Way to go GM !!

OverMyHead wrote: Certainly how a car is measured differs from personal experience. That is hard to forget. My best experiences were with Honda by far, although my current Dakota with over 200,000 has been a good vehicle. My Honda sales person used to drive to my home and trade vehicles for the day while my car was serviced!!!!

You are certainly right my friend. I still get a good chuckle when we talk about my brother-in-law taking his Honda on vacation to Wisconsin on vacation in the early 80's. Car broke down and needed a carb; fairly common and could be purchased anywhere for American car. Had to rent a car in Green Bay to come back home and go back two weeks later to pick up his car. He now has two Ford's in his driveway.

i really think the Timkens are made i China now also, I swear to god that they got these bearings down to a science, they put a one year warranty on them and i just did some this week, they went 14 months and the two i replaced on the stratus were bad again,
i put some high end Napas on a 1500 truck, luckily the customer purchased them, both sensors are bad on the front after 8 months, free bearings, but not free labor. really the bearings are taking a *************** up here in Ohio because of the brines that are being used on the roads, unlike salt it becomes active at a certain temperature and is like acid on these bearings.

Randy_in_Ohio wrote: PAPA wrote: Randy_in_Ohio wrote: I have to take my POS 2006 Chevy Cobalt back into the shop after work today. After spending over $800 on struts, control arms, wheel bearings, stabilizer ends, steering linkage, etc. etc.... I still have a clunking noise when I turn the wheel to the left! Sounds more like a POS repair shop rather than the car. My Brother-in-Law and I did the work. Perhaps it was the crappy Chinese replacement parts I bought. You would think that if you have an American car, you could find American parts for it. Not so. I bought American when I had the option (Timken wheel bearings) but most of the parts I bought weren't even available from anywhere but China! Sad huh? The car is now at a trusted repair shop that has been in business for a very long time. They, have told me that they have a LOT of issues with these cars...

Bet you will be putting engine cradle bushings in. Well, the repair shop will. It is so common, I bet the local dealer has 12 on hand.

wanna go to the party but dont wanna bring beer

isnt it a good feeling putting your neighbor back to work? you know the ones, the ones that worked for twenty years and all of a sudden got laid off and then haad to suck off the system, you know the lazy people, the poor

eric lavine wrote: isnt it a good feeling putting your neighbor back to work? you know the ones, the ones that worked for twenty years and all of a sudden got laid off and then haad to suck off the system, you know the lazy people, the poor

just so you know...toyota laid off NO ONE in the US during the recession/recall BS/Tsunami/Floods...they paid the line workers to sweep the floors or organize the parts or try to find ways to improve the production process...so they could stay employed and wouldn't have to suck off the system...engineering staff (like me) and management took pay cuts/got no bonus to keep EVERYONE employed...they did NOT pass there problems on to the citizens or government...just so you know...

so Critter, if Toyota flopped and their sales crashed, would you personally give them a loan? as GM grows, Toyota will lay off and the workforce will switch back to GM because of the experience in the auto industry, its tit for tat,
there surely is alot more involved in doing business in this country and why Toyota and Honda set up shop here, it wasnt for the American Employee, it was better for business....if their sales flopped they would chew you up and spit you out and get back on the boat and head east and wipe their hands of you. its about the bottom line and the marketing make you feel like your 40k car was built right here in the good ole USA, you cant see the aftershock of what is happening
GM is our brother, and we take care of our brothers, a garden grows when you water it, and everyone eats. Ive been around just long enough to see the recoil of the Auto industry, it drove this countries wheel, there's alot of Ghost towns in this country and but the other side of the coin, we dont want to take care of our poor, well these are the poor that had allegiance to these companies, we need big business in this country and have to quit relying on others, do we need someone making making 35.00 bucks an hour to push a broom, no, not really, but we need the opportunity for that man to make a good living and prosper. The government doesnt tell us what to purchase and we as citizens still have control of this. plain and simple the government is big business and needs revenue, they write checks too, they generate revenue from taxes. im past my prime so I really dont give 2 ***************s, obviously there is a problem or we wouldnt be talking about it, its funny that the persona is out there they we want to drill for our own oil to lower prices and become a less reliant country on Foriegn oil? please tell me the difference?

critter wrote: If Toyota "flopped" and could not pay their bills, they should be allowed to fail just as the ACE Hardware was allowed to fail here in town and GM should have been allowed to. I have friends that are out of a job, just as we all do. I did not expect the govt to bail any of them out. It is freedom for all to succeed or fail, no matter how large or what donations to a campain you make.

What I don't understand is, why now that you see it is working can you still say it was a bad idea? Just because everybody didn't get the exact same help? It was pointed out about it being a loan, not a hand out. Though even if it were a hand out that would be a good thing, especially if you look at the consequences of not helping.
With your logic, you shouldn't ever help anybody because you cannot help everybody.

Seriously though I think it has less to do with campaign donations made than the amount of workers involved.

GM is like the lutefisk of bailouts, a really bad idea that ends up with results that some like. GM was not a loan, when you get a loan the bank does not get to replace your CEO, rework your entire distribution, determine your product line, tell your creditors to pound sand, and give a big chunk of your company to your union workers. I am glad it worked out for the workers but why them? Housing stated this and the residential construction industry took a bigger hit than anyone. That would be non-union construction workers, what did the 10's of thousands of us guys get to keep us working? Bubcus! but we did get national debt that will slow down the recovery and we will have to help pay it back when things recover and we get back to work. Thanks Barrack for picking favorites.

you dont hear much about the radiation in Japan, if your ass burns in that new Camry let us know lol

86BFN wrote: 86BFN wrote: Top American-Made Cars.     Eric, those are built in Georgetown KY. & Lafayette IN.

Kind of a funny list. I looked at number 1 Camry and reviewers rated it a 4.2 out of 5. Was surprised a Ford Fusion was not on the list so I looked for a fusion and its reviewer rating and lo and behold it was a 4.8 out of 5. Go figure.

OverMyHead wrote: GM is like the lutefisk of bailouts, a really bad idea that ends up with results that some like. GM was not a loan, when you get a loan the bank does not get to replace your CEO, rework your entire distribution, determine your product line, tell your creditors to pound sand, and give a big chunk of your company to your union workers. I am glad it worked out for the workers but why them? Housing stated this and the residential construction industry took a bigger hit than anyone. That would be non-union construction workers, what did the 10's of thousands of us guys get to keep us working? Bubcus! but we did get national debt that will slow down the recovery and we will have to help pay it back when things recover and we get back to work. Thanks Barrack for picking favorites.

The GM situation was one in which lack of government oversight had put the country into a financial collapse where there was no viable way for capital to be raised to privately restructure GM. (One can argue that the GM was so large as for that to be all but impossible anyway and that companies too large to function in a private market are a danger to that free market but to compete as an automaker currently is only possible through such scale)

It is a global market and the japanese, germans, french, chinese, etc all have no problems with helping out or nationalizing a company when it is in thier strategic interest. If we dont all want to be working for overseas interests then we are going to need to play on the same level as they are, or my next 5 patents will go foreign owned companies just like my last 5 have.

When restructures and bailouts in this country have come through private equity means (the Mitt Romney or Warren Buffet option)... and all the conditions referenced above are absolutely typical including replacing your CEO - so I dont really get where you are going with this...

A - we should not do what other countries would do and simply give up on the idea of american owned car companies. (Ford wouldnt have made it when thier suppliers started closing en mass due to the GM and Chyrsler collapse)

B - we should have loaned them money with no conditions to piss away to the previous stock holders and existing failed leaders who were the ones that brought them to bankrupcy and irrelevancy? (like we did with AIG)

and not C which we did and which worked, but was done by the wrong party so must be hated and mocked in every way

the all or none thing would certainly be more fair but it would involve us not allowing companies to grow so large as to be able to destroy the economy with thier collapse, or so large as to be able to crush start up competition. Which might be where I would be if I had my drothers... but I don't and the world is what it is. Somewhere along the line we decided the benefits of having cheaper cars (insurance, loans, oil, airlines, aircraft, and a few other key industries) outweighted the cost of allowing people to be ruled by corporations that don't always act in the best interest of their owners (the stock holders).

Allowing corporations to act in a free market and calling it capitalism has gotten to be crazy in the last 40 years. These huge multi national corporations cannot be expected to know what is in thier own best interest much less act in thier own best interest and therefore cannot be a part of a functioning free market.

If we need to allow absurd outsized corporations then we are going to need to find a way to allow them to function without destroying the people that own them while enriching only those that are paid to run the company for them.

Sadly, that means a large regulation structure in government or economic slavery to the ultra rich.

At this point I don't trust any company not being fundamentally run by the owner or some reasonable amount of significantly invested partners.

Trying to take the high road on having a reasonable government while allowing corporations a free hand is a nice place to think you can live but you wont like the reality.

You dont have to assume anything, you can study history and economics and it becomes easy to see what will happen. Or you can watch the smoke and mirrors.

I really dont think Japan has the resources to continue building cars on their little island, you know the one we dropped the bombs on? so why not move it right into the playing field, rob our resources and jobs, get the same money...just like the same concept of the Nike shoes, why do you think scrap prices are so high? the zips are buying all of our scrap.
i will not bow to a red dot, not now, not ever.
Japan's economy isnt crumbling, ours is