GM now has lost something like $5billion this year. Trivial intelligence is necessary to appreciate why GM is losing so much money. Routinely perform HP/Liter calculations for their crappy engines. GM products need typically two extra pistons to obtain same horsepower. So the technology originally pioneered by GM in the early 1970s still will not be sold in that brand new car - using the same technology from 1955 models.
GERMAN automakers gave up pushrod engines long ago, in favor of more complex overhead-cam power plants. The Japanese have essentially quit making the old-design engines. Ford is down to just a couple.
But Chrysler, with seven, and especially General Motors, with about a dozen in 21 different forms, remain bastions of the pushrod engine, also known as an overhead-valve design.
Not only has G.M. continued to carry forward older engine designs, like the famous "small block V-8" in your grandfather's 1955 Bel Air (and your son's 2005 Corvette), it has been designing new ones. The Chevy Impala offers two pushrod V-6's that are new for 2006.
Today we have another GM solution. Promote more MBA types into top management. General Motors Corp., the world's largest automaker, appointed Frederick Henderson chief financial officer and vice chairman to help end losses in North America after he trimmed jobs at its money-losing European business.
Henderson will help Chief Executive Rick Wagoner eliminate 30,000 factory jobs and close 12 facilities in North America, where GM has lost $4.8 billion from its auto operations this year. Henderson since June 2004 has led an effort that included slashing 12,000 jobs in Europe, where GM hasn't had an annual profit since 1999. The European business in this year's second quarter posted its first profit in five years, before slipping to a $382 million loss in the third quarter.
They still design new engines with 1950 push rod, obsolete technology. Then promote more of the problem - bean counters - to solve their crap product line and stifled innovation.
Let's see. The government gave them how many hundreds of millions of dollars in 1994 to build a hybrid? Where are those products? It requires an MBA to worry about the product - to innovate. Finance people cannot innovate except on spread sheet. In some places, spread sheet innovation is still called fraud - when they don't contribute enough to Bush Cheney campaign funds.
Anything new here? It was not new when it was posted in 2005 as
Kill the Messenger - this time the LA Times. Americans did nothing - bought even more of those most anti-American products. Economics then takes revenge including now paying $1.65 for things that once costs less than $1.00. Stay ignorant. Even listen to a lying president and his myths such as Man to Mars. Then suffer the consequences. Deja Vue the days of Nam and those like UG who got us into this. BTW, UG also criticized this reality when it was posted in 2005.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla
That's because I'm brighter than you, you know, and I never tire of reminding you of that.
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UG also denied what we now know as reasons for rising oil prices. Public denial.
When do things start getting better? Innovation takes four to ten years. We are only beginning to pay for easy money, mythical tax breaks, "Mission Accomplished", welfare to big pharma, and other things that UG, et al approved of. We have not seen the resulting bills yet. Deja vue days of Nam which was also created by people like UG who promoted those same myths.