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Automotive News & Views GM News, New Models and Market Share
8062 messages, Last post on Nov 10, 2009 at 2:15 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: imidazol97 (May 23, 2009 8:59 am) By HELEN O'NEILL (AP) - The auto plants and steel mills, once the lifeblood of Warren, are ghosts of their former selves. Plants lie idle, shifts have been cut, and the huge parking lot outside the Lordstown General Motors factory is nearly empty. The Golden Gate restaurant and Mary M's, fixtures for years, are shuttered. Houses are boarded up. Businesses have given up on downtown. There is a saying among old-timers in this gritty river town: What recession? We've been stuck in one for 30 years. Yet even stubborn Warren, a town with a dwindling population of about 43,000 in northeast Ohio, is being tested like never before. And folks talk of a hopelessness, a weariness of spirit that is pervading every aspect of life. "It's like lives are being stripped away whole," says Pam Bennett, 55, a retired high school secretary who volunteers at the Warren Family Mission, where hundreds of people flock every week for food and clothes and shelter. Many are families with small children. Many have lost their jobs. And many are coming in for the first time. There was a time when jobs - good-paying jobs - were plentiful. People like Bennett's husband, David, marched straight out of high school and into Delphi Packard Electric Systems, once one of the area's largest and best-paying employers. Now the auto parts plant operates with a skeletal crew. After 37 years, Bennett has been told his health benefits will end when he retires, his pension is frozen and he will lose his job if the plant folds this summer. And so the Bennetts have abandoned their dream of retiring to Myrtle Beach, S.C., and building a small prefabricated house where they hoped to spend sun-filled days after a life of frugality and hard work. These days Warren is littered with abandoned dreams. "It's awful, just awful," says Nick Angelo, 73, who raised six children and two grandchildren in what he says was once a vibrant, prosperous community. Now he feels nothing but sadness when he walks past the closed store fronts near the courthouse square. "I feel sorry for the young people," Angelo says. Angelo, a retired high school athletic director, vividly recalls a time when things were different, when the town sparkled with vitality and hope. It was in the early 1970s and for four consecutive years the two high school football teams - the Warren Harding Panthers and the Warren Western Reserve Raiders - won state championships. There were parades and lavish pre-game dinners at the Golden Gate and 15,000 cheering fans turned out in support. There was a glimmer of that former glory this spring when the high school basketball team made it to the state semifinals and several thousand fans drove three hours to Columbus to watch the game. For a week, it was as if the team held the heart of the town. Bands played at pep rallies, restaurants donated food, and "Go Raiders!" signs bedecked the town. "People just desperately need some hope to cling to," coach Steve Arnold says. "And for a short time, we were that hope." Over at the Hoyt Street Church, Pastor Gerald Morgan sees the same thirst for hope. Worshippers are flocking to services in greater numbers, though donations are down. It's always that way in a time of austerity, he says. People turn to the church for solace and for answers they can't find anywhere else. The 59-year-old minister, who spent 30 years on a General Motors assembly line before becoming a full-time pastor, doesn't have answers. Just a deep, ingrained knowledge of how his people are suffering. And an abiding faith that, no matter how bad things get, they will pull through. And so he quotes from Genesis, the passage about how the earth returned to life after the devastation of the great flood. And he tells his congregation that Warren too will emerge from this latest chapter of darkness, and someday thrive again. |
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Replying to: circlew (May 23, 2009 9:34 am) Well, if that's the case, I wouldn't have a car at all! The cheapest and most practical way for me to get from point A to point B is to walk! I live close enough to work to walk. The local supermarket is within two blocks of me. Same with the local drugstore. There quite a few restaurants and taverns in my vicinity.
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Replying to: bpizzuti (May 24, 2009 3:01 am)
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Replying to: lemko (May 24, 2009 6:12 am) Said Asian imports appear to be quite successful and profitable. Maybe this explains why GM and Chrysler are in such deep trouble. While Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, etc were building cars people wanted, GM and Chrysler were building cars they wanted instead.
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Replying to: bpizzuti (May 24, 2009 6:21 am) Where's Doc Brown's Delorean so I can go back to 1955, break it and stay there? Just think, I'll get to go through the Muscle Car Era I was too young to enjoy the first time through! Hopefully I'll be dead before 2009 comes again.
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Replying to: lemko (May 24, 2009 6:29 am) Maybe, but here's a great philosophical question, heh: Is it GM's fault for not building a product that appeals to customers, or is it the customers' collective faults for not finding GM's products appealing?  The answer is supposed to be A, but it seems like a lot of people, GM included, think it's supposed to be B. |
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Replying to: lemko (May 24, 2009 6:12 am) Perhaps I'll buy some 'vette bodies from the new owners to experiment with some college engineers fresh from graduation this year....nothing else to do! The storied V-8 is almost gone.  Regards, OW |
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Replying to: bpizzuti (May 24, 2009 6:41 am) The answer is supposed to be A, but it seems like a lot of people, GM included, think it's supposed to be B. It's always been answer A but twisted by some to B. The B folks, in the majority, refuse to see that the market will always rule. If market share is going down for company A and increasing for company B and C, there is a direct correlation to the products of company A not doing their job. Can it be more any more simple to understand? Regards, OW
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Replying to: tlong (May 23, 2009 9:29 pm) 1 - throw a generator that can function as a motor on a few vehicles and call them a hybrid: Malibu, Vue "Green Line" (another hype term covering up for no technology). About 1 mpg improvement. Stupid. This is basically autostart-stop technology, just like the original Civic "hybrid." 0 mph is 0 mpg. 2 - develop a highly complex and expensive two-mode hybrid system and throw it on the big gas guzzlers: Escalade, etc. Adds $10K to cost. Payback is >>10 years. Yeah, I think they could do better than a 10% increase in fuel economy on a 6000# vehicle. Another point regarding the Volt. An earlier post said that the Volt is more like the Tesla. Wrong. The Volt is still a HYBRID. Once you've gone 40 miles you are on gasoline power. With a drained battery you can never have more power than that gas engine can give you, you will have less as no energy conversion is 100% efficient. Right, and since something like 75% of the population live withing 40 miles of where they work, it may never turn on. The gasoline engine powers a generator, so I agree that there are losses in efficiency there, but that is allowing you've depleted the battery. So after 40 miles in your Volt, what happens when you need to climb the mountain pass? You are going to be in low gear in the right lane poking along, because your battery is dead! And that wimpy engine has to charge the battery, and the battery is immediately using all that charge to propel you up the hill! So you have, maximum, the amount of energy that wimpy engine can put out to get you over the hill! Right, and with the Tesla, you call AAA and get towed home. That sounds wonderful. The Volt might be fine if you rarely go over 40 miles before recharging, but it will have serious usability issues for those who drive longer distances and need range. This will further limit its market. So if it doesn't fit your lifestyle, don't buy one. I don't see why this is so complicated. It sounds like there is one of the biggest logical errors in engineering going on here...assuming everyone else's situation is just like yours.
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Replying to: tlong (May 23, 2009 9:41 pm) I agree, Range Rover has auto-start-stop on their European vehicles, I don't think that makes them a hybrid. Just like the 1st generation Civic Hybrid.
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