1. You always here the adjective "voracious" associated with reading. Why is that? It is an adjective that means "excessivly eager", but you don't here Cronz say "I am a voracious runner" or Slim say "I voraciously watch the Twins and Vikings". But anyone who reads alot is a voracious reader. Thoughts?
2. Two paragraphs from a WSJ article today.
GM reported light-vehicle sales of 153,404 in November, down from 261,273 a year earlier. (side comment: How ugly is that?)
Looking ahead, GM said it now expects fourth-quarter North American production of 835,000 vehicles, down from its prior view of 875,000. It also expects 600,000 vehicles to be made in North America during the first quarter.
So, GM is producing approximatly 265,000 cars a month, and are only selling 153,000. They are making 112,000 more cars than they are able to sell. I am no great business man, but my radical idea to turn around the car company is STOP MAKING SO MANY FUCKING CARS
Thoughts.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Good point. The only other context I recall seeing voracious is with eating. I've read the term, "voracious appetite." Bonus points for whoever uses voracious in conversation today.
Another good point with GM. I'm no econ prof either, but don't you need to lower prices until you get to the price point the customer will pay?
I think your correct. Voracious appetite is a phrase I have heard before.
I would think so. But I looked at these red tag prices, and it doesn't look like they are discounting enough, especially considering none of them are giving any low interest loans anymore.
I appreciate the voracious discussion.
On GM I kind of disagree. They can't keep slashing prices - they are telling consumers our product is crap. I strongly agree they need to cut production. Get back to the basics. Find out who the 260 thousand buying or whatever the number is and why. Find more of those people. Stop building too many cars. Let people go. Handle your pension and healthcare liability. Build shit people want (I really don't think it is that hard in cars - reliability and mpg, maybe that is just me). Biggest issue (again just me) is the brand. 2nd biggest investment. People derive a lot of their identity from their rig (what does a 98 Altima tell you?) - what do any of these jokers stand for? Play on the new americanism (a la Barak).
Bottom line production is almost flat and demand is 50% - ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The biggest issue about these guys isn't that they flew private jets to DC - its that they are raging idiots.
Would cutting prices be them telling us the product is crap? Hasn't the market spent the last decade telling them the product is crap? Isn't that how they got here? It seems like a chicken vs. the egg question. Either way they shouldn't have inventory coming out of their ears. It's like the mother-in-law who just keeps cooking. Everybody's full, noboby's eating, get out of the kitchen.
They have to cut the prices ridiculously low, the dealerships have financed the purchases of those cars, so they have to get rid of them, and they can't sit on a depreciating product and hope for the market to come back for much longer. I think it looks worse to have half a million cars sitting there.
GM is a pension that owns a car company. They have to redo it. Unfortunately, I think it is too late. This $ that the government will give them will be gone by Jan 31. Then, do we support them for the next 1.5 years, or let them fail? Besides trucks and SUVs, American car companies haven't had a single product that anyone has pined for. Even with the Volt, I don't see anything changing.
Post a Comment