GM Changes

https://www.foxnews.com/auto/get-them-while-theyre-not-hot-gm-is-killing-these-six-models-next-year

Following Ford and Fiat Chrysler’s lead, General Motors is reducing the number of sedan and hatchback models it offers in the United States in favor of a lineup made up largely of trucks and SUVs.

Several manufacturing plants in North America will be idled, and thousands of workers laid off by the end of 2019 as the company gears up to fill the void with new electric and autonomous vehicles.

Six models are set to be eliminated, leaving a handful of four-door cars in GMs showrooms. At least for now.....

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Chevrolet Cruze, the Cadillac CT6 and the Buick LaCrosse, will be discontinued. A GM spokesperson also confirmedthat Chevy Volt production will be discontinued by March 2019.
 
Chevrolet Cruze, the Cadillac CT6 and the Buick LaCrosse, will be discontinued. A GM spokesperson also confirmedthat Chevy Volt production will be discontinued by March 2019.

The funny part of Volt going to the locker room is yesterday I heard 3 spokesmouths on the radio announcing with less money and resources spent on sedans nobody wants more would be spent on electric cars (self igniting?) and alternate fuel cars.

Sure, I believe that. I live near Rochester, I see the abandoned Delco plant and barely used Rochester Products plant, and I know 2 retired Engineers from the alternate fuel dreamworks (now closed) where GM developed the Hydrogen cars and military vehicles. Mrs Clinton came to get her picture taken in a Hydrogen Hummer and a fledgling Congress criminal rode a Hydrogen car to the Capitol from there. OK, so it took 6 Hydtogen cars, 5 Blazers and 5 trailers to accomplish the trip, no big deal, nobody at GM could be expected to know multiple vendors operate Hydrogen fill plants between here and there.
We won't mention how GM blew hell out of the back side of the Airport with the hydrogen fill station for the experimental fleet the County was testing.
 
The XTS and the CT6 are going away. No more Cadillac passenger car-based hearses. Who would have foreseen the Big 3 totally exiting/abandoning the passenger car market in our lifetimes?
I guess that the steel tarriffs were "the last straw".
 
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The XTS and the CT6 are going away. No more Cadillac passenger car-based hearses. Who would have foreseen the Big 3 totally exiting/abandoning the passenger car market in our lifetimes?
I guess that the steel tarriffs were "the last straw".

GM produced passenger vehicles that were simply not selling. That is, the public did not like them. Additionally, many current GM vehicles have been rated among the least reliable, including Cadillac models (JD Power, 2018). GM was given billions by the taxpayers as a loan to bail them out. In the 5 years after the bailout, GM earned more than $22.6 billion; the Taxpayers lost $10.6 billion in the bailout https://money.cnn.com/2014/05/29/news/companies/gm-profit-bailout/index.html . GM survived the recession thanks to the U.S. Taxpayer, but they failed themselves and the United States by engineering unreliable, substandard vehicles that held little appeal to consumers.

GM's current circumstance has nothing to do with steel tariffs being imposed for the past 7-8 months. Relative to tariffs: The bottom line is that steel tariffs existed long before the current admin imposed them. Those tariffs were imposed on U.S. goods by our international trading partners. The current admin's aim was to eliminate tariffs completely so that trade would be FREE, FAIR, & RECIPROCAL. The current tariffs were imposed to create leverage with the aim to eliminate them all together. As soon as our trading partners engage in free, fair, reciprocal trade, without tariffs, the current admin will remove all tariffs imposed on foreign steel.
Facts matter.
 
what they are not saying at all is the fuel mandates just starting to come in effect have exceptions for trucks. the bigger wider taller the less they are subject to the rules. OH ya SUVs and Crossover are considered trucks for the mandate. so by cars if you want a car built in the USA you got to buy a Honda:rolleyes:
 
William Crapo Durrant is spinning in his grave!

He would not believe what these people have done to his company. Harlow Curtis and Alfred Sloan would be even more stunned. For the last 25 years every time I think the leadership of General Motors can’t do anything more stupid, they do something more stupid.
 
GM has lost its way on making reliable products. I have a 2008 Suburban LTZ it has had more money spent on repairs than any other vehicle I have ever owned. I have owned repaired and paid to have repaired many GM vehicles over the years since my first one in 1954 (a 1041 Pontiac) I have bought new eight Cadillacs two Corvettes a GMC Syclone an 89 Turbo Trans AM, an 87 Buick Regal turbo powered these cars were all relitivley trouble free. I have bought sold and used many GM vehicles in the business. But since about 2001 GM has made crap. Compared to Ford the recent GM cop cars have been duds the Impala front wheel drive falls apart and every dept. we get them from are glad to see them gone. The Australian Caprice, quick but many problems most depts sacked them early due to high repair costs. Even my all time favorite the 94 to 96 LT-1 Caprice cop car was a victem of the GM downward reliabilty slide Bad water pump design the Opti spark and the damn 4L-60 transmission. The 4L-80 would have held up great but cheap GM did not want to change the floor stamping to accomidate the bigger transmission so instead they spent the money on warranty claims for the weaker 4L-60. Of the folks I have known for many years that were loyal GM owners. A number have gone to Ford,Toyota.Subaru,Lexus, MB,BMW,all say the same they don;t have the problems they did with their GM rides. I am going to get another Suburban used I ain't paying 70K for unreliable junk and nothing else on the market fills the bill for me like a Suburban. It hauls a lot of German Shepherds and they like the rear AC.
 
I have owned many GM cars over the years snd was very happy with most of them. So, I am frustrated by their poor decisions. It started with their Plan 2000 in the early 90s, when they forced most mom and pop and many "in town" dealerships to close, or move to a highway. Then they kill Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Saturn and Hummer. Now they are discontinuing so many popular models, it never seems to stop. And to make matters worse, they keep losing loyal employees and customers. Honestly, these people running GM and some other large companies are so bent on the bottom line, that they completely forget about what makes a company successful, happy clients and employees.

All I can say to GM execs is, keep doing what you're doing and you will make GM cease to exist. What a shame!
 
GM has lost its way on making reliable products. I have a 2008 Suburban LTZ it has had more money spent on repairs than any other vehicle I have ever owned. I have owned repaired and paid to have repaired many GM vehicles over the years since my first one in 1954 (a 1041 Pontiac) I have bought new eight Cadillacs two Corvettes a GMC Syclone an 89 Turbo Trans AM, an 87 Buick Regal turbo powered these cars were all relitivley trouble free. I have bought sold and used many GM vehicles in the business. But since about 2001 GM has made crap. Compared to Ford the recent GM cop cars have been duds the Impala front wheel drive falls apart and every dept. we get them from are glad to see them gone. The Australian Caprice, quick but many problems most depts sacked them early due to high repair costs. Even my all time favorite the 94 to 96 LT-1 Caprice cop car was a victem of the GM downward reliabilty slide Bad water pump design the Opti spark and the damn 4L-60 transmission. The 4L-80 would have held up great but cheap GM did not want to change the floor stamping to accomidate the bigger transmission so instead they spent the money on warranty claims for the weaker 4L-60. Of the folks I have known for many years that were loyal GM owners. A number have gone to Ford,Toyota.Subaru,Lexus, MB,BMW,all say the same they don;t have the problems they did with their GM rides. I am going to get another Suburban used I ain't paying 70K for unreliable junk and nothing else on the market fills the bill for me like a Suburban. It hauls a lot of German Shepherds and they like the rear AC.



............ and you forgot to mention that the late model GM trucks rot out horribly too!
 
Peter....I feel the same about Suburbans; I own one too. It has a lot of hp and torque...It has room for days. I baby the heck out of it, and I do everything I can to overkill the preventive maintenance.
Mechanically, I am satisfied with it thus far. It does, however, have an electrical gremlin who likes to periodically interfere with various systems.
 
GM & the UAW worked well together to chase customers away.
The Government did all it could to help too.
I well remember sitting in a hospital cafeteria having lunch with a Nurse overhearing a retired GM forklift driver from Delco bragging on how hard he avoided work at Delco to the extent GM had twice the forklifts they needed and half the fleet had a hideout with TV and microwave. When he got to his pension benefits I wanted to choke. The nurse was making notes.

Back at her office she punched her calculator for a few minutes and announced she had bought and driven GM for 33 years, and she was damned if she'd ever buy another GM product. She was not about to pay $1800 toward any GM employee's Blue Cross and have to pay for her own. I know she's bought 2 Hyundais since.

I don't recall a new Caddy ambulance or hearse in this area since the contrived Carter fuel shortage. Everybody I know downsized to the Mercury based hearses.

Odd thing is my last employer harvested a lot of money from GM plants here, and I can truthfully say we provided value for what they paid us. The opulence inside GM plants was insane. Lista tool boxes beyond my ability to count, caught my eye very early in the relationship. Small items like hydraulic wrenches were stashed and hidden so they didn't have to be used, and nobody cared. The work environment resembled war between GM and UAW. Perhaps I'm stupid, but I always believed if I wanted money from my employer I had to deliver my services so the employer could pay me. GM don't fly that way.

The icing on the cake had to have been when GM refused to honor Warranty via their Bankruptcy. That terminated the relationship with many long term customers.

Writing this I recall driving a 2013 Impala around 400 miles back in April 14.
By 50 miles out the Impala had won my manure pile award. The seat sucked, and the rest of the car wasn't far behind. It had also chewed up both front tires to the extent I called Enterprize for replacements or a different car.

That Impala couldn't hold a candle to a 4 year old Hyundai Sonata, and drank gas like it was pulling a tank trailer.

Simply stated GM resigned the playing field to people who read Deming's books.
 
Anyone can kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. What has confused me with all the big 3 is there continuing to attempt to reinvent the wheel by reaching back to things they abandoned years ago because they did not work then.
The loss of the 4 door 6 passenger sedan is what has stoped me from getting any thing new way more then the price. To me the have gone down hill since 2000. Trying to meet government mandates rather then customers needs has been the decline in my eye. Blame the union all you want but if you force people to buy something they don't want with a take it or leave it mentality you will find they walk away. Deciding a good used one that fits there needs is a better buy then a new one that doesn't is money better spent
 
I was a long time GM dealership parts person and manager from 1970 to 2017, over the years dealt with all brands of GM cars and trucks including Medium and Heavy Duty trucks.

I could go on and on with my views on what happened to GM and why . The best way for me to sum it up at present in my driveway the vehicles are both FCA products. In 2012 I vowed never to buy a post bankruptcy GM product.
 
I am sure that you shared my utter shock and disbelief with the recent General Motors announcement. The plant closings and the vehicles that are being discontinued came as a complete surprise. Now...we were all aware that the XTS was scheduled to be discontinued late in the 2019 model year. That was understood. But, the plant closings and the dropping of several other Buick, Cadillac and Chevrolet models was unexpected - to say the least.

However, with regard to future Cadillac-based professional vehicle production, this is what I'm being told by inside and highly reliable sources. Here's the rest of the story. Yes, production of the current Cadillac XTS will cease (somewhat) in the fourth quarter of 2019. Nevertheless, following this, and for professional vehicle manufacturers, in late 2019 and possibly into early 2020 GMs Oshawa plant will then commence building a 2020 version for a short period. The manufacturers will have to purchase and store large numbers of these "2020" XTS vehicles which will allow them to continue production through the model year. So....there will be Cadillac XTS-based professional vehicles through the 2020 model year.

Cadillac will be announcing a new "crossover" or SUV early next year that the manufacturers hope will form the basis for a 2021 range of Cadillac funeral cars and limousines. So....as far as Cadillac-based professional vehicles are concerned....all is not lost. There will be more information on this "transition" available soon and I will do my best to keep you appraised of developments in this regard.

Just thought that I'd share this information which may put many minds at ease - at least temporarily. Have a good what's left of your day.
 
Is anyone else totally sick of looking at "Cross-Overs" and small "SUVs"? The term "SUV" is a total misnomer as there is absolutely NOTHING "utilitarian" about any of them! I can get far more cargo in the trunk of a Crown Vic than you can get in any small "SUV"! Rediculous vehicles with horrible visibility.
 
Is anyone else totally sick of looking at "Cross-Overs" and small "SUVs"? The term "SUV" is a total misnomer as there is absolutely NOTHING "utilitarian" about any of them! I can get far more cargo in the trunk of a Crown Vic than you can get in any small "SUV"! Rediculous vehicles with horrible visibility.

I went from an Astrovan to a 2010 Explorer. I live in fear of ever needing to put the spare tire on the Explorer, I know where it is, but I have to move probably 1000 pounds of things I carry to get to it. Then again, when I last checked the air pressure on the spare for the Astro I learned the cable had rotted and the spare was someplace other than with the Astro.
I'll just call a flatbed to haul me to the shop.

I can lay hands on a 68 Plymouth Fury 3 with enough trunk space to live in. The 08 Hyundai Sonata had more usable cargo space than the Explorer has. Might nave had more legroom too.

Something has gone bad wrong in the way US built cars are designed. I'll not even mention the brilliant canbus system.
 
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