Your opinion respectfully accepted. And I agree GM has done some great things like their dominance in China and the rebirth of Caddy for example.

However...
My opinion is that throwing tens-of-millions into a development, showing it to the public, and cancelling the project when it is days from Job-1 date is poor management. Offering 2, 3, or even 4 versions of the same basic car under various names and plastic skins is poor management. Offer 1 and do it well... don't waste the developmental costs on doing 4 cosmetic variations of the same vehicle under different badges. As for market trends... how many SUVs does one brand/company need to offer? Escalade, Denali, Yukon, Suburban, Tahoe... put them all on the opposite end of a football field and stare at them.

I know these are just my ramblings, but in my humble opinion, GM has in fact been mis-managed for the last decade and was long overdue for a major rebuild. We can easily see some great successes like Caddy's turnaround and the G8, but let's be honest with ourselves and make a pereto with successes and failures and see which one is more heavily loaded. Aztek. SSR. The whole Geo thing. Saturn's slide. The Fiat fiasco. etc. etc. I hope (sincerely and in a polite way) that you can see where I am coming from on this. It's not just the quality of the upholstery material in the 2009 Acadia that I am basing my decision on... it's the whole ball game over the last 10-15 years. It simply hasn't been all that it could have been.

 

I want to buy some of your glasses.

So said the public of Enron, Arthur Andersen, Ma-Bell, and Standard Oil too.
Be careful of your impulses.

 

To anyone who may have read my earlier post regarding the yen...
I was not really wanting someone to describe why they use the yen or how important it is/is not. I was being facetious.
I actually know pretty well how companies report their incomes. I'm over 17 now and I finished my economics class with pretty decent grades.


Now back to the serious stuff...
My point is that it DOES matter where the money is "claimed" for income and taxation. Let the dollar fall against the yen by 5%-10% and see "so what".

I will become one of the most anti-GM critics ever if they decide to blatantly design, develop, and build GM cars in China and ship them here for retail sale. It flies in the face of everything they have stood for for years. "The Heartbeat of America"... "Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet"...
Any of this ringing with anyone? Beyond a "bad" decision IMO... a terminal decision.

Lastly, I'm not throwing a single stone at Toyota. I stated FACTS to back up an opinion. My job is funded by money from almost every OEM making a car or truck. I don't want to see any of them go down. But I also think Toyota has a holier-than-thou attitude that is quickly coming home to roost on them.
Please see the difference... I am not wishing them failure, as an insider I'm trying to describe the forrest I see behind the tree we are discussing.

 

The profits any company makes from their business conducted in the U.S. (it doesn't even matter where the merchandise is made) are assessed U.S. Income Taxes; it has nothing to do with where their world headquarters is located or what currency they report use in reporting their annual financial results.

 

Uh no. It's an archaic line of thinking that hasn't been factually correct in almost 30 years, and that's probably being generous. The Big 3 love to play on the patriotic heartstrings of the American public, but the arguement is hollow.