GM's Last-Ditch Plan to Avoid Bankruptcy: Close Pontiac and Shed 21,000 Jobs

Reply to "SDT"

SDT,

The post you were referring to by Greg Roberts was actually written fabulously and thoughtfully. It is a shame that you cannot differentiate between a typo (ie not I was...I was not) and poor sentence structure.

Regards,

JAK

Goodbye to the Firebird

As A Pontiac Firebird enthusiast for over 20 years, I found this decision very discouraging but not I was surprised. One of the main reasons that I have been a Firebird owner has been to show my patriotism and support of one of the main industries that we have been blessed to have for many years. It has been a very difficult decision for me to stick with over the years. I have had over a dozen of the 80’s and 90’s models of Firebird and have spent a fortune on repair costs. I have driven almost a million miles in these cars and have endured the relentless attack from law enforcement who love to single out these sport cars to make examples of the traffic laws which so many others ignore. After all the tickets and costly breakdowns, I am left holding a vintage vehicle with only scrap value. The depreciation of these models over time has made them the worst money pits.

It is one of my beliefs that we learn our best lessons through our failures. The decision to outsource the component parts and even our production of these cars was one of our greatest failures. The poor engineering and design that went into choosing the materials and processes for these models also contributed to their premature failure. Even my experience with the sales and customers service side has been a failure. With arrogant salesmen and over priced repair parts and service only available during rigid business hours, who would blame Americans for turning to the foreign cars.

Pontiac Firebird was a symbol of the great Phoenix, which rose from the ashes to triumph. I had hopes that a new model of the Firebird would be released in 2012, but that does not seem to be a possibility. Unfortunately it would have also been burdened with the same poor decisions that have plagued the last two models. There is nothing like the sound of a V-8 Pontiac engine to turn the heads of men and women alike. We will still hear those sounds from our classics, but the Phoenix will not rise this time. Along with it dies some hope of having the American dream fulfilled with a good job and a healthy economy.

Closing plants and phasing out Pontiac may seem like the only decision GM has to save the company now, but it was series of bad decisions from the past that have left them with no choice.

Pontiac GM throwing sporty out the door.

Whomesoever you are that wrote this - learn how to spell, learn to write and learn how to present your views in an erudite manner - it is very difficult to take your badly writen & constructed views seriously when you can not even spell a 4 letter work correctly.

Regards,

SDT.

Car factory troubles.

Send all your money out of the country, to have cheap labor, and make American execs rich, and wonder why everyone is out of work in the US?

All the money the money spent on imports by the US funds the importer's engineers to build better cars.

Buying imports may save you money in the short run but increases your taxes in the long run to pay unemployment benefits to the out of work US citizens.

In the very long run it may not be could for execs either because if everyone is out of work in the US who is going to by the products from companies that the execs manage?

Pontiac GM throwing sporty out the door.

OK I own a 2k Bonneville with super charger had its problems wheel bearings shot after 48k miles to find out OEM's were made by Dynapak which is a China manufacturer, cheap low grade metals. Non the less I like the car though poor quality in materials selections and designs(which is also an engineering issue with GM). Buick, have you ever ridden behind a Buick? It's usually someone driving 10 to 20 miles an hour under the speed limit, could have made that left turn had they actually bothered to touch the accelerator and when you do get past them finally I guarentee you 99% of the time it is some retired person 60+ Buicks are old people cars no style simple ugly and plain but yes old people buy cars but usually want a car that they can be burried in after owning it 30+ years. Cadillac, owned an 89 Seville great car over priced parts and repairs, hose for the radiator 60$. Breaks went out on me went to dealer to get it fixed 110$ just for the actuator for the master cylinder overall about 300 to fix only to have the breaks go out again the next day on a major highway doing 70 and just about killed myself and someone else luckily dodging them and e-breaking to finally stop. Problem this time mastercylinder cost to replace at dealer part only as they called it a genuine GM part manufactured in I believe the country of origin sticker was Belgium or something like that anyway 630 just for the part. Did not get the genuine dealer gm part went to Nappa auto parts cost there 230$ and to top it off the master cylinder also inclused the actuator I had previously paid 110$ to the dealer for and get this it gets even better When I asked the dealer why the master cylinder was so expensive? "Why because it's a genuine GM part." Needless to say when i pulled out the genuine Nappa part which included the actuator for 230$ and showed him the same made in Belgium sticker he had on his part he did not know what to say. So about a 400Z$ difference. Moral of the story here, it is not just the unions or the execs or engineers or dealerships its a combonation of them all. I like pontiacs because they have a sporty look and i dont want aminivan or my grandfathers car or an over priced luxury car like Cadi's who by the way at a dealership tried to compare a Cadi to a BMW I laughed at him needless to say i watched how the process of BMW manufacturers work let me say American manus could learn a lot. Now with all the American cars i have owned ford gm etc i always had problems with things thati shouldnt have and because of that i never wanted that type of car again. general census you burn someone on a product they wont buy it again not everyone can afford to go buy or lease a new car every 2-3 years or 100k miles because that is all that American cars are about good for their lifecyle is short compared to a lot of foreign cars I think American consumers have lost trust in American car companies and I hear all the time about hondas toyotas etc running 2-300k.

omg

the world is going to end soon and the swine flu is going to wipe us off the earth. this is just a sign from god telling us the world is going to an end

Pontiac/UAW/America

The original plan of downsizing Pontiac seemed a much better idea that the outright killing of it. But, I imagine that this has more to do with a congress that has no idea what the American consumer wants and telling GM to kill Pontiac. Dwight D. Eisenhower said "Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you are a thousand miles away from the corn field". This applies to every facet of America, not just the ag industry. What experiance does anyone on the Hill have that can be applied to the automotive or banking industries? None. Why is is so difficult to help support industry when they are just pouring money down the dark bottomless well that is banking?

Unions as the exsist today have become a bloated power machine, much like the government that helps keep them that way. Why do the Japanese automakers have cars with such higher fit and finish? Because they can spend money on better materials and the labour to do so. They are non union factories and they still offer great jobs for people that want to work.

This brings us to the crux. Maybe we need to let it all fail. The banks, GM, all of it. Then maybe people will realize that they had a great job. Maybe America will wake up and start taking care of itself. Maybe all those folks facing foreclosure will think to themselves 'maybe I should have been making my house payments and saving some of my income instead of buying a cellphone with goddamn camera/keyboard/gps/whatever and 'rims' for my 'ride' and a forty-two inch flatscreen.

We have failed ourselves, and we are letting our government fail America.

Write to your representatives. Not an email, but a proper letter. Get involved, get focused, get angry. We can and will survive if we chose too.

pontiac is the best y??????

pontiac is the best car mad in america why get rid of it its the third highest selling car gm has yet you get rid of pontiac before hummer, cadillac, gmc makes no sense this is making me rethink the us car now your scrapping the first muscle car ever made for what a chevy volt a foreign looking chevy camaro a cadillac escalade cars that have a high price tag will not help your sales pontiacs were cheap and great cars gm lost another to ford or anybody else but gm ever again

build quality

I agree, I worked for the UAW through Coltfirearms and I was a servie writer for Ford many years and the fit and finish of american vehicles in genral is misserable. I beleave the Unions had a purpuse at one time. Not any longer. the American auto worker is over paid with little work ethic, and no pride in workmanship. I have seen this first hand. I have always bought american autombiles and probably always will.I'm an american for better or worse.However whats it going to take to get this thing we invented right agin. The UAW is a ball and chain thats dragging down the economy and the industery as a hole, GM may have to disapear just to get rid of the UAW.As for those that are UAW members now... They can negotiate them self into homeless staus for all I care.

Why pontiac

It seems ignorant to phase out pontiac seeing as there are way more pontiacs out on the road than buicks. Heck i see more Pontiacs on the road than Chevys and Gmc's so wat the hell are they thinking.