GM's reign as #1 in USA has ended after 89 years

[Syndrome]

https://www.drive.com.au/news/genera...-that-changed/

[FormulaFG]

89 consecutive years!

I find it a little amusing that GM had such a golden run and STILL went bankrupt. Also a little sad that Ford was never able to topple them in all those years.

I had a quick look but couldn't find it, can I assume prior to 1931 Ford was the best seller with the Model A?

[Adamz Ghia]

Originally Posted by FormulaFG

89 consecutive years!

I find it a little amusing that GM had such a golden run and STILL went bankrupt. Also a little sad that Ford was never able to topple them in all those years.

I had a quick look but couldn't find it, can I assume prior to 1931 Ford was the best seller with the Model A?

His many brands did GM sell during those years compared to Ford? Take Ford and put it next to Chev alone and surely Ford would have come out on top during some stages in that time.

[xb74_black]

Another article: https://www.latimes.com/business/sto...r-best-selling

[CyberWasp]

There is only so many times I can post a Titanic photo when speaking of GM.
There is a graveyard of car companies they have run into the ground.
They can't manage or compete in any country in the world except the USA.
When you keep backing yourself into a corner there is only one eventuality.

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by FormulaFG

89 consecutive years!

I find it a little amusing that GM had such a golden run and STILL went bankrupt. Also a little sad that Ford was never able to topple them in all those years.

For the last twenty years, Ford has been reducing the amount of vehicles it sells,
basically cutting out what it sees as empty sales.

And you’re correct, GM outsold Ford all the way into bankruptcy.

[Sprintey]

There was an old saying "What is good for GM is good for America," makes you wonder...

[Sprintey]

https://www.caranddriver.com/feature...otten-feature/

They even tried something that I think evokes the Homer, in real life.

[kevino]

Originally Posted by jpd80

For the last twenty years, Ford has been reducing the amount of vehicles it sells,
basically cutting out what it sees as empty sales.

And you’re correct, GM outsold Ford all the way into bankruptcy.

What is the average age of a ford car buyer in Aust.
I reckon its quite old and eventually their policy of high prices and nothing afFORDable will come back and bite them.

[cs123]

Originally Posted by Sprintey

https://www.caranddriver.com/feature...otten-feature/

They even tried something that I think evokes the Homer, in real life.

I remember seeing Breaking Bad and thinking what the hell is that car he owns.

[XR6Runner]

Why do people care which manufacturer sold most in USA? Toyota has been top dog worldwide for a long time. They sell, worldwide over 4 million more cars than GM.

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by kevino

What is the average age of a ford car buyer in Aust.
I reckon its quite old and eventually their policy of high prices and nothing afFORDable will come back and bite them.

Considering the majority of sales now are Ranger, Everest, Mustang, I think that the average age is much lower than you think.

Apparently, Ford has a plan to supply no fewer than five electrified vehicles by the end of 2023,
I’ll believe it when I see it…..

Ford’s strategy of higher pricing seems to be something that other carmakers are now adopting,
it seems that the new norm of higher prices is to the exclusion of those affordable vehicle segments..

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by XR6Runner

Why do people care which manufacturer sold most in USA? Toyota has been top dog worldwide for a long time. They sell, worldwide over 4 million more cars than GM.

It’s an American pride thing, that Detroit manufacturers should rank 1 ,2 and 3.
Toyota has made real ground on Ford and GM since both basically threw away car sales
to embrace higher profit SUVs and large pickups.

[Bossxr8]

Even Ford outsold GM for quite a few months last year. Ford gained market share while GM went backwards.

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by Bossxr8

Even Ford outsold GM for quite a few months last year. Ford gained market share while GM went backwards.

Notice how GM still sticks to quarterly reporting, they try as much as possible to avoid direct comparison with Ford, especially while chip shortages are hurting them

Both companies’ profit comes mainly from those full sized pickups and SUVs, those remain strong
indicating that Ford and GM are prioritising profit earners over ‘nice to have’ vehicle volume.

[naddis01]

Originally Posted by jpd80

Ford’s strategy of higher pricing seems to be something that other carmakers are now adopting,
it seems that the new norm of higher prices is to the exclusion of those affordable vehicle segments..

That's good for the bottom line in the short term, but I fear in the long term all they are doing is allowing the Chinese to get a foothold faster. Eventually it's going to cost them market share.

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by naddis01

That's good for the bottom line in the short term, but I fear in the long term all they are doing is allowing the Chinese to get a foothold faster. Eventually it's going to cost them market share.

Ford doesn’t care about market share in segments that don’t make financial sense,
it exists in our market to make profits with the vehicles it chooses and sometimes
that’s hard for some to accept.

What bugs me is that Australia can’t get any supply of Mach E to at least try something new…

[Syndrome]

Technically General Motors ceased to exist in 2009 when they became bankrupt and were liquidated. The GM moniker et al has been carried over by a phoenix company which was created from the ashes of that time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motors...dation_Company

The GM chairman is currently sowing the seeds of GM Mark 2 next bankruptcy.

[DFB FGXR6]

Originally Posted by Sprintey

https://www.caranddriver.com/feature...otten-feature/

They even tried something that I think evokes the Homer, in real life.

I remember listening to an Autoline After Hours podcast where they had Bob Lutz as a guest. The way he told the story of the Aztek was stunningly funny and head shaking at the same time. The Aztec is the very definition of a corporate in-house politics.

"Bob Lutz, who took over the top product job at GM in the aftermath of the Aztek, has claimed that the design was presented to focus groups who felt about the thing the way we all felt about it when we first saw it: They hated it. Well, actually Lutz claimed that the market-research respondents said, “I wouldn’t take it as a gift.” So convinced were the powers that be of the essential rightness of the vehicle, though, that this didn’t kill the Aztek, either."

[naddis01]

Originally Posted by jpd80

Ford doesn’t care about market share in segments that don’t make financial sense,
it exists in our market to make profits with the vehicles it chooses and sometimes
that’s hard for some to accept.

What bugs me is that Australia can’t get any supply of Mach E to at least try something new…

I was talking more generally rather than Ford specifically. If everyone does the same thing it just opens the door for the Chinese to emulate the Koreans and Japanese before that.

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by Syndrome

Technically General Motors ceased to exist in 2009 when they became bankrupt and were liquidated. The GM moniker et al has been carried over by a phoenix company which was created from the ashes of that time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motors...dation_Company

The GM chairman is currently sowing the seeds of GM Mark 2 next bankruptcy.

Not exactly, under chapter 11 reorganisation, the company was divided into viable and non-viable assets, the non-viable section was renamed Motors Liquidation Company, saving General Motors the humiliation of chapter 7 Bankruptcy.

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by naddis01

I was talking more generally rather than Ford specifically. If everyone does the same thing it just opens the door for the Chinese to emulate the Koreans and Japanese before that.

But see, the Koreans don’t own the Aussie car market, just the bit the Chinese want, so they are the ones with the most to lose…

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by DFB FGXR6

I remember listening to an Autoline After Hours podcast where they had Bob Lutz as a guest. The way he told the story of the Aztek was stunningly funny and head shaking at the same time. The Aztec is the very definition of a corporate in-house politics.

"Bob Lutz, who took over the top product job at GM in the aftermath of the Aztek, has claimed that the design was presented to focus groups who felt about the thing the way we all felt about it when we first saw it: They hated it. Well, actually Lutz claimed that the market-research respondents said, “I wouldn’t take it as a gift.” So convinced were the powers that be of the essential rightness of the vehicle, though, that this didn’t kill the Aztek, either."

Bob Lutz can hardly talk, he presided over the disastrous Volt/ELR fiasco.
Long story short,
1. the Volt was developed on a unique EV platform that shared no sheet metal or parts with high volume platforms
2. Part way through development Lutz decides to add a range extender gasoline engine to curry favour with GM board
3. GM was terrified of Volt being another EV1 so agreed with the plan
4. Horrendous cost over runs ensued and the EV envisioned as a $25k starter became at least $38k

It was downhill from there with Lutz estimating that GM had to be losing $15k per car, so the less they sold the bettter, the only way GM could sell them was as super low leases with guaranteed buy back prices.

Eager to move some stink off Chevrolet’s books, GM commissioned the Cadillac ELR and divided all development costs across both divisions even though the ELR was just a different top hat. To complete the fiasco Cadillac set the starting price at US$63k and watched the car wither and die with minute sales. The whole thing collapsed with very little production.

The whole mess was written down as huge loss and as tax credits to be claimed over the next few years.

[Dr Terry]

Originally Posted by jpd80

Long story short,
1. the Volt was developed on a unique EV platform that shared no sheet metal or parts with high volume platforms

The Volt used the Cruze platform as a base, sharing much of the frame & suspension etc.

Dr Terry

[EBSXR6]

I am sensing Dejavu.
Port Melbourne went into denial when they lost the throne and it appears from across the Pacific, Detroit is doing the same.

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by Dr Terry

The Volt used the Cruze platform as a base, sharing much of the frame & suspension etc.

Dr Terry

I short handed some crucial information…..
Volt = Delta? Not exactly, that was the main problem that Lutz explained in an article I read a few years back..

From memory, the Volt started out as a unique BEV design but when they added the gas engine, more money was spent to try and get some scales of economy with the Delta platform but so many changes meant everything was different. Here’s some extracts from a good article that explains a few problems:

https://europe.autonews.com/article/...-rose-and-rose

'You pay a premium'
The Volt team knew that the drivetrain would be expensive, Lauckner said in an interview. At about $8,000, the lithium-ion battery pack, with batteries supplied by Korean firm LG Chem, is the big-ticket item.

But GM also needed a compact 110-kilowatt electric motor and specialized microprocessors to control energy flow to the motor, he says. GM has not revealed the motor supplier.

The motor technology we're talking about is very sophisticated to get so much power and torque out of such a small package," Lauckner says. "And you pay a premium for it."

In a normal vehicle program, GM would have saved money by using standard non-drivetrain parts from its global compact-car architecture. But with the Volt, GM had to change many standard systems.

For instance, Lauckner says, power steering is often a hydraulic system — a pump driven by a belt running off the engine. Because the internal combustion engine in the Volt runs only intermittently to charge the battery, GM switched to more costly electric power steering run by an electric motor on the steering rack.

An air conditioning compressor normally is driven by a belt and pulleys running off the engine; the Volt's compressor is driven by an electric motor. Likewise, the Volt's electrohydraulic brakes use an electric motor to provide the boost assist.

GM found that traditional suppliers lacked expertise in electrical drive systems while companies touting EV technology were small by automotive standards.

"You have to go to suppliers that you think have the experience, the capability and the manufacturing scale to do this," Lauckner says. "In many cases, it's less than the number of fingers on your hand, with some fingers to spare."

Lutz adds that GM's fast-paced development left no time to merge redundant systems, such as cooling and heating pipes.

"There are no systems synergies in that car; everything is stand-alone," Lutz says. "But that was just because the electric guys had to do their job, the cooling guys had to do their job, the hydraulic guys had to do their job, and there wasn't time to go back through it and say, 'Wait a minute, how come we have two of these?' "


As they looked at the cost of the project, GM also built in worst-case assumptions for warranty costs, Lutz says. GM will put a 10-year, 150,000-mile warranty on the Volt battery pack and powertrain. Lauckner says that is necessary to meet California Advanced Technology Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle standards.

High warranty-cost projections have an upside. If warranty costs don't hit projected levels, "the car is OK almost from Day One," Lutz says.

[Rob 351]

While GM and Toyota are fighting over overall sales, Fords F series is still clearly #1 in the US selling 726,003 vehicles in 2021. Down only 7% on 2020 which is quite remarkable considering how they badly they were affected with the chip shortage and a whopping 156,614 units clear of its closest competitor in Ram and almost 200,000 clear of the Chevy Silverado.

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by Rob 351

While GM and Toyota are fighting over overall sales, Fords F series is still clearly #1 in the US selling 726,003 vehicles in 2021. Down only 7% on 2020 which is quite remarkable considering how they badly they were affected with the chip shortage and a whopping 156,614 units clear of its closest competitor in Ram and almost 200,000 clear of the Chevy Silverado.

In Q4, GM’s USA sales were exceptionally low compared to Ford’s +500k
and clearly hurting badly due to chip shortages while Ford is recovering.

[roddy1960]

General Motors has been a whole mess of trouble for a while now I think according to my great friend in Baltimore. He's a loyal GM buyer but he's disappointed with what they're doing and will be looking elsewhere next time , even to an Asian built vehicle. He doesn't mind Toyota these days but still currently owns an Equinox and Sonic from GM . Maybe it's a sign of the times and it was just too big and too reliant on a diminishing loyal buyer base with so many other cheaper Asian competitors providing alternatives . One day the F Series for Ford which keeps them travelling reasonably will fall away too and if that happens they'll slip too .

As Ford is basically a truck builder now (pick up trucks) and a few SUV's I suppose with their one staple diet car market Mustang is about it for cars. How much longer do you think the Mustang will go do you all think ?

Unfortunately I have little interest yet in pick up's or SUV's of any type. That might change one day but not as we speak .

I have about four to five to work yet before retiring (unless I win Lotto of course) and my plan has always been to buy a brand new car as a retirement gift . Beginning to wonder now if that might not be a Ford product unless the Stang is still around then .

[Bossxr8]

Originally Posted by roddy1960

General Motors has been a whole mess of trouble for a while now I think according to my great friend in Baltimore. He's a loyal GM buyer but he's disappointed with what they're doing and will be looking elsewhere next time , even to an Asian built vehicle. He doesn't mind Toyota these days but still currently owns an Equinox and Sonic from GM . Maybe it's a sign of the times and it was just too big and too reliant on a diminishing loyal buyer base with so many other cheaper Asian competitors providing alternatives . One day the F Series for Ford which keeps them travelling reasonably will fall away too and if that happens they'll slip too .

As Ford is basically a truck builder now (pick up trucks) and a few SUV's I suppose with their one staple diet car market Mustang is about it for cars. How much longer do you think the Mustang will go do you all think ?

Unfortunately I have little interest yet in pick up's or SUV's of any type. That might change one day but not as we speak .

I have about four to five to work yet before retiring (unless I win Lotto of course) and my plan has always been to buy a brand new car as a retirement gift . Beginning to wonder now if that might not be a Ford product unless the Stang is still around then .

There is a new stang coming in 2023/24. It will be around for quite a while yet. This might be the last generation before it goes EV though, probably some time in the early 2030’s.

The new gen will have hybrids available though as an option.