Good work General!

It’s about time. Now if they can just ditch even more of the overpaid union workers with their ridiculous benefit packages, they might just make some really good progress. The jobs bank should be the first thing to go @ contract renewal time.

Hey GM: It’s working – I see a Saturn in my future.

GM did not need Nissan/Renault. They’ve achieved an impressive turnaround.

Good Job General. Keep developing great product and the turnaround will be complete.

Good for you, GM!

Can’t wait to see how the naysayers spin this…

lets hope gm learns from its mistakes and producecs good cars for a long time coming.

I’m not a GM fan at all, but good on ya for turning it around. While I dislike GM cars, I admit that they are an important car company for millions of people, and this turnaround is VERY important for the car industry as a whole. Congrats!

The turnaround is important for the United States as well. Too many American companies are getting hurt by cheaper foreign labor and cheaper foreign products, Americans can rally around this and finally realize that we need industry. We cannot continue down the pay of being a service economy.

Sorry, I meant path of being a service economy.

So what steps caused/aided the turnaround and how are these being benchmarked? noting that they sold some great assets (ones that threw cash) like a majority of their lending business to raise cash which makes the adjusted profit more impressive (not having that cow to reap from), how can their peers (Chrysler group and Ford) learn from GM to garner the same improved results? What is the fundamental change that occurred or is this the special sauce that no one talks about?

As much as we auto-philes want to think, bringing out a new model or two was not the cause of the sea change, but something fundamental in operations led to it.

Legions upon legions of retired employees from years of being the largest company tend to contribute to the siphoning of funds away from product development and public relations. Also GM had become a beauacracy that rivaled only our government in size. It was time for tough love and time to trim the fat.

The naysayers couldn’t give two ****s about GM. The competition isn’t suddenly going to disappear because GM is have a few good quarters. Toyota will still take over GM’s spot (Deservingly) it’s only a matter of time.

I am sad to see Ford doing badly though.

BrokenCadillac, I have you disagree with you. If you didn’t give to ****s about GM, you would not be so adamant about running them down every chance you could. The truth is down deep you probably want to drive a GM so bad, that you can’t stand the reality. Do yourself a favor, come out of the closet and go buy a Lucerne. You will never be able to thank me enough.

I second the Saturn-in-my-future comment.

Yay, GM!

Amen, GMFan.

And by naysayers I meant all the people who comment negatively about Ford and GM no matter what good they do.

GM’s survival is of vital importance to our national economy and security.

the era of “free trade” has come to an end – it’s time to talk about fair trade – and that includes building products that people not only want to buy but get excited about.

GM is beginning to do that. there is a long way to go, but it sure beats a $5bil loss like Ford just experienced, or the nearly $2bil loss for DC.

congratulations, GM.

Great to hear, two years ago i wouldve taken a ford, but now i think GM definatly has the advantage, especially in the truck/SUV market. While they may not be as popular as an F-series they are really growing on the public, and the Explorer is so ****ty id rather have the TrailBlazer. All hope is lost for the Expedition.. while the new redesign looks badass its obvious the GM has buckets more refinement in their Tahoe/Yukon. They also couldnt have made a better choice going forward with saturn. Ive always loved Opels and hoped theyd bring back the brand, and this is the closest ill get, so bravo.

So how are they doing it? GM finally made a decision to dump overcapacity and told/made/asked the UAW to pony up some help in the way of buying out the extra capacity in workers. Now they can shut down a bunch of unneeded plants. Now they can quit selling rental fleet cars to keep the plants running. Now they can put some of that new found savings cash into product.

The other place for cash/cost reduction is in the retiree pensions and healthcare. Not sure what they can do there. A first step is they just told them that they are holding the line on health care cost. All increases in the future will be paid for by the retiree. Long term it will help.

This is great news for many reasons, most outlined above. I have not considered an American car since I starting driving 24 years ago, but the Saturn Aura looks great, and if Ford could bring that Mondeo over…

I do drive a GM. And I’m not old enough to drive a Lucerne. Not into wallowy, pillows with weezing pushrod power. I broke the age barrier with my SRX which I found was also an oddity since everyone else whom I have bumped into is way older than I am who also drives one.

What exactly does “not old enough to drive a Lucerne mean?” Are there car police watching you? Or are you so motivated by public perception of yourself, that you feel you can’t make a decision based on anything except what the media tells you the demographic of an automobile might be?

I’d like to delve into the line-by-line specifies of exactly what “adjusted” entails. I hope this is simply not funny money.

Okay, I guess you can put me into the category of naysayers, especially when it comes to GM. However, I do like to think I am a relatively balanced and considerate naysayer.

I find it odd how two things that seem to come up in the discussions of GM, and indeed, American industry in general, are how the lack of free trade and cheap foreign labour really hurts domestic American operations. When really, because of free trade, many large American companies have been outsourcing their own production to cheap foreign labour markets (read: Mexico). I mean, I don’t know if anybody else has observed this, but there aren’t exactly many other foreign car manufacturers (with the possible exceptions of Kia and Hyundai) whose domestic markets allow for cut-rate manufacturing. I mean, does anybody here have any idea what minimum wage is in Japan? The fact is that the push to reduce manufacturing costs (apparently with little or no concern for loss in quality) has a lot less to do with remaining competitive, and a lot more to do with maximizing profit. Now I’m certainly not saying that companies like GM shouldn’t make a profit, I just don’t think that they should be pushing the absolute limit of what’s possible in terms of profit. Apparently, the market agrees with me on this, as this strategy didn’t exactly pay off for them.

I would also like to point out that being (very marginally) profitable isn’t necessarily indicative building great cars. I do agree that much of this apparent turn around at GM has a lot to do with the manner in which they conduct their operations, so that’s good news. Now, if they could start building consisting good and appealing vehicles they’d be in a much better position. And don’t anybody mention the Corvette Z06. Yeah, it’s great, but building one great car doesn’t mean you have a great company.

I mean, in the future, I don’t ever see GM really being able to reclaim the status they once had. I don’t mean any disrespect by this comment, but I kind of see GM (and a lot of really large manufacturers, like Ford or even Toyota) as having carved out a niche on the bottom of the automotive totem pole. As the world’s largest automaker, they build a lot of average cars for average people (or below average cars for below average people) [and I should point out that I'm talking here about the Cobalt and the Wave and the Colorado and the like]. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. The market is there, and it’s pretty much the biggest automotive market there is, so somebody has to build cars for that market. I think it’s this market that ultimately sets the low bar in the automotive industry, and the higher companies can set that low bar, the better it is for all of us. I welcome the notion that GM will be building much better cars, because it means the competition will have to build cars even better than that.

/no

Excellent news for Mother GM… I own two GM cars one real old 1967 big block SS Camaro and a 2003 corvette Z06 and i wouldn’t trade EITHER of them for ANYTHING thats anywhere near comparably priced… GO GM GO….

The Lucerne is far from wallowing and does have a DOHC engine. Try it, you might like it.

In fact my neighbor (probably older than you, he’s 49) just sold his SRX and got a Lucerne. Loves it.

After my miserable experience with my SRX, I’m thinking about a 300C or Charger. My neighbor with the lemon STS just picked up a loaded Pacifica so I may look at one of those as well.

Buick is for fogeys, plain and simple. I am not old (I am in my late 30’s) don’t live in a retirment commuunity and prefer something a bit more “Engaging” than a bloated pillow. Sorry, the Lucerne is not a performance vehicle like my SRX is. You’re wasting your time trying to convince me that it is.

Granted the Lucerne CX looks abit sedate. Try the Lucerne CXS with the Northstar. Take 10 minutes out of you life and drive one. You will be amazed.

What are you a salesman? You sound pretty desperate to sell the Lucerne. Don’t you get it? I my 60 thousand dollar Pile of crap they call a Cadillac has soured me on GM for good. Just like my neighbor who lives a few doors down with a 2005 STS V8, I am leaving GM in the dust.

There, service dept. blows, the product is overpriced for what you get and frankly, I don’t like driving something that my Grandpop would own. And now you are trying to sell me on a Bluehair Buick?

Might as well try and sell me on a Hearse.

I for one don’t really care what you drive BrokenCadillac, I’m just tired of your constant whining. Just because you and your neighbor make up 1/2 of the Cadillac hate club doesn’t make them bad cars. I’m sorry you had a bad experiance, but be an adult and get over it already. Cadillac almost always places near the top on dependability studies, so I think you situation is the exception rather than the case. Just be glad that an American car company is starting to pull out of there financial troubles.

And nowei, please get over yourself, not everyone who buys American is low class and broke.

Good to see things are going better with GM. America needs this. Go GM Go!

Not everyone has to like GM either. Get over it.

GM’s success comes at the price of Ford Motor and Daimler Chrysler. I don’t want to see them disappear and I also think it is time for GM to drop off the pedestal of #1 that they haven’t earned in decades.

Of course, if you drop the fleet sales, the 0% finance deals, the payouts to customers to buy the metal and the Oprah Winfrey giveaways, GM sales don’t look so hot. Toyota is going to be eating their lunch soon enough anyways

Don’t agree with my negative posts about GM? Sorry, this isn’t a F**king GM fan site. Not all is rosy as the brainwashed GM fanatics would have you believe.

I got burned. Don’t like reading my posts? Move on.

This is a welcome turnaround… and very quick too. It looks like GM got the slap in the face that it needed to stop the bleeding. Now lets see it if it can continue the upward trend. I would like to see GM or Ford become the innovators in this industry, not just the followers to new trends paved by Toyota and others.

@BrokenCadillac: “Move on”…gee, that’s what everyone’s been asking YOU to do. Practice what you preach.

Sounds like the tribe has spoken BrokenCadillac. Time to leave the island.

To :

David

“So what steps caused/aided the turnaround and how are these being benchmarked? noting that they sold some great assets (ones that threw cash) like a majority of their lending business to raise cash which makes the adjusted profit more impressive ”

what does the above have to do with the third quarter ?
GM AC minority sold in 4/2006
Isuzu stake sold in 4/2006
It’s called diversification look up the meaning and purpose.

To: everyone else
As far as the meaning adjusted it means the car company generated profit from their automotive sales. The adjustment come in the form of all their contractual agreements buyouts and bailouts like Delphi. Gm having previously owned Delphi was obligated by contracts even if the company was spun off. Besides a Delphi bankruptcy or failure would have severely crippled GM and other car manufacturers. Because they are a major source of parts. Now that being said it was cheaper to take a hit now and keep the company going than have them fail and run out of parts. No parts ,no cars.

As far as fleet sales they mean more to Ford than GM here in the US, lets get that strait. Yes it’s significant but Ford has a edge on that one. So what if they (GM/Ford) sell large quantities to government or companies. The idiots are the ones making these comments glorifying these other foreign car companies not thinking about what they do. As if they do not have fleet sales. What does Japan have for their government/companies vehicles(mostly Toyota)? What does Europe have for theirs (Mercedes, just about every cab I’ve seen in Europe, police car etc.) That’s everyones bread and butter.

Please Please take 2 minutes and research before posting, makes for a much more stimulating discussion. Nothing wrong with opinions but at least be factual.

That’s a pretty weak tribe you got there…

I have every damn right to be here as everyone else. This isn’t a GM fanboi site bud. Go cry to someone else because I called your friend names. I hope Toyota destroys them. It’s only a matter of time.

GMAC has not been sold yet. No money transfer until this coming quarter.

BrokenCadillac, if having 7 trouble free GM trucks in a row including my current Duramax with 82,000 makes me a brainwashed GM fan boy them I guess I’m guilty as charged. Of course you have a right to post like anyone else. All we are saying is everyone already knows your SRX story, so maybe it’s time to move on.

I’ve had very reliable GM vehicles as well. The one that gave me a reliability headache was a 2001 BMW 330Ci, but I got rid of it fast.

My parents had a 92 Chevy van, and it ran 100,000 miles with us, there were some problems with it but thats because we didnt change the oil that often. Its not reliability thats the biggest problem with their cars I think its just their fit and finish with their interiors, otherwise their cars run fine. I’m not a domestic car fan at all but I am pulling for them. Good job GM

Indeed, Egbert Souse. Of all the GMs that have been in my family over the years, none have ever had much of a reliability problem other than minor issues such as a warped brake rotor and a broken wiper motor.

The problem has been the fit and finish and quality of materials. My current Cavalier Z24 is fine engine / mechanical wise, but it definitely feels like its falling apart. Panel gaps are uneven, squeaks and rattles abound.

It will soon be time for me to purchase my first brand new car and I don’t think it is likely to be a GM, though a Saturn Ion once it is replaced by an Opel sounds tempting. Even the Aura once it comes in Red Line trim sounds nice, but I’d rather have an engaging to drive hatch such as a Mazda 3 or VW GTI (though VWs reliability is suspect also)

100k isn’t that much, FYI. Not that I’m saying GM cars aren’t reliable, just pointing that out. I’m hitting 190k on my current vehicle. And the Toyota pickup from 85 from when I was 3 is still kicking.

You know what I would like to see GM do at this point? Make a rear-drive compact sedan. I don’t want something that weighs 4000 pounds to have RWD, the Ecotec engines are totally tuneable for more power, but I hate the fact that the Cobalt, SS or no, are FWD. I know there’s probably no market for this, but I’d be willing to consider something like the Cobalt if it had RWD (or even AWD.. that would be pretty sweet.) I’m not a very tall guy, so all the space in the new Camaro/Impala would be wasted on me, so I prefer small cars. Better parking and mileage, etc. There’s only one car company I hate, and that’s Kia. Hope all car companies (except Kia) do better in the future – more competition always means better results for consumers.

GM could make a kick ass rear wheel drive sport sedan/coupe using the Ecotec motor inthe base model and then a forced induction destroked version of the 4200 motor from the Trailblazer for the top of the line model.

The 4200 in the trailblazer is a very smooth strong modern DOHC motor with variable valvetiming. It makes close to 300 hp in stock format with a red line of a little over 6,000 rpms. Decrease the bore of the 4200 slightly to increase block cylinder wall strength for the forced induction. Then destroke the motor some to increase the red line. Make it so you end up with a 3900 inline 6 using a supercharger or maybe twin turbos.

That should net you a conservitive 400-450 horsepower.

Broken cadillac, i knew you would be on this story with your negativity. I think you wake up to find anything about GM just to knock it. Which is ok because unfortunately for you GM isn’t going anywhere, so you can just go on being an idiot.

i bet brocken caddilac is a homo and only suports ford because they suport him! see gm is a republican company and rick wagner is a christian! bill ford is a liberal/ homo who suports gay’s and wants to live in the forest with the butterflys!