Chrysler and Fiat to "Fire" Dealers Under New Bankruptcy Plan

WHIO.com ^ | May 13, 2009 | staff writer

[ken5050]

Except for the grill...right off a Sebring...

[nyconse]

Totally wrong...the domestics have been around for years and have legacy costs (retirement and health care), this caused some of the problems...the other culprit would be those who turned their back on their country and purchased foreign cars...it may have seemed like a good idea, but we are going to pay for it now and in the future. An America without manufacturing is a weakened America and in serious danger from our enemies (not to mention on the path of socialism because of the loss of good jobs with benefits)...for example China is building weapons with our trade dollars...stupid is as stupid does.

The union was just a bogeyman for globalists who had to find a reason why jobs were being lost other then their short sighted policies...many non-union jobs have gone overseas as have companies that have no unions. I don’t care what you say as long as slave labor and super cheap labor from third world countries continues, union or no union, American workers can not compete...for example the tech sector is losing many jobs to India...no union involved there.

[nyconse]

Exactly so.

[Mr Rogers]

How does the number of dealers impact warranty costs? Isn’t that a factor of the number of CARS sold & percentage needing work? If one dealer fixes 12 cars under warranty, and two dealers fix 6 cars each, how does the cost to the company change?

Same of unsold inventory...20,000 cars on 50 lots would cost the same as 20,000 cars on 25 lots, except that it is easier to find the cars to buy if there are 50 lots.

What am I missing?

[Oatka]

I believe the term “green shoot” was started by Bernanke

It's mold.

[nyconse]

It’s really simple...dealerships that are losing money or struggling are famous for telling their customers that they need expensive and often unnecessary warranty work because it’s a way to improve profits if you are not selling cars. In fact, many GM dealers offer free oil changes for the life of the car if you buy through them and are quite likely to ‘discover’ a hidden but expensive warranty issue. GM pays for the warranty work and also gets a bad name with their customers who think the car is not a good car because of this practice.

Now let’s say your car is out of warranty, and you have a problem...you go to a struggling dealer who says you have a bigger and more expensive problem then you really do in order to garner more money. We know this is true because when customer complaints are investigated about big ticket items like head gaskets, transmissions etc, we often find, the cars do not suffer from this but maybe it’s a fuel pump or some other minor problem. Also, by the new warranties, customers have five years or 100,000 miles and the promise of a loaner, failing dealers don’t want to meet the new customer friendly terms of the warranty agreements and lie to their customers and say GM ‘changed’ the warranty. We know this is true again by customer complaints which are investigated and taken very seriously.

[odin2008]

It should say,”Obama fires dealers!”

[nyconse]

Also,GM has statistics that clearly demonstrate that warranty work numbers are much higher at troubled dealerships than their more successful counterparts. This is expensive and as stated before cause a serious public relations problem.

[LonePalm]

The official French term, according to the Académie Francaise, for a start-up company is jeune-pousse or young shoot. It refers to the green portion of a plant that has just broken through the soil.

This is probably where Bernanke got the term.

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[Old Professer]

I like this description of the term from Newsweek.com:

“Spring is the season of rebirth. So it was fitting that Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, in mid-March told “60 Minutes” that he detected “green shoots” of economic recovery. Since then, the phrase “green shoots,” which had apparently lain dormant in the linguistic field, has sprouted and blossomed. Analysts and journalists, desperate for any sign of hope, have taken to repeating the phrase “green shoots” as a soothing mantra. Economists are now walking around, eyes fixed on the ground like French rustics hunting for truffles, trying to sniff out signs of growth.”

[nina0113]

I really do appreciate the langauge lesson, but do we have any evidence that Bernanke speaks more than menu French?

[WVKayaker]

Have you driven a Ford lately?

2010 Ford F-150 Raptor

[LonePalm]

Don't know.

I remembered this from the 90's when the Académie Française took exception to the dot-com entrepreneurs being called "les startupistes."

Even I thought that "les startupistes" was a crappy term.

Oddly enough, they do allow "reporter" and "bulldozer" in the official French Dictionary, Le Dictionnaire de L'Académie Française.

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[wolf78]

Totally wrong...the domestics have been around for years and have legacy costs (retirement and health care), this caused some of the problems...the other culprit would be those who turned their back on their country and purchased foreign cars...it may have seemed like a good idea, but we are going to pay for it now and in the future.

While legacy costs are a fact (GM, a 300.000 employee company, has the legacy costs of a 800.000 employee company), first of all, it was the management that failed to outsource many of these costs by e.g. setting up retirement funds and secondly they lost the market share all by themselves (which hurt doubly as they have to pay the legacy costs from times when they had a far larger market share). Technologically speaking American car companies are up to a decade behind the market leaders (Toyota, Volkswagen etc.).

Also, American companies aren't loosing out to Chinese companies like FAW or Dongfeng (which is like 10 times smaller than Hyundai), but to companies from allied countries that either produce at comparable costs or even manufacture their cars in the US itself.

GM for the most part f*cked up all on its own.