from today's telegraph:
money.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/...l
Ravaged General Motors to slash 25,000 jobs in US
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Mr Wagoner, who took the job two years ago, said a number of US plants would be closed by 2008 as the company attempts to staunch the loss of market share to its foreign rivals. He said the plan, which comes on top of thousands of job losses in Europe and among its white-collar workers, would save $2.5billion (£1.37billion) a year.
Mr Wagoner acknowledged the dire financial straits of the car marker, admitting that without significant changes, there was a "significant risk to the long-term viability of our business".
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If you mean close Ellesmere Port and anything still left at Luton rather than axe the name, anything is of course possible. This would be a shame, as unlike Rover, Vauxhall sells up-to-date models that keep it at the top of the UK car & van sales figures.
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Story of my life. I've just sold my MG ZT and bought a Vectra!!!
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Why don?t we just bow to the inevitable and all buy BMW?s now?
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Same reason why M&S is being squeezed.
In the marketplace to day you have three types of buyer: -
1) Only interested in the brand not quality or value, just perceived and reflected glory - in clothing terms is designer labels, in motoring its BMW, Merc etc
2) Most concerned about value and purchase price and less concerned about image, so these people go to the discount stores like Matalan, Peacocks, Primark, Dunnes etc and in Motoring terms, Hyundai, Kia, Citroen, Skoda
3) In between you have regular punters who have little idea of the alternatives or don't want to be seen buying something too cheap or too flash - so they buy new Fords, VXs, VWs etc and M&S, BHS etc.
This third crowd are shrinking, and whilst in clothing M&S can quickly change a range and possibly turn the ship around, just look what happened to Rover. Despite the Focus being an excellent vehicle, I want something different not a clone, so thats my I have my Scooby despite knowing that a C-Max TDCi CVT is the perfect car for me.
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Espada III - well if you have a family and need a Lamborghini, what else do you drive?
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Rover died because it was not the best at anything. Whatever your reason for buying a car (image, performance, value, economy, luxury), in any category or class the Rover was beaten by another make. The only people who bought Rovers were people who either didn't do their research or who thought it was a good idea to keep on buying British.
GM/Vauxhall are also pretty bland, though they have a couple of interesting cars - the Monaro and the VX220. And the Astra I suppose is value for money in places.
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Mattster
Boycott shoddy build and reliability.
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GM make all their money off financing their own vehicles in the USA anyway. They lose a colossal amount in Europe. Opel plants over here in Germany are closing. They don´t seem to have the low(er)cost manufacturing infrastructure that, say, the VW group has in Spain (SEAT) and Cz (Skoda), and VW are making miniscule profits (relative to BM and Merc) out here anyway. Holden is being squeezed by the Korean and japanese marques in Oz. I´d say GM´s days as a volume car builder in Europe are pretty numbered.
But the Astra looks a step in the right direction.
And I´ll have a Signum 1.9dti in 2-3years when the prices have dropped.
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It's a squeeze between the premium brands and the (what's the polite word for cheap ?) brands from Korea / Malaysia and then India / China. Ford and GM have no chance. Have you seen how many billions of debt GM has ?
Ten year's ago the Korean workers were rioting because they were being made redundant. They thought they had jobs for life. Hmm. Sounds familiar.
Now I read read that Korean manufacturer's will probably build plants in E. Europe where wages are 20% of what they are in Korea ! We'll be opening call centres before you know it. Wait a bit longer and we'll build a blast furnace. Maybe start making bikes and then after a few years, who knows, cars ?
John
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48% of the worlds motorcycles are now produced in China. Mostly small commuters for the domestic and Asian markets at present, but increasingly being imported into Europe with favourable comments from the biking press and undercutting the competition on price.
That was how the Japanese automotive industry began. We could well be at the start of a major shift in industrial power.
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Vauxhalls won't die, because most of the cars and vans are made abroad in the GM/Opel factories. Spain and Poland etc or even Australia for the big V8 model Monaro.
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GM make all their money off financing their own vehicles in the USA anyway. They lose a colossal amount in Europe.
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according to the telegraph, and the full statement at
2005-06-07 GM Chairman Addresses Stockholders At Annual Meeting
www.gm.com/company/news_events/press_releases/
".. he blamed most of the company's woes on its crippling US health care costs. "Our $1,500 per unit (car) health care expense represents a significant disadvantage versus our foreign-based rivals."
" .. there are some structural issues -- difficult, long-standing issues that we have to step up to and address. In doing so, it will be challenging and discomforting, but it is clear that not addressing them will cause significant risk to the long-term viability of our business. One example of a structural issue that we took on last fall at GM Europe, was our uncompetitive manufacturing cost structure. You'll recall we negotiated a plan with our European unions to reduce our employment by 12,000 people over two years, including 10,000 in Germany. ...
in order to achieve full capacity utilization based on conservative volume planning scenarios, we expect to close additional assembly and component plants over the next few years, and to reduce our manufacturing employment levels in the U.S. by 25,000 or more people in the 2005 to 2008 period. ..."
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The company's market share is falling as large sports utility vehicles become less popular, its debt has been reduced to junk status and it has been hit by rising energy costs as well as health care expenses.
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Not surprisingly, there's more good sense in the above posts than anything said by Mr Wagoner, or by many of his countrymen.
Vauxhall / Opel, ans quite possibly GM as a whole, needs a unique selling point, a USP. Think how often we read the triple tests in the magazines between Focus, Astra and Golf. The Focus is the most fun to drive, the Golf the best built and most likely to hold its value - and the Astra is somewhere in the middle. There's no particular reason to have one, unless it's a company fleet policy or you get a better deal from the garage than on the others.
I'm not knocking Vauxhalls as bad cars - they're not, and there are plenty of Backroomers who swear by them - but in 35 years of owning cars I've never had any particular reason to buy one.
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But we mustn't forget the GM interests in Daewoo & other brands they have interests in.So they still sneak in, the backdoor!!
& I still can't imagine that out-going UK boss, Nick Riley (spelling), was offerd, his job HeadOfMalaysian&Eastern&Northern&WhateverPacificRimRegiopnsOperations, if he hadn't made a sucsesful shutdown of our factories, here!
Not a bad deal for him, I'd imagine!!
VB
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