I am sitting in a dealer meeting about GM’s current economic state and the plan Rick Waggoner has for the next 2 years to get GM back on track and he just said they are building the CTS coupe, Cadillac Sportwagon and some other concepts from Buick.
CTS Coupe will be out next summer, new SRX will be out next spring and the Sportwagon should be out next year as well. The Buicks are simply a redesign for current models but the Chevrolet Cruze was also given the go ahead for production next year.
As for the dollars and cents I won’t discuss everything because they will announce most of it at the public press conference in 2 minutes but they have good plans that will raise about 15 billion. Exec’s have given up bonuses, shift from trucks to cars in US, aggressive targeting of foreign markets, shift in marketing budgets, selling off unnecessary real estate, among others.
“cutting white-collar jobs and some retiree health-care coverage, eliminating executive bonuses for 2008.”
-I’m interested to see what the health-care coverage cuts will be. They killed our lifetime benefits once we were 51% sold, even though people had been paying into it for 20+ years.
“suspend its common stock dividend”
-that can’t help the stock price
“try to sell its Hummer brand in response to higher gas prices.”
-But they are still launching the H3T, brilliant
1.4 liter turbo motor will be in the Chevrolet Cruze, projected 9 mpg better than the cobalt.
I wish I could post pics, that car is beautiful.
this is a very positive press conference. Rick has the backing of the board and will be trimming some fat, pissing some people off i’m sure and overall kicking some ass. The plan will generate about 15 billion in cash, 10 billion from operating costs, 5 billion from capital assests.
no more health care coverage for retirees that are 65 or over. they will be eligible for medicaid and will receive some $$ instead. That’s been a long time coming, good move.
Despite the doom and gloom in America, GM’s sales edged up in Europe by 3% in the first six months of 2008, including a 58% increase in Eastern Europe and a 60% surge in Russia. This includes a 21% increase in Russian Hummer sales.
I just interviewed with pratt & miller and when i brought up my concern with gm they told I had nothing to worry about. The current contract lasts until 2010 and they are currently nogociating a new one. So that side of gm’s motorsports program (c6.r, gto.r, gxp.r, cts-v) should be fine.
It’s probably a real smart place for GM to make cuts. Get out of everything but Nascar. Not because I like Nascar, but because I’m pretty sure with it’s popularity they get an actual ROI for dollars spent there.
I think Rick was reffering to advertising/sponsorship dollars because that came up when he was talking about their advertising changes. I think the cars themselves will be fine.
