You're right, I wasn't thinking globally (although I didn't think that was the thrust of this thread). However even so, to go back to the Toyota example they produced 1.5 million cars in NA and sold about 8.5 million worldwide; still a pretty good percentage.

As to the rest of the points in your post, I wasn't challenging that, I was merely pointing out the production sales/numbers. I'm sure RP knows the real numbers are not what he posted, so either he was exaggerating for effect or trying to elicit a response. Either way, I just wanted to bring some of the real numbers out.

 

Haha...I was reading this thread and then asked myself..."what was the title to this thread again?"

Anyway, yes...you would be dumb not to make it. Us enthsuiasts wait since 2001 for a new Camaro, you invite out 250 enthuisasts (thank you again btw) to see this beauty, and then you back out? It would mean death.

 

100% right. It IS a red herring as far as it putting GM in it's current trouble.

GM is in trouble because they put all their eggs in one basket (Larges SUVs & trucks) and had a management team that thought of cars as low profit appliances worthy of nothing more than an afterthought. I was making hay of this a year ago when GM was whining that it was health care costs that was killing them (despite having only 1 car in the entire 7 division company...the imported GTO... I'd even consider buying).

However, GM's issue is that they have tons of retirees & it's hurting them.


We can debate government health care and business taxes till the cows come home, but all our domestic auto companies are in favor of it, and so is pretty much every business, despite additional taxes. Pretty sure there's reasons for this. Health care costs are rising many times more than inflation, and as someone pointed out once, over half of health care costs tend to go to people in the last 5 years of their life.

Intrestingly, GM expects to be out of the woods at the start of the next decade.... about 5 years.

 

The thing i can't get over is that just three or four years ago they made record profits. It really gets to me when some dumb reporter gets on tv and says America doesn't build quality cars. I saw a report on AutoWeek last year that said in 1980 for every 100 American cars that left the factory there were 106 problems. The Japanese and Germans were lower in the 60-80 range. Now for every 100 cars there are 16 problems. The Germans, 17 and the Japanese about 14. So America is right there. As far as product, we had the 4th gen Camaro and the public bought trucks instead. Do you know in 1992 GM and Ford were selling about 250,000 trucks a year, and by the late 90s that became 750,000. Why? Unfortunately GM just followed the trend. They didn't force people to buy trucks. Hopefully we can get a Camaro people will buy, and an hot Impala off the same platform.

 

I wish I had gotten to see the show , sounds like it would have been interesting to see.

David

 

http://www.leftlanenews.com/2006/04/...-cadillac-cts/

From what I can see from these pics, that Cadillac is going to be one slick ride .

David

 

So is there still some big news coming down at New York this week?