US Automakers Face Unprecedented Threat of Collapse

This is indeed very worrying..... Think of all the people with no jobs!

Why doesn't the US Government make the top Executives pay for it. Send those bastards to jail.

dodnt worry i am sure that the us government under obama will bail them out they cant allow that many people to lose their jobs. plus if GM goes down were will obama get parts for the presidential caddilac i do not think he will do with a ford 500 or a crown victoria:-)

it's clear that US auto makers need some smart CEOs from Japan or Europe....even if they get the money for next year, they will go down a year later... it's not the money they need, they need to learn how to do bussiness like Toyota or VW and stop make those shits cars!

Just sell all their assets, and send them to jail. No to bail them out. Greedy bastards. Poor management.

I have to agree with abugatti. For decades now the US automakers haven't produce one single good car. Low on quality standards, fuel behemoths, heavy cars, lacking on style, and so on, and so on...(I must say that the US consumers were very irresponsible not to demand better cars from their makes). It was pretty obvious for the rest of the world that something like this would happen. Now the only way I see to avoid this catastrophe is to start producing cars like the japonese and the europeans.

My hope is that through restructuring and price negotiations with UAW they will come through this with highly competitive cars. GM needs a kick in the pants they are too bloated and their workforce has no where near the efficiency or productivity of the Japanese. For GM's sake if gas prices stay high they may well produce some amazing cars and reinvent themselves.

The problem with the US automakers are there employees they're union labors and those unions they don't care about financial problems. They only care about them selves and it happens in every mayor US industry.

I want them to fail, and i hope Obama gives them the finger. Lets face reality their products are crap, and they have been crap for a long time, why should our tax payer's $ go to help them out? What have they done for us? Don't say oh "they gave us jobs" because they aren't a non profit charity organization, they made billions from those jobs. They need to crumble, and if 7 million jobs are lost that is meaningless for the US, unemployment rate will go up 2.91% for a short period of time. There is NO hope for them, and i cant justify giving them 50 billion of our $, nothing would change. Gas has been on the rise for a good 4 years, there were signs of a recession in the US for just as long, what have they done in 4 years to assure they would go through the hard times? NOTHING same $hit they have been making since the 60s. Gas is expensive, economy is unsure, doesn't take an Einstein to realize people want an efficient car that is reliable because they cant afford the gas, and dont want to worry about having to make the choice between paying their mortgage or fixing their car.

I only feel bad for the workers. Hopefully they can find jobs with other manufacturers. May be they can swollow their pride and work for Toyota or Huyndai or other foreign car company that have been assembling cars here in U.S for a while now.

if only american brads would quit building cars for americans only... i mean, it is not a globalization process we're in the middle of, but a real 'globalized' reality, and i don't quite believe anyone these days can afford focusing on its original market alone. maybe chevy, ford and dodge should consider moving slighty 'downmarket', competing globally with the likes of kia or skoda, for example. their quality standards are already below the european mainstream brands, and so are their average pricing points, so they'd rather focus on developing competitive low-budget compact and family cars before some chine chery does.

and don't worry, americans could still have caddy to make them proud!

@Radmeister:

Unemployment would rise much more than 2.91%. There are only roughly 100 million taxpayers in the US today out of roughly 300 million people total. The other 200 million are either retired, children, unemployed, or simply not working. Thus a loss of 7 million jobs would create a roughly 7% increase in unemployment.

Holmstar both of our math is wrong.

unemployment is currently sitting at roughly 5% nation wide, with a work force of roughly 154 million. Pensioners and people on dissability do not count and are not affected by this. So if 5% of those 154 are unemployed, then 7/147=4.8% which would bring the overall national unemployment rate to 9.8%, which is what i call a recession. 10% is the point where the economy starts taking a very fast fall. Although i think when they say 7 million that the figure is very highly inflated because that would mean for every employee at GM there are 20 somewhere else. I highly doubt that there are 20 and if there are i doubt most of them are even within the US. The government will have to make a choice, the hard way which would be to let them die and let the economy self adjust OR go into an even larger national Debt to prolongue the downfall of these companies, which will happen regardless of a 25billion $ loan or 250billion $, all it changes is the date.

I feel sorry for GM, the damn unions have bloated the company into oblivion. If GM was able to replace more jobs with computers/robots, pay it's employees less, be able to shut down its redundant profitless plants without having to worry about job losses. Then GM would once again be a force to be reckoned with. It isn't the product they are producing. For many years now GM standards for reliability, fuel economy, and feasibility have been on par and in many cases better then there international competitors.

joe_limon, can you exemplify wich cars GM is making that are better than its international competitors? 'Cos I don't remember one since the 50's.

hmm...CTS/V, Corvette ZR1, current Malibu, Lambda SUV's, all of the full-sized trucks/SUV's (except Hummer).

In addition to mustang5507's list, add the Solstice platform, Holden's Commodore platform, and the regular Corvettes in addition to the zr1, and even GM's small economy cars are reliable and decent on gas, something many german cars have great difficulty with by trying to invent newer not necessarily greater technologies with slight economy gains accompanied by massive price tags and reduced reliability. The last things you would ever want to have in a small fuel efficient economy car. If you still disagree with what I am saying, think a bit. Car companies have to strike a balance between cost, reliability, performance, comfort, and fuel economy. In general, German cars have excellent marks in comfort and performance, but are killed by their cost, questionable reliability and horrendous fuel economy. Japanese cars are better in regards that they are excellent cost, fuel economy, reliability (in regards to toyota), and to the average consumer have adequate performance and comfort. GM on the other hand is much like the japanese, if you compare the numbers, GM is heavily competing with Japanese automaker in terms of fuel economy and reliability and cost. And thankfully, the comfort as well as performance is finally starting to surpass the Japanese.

I agree with whoever said their making cars for the American market; all the cars which look interesting never come to us because they don't wanna make them RHD or whatever; I don't know American cars very well but I was bored and looking through American motor history and it really looked like there was a fall of quality in terms of "looks"; most american cars, from about the 80s onwards, started to look pretty similar; the old mustang looked similar to the cabs driven in New York which look similar to that car that seems to only come in limo form which looks slightly newer than a Crown Vic; nothing exciting. Sure it seems like they tried to fix that from around the late 90s or so but right now the premium cars just don't look premium from the outside... when I was in America I got to understand why Korean cars are designed to look the way they are and that is because that's what everything else in America looks like.

I would say Cadillac is the first American Automaker to be somewhat on the right track; I personally like Cadillac and I wish that it could, momentarily, be placed aside to do it's own thing while GM sorts itself out.

And it's all fine and dandy that American cars are of better quality than their European counterparts but they just don't look it... It frustrates me, I mean the Town Car how boring does that thing look? And I could name quite a few more if I could remember their names, or if I could remember which is which...

Are you kidding? GM in competition with the Japs? Dude GM has not contributed a SINGLE thing to the world of automation and quality control. Hell they have never even heard of 6 sigma or any of that fun stuff. Their quality is inferior in every car. GMs are MUCH worse than any european or korean car out on the market. From the lowest of the low the Aveo vs Kia rio, to the highest STS-V vs audi S6, they simply do not compare in any single category. If you could please tell me a car that's out of GM that gets better gas mileage than the 2009 Golf TDI? Or how close the DTS gets to the Bmw 750? Their horse in shining armour is the ZR1 which i must say compared to an audi R8 is pathetic. All they have is displacement and HP, their corporate values from friggen 1950 when gasoline was 0.10$/L. If all that the consumer cared about was speed we would all be driving Ariel Atoms.

hahaha, Radmeister, your comment thoroughly amuses me. No I am not kidding, you seem to have it stuck in your head that GM still has a line of people who's sole job is to attach a single bolt, fastener, or weld a seam. Quality control is great, if you ever had a decent car. Not just some subsidiary bought by GM and produced in Sweden you wouldn't complain. All car's break down eventually, it doesn't matter if they are German Japanese or American. With German cars your screwed because of the cost of parts. With Japanese cars you are a better off since they have manufacturing plants throught the world. And with American cars they are just plain cheap to fix. From the number of complaints I have heard over the years, the only cars that seem not to break down less frequently are cars with fewer options. Japanese car manufacturers like Toyota charge bundles to deter buyers away from unreliable fully loaded cars. And don't you dare compare an entire continents fuel economy on one car. By that logic I could compare the entire North American car market with the 43mpg Dodge caliber, or the Chevy Volt when that comes out, which potentially doesn't even need to use fuel. If you compare all the cars in general, Germany is effing horrendous. Explain to me why a 3.1L a4 quattro gets the same fuel economy as a 6.2L Corvetter? The R8 was a damn let down. 420hp in a supercar? forget it, a new SRT8 Challnger gets more hp and gets 16mpg city/25mpg hwy, vs the R8's 13mpg city/18mpg hwy. Sure it's won't handling wont be anywhere near the R8, but for a third of the price it doesn't need to be. I guess what I am trying to say is STFU your opinions are more then just biased and ignorant. Also, I feel childish saying this, but... so whats the R8 nurburgring time look like incomparison to the ZR1? hmm? How could a car that costs as much, gets better fuel economy, and have better straight line and track based performance numbers be worse then the R8? No it definitely isn't just because of interior quality, I've been in an R8 and the interior was effing boring. Almost as bad as the Challengers.

But the R8 just looks better; argue that... and truthfully the Volt is an amazing car, it's a technological marvel... but... how many of you here actually plan to buy one?

The American manufacturers need to start building cars for the world market, and cars that are true to the times; The US has a rich motor history; pre-70s we saw some of the greatest models to ever come out of that market; cars that lead the pack not just followed then the big 3 got comfortable and complacency set in... the rest is, as they say, history.

It's quite simple: if american cars are so good as you say, so reliable, fuel efficient, good looking, with high standards, then, how do you explain what's happening with the big three? As far as i'm concerned, US automakers lived only to their own market for too long. They did not modernised themselves, and now they're paying the bill.

Thanks to unions, wages are high, jobs are being kept where they should be lost, and unprecedented retirement packages are costing these companies billions.

if the cars were having a hard time selling. Wouldn't you think that there would be a huge stock pile building up somewhere? maybe area 51?

Wouldn't that be why you're laying people off? I mean if your people are producing A number of cars and people are buying B number of cars and A is greater than B then you slow down production right? maybe by laying people off; tax and wages are usually the biggest costs in a company so it would make sense to do so.

Let's face it, American cars aren't selling like hotcakes at the moment.

why is everybody hammering on the unions? check Vdubja, they have the toughest union in the world in their back (they were on strike the other week to demand 8% higher wages..), yet VW is rivaling Toyota and ranks really well amongst investors. The workforce has a thorough understanding of quality and how they contribute to it. Families in Germany and the Czech Republic, etc live and breathe VW, they somehow know that they are part of the product and how successful the company is and will be. Not too long ago VW workers worked 28.5 hrs /week, now with the economy down they are back to 35 hrs/week or so and still are way more productive than any US manufacturer except maybe Toyota. Somehow I think that management of the big three si/was unable to motivate and engage the workforce and working ethics, that is why they suffer not the union. BMW and Toyota seem to manage to build good quality cars stateside, so people are not dumb or unskilled, just bloody wrong management, only focusing on their next benefits that is all..

Wouldn't that be why you're laying people off? I mean if your people are producing A number of cars and people are buying B number of cars and A is greater than B then you slow down production right? maybe by laying people off; tax and wages are usually the biggest costs in a company so it would make sense to do so.

Let's face it, American cars aren't selling like hotcakes at the moment.

I like German cars (I have two); but I think the perception of German reliability is faulty. Their cars perform better because they are designed for the higher tolerances demanded by the Autobahn.

Recent GM offerings seem substantially better than the generation they are replacing. Saturn is practically Opel.

If you look at the stock prices of auto manufacturers all over the world, you'll see that they are all hurting.

Talking about layoffs and factory closures is irrelevant when your sales drop 30% in a month with current year projections already having been adjusted from a year ago. The industry just doesn't turn on a dime. I would imaging it is also a bean-counter challenge determining what the real savings are with lay offs or plant closures when having to pay out benefits anyway. Who in today's global economy has benefits and manufacturing pay scales like the UAW?

Hopefully the big three will get what they need through easing loan requirements from the Department of Energy.

Yes, I would buy a Volt, but would prefer to wait for the plug-in equivalent for the Saturn Vue.