
GM has had plenty of great small cars. Mediocre? Maybe. And sure, there's some shitty ones out there too. If you're expecting the world out of your small cheap car, you're kidding yourself. I've had plenty of 'economy' cars from GM that have all been great. Sure, they could stand to be improved, everthing can, and as years went by, they got better.
As for seemingly punishing people for not buying a truck, give me a break...
GM's small cars have been getting 25 to 30 mpg since the late '80's, I don't consider that mediocre at all. I don't know about down in Florida where you are, but Import cars older than 1990 do not exist up here. Where'd they all go? The junk yard. They were even shittier than the stuff coming out of Detroit in those years. I still see tons of pre-'90 u.s. cars running around. Also in the past few years, GM has been rated higher in initial quality than Toyota. Sure, Toyota does build a nice car, but they aren't impervious to problems either, and I don't think they deserve to be on the pedistal that everybody seems to have put them on.
You know the reason that GM hasn't had that many small cars in recent years? Nobody bought them, that's why. GM couldn't build trucks and suv's fast enough to keep them on the lots, so they cut back on what people weren't buying, and built more of what people wanted. Can you really say that is a bad business plan? It's simple, people wanted trucks, they built them. Toyota even jumped on the bandwagon here and started building full-size V8 powered trucks and suv's. Imagine that. What has created a problem is how quickly peoples perspectives have changed in light of the recent fuel price jumps, and now they're scrambling to get something more efficient.
And what are they doing to combat the situation? Cutting truck production, and increasing small car production. Amazingly simple, huh? This is supply and demand, plain and simple, and the nature of any industry. The part that's killing U.S. auto makers is that people are still so stuck in the mentality that everything coming out of Detroit is junk and the only things that are well made are from Japan.
The '70's and '80's were over a long time ago.
I think this is a bad idea. Neither company has anything to gain from joining the other as both lack marketable product lines in the current economy. They would be better served using the money instead to develop a really good small car line. Let's face it, the Cobalt and the Caliber are not up to the task of taking on the Fit, Civic, Corolla, Versa or even the Yaris. Mediocre fuel economy with the reliability and innovation of an item built by union communists does not a market leader make.
This I do agree with, I don't think that either would really gain anything from a merger, and the money could be better spent elsewhere. But there again is the negative attitude against Detroit. Does a Cobalt really have mediocre fuel economy? I think 36 mpg is pretty good, that's what my co-worker that has one is getting. How about reliabily? Well his already has over 150,000 with nothing more than plugs and oil changes. As far is innovation goes, what are you expecting out of a $12,000 car? I mean really? Be realistic.
Just think, if all those people that have bought foreign cars over the years had kept their money in the U.S. by buying something domestic, where would our economy be? People forget that their money goes right back to Japan, which doesn't help our economy, now does it?