GM Incentives - Addicted to Blue Light Specials?

GM needs to do whatever it can to get one of its cars into every home in the U.S., so each family can have a GM experience. (THEN it needs that car to be reliable. AND, if the car ever needs service, GM needs to ensure that the experience at the dealer is a good one.)
 
If GM does not get its cars into our garages, it won't matter. I think short-term price deals are the only way GM is going to get one of their cars into every home.

Does the GM rebates apply in addition to the red tag sale?
 
Cambece

GM is not going to survive, if they do not change direction - no ifs, ands, or buts. It's not possible to lose $2700 per car and survive. Recent figures on a blogsite showed that even if the UAW worked for "nothing", and the legacy costs "disappeared" they would only cust costs by $1600 per car. Therefore, it is apparently obvious that GM can no longer make money building vehicles and selling them in the United States.
 
Perhaps it would be better for them and the rest of us to conclude that the status quo cannot continue, and that drastic changes must be made.
 
Dramatic cuts in the number of vehicle types and even brand names produced, instead concentrating on the quality of the vehicle. Use Nissan as a quality bench-mark since it is apparently not possible for them to attain "Toyota" quality - they've tried for 3 decades and are instead falling farther behind, despite some recent PR blah blah blah about better quality.
 
Use Saturn style pricing for all GM products. Choose only the BEST dealers with the BEST reputations for helping the customers and dump the rest - probably 75% of them.
 
In reality, I think the current GM management are busy letting the open arteries of the company bleed money so that they can declare bankruptcy and attempt a fresh start without as many legacy costs, but if they do so, they need to go back to the top of these comments and read it over again.
 
Here's an interesting and short article about the situation.
 
http://www.evworld.com/blogs/index.cfm?page=blogentry&authorid=54&blogid=111

Product is King.
 
Look at the cars excluded from the Red Tag sale. Build the rest of the cars like those. End of problem.
 
The Equinox has so much potential - so why stuff an ancient 3.4l pushrod engine made in China? The RAV4 makes nearly 100 more horsepower! When that SUV comes out the Equinox will need another $2-3 grand in rebates to sell at all.
 
Why? The product is not competitive. Period.

The Red Tag Sale in itself is not a horrible idea: Customers come into the dealership, the price is on the window, and there's no bickering over price or leaving feeling like you've been taken to the cleaners. Basically, it's what "value pricing" ought to be like.
 
I think that for people to expect GM to quit incentives "cold turkey" is not realistic. GM should steadily reduce incentives until customers are no longer trained to expect $4000 rebates. This isn't going to an overnight thing, unless you want a total shock to the system.
 
Current rebates offered at GM are instead of the Red Tag price, not in addition to. And you don't have to buy for the Red Tag price, if you think you can make out better the "old fashion" way.
 
By the way, I've noticed recently that even Toyota is offering cash back on every model ("$1000 off you best deal"), and Hyundai is constantly giving cash back. Discuss amonst yourselves.

GM does need to get off the huge incentives on everything. Huge incentives should be used for old models and end of year clearance sales.
 
Only problem is they have to keep the plants running to pay off the overhead that the transplants do not have. Health care/pensions/high wages/too many employees for the number of cars built/much older work force/expensive domestic suppliers/unemployed workers making 95% of their salary doing nothing/and the list goes on. GM needs to get rid of these differences to even come close to meeting the costs of the transplants.
 
If they did cut the incentives now they would have to basically cut production by some 20% or so. Now all that overhead would be divided up among a much smaller number of autos and you would have even more folks doing nothing but still making 95% of their salary. I would think GM would have looked at the costs of incentives/sales volume vs. cutting the production/overhead per vehicle costs.
 
GM has little time to make the costs reductions needed so they can decrease incentives. The new cars in the last year are showing great promise. Just need to convince the public to take a look.

GM has got to get off the thing, but not before they can build a complete line of world class cars. Then, to get people to buy them, discount like crazy for a year. Then cut them down quickly down to a maximum of $500.
 
Or GM can get sneaky and raise the Red Tag price up AND make world class product.
 
GM should seriously adopt the Saturn sales method- the price you see is the price you pay. Then some buyers would buy them just for the sheer simplicity of the process. You come in, look at the price on the window, write a check, and drive home.

GM needs to make owning one of their cars a pleasurable EXPERIENCE, not just an emotion-driven sale. That's because most of us have to keep our cars around for years! They also need to build solid first year cars, not half-finished experiements.
 
A pleasurable EXPERIENCE includes good; a) sales practices (Saturn and Scion have this down pretty well), b) service practices (GM needs a lot of help here), 3) upgrade practices (how about some __real__ enhancements rather than the usual bling bling?).
 
My experiences with GM range from meidocre to terrible - persian bazaar sales (except Saturn), half finished autos (the HHR I drove recently is another example), shoddy service and mostly bling-bling for upgrades.
 
Make no mistake, GM has gotten better, but so has its rivals.
Toyota is overtaking GM for good reasons. Both my Toyotas (an '83 Camry and '96 Prism, went for 6-9 years without major problems. Not the GM cars (in one year the Saturn fell apart, and the Malibu had major problems).
 
I sincerely hope the "General" wakes up, damps the LRDF (Lutz Reality Distortion Field) and really sweats the details to BUILD GOOD CARS THE FIRST TIME before Toyota runs him over.

Toyota will sell over 150,000 Scion Xa's in 2005.
 
150 THOUSAND
 
and GM is excited about 10,000 Solstices.
 
granted, the Solstice is more a niche vehicle than the xA.
 
but 150,000??? How many HHRs can GM hope to sell?
 
somehow, some way, GM needs to get through to young buyers. I hope the Red Tag event does it.

I stand corrected, I think. That 150,000 figure is for ALL Scions, not simly the xB. (the boxy one)

No technical talk.
  
As a potential young customer (not graduated from college with an economics major), I see GM extending their "Employee Discount for Everyone" week after week waiting for Ford's "Family Plan" and Daimler Chrysler's "Employee Pricing Plus" plans to end, as the other two are doing, waiting for one to give out. It seems like a "who's baddest" contest - a cock war and nothing more.
  
Now that GM has gone and developed some -other- new scheme, they start to sound like a nagging salesmen or an infomercial. Call Now!
  
No. All this bitching makes me rather walk into a Korean dealership than a homegrown American dealership. Bottom line - GM's cars are fine, just stop this seemingly pathetic, desprate cry for customers.

I don't know about that notion that rebates do not apply to red tagged vehicles, because I have seen GM ads on TV for several different models which display the red tag price and then subtract away further rebates to give a final price.
 
And the largest local dealers are now running ads where they will show the red tag, the rebates, and then their FURTHER blanket discount, in a show of TRUE desperation.
 
I was fairly amazed to see you can now get base Buick LaCrosses for about the same price as a Corolla LE, and geez, 2WD Silverados for the price of a Hyundai Accent. Those HAVE to be money-losing propositions.
 
It really creates a very bad impression of GM vehicles, if you don't already have one. If you do, it worsens it.

I read that even before the "big giveaway" late in the summer, GM was losing $2700 per vehicle built! That can't continue, obviously, without some major problems (like - emptying the coffers completely, declaring Chapter 7 bankruptcy and closing the doors forever).
 
It's gotten to be so that GM stands for nothing but low-rent/cheapo/terrible resale value, antiquated clunkers.
 
If Wal-Mart starts selling cars (from China?) on a commodity basis (which is what GM, Ford and Chrysler are doing) then the "big 3" are going to be completely finished.
 
You don't see haggling at Wal-Mart, K-Mart, etc. You walk in, choose what you want, pay and leave. I can see how Wal-Mart could make life so easy for car purchasers, that it would show the current buying experience to be totally antiquated (except for Saturn - a clue, GM, a clue! Get, it? A clue, here!)

GM will need some sort of discount for the foreseable future to get people who wouldnt typically look at GM to consider their products. The Reg tag sale isnt that bad because the discounts vary depending on the vehicle and Cadillac/Saab/Hummer arent included. This thing about "eroding brand image" is a bunch of crap concocted by the media. If you look in your local paper, all the ads are based on discounts, even the ads run by Toyota dealers. Price is the number one factor in local car advertising and GM is merely doing the same on a national level. When I see ads saying "$3000 off MSRP!" for Altimas and Maximas no one is complaining about Nissan's "brand image" being eroded. Give me a break.