Obama screwed up the GM bailout royally. He finally was talked into making it a structured bankruptcy but he took it away from the bond holders and gave it to the union contrary to law and morality.
America being "back at the top of the market" has far less to do with GM's bailout and far more to do with the "luck" of having Japan decimated by an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident.
I was the same although my first car was a '49 Ford borrowed from my mom. I would never consider buying anything other than GM for decades. But somewhere long before I ever heard of Obama GM failed me and I haven't bought a GM car since. Probably won't as long as I'm alive but I'll never say never!
Wow. I'm partial to my mom's '65 Pontiac Catalina 4-door. Never has such a land-yacht been built since then in my view. I couple of years ago (well, 2009) I tried to buy a new Cadillac CTS-V. I called a few dealerships and one said they had a car that matched my requirements "in shipment" to southern California. I went over there and put a deposit on it. Subsequently the car just never arrived. I called a friend of mine who has access to GM shipping data and he said that VIN number was not "in shipment" and did not even exist. I went back to the dealer and almost had to kick the crap out of the executive sales manager to get my money back. Lying bastards. That was my *last* interaction with General Motors. Then Obama ripped off the bondholders and I decided to make it permanent. I've had good luck with Fords. I own some Porsches but I like an American car for a daily driver and Ford offers value and pretty good quality. I once worked for Allan Mulally so that is part of it I guess.
Detroit has failed..... There are ten times the workers making cars outside Michigan then in Michigan. So Obama spent 50 Billion dollars to save about 15% of the automotive assembly line workers in the USA. The car industry in now in Red states. For 50 Billion GM should have bulldozed all its factories and rebuilt from the ground up....in Texas.
WOW is right. Almost that exact same thing happened to me many years ago. I put down a deposit to buy a Chevy Blazer and put it on order at the Boulder CO dealer. Months go by and no car. Then they give me a date it will be there and it still doesn't show up. And to top it off, the salesman tells me I can't have my deposit back!!! I wrote a letter to the owner of the dealership and they gave me my deposit back. Since then I've only owned one GM product - a used Chevy and that was about 20 years ago. I've had great luck with Japanese cars ever since (even those made in the U.S.) so to hell with Detroit. I even had a Toyota Land Cruiser that I bought with 300 miles on it. I put about 100,000 mountain miles on it and sold it for $200 more than I paid for it. I'll never be able to do that again.
Some very large Honda and Toyota manufacturing facilities were flooded in Thailand this year as well.
The leftists media is reporting this morning that the cessation of production of the Volt might not be temporary after all. They're saying GM will not restart production until the current inventory begins to sell at higher sales rates. Looks like the Volt is dead dead dead. Funny that the EV1 was a better vehicle based on old lead/acid battery technology but GM refuses to produce a plug-in electric vehicle. If they can't put an internal combustion engine in it they won't build it. Maybe if they built-in a barbeque grill they might sell more Volts. Crash a Volt, cook a steak and some barbequed chicken.