I say that it doesnt even get fact checked next week. Obama will come out and claim what a success story it is, and how the taxpayer has supposedly been paid back (a common lie from the left,) The same guys who had Ryans speech ripped apart in ten minutes, wont even bother with Obama's shameless lie, that GM is a huge success..... Obama is already on the record saying he wants to take what he did wit GM and apply it to everyone, yet the media doesnt even mention it.... GM Goes From Bad to Worse Despite Obama Bailout By Michael Barone - August 23, 2012 Readers with long memories may recall that Charles E. Wilson, president of General Motors and nominee for secretary of defense, got into trouble when he told a Senate committee, "What is good for the country is good for General Motors, and what's good for General Motors is good for the country." That was in 1953, and Wilson was trying to make the point that General Motors was such a big company -- it sold about half the cars in the U.S. back then -- that its interests were inevitably aligned with those of the country as a whole. Things are different now. General Motors' market share in the U.S. is below 20 percent. It has gone through bankruptcy and exists now thanks to a federal bailout. But Barack Obama seems to think that it's as closely aligned with the national interest as Wilson did. "When the American auto industry was on the brink of collapse," Obama told a campaign event audience in Colorado earlier this month, "I said, let's bet on America's workers. And we got management and workers to come together, making cars better than ever, and now GM is No. 1 again and the American auto industry has come roaring back." His conclusion: "So now I want to say that what we did with the auto industry, we can do in manufacturing across America. Let's make sure advanced, high-tech manufacturing jobs take root here, not in China. Let's have them here in Colorado. And that means supporting investment here." Was he calling for a federal bailout of other American manufacturing companies? And what does he mean by "supporting investment"? White House reporters have not asked these obvious questions, for the good reason that the president, who has been attending fundraisers on an average of one every 60 hours, has not held a press conference in something like two months. Obama talks about the auto bailout frequently, since it's one of the few things in his record that gets positive responses in the polls. But he's probably wise to avoid probing questions, since the GM bailout is not at all the success he claims. GM has been selling cars in the U.S. at deep discount and, while it's making money in China -- and is outsourcing operations there and elsewhere -- it's bleeding losses in Europe. It's spending billions to ditch its Opel brand there in favor of Chevrolet, including $559 million to put the Chevy logo on Manchester United soccer team uniforms -- and just fired the marketing exec who cut that deal. It botched the launch of its new Chevrolet Malibu by starting with the green-friendly Eco version, which pleased its government shareholders, but which got lousy reviews. And it's selling only about 10,000 electric-powered Chevy Volts a year, a puny contribution toward Obama's goal of 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. "GM is going from bad to worse," reads the headline on Automotive News Editor in Chief Keith Crain's analysis. That's certainly true of its stock price. The government still owns 500 million shares of GM, 26 percent of the total. It needs to sell them for $53 a share to recover its $49.5 billion bailout. But the stock price is around $20 a share, and the Treasury now estimates that the government will lose more than $25 billion if and when it sells. That's in addition to the revenue lost when the Obama administration permitted GM to continue to deduct previous losses from current profits, even though such deductions are ordinarily wiped out in bankruptcy proceedings. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that GM is bleeding money because of decisions made by a management eager to please its political masters -- and by the terms of the bankruptcy arranged by Obama car czars Ron Bloom and Steven Rattner. Rattner himself admitted late last year, in a speech to the Detroit Economic Club: "We should have asked the UAW (the United Auto Workers union) to do a bit more. We did not ask any UAW member to take a cut in their pay." Non-union employees of GM spinoff Delphi lost their pensions. UAW members didn't. The UAW got their political payoff. And GM, according to Forbes writer Louis Woodhill, is headed to bankruptcy again. Is this really what Obama wants to do for all manufacturing across America? Let's hope not.
Probably cause he is sick of fixing your1997 GM EV1, and he sure as fuck doesnt want you bringing a volt to him for the next 15 years... j/k It seems history is repeating itself..... The EV1 was a marvel of engineering, absolutely the best electric vehicle anyone had ever seen. Built by GM to comply with California's zero-emissions-vehicle mandate, the EV1 was quick, fun, and reliable. It held out the promise that soon electric cars â charged from the grid with all sorts of groovy power sources, like wind and solar â could replace the smelly old internal-combustion vehicle. And therein lies the problem: the promise. In fact, battery technology at the time was nowhere near ready to replace the piston-powered engine. The early car's lead-acid bats, and even the later nickel-metal hydride batteries, couldn't supply the range or durability required by the mass market. The car itself was a tiny, super-light two-seater, not exactly what American consumers were looking for. And the EV1 was horrifically expensive to build, which was why GM's execs terminated the program â handing detractors yet another stick to beat them with. GM, the company that had done more to advance EV technology than any other, became the company that "killed the electric car." Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1658545_1658544_1658535,00.html #ixzz25Mf5YTwc
The mechanic was half right. Most GM cars are junk. The trucks aren't junk at all. In fact, I'd argue they are the best going for the money. Corvettes and camaros are not junk either. Some Cads are ok.
The upside to GM is that their parts are cheap...so even if the car is a de facto lemon, it's still alot cheaper than trying to fix some high end MB...(and MB went straight down the toilet after the Daimler Chrysler fiasco).
AK, I think that is first honest statement you have made on this forum in years. (at least that I have seen re-posted) Congratulations. Keep it up. Seriously.