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General Motors will end production of six sedans by the end of 2019. North American customers want SUVs, crossovers, hatchbacks and trucks. Sedans have fallen out of favor. As GM (GM) adjusts to changing customer behavior it is also planning ahead for the future. The company announced massive layoffs and is closing five North American facilities as it transitions to self-driving, electric cars of the future. The soon-to-be closed plants mean GM will no longer make these cars: Buick LaCrosse January - September sales: 13,409, down 14.2% The LaCrosse is a large car built by a brand that was a...

(Reuters) - A new lawsuit says General Motors Co should compensate millions of car and truck owners for lost resale value, potentially exceeding $10 billion, because a slew of recalls and a deadly delay in recalling cars with defective ignition switches has damaged its brand. According to a complaint filed on Wednesday with the federal court in Riverside, California, GM hurt customers by concealing known defects and valuing cost-cutting over safety, leading to roughly 40 recalls covering more than 20 million vehicles this year alone. It said this has caused a variety of late-model vehicles to lose roughly $500 to...

General Motors Co., in the latest recall related to ignition-switch flaws, is calling back about 3.2 million more vehicles and said recall-related charges would reach $700 million in the second quarter.

General Motors added five recalls to its growing list Thursday, pushing its total number of recalled vehicles to more than 11 million this year. GM's recalls alone have the U.S. auto industry on pace to break the record of 30.8 million recalled vehicles set in 2004.

Do you know Ally Financial Inc.? You've no doubt seen their commercials. They used to be all over the tube hawking their high-yielding certificates of deposit. Now they're all over the tube with their "no hidden fees" campaign. . . . But Ally isn't funny. It recently announced that it's launching an initial public offering (IPO) of its stock at a price per share of $25 to $28. The shares will be offered by the U.S. Treasury as part of its planned exit of its investment in Ally during the subprime crisis in 2008. I've heard some analysts say this...

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore believes that whoever was responsible at General Motors for failing to recall a faulty ignition switch deserves death. "I am opposed to the death penalty, but to every rule there is usually an exception, and in this case I hope the criminals at General Motors will be arrested and made to pay for their pre-meditated decision to take human lives for a lousy ten bucks," he wrote. Moore blamed former President George W. Bush's transportation Department for ignoring the problem in 2007 and praised new GM CEO Mary Barra for telling the truth about the problem.

Members of a Senate subcommittee accused General Motors of trying to cover up problems with an ignition switch that is now tied to 13 deaths, and pressed CEO Mary Barra to commit to punishing anyone involved. Panel members also told Barra that GM should tell owners to stop driving all the 2.6 million cars being recalled for the faulty switch until they are repaired. GM is currently telling owners the cars, mainly Chevrolet Cobalts and Saturn Ions, are fine to drive as long as nothing is placed on the key chain.

Government Motors. Remember that one? That's a huge, overlooked detail in this whole GM recall crisis - the federal government's oversight of a company they bought out of bankruptcy four years ago and, under their nose, that same company is hiding its deadly, dirty laundry. Charlie LeDuff caught up with California Democrat Henry Waxman, who was head of the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform at the time of that purchase.

April 1, 2014 3:54 PM Democratic Senator Tells GM Car Owners to Stop Driving Immediately By Jim Geraghty A reader sends this in and quips, “Blumenthal to Michigan: Drop Dead!” CBS Connecticut: “Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal is among those calling for GM to make a stronger statement and tell owners to stop driving their cars immediately. Blumenthal believes GM made a decision to hide the defect of ignition switches.” Considering the risk from the switches, Blumenthal’s advice isn’t the most outlandish conclusion in the world. If an owner of one of the recalled cars wants to drive it at all,...

Long before the Chevrolet Cobalt became known for having a deadly ignition defect, it was already seen as a lemon. Owners complained about power steering failures, locks inexplicably opening and closing, doors jamming shut in the rain — even windows falling out. Long before the Chevrolet Cobalt became known for having a deadly ignition defect, it was already seen as a lemon. Owners complained about power steering failures, locks inexplicably opening and closing, doors jamming shut in the rain — even windows falling out.

AUTOS Updated May 16, 2012, 7:50 p.m. ET GM Claims Immunity For Its Old Cars By Mike Spector GM pushed a lawyer to drop a potential punitive-damages claim involving a prebankruptcy vehicle involved in a fatal accident, asserting a level of immunity in that some lawyers claim is a stretch. A General Motors Co. (GM) lawyer demanded the widow of a car-crash victim drop a plan to seek punitive damages from the auto maker, even though the company's government-brokered overhaul doesn't bar plaintiffs from going after such legal penalties. The GM lawyer in a March 3 email told a lawyer...

President Barack Obama says he wants to buy a Chevy Volt when he’s out of office in five years. If getting into a General Motors electric automobile means so much to him, he’d better hope he loses in November. What the president dubbed the “car of the future” in a visit to a Volt plant may not make it to January 2017. The partially government-owned General Motors has suspended production of its government-approved miracle car and temporarily laid off 1,300 workers at a Detroit plant. The halt is the result of a piddling detail lost in the gushers of praise...

The Chevrolet Volt is everything that is wrong with Washington on four wheels, and investors (that’s you and me) should be furious. Wrong #1 : The Volt should be re-named the Vote. Who can forget that Super Bowl ad, with the pseudo-assembly line of Volts rolling through Hamtramck, Michigan, and the voice overlay that “this isn’t the car we wanted to build; it’s the car America had to build…from the heart of Detroit to the help [sic] of the country.” How true—corporate welfare on wheels, buying votes in a state vital to the President’s re-election. There is simply no...

I discovered an interesting fact while reviewing the 2011 IRS form 8936 used for the $7500 EV tax credit. While under most circumstances it is the wealthy purchasers of Chevy Volts and other high priced plug-in vehicles that get the taxpayer-funded handout, it appears that General Motors' dealerships that sell the vehicles to government entities are benefiting by being able to claim the credits. These dealers are able to double-dip into the seemingly endless pool of taxpayer funds designated for cronies of the Obama Administration under the guise of green initiatives. Not only do taxpayers pay for Chevy Volts...

General Motors has thrown the transmission in reverse, exercising options to cancel a substantial portion of its second quarter upfront commitments. According to several sources, GM has pulled out of nearly 50 percent of its Q2 upfront buys in broadcast and cable, the maximum allowable under the terms of network ad contracts.

General Motors Co will cut production of its Chevrolet Volt if sales of the plug-in hybrid fall short of estimates in the first half of the year, GM vice chairman Steve Girsky said on Tuesday.

General Motors plans to ask Volt owners to bring their electric cars into dealers to strengthen the structure around the batteries, according to a report. The move is similar to a recall and involves the 8,000 Volts sold in the U.S. in the past two years.

General Motors Co. (GM) has hired management consultant Hackett Group (HCKT) to help identify areas to cut an undetermined number of white-collar jobs, said two people familiar with the matter. Hackett Group, based in Miami, will help identify opportunities for cuts and efficiency improvements at headquarters and elsewhere in North America, said the people, who asked not to be identified revealing private plans. GM has been trimming engineers and other white-collar staff, said Jay Cooney, a spokesman, who declined to comment on whether the Detroit-based automaker had hired Hackett Group.

U.S. opening formal probe into GM Volt fire risk Photo 5:46pm EST (Reuters) - U.S. auto safety regulators are opening a formal investigation into fire risks in General Motors' Volt vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Friday it was taking the step after efforts to recreate a May crash test saw fires result from two out of three crash tests performed this month. "While it is too soon to tell whether the investigation will lead to a recall of any vehicles or parts, if NHTSA identifies an unreasonable risk to safety, the agency will take immediate action...

(CBS/AP) Two years after it was saved by a bailout from Washington, General Motors is trumpeting its latest investments in China. As CBS News business and economics correspondent Rebecca Jarvis reported from Shanghai, American cars are more popular than ever in China, and U.S. automakers sell more cars there than anywhere else in the world. And while that's good news for American car companies, it makes many question what it will mean for American jobs. If you were to visit General Motors in Shanghai, you'd find a lot of what you would in Detroit The plant, says David Gibbons, executive...