The Big 3 Bailout

Last year, I was in the market to buy a hybrid. My brother is a GM Technician so I always give GM the first chance at any new vehicle I buy. So when I explored the hybrid market thoroughly (both foreign and domestic), I found it a no-brainer to buy a Toyota Camry Hybrid. I remember my brother suggesting I should purchase a Malibu hybrid (a model I admittedly found attractive). I pointed out that the Toyota had heated leather seats (vs cloth), dual power seats (vs. just one on the Malibu), a touch screen navigation unit, touch start keyless ignition, and got better gas mileage for around the same price, he said, "Yeah but the Malibu is way faster."

This seems to sum up GM's problems. They don't get it. Chevrolet has two models of car that get close to the Camry in terms of mileage (the Aveo5 and Aveo Sedan) and only one that ties it (the Cobalt). I realize this is subjective, but those aren't exactly attractive cars, in my opinion. Buyers want to be conscious of gas mileage without driving a compact looking shoebox. I can fit four adults in luxury in my Camry and get 35-40 MPG doing it. The rest of Chevy's models are either speed demons or gas guzzling behemoths.

What would have stopped me in my tracks? The Chevy Volt. But, alas, at the moment that's a pipe dream. I wonder what would have happened if GM would have invested some of their SUV resources years ago into the Volt instead. Would we be having this conversation right now? I doubt it.

One last relevant point to make. In 2005, when I bought my Corvette (a very fast, attractive car that still gets a respectable 27 MPG on the freeway), I received a survey from GM that was six pages long(!) and do you know how many of the questions had to do with my satisfaction with the car? Two. The rest of them were about my satisfaction with the sales experience. This seems rather obvious to me, but if I love the car and hate the sales experience, I'll just buy the car from another dealer. If I hate the car, it doesn't matter how much I loved the dealer, I'm buying a different car. My Camry survey was two pages and 99% of the questions had to do with the car.

I'm sorry, but with flawed reasoning like this, I'd say that some heads at the top need to roll before they get a penny of my tax dollars.