I couldn't quite pull the trigger on "all of the abobve" because I don't think the CAFE standards really contributed that much to the collapse.

What really did it was bad management ignoring what the consumer really wanted to buy, and an uncompetitive environment created by the unions driving up the price of manufacture.

I have for years said that the person or company that creates the vehicle that seats five or six, gets 40 or so miles per gallon and sells for about $10K will own the market.  It can be done, but not under the auspices of the UAW.

Of course, that's just my opinion.  I could be wrong (h/t Dennis Miller).

Kahuna

There are persons...who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy...will be merciful.

Thomas Paine, Dec. 23, 1776

I have it on good authority (Baghdad Bob Gibbs) that GM is a strong entity.

"The only reason Clarence Thomas is on the court is because he's black". - Joe Biden

There should be another choice,

 Taxes and Burdensome Regulations...

"There are two types of people in this country; those who provide freedom and those who enjoy it." MM says...

Management was never forced to not make the hard decisions to remove union control even when they had the opportunity to do so with intrusion of foreign manufacturers onto US soil. Management was never forced to make cars that people did not want. Management was never forced to abandon fuel efficiency as a goal when CAFE standards were originally removed. Management was never forced to seek government money but they went to Washington with hat in hand. Management was never forced to keep open US plants when overseas plants were making more money (government may have eased taxes and other regulations if the threat to leave was real).

While many things factored into the problems at GM, the dominate problem was management and the buck has to stop there. For years GM management made one bad move after another and ignored their local vendors, stock holders and customers and now we wonder why they are going under? The regulations forced on the automakers can arguably be said to be beyond their responsibility but their lack of vision and poor decisions in response to those regulations were also factors in GM's collapse.

A person may be won over with logic and reason but the masses must be bought with spectacle and platitudes. - 2008 Elections

If you think that GM could have made major changes to its union contract, you've obviously never dealt with union management on any real level.

Assuming GM wanted to make a major change to its Union contract it would have required risking a major strike, the subsequent loss of revenue & market share during the strike and the hope the government would stay out of it. (Highly unlikely.) The union realizes that they play a delicate game of extortion. They didn't want to kill GM, they just wanted to leave the corpse alive enough to come back an feed on it again from time to time. Unfortunately for everyone the law of unintended consequences kicked in.

Even day to day affairs like dismissing union employees for excessive absenteeism takes a concentrated effort with the possibility the Public Law Board (PLB) will overturn the discipline and return the employee to work. I've seen employees returned to work for theft in amounts that would be considered a felony in most jurisdictions, but the PLB says "Aw, he's worked there for 25 years. Give him another chance.” Sending them to jail isn't as easy as it sounds because most prosecutors don't want to bother with what they see as a private matter. (Never mind the taxes those companies pay into the public coffers.)

 For years I have been telling my kids that the economy was fragile.

 What prompted this vission was the amount of used cars on car lots.

 The same could be said about housing but I didn't see that as I never looked at housing.

 Who holds all the mortages for these millions of cars??

 Everybody wanted a new one and the used lots just kept popping up and growing. 

I'm ambivalent on past CAFE. Their effect on the automakers has been somewhat even-handed, in that they have not hurt GM more than say, Toyota. CAFE forced the implementation of electronic fuel injection and other advances that a single company might not have been able to sell on their own because of the cost premium. They may have even helped the unionized companies because that made labor a smaller part of the total cost of a car. But being a conservative I don't like even that much control of a market.

But the new CAFE standards are a whole new problem. I have been throwing things at the TV lately, hearing the talking heads tell us how great the new CAFE standards are. (ie the idiot BOR) The new CAFE standards are not here yet and won't be for a few years, and we have no idea if the manufacturers can even achieve those numbers or how they might do it. Did anyone think to ask them? Technological advance in autos today is near a brick wall, and I suspect that if they are able to meet future CAFE, the only way will be through marketing and not technology. Talking heads are saying stupid things like, --'won't it be great when my Cadillac Escalade gets 30 miles per gallon instead of 25'?'

At times it seems like those in government think there is a secret dial that only the auto manufacturers can control, to set miles per gallon. "Send regrets to that fat guy at Exxon, tell him that the government gave us no choice and we have to turn up the secret mpg dial a little."

The new CAFEs are likely to be achieved through marketing, and that means simply dropping medium sized cars and large and medium sized SUVs and pickups, and putting only little putt-putts on the market. Will people buy them? Will the value of a decent pre-new-CAFE used car or SUV skyrocket?

The Gov will cut prices forcing buyers to consider the Gov cars. They will be able to do it buy using your and my tax dollars to subsidize the cost. They will also strong arm their vendors into providing services at a cheaper price. They will force others, like Ford and the imports into bankrupcy. The Gov will only use GM products, no-bidding needed. They will force rental Co and other large Corps to use their vehicals. Force through supposed tax incentives.

In-fact they will be the largest in the world in no time, unless it is returned to the privet sector. 

My Gov. thinks I am dangerous, so be careful

"Television is a freak show" Bernie Goldberg

Other Short Sighted Environmental Regulation

I point to the rules forcing American cars to switch to new painting technologies in the early 80's when no such technology had been deployed on a large scale nor tested for the long term.

American manufacturers had to spend tons of money on new equipment and training, only to find that the processes and materials were vastly inferior to previous products. So when cars started peeling, American manufacturers had to find, develop and put into production new chemicals and methods. Overseas, they had to do none of this, until such time as American manufacturers worked out most of the kinks. Then, since they didn't have to fund the research, nor invest in painting technologies repeatedly until a proper formula was discovered, were able to produce superior resultes first time out. 

Of course, while American cars suffered from the failures of the original attempts, Japanese cars still looked better because they were using the old tried and true methods. Which added more sales losses, along with the investment in research and failed techniques and warranty expenses that also had to be recouped. Same thing with the electronics industry being forced to retool to avoid CFC's and now the new reduced lead mandates (which we need to sell in the EU but internal EU companies don't have to follow as much-protectionism at it's finest) caused American electronics to go up in price, while Asian markets used lower labor and unimproved factories to pass that savings on to the consumer. 

Regulation that started the vicious circle that kills production in America. Which could be easily solved by requiring all imports meet the same stringent requirements as domestic manufacturer, or stiff tariffs are imposed-these going towards subsidies of domestic products to offset increased labor costs. 

WWW.GS2AC.COM. 2nd Amendment Grass Roots Action in the Bay Area, CA. We're not all "Breakfast Cereal" folks here! :)

Other auto companies have managed to succeed or at least survive even with CAFE standards and higher energy prices.  What killed GM is primarily the UAW.  Toyota and Honda do not have unions and they are growing.  I think Ford squeeked by this one by the hair of its chiny chin chin.

Whatever the unions touch they destroy.  Think education, think the steel industry, think the American auto industry.  They're all in the toilet thanks to the unions.

UNION NO! 

at a conference with upper management of different companies... including car companies (including GM) a number of years ago.  They talked about this coming.  The US auto makers made a mistake.  They gave the union workers of all auto plants the right to negotiate terms simultaneously.  When they did that, the unions basically said "give us what we want, or we'll all strike and all US car companies will go bankrupt."  The US companies caved.  At this conference, they expressed hope that they might be able to get out of the union agreements somehow before their companies collapsed.

If Obama succeeds, liberty fails.  I'm for the success of liberty.

I voted "other".  I didn't vote "all of the above" because I don't think GM had a particularly uncompetitive product line.  

Why do the libs keep trying to convince us that American auto makers aren't building the "cars Americans want" when for many years, the top-selling vehicles have been the Ford and GM full-size pickups?  On top of which, the profit margin for pickups and SUVs is better than for the small, fuel-efficient cars we're supposed to believe Americans want.  My belief is, American car-makers would be perfectly happy to keep right on building pickups and larger, higher-profit cars and let the Japanese and Europeans have the small, fuel-efficient, low-profit cars, and be in much better shape, if it hadn't been for the CAFE standards enforced by the government.  If Americans tastes really moved toward smaller cars as gas prices went up, they would have found ways to build those, but look at, for instance, Honda:  once, the Civic (or CVCC) was a tiny little tin-foil car, and the Accord was a compact.  The Civics now are bigger than the Accords were in the 1970s, and the Accord became a direct competitor to the Ford Taurus, which is not particularly small.  Would Japanese cars be getting bigger, if Americans really wanted smaller cars?

Lee T / USN(ret) / Oregon City, OR

Be careful -- the U.S. Department of Homeland Security thinks I'm dangerous because
1. I'm a U.S. military veteran.
2. I'm not in favor of the government spending money it doesn't have.
3. I believe free speech is for everybody.