GM closing 5 US/Canadian plants, 2 International - Laying off staff

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CodeRedR51

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Right before the holidays. How generous of them. :rolleyes:

https://www.carscoops.com/2018/11/g...-canadian-plants-slashes-15-salaries-workers/

This also means the Volt, Cruz, Impala, XTS, CT6, and LaCrosse will be discontinued.

https://www.autoblog.com/2018/11/26/gm-production-cut-oshawa-chevy-impala-cadillac-xts/

Reports about GM’s plan to close the Oshawa plant in Ontario have proven to be true.

Unfortunately, the Canadian facility is not the only one that will become idle starting next year. Things are much worse in the United States, where the automaker has announced plans to stop production at four plants from 2019.

Those include two vehicle assembly facilities and two propulsion factories. GM says the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly, Lordstown Assembly, Baltimore Operations, and Warren Transmission Operations “will be unallocated in 2019.”

Both U.S. car plants that will stop production currently build slow-selling sedans

In plain English, that means they will produce no vehicles or propulsion components next year and will be at risk of closure. GM says it will allocate future products to fewer plants next year amid “changing customer preferences in the U.S. and in response to market-related volume declines in cars.”

Both U.S. vehicle assembly plants scheduled to stop production next year currently build slow-selling passenger cars. The Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly produces the Buick LaCrosse, Cadillac CT6, Chevrolet Impala, and Chevrolet Volt. Lordstown Assembly builds the Chevrolet Cruze...
 
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The writing has been on the wall for this for a while now since GM has still been hopelessly overcapacity even after the bailout/bankruptcy, but it won't be good optics for all three US manufacturers to have outright cancelled all of their cars that they actually have to worry about meeting CAFE with. Even before the jobs issue comes up where this was done in the same year that GM made enough profit to do a big stock buyback.
 
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The biggest surprise is the Volt. With as much as GM is investing into EV tech, ditching that seems strange. I get the other vehicles though, but I am curious if it's stopping the production of the Impala then what will I get for a rental car now?

Pretty sure Tesla is hiring.

But then you have to work for Elon Musk, which sounds awful. Plus Tesla is almost always on the verge of a collapse because there's only so many tech-bros it can shove the car on to.
 
Economy is booming again, back to just building V8's, trucks and suv's again!

Or will they push the Korean Chevrolets down your throats?
 
Or will they push the Korean Chevrolets down your throats?

Well as soon as gas prices go back up (they will), it's hard to say what the domestic car companies will do. But Korean Chevy's seem like a GM move, so I'm guessing they'd do that.
 
Vaguely on topic: Regarding the Cruz and Volt (and every car that Ford is discontinuing), does anyone else wonder whether the executives who make the call to discontinue these vehicles ever consider that the reason they are performing so poorly is that they are so ass-ugly and/or ancient, rather than a general lack of interest in the segment? Another good example of this is the 2018 Accord vs the 2017 Accord. The 2017 actually sold better, despite being the older and less well regarded model. But the 2018 is hideous (I get cold shivers every time I see that brutish disjointed mess in person). Fading segment or is the design putting people off? I keep hearing nonstop how nobody wants cars, but I see few manufacturers actually trying to make good looking cars.

Or, from a more Machiavellian/cynical perspective, are these same executives deliberately sabotaging the cars in this segment with bad design so they can discontinue them in favor of higher-margin offerings? It's a lot easier to convince a board to axe a product that isn't selling well, after all.
 
Or will they push the Korean Chevrolets down your throats?
The South Korea plant is closing too.

Also:

d674b29e-gm-production-cuts.jpg
 
Vaguely on topic: Regarding the Cruz and Volt (and every car that Ford is discontinuing), does anyone else wonder whether the executives who make the call to discontinue these vehicles ever consider that the reason they are performing so poorly is that they are so ass-ugly and/or ancient, rather than a general lack of interest in the segment? Another good example of this is the 2018 Accord vs the 2017 Accord. The 2017 actually sold better, despite being the older and less well regarded model. But the 2018 is hideous (I get cold shivers every time I see that brutish disjointed mess in person). Fading segment or is the design putting people off? I keep hearing nonstop how nobody wants cars, but I see few manufacturers actually trying to make good looking cars.

Or, from a more Machiavellian/cynical perspective, are these same executives deliberately sabotaging the cars in this segment with bad design so they can discontinue them in favor of higher-margin offerings? It's a lot easier to convince a board to axe a product that isn't selling well, after all.

Considering how pretty much every modern manufacturer only has 1 design for their entire lineup, I don't think that's what's putting people off.
 
And apparently this means the V8 powered CT6 will be a one year only offering, and they've already stopped importing the hybrid CT6. They'll still sell the CT6 in China though. And I also liked the current gen Impala.
 
I didn't do too much reading on Cadillac's line-up but it seemed a bit confusing. They offered three sedans that start within a few thousand dollars of each other (CTS, CT6, XTS).
 
GM stock prices went up 7% after this announcement. Fire poor people, rich people get richer.
 
GM stock prices went up 7% after this announcement. Fire poor people, rich people get richer.

When stock prices go up it’s rich people redistributing their wealth among themselves. Some win, some lose, but no new money is added.
 
How does the current Prius stack up against the previous model, because that thing sure is one ugly "insert Predator quote".
Its sales have dropped year after year since the current model debuted; and last year were sitting at about half of what they were in the last year of the previous generation.


Whether it's the specific attitude towards the car in comparison to straight up electric vehicles (read: It's not trendy anymore), general market direction for cars of its type (read: it's not a lard ass crossover) or just the fact that it is 🤬 ugly is something Toyota will need to determine.

I didn't do too much reading on Cadillac's line-up but it seemed a bit confusing. They offered three sedans that start within a few thousand dollars of each other (CTS, CT6, XTS).
The CTS and XTS were both on the way out. It's certainly confusing that they had three different, similarly sized and looking cars with three different naming schemes from three different attempts at a rebranding their model line, but after next year it was always supposed to just be the CT6.


Now it's a moot point, though, since I can see GM giving up entirely on Cadillac now after immediately abandoning the car that they just developed a new platform and engine for. Spin off the Escalade into its own thing and shutter the brand outright beyond that.
 
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Surprisingly, the union that represents the laid off U.S. workers, UAW, should make out rather nice considering they still own a sizeable chunk of the company.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/b...ors/2018/03/05/uaw-veba-stock-sale/111124700/

YAY UNIONS!!!! :rolleyes:👍

UAW is a fat cat union that is so corrupted and warped that it shouldn't be taken as an actual union, especially when we actually have examples of smaller scale unions pushing through demands for a better workplace.
 
YAY UNIONS!!!! :rolleyes:👍
Most unions are a great idea but the UAW in particular is corrupt as hell with big stakes in the car companies and money to be made. The UAW is so crooked it gives all unions a bad name. It's part of the reason American companies have such a hard time competing.
 
In my mind GM is smart for getting ahead of the curve .

Absolutely. Unlike Ford, GM is actually attempting to do something before it all goes wrong. For as much flak as Mary Barra is getting right now, I think she's probably the best thing to happen to GM. Several of my friends who work there say the same thing too.
 
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