Quote:
GM in Need of Fine-Tuning
posted by Geraldo Rivera at 2:18 pm ET
They used to say that what was good for General Motors was good for the country, but that day is long gone. And today the wounded auto giant announced that it was shrinking itself by offering buyouts to more than a 100,000 hourly workers. For years, GM’s clearly inept management has been crying about how hard it is to compete with the rest of the world because of the price of labor and especially its pensions. But the bigger reason is that many of its cars stink, and I say that as a present stockholder and former consumer.
Consumer Reports, the authoritative, influential and totally above-reproach magazine, just came out with its annual top 10 list for 2006 vehicles. For the first time ever, all ten vehicles, ranging from SUV’s to inexpensive, mid-price and luxury sedans, to minivans, green cars and even that once All-American category, pickups, are Japanese. Everyone of them.
The top ten list includes four vehicles from Honda, including the small Civic, the medium Accord, the Odyssey minivan and the Ridgeline pickup; two green vehicles from Toyota, the Highland Hybrid and the Prius; two from Subaru, the fun to drive Impreza rally car (my son owns one), and the Forester SUV; and one each from Lexus, Acura and Infiniti.
GM’s response to getting swept by the Japanese: whining.
In an e-mail Monday to Automotive News magazine, Lori Queen, a GM executive for small cars essentially blamed the messenger, saying of Consumer Reports, "They are totally non-objective and go to great extremes to a paint a picture for their paid subscription readers who primary buy Japanese cars..."
When the rating company's director of vehicle testing pointed out that they do not consider country of origin, just objective test results, GM’s embattled CEO Rick Wagoner personally called David Champion, Consumer Reports head of auto testing, to apologize.
The real problem for GM, and Ford for that matter, is that too many of their cars are crap. Note that I specifically exclude Chrysler from the melancholy list. Having bought one of the sharp 300’s, I think it’s the one American-based (although German-owned) auto company that still has spunk.
Among the lowest rated vehicles on the Consumer Reports list are the once mighty, now tired, Ford Taurus, the homely Pontiac Grand Prix, and the dreadful Chevy Equinox. And unless you live in Kabul or Baghdad, isn’t the Hummer the ugliest, dumbest vehicle on the road today?
Forbes Magazine senior editor Neil Weinberg sums it up, saying of GM, "Well its biggest problem is product. People just don’t get too thrilled about going into a GM dealership to buy a Chevy or Buick, and that is a big problem."
GM should stop whining and start building better cars.
At least nobody from GM showed on live TV where the US/UK troops were headed in the early days of the Iraq war
. Hummers seem to be selling well, maybe he should just stick with his day job news stories.
what a dumbass...haha I think the pontiac is beatiful and well the Hummers must be selling well because everyong and there brother has one. And if hes reffering to the H1 then it just makes him an even bigger dumbass.
Do you think he realizies all the cars GM actually makes?
Cadillac junk?
Chevy and GMCs truck and SUV line Junk?
How about Buicks or Sabbs...And the saturn line. Although they look cheap will run for 200 thousand miles and the engine still looks brand new.
Im sorry if you wanna trash GM go ahead but dont trash them and then talk about how great DC is. Esepcially the 300. Which i like, but has many, many problems...
Its hard to take anything Geraldo Riviera says seriously. That dude is such a tool, he should stop worrying about GM and start worrying about what he's gonna do about that mustache.
geraldo can suck my left nut
-Borsty
I take what Heraldo says with a grain of salt.
There are a few good points. I sold Chev Olds Caddy in a time where there was nothing in the dealer that was sweet. I mean, there was nothing fun that our customers could buy. There are only so many Vette buyers out there. Customers woudl buy if the deal was too good to refuse. This is where the vicous circle starts.
The more sweet deals you hand out, the more you have to cut corners on the product to make ends meet. So, instead of making desireable vehicles, they turn reasonable designs and so so vehicles into frustrating junk piles with cheaper and cheaper parts.
Today, I see the GM lineup as a huge improvement. While not as trendy as Dailmer designs, there's much to chose from and the quality is nothing to shrug at. Certainly not the 80's again.
Sure, many Hondas are good vehicles. The simple fact is, they are still more expensive to buy. So go figure. They rate better.
Heraldo can keep his 300. He can pretend he's driving a Bentley. He might have been able to own a real one had he not bombed his career.
Who listens to Geraldo anyways? People need to form their own opinions not steal everyone elses.
If he had actually reasearched anything he would know about GM's current financial restructuring and investment in their plants.
Reliability is a biased statement as well and uses small faults such as an alternator dieing. Its considered a mechanical failure.
Secondly consumer reports is based on the consumers reviews, so if the majority of their readers are japanease auto owners you can pretty much garuntee their reports will be biased in that direction.
Also people who drive foreign cars or more expensive models don't consider a few hundred a year in repairs to be a detriment to their reliability.
I can't belive the look on peoples faces when I tell them my pontiac has just under 60,000 miles and I've never had any problems with the engine or any other part of the car for that matter.
Oh well, Geraldo has been out so long their are people that will believe him because he's Geraldo
-Chris
i almost agreed with him on a lot of points (granted, i don't think he necessarily phrased said points correctly), until he said that Chrysler was ok..... Having worked for them for 3 years, thats a fricking joke... Build quality and fit and finish is actually worse on the newer LX platform than it was in any car Chrysler made from 95 until 2003. I'd be willing to bet his personal 300M came out of some kind of endorsement deal
But seriously guys, lets be honest, the reason americans keep buying more japanese and european cars is simply because American companies sat on their hands for too long, thinking that they could TELL the American consumer what they wanted, instead of having to LISTEN to the customer and build the car they really did want. The imports are doing this, while the American companies are just now starting to realize that they have to as well if they are to survive. And the bit on the consumer reports thing goes right along with that... they're quicker to blame the magazine as being biased than they are to look at their cars and admit that they have a problem that needs to be rectified... Calling consumer reports "biased" towards Japanese cars is ridiculous to begin with.... anyone remember what magazine SUNK the Suzuki Samurai in tests that pitted it against the Jeep, Blazer, and Bronco?
Like i said, I don't necessarily agree with how he said it, but even being as big a tool as he is, there were some valid points....
Arrival Blue 04 LS Sport
Eco
Turbo
Megasquirt
'Nuff said
I agree with him on some points. But he is just restating the obvious and something that we have all known for years now.
Hey Rivera, stop whining and do some real journalism.
>>>For Sale? Clicky!<<<
-----The orginal Mr.Goodwrench on the JBO since 11/99-----
Geraldo Rivera:
- Insiteful Talk-show host (in the ranks with Jerry Springer, Richard Bey, Jenny Jones and Morton Downey Jr.)
- News correspondent (for a Bush Administration/Rupert Murdock mouthpiece oragnisation)
- Humanitarian (before he retires to his airconditioned bus and the camera's stop rolling)
and now...
- Car critic
Great.
How can a biased, uneducated opinion coming from mr moustache be called ripping GM a new one?
Geraldo who ???
I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, thats as good as they are going to feel all day. ~ Dean Martin
While I hate Geraldo and everything he says (ever since he was kicked out of Iraq for exposing the position of US forces during the war) I have to agree with some of what he said. But, however, I think the Grand Prix is a pretty damn sexy car, and I dont think its possible for him to be objective when his family owns competitor vehicles...
Borsty wrote:geraldo can suck my left nut
x2
Great, now we have another no talent ass clown jumping on the band wagon to bash GM vehicles. That just pisses me off that peole are so bent on import vehiucle being the best thin gon teh road, sure they have built a name for themselves but that is all. People buy the name. It is pretty pathetic when you can look up a toyota corolla and a chevy prism and find out that the toyota is worthmore just because it has a toyota badge on it. Same thing with the vibe. People are so blinded to realize that the quality isn't as good as GM, being GM has some of the top ranked plants in the nation in quality and durability. peopel don;t see that though, they just see an import brand and automatically asume that it is gonna last forever, and once they see a GM brand they think that it is crap. Fine exapmle of this is the other day I had a lady call our dealership looking for a 1998 nissan altima that has 135,000. We had it and she asked how much it was and it was for, 6,900. I then told here that we had a 2003 cavalier with 35,000 miles and a GM certified warranty for the same price of 6,900, and I could have kicked her in the face if she was in front of me. All she said was that she wanted to stick with an import vehicle.
. That right there should say somthing. Geraldo just needs anouther broken nose to get him back into the sense of reality. Just anouther guy throwing in his .02 becasue he is a washed up journalist looking for some exposure.
As far as the DC thing, that company is one big joke. Thier entire car line up and all thier ideas are all old news. I'm just waiting for them to revive the plymouth name so that they can ruin the Cuda' namesake next. Get new ideas and quit bringing back old ones.
http://www.j-body.org/forums/read.php?f=1&i=333805&t=333704#333805
Ripping on GM is not that hard to do these days... and chrysler is on top of the big 3... hummers are pretty stupid... IF that quote above was some grade 6 class project in journalism i'd be impresed. Granted i don't really expect much from the guy, but stating the obvious is not what these people on tv should be doing.. we already know all this!
Lui
