Comments for After Many Stumbles, Fall of an American Giant »
Posted By engineer 6 months, 4 weeks ago in Business & FinanceIt is a company that helped lift hundreds of thousands of American workers into the middle class. It transformed Detroit into the Silicon Valley of its day, a symbol of America’s talent for innovation. It built celebrated cars, like Cadillacs, that became synonymous with luxury.
In 1985, Gov. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, flanked by other government officials, announced the opening of a G.M. Saturn plant in Spring Hill, just outside Nashville.
And now it is filing for bankruptcy, something that would have been unfathomable even a few years ago, much less decades ago, when it was a dominant force in the American economy.
Rarely has a company fallen so far and so fast as General Motors. And while its bankruptcy appeared increasingly likely in recent weeks, the arrival of the moment is still a staggering blow, particularly for anyone with ties to the company.
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nostalgia6 months, 4 weeks ago
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Who is making the decisions on the car companies?
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The 31-Year-Old in Charge of Dismantling G.M
It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.
But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.
“There was a time between Nov. 4 and mid-February when I was the only full-time member of the auto task force,” Mr. Deese, a special assistant to the president for economic policy, acknowledged recently as he hurried between his desk at the White House and the Treasury building next door. “It was a little scary.”
While far more prominent members of the administration are making the big decisions about Detroit, it is Mr. Deese who is often narrowing their options.
“I slept in the parking lot of the G. M. plant in Lordstown, Ohio,” he recalled. The giant plant, opened during G.M.’s heyday in the mid-1960s, is where the Pontiac G5 is produced. Under the plan Mr. Deese worked on when he arrived in Washington, Pontiac will disappear.
“I guess that was prophetic,” he said, shaking his head.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/business/01deese...-
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nostalgia6 months, 4 weeks ago
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So Pontiac will disappear and GM will keep Buick
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Strange decision, isn't it, in light of sales figures for 2008
2008 GM Vehicle Sales
Chevrolet 1,801,131
GMC 376,996
Pontiac 267,348
Saturn 188,004
Cadillac 161,159
Buick 137,197
Hummer 27,485
Saab 21,368
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/27/autos/pontiac_obit...
So GM sells almost twice as many Pontiacs as Buicks and Deese decides Pontiac has to go?
If this is how he is making decisions, say good bye to GM
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