So GM bitches and moans about a "perception gap," then shamelessly manipulates its worldwide sales figures to cling to its title of "world's largest automaker," while telling the world that the competition doesn't mean en effing thing, really. What's worse (if that's possible) is that the automotive press A) accepted GM's proclamation without looking into the numbers and B) failed to set things straight when Automotive News [sub] revealed the ruse. You will, for example, note that Autoblog's home page still has a link under "Breaking News" that reads "UPDATE: GM sold more in 2007 than Toyota." For a breath of fresh air in this despicable spinmeistering we turn to Rick Newman at U.S. News & World Report . After recounting the debacle, Newman says "GM should simply hand over the crown and get this all over with. It should agree with the Automotive News calculations, or rebook some '07 sales in '08, or even give back some cars if that's what's necessary to become No. 2… With clever leadership, GM can even benefit from becoming the underdog. But first it needs to attain No. 2—and give the analysts something else to write about." Amen.
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I wonder what makes Mr. Newman believe that GM has averted bankruptcy. GM cannot keep losing money in B$12 chunks forever. Even GM does not see a return to profitability anytime soon.
Amen, RF. When I later read about the “shell game”, I just shook my head and thought “Typical GM”. Pretty sad.
This is why I don’t like GM. They would need a complete executive overhaul before I would even consider buying something from them.
The reasonable thing to do would be to scale the unit sales of any part-owned affiliate based on the percentage owned. Thus if GM really owns 34% of it’s Chinese joint venture as reported and that unit sold 516,000 vehicles the adjusted sales would be about 175,000 units. I’m pretty sure that such scaling is how financial reporting is done for revenues, expenses and profits related to rolling up the results of part owned subsidiaries and affiliates.
But then again, who cares? Customer don’t (or shouldn’t) care if they are buying from the world’s highest unit volume supplier and investors should be looking at revenues, profit and growth. Absolute industry unit sales ranking really isn’t very interesting or important.
Denial – It’s not just a river in Africa.
Thanks to the big writedown last fall, GM is number one – losses in 2007 were $40.47 billion. Toyota made almost $17 billion.
According to Left Lane News, the industry standard is to refrain from reporting production from subsidiaries with minority ownership. Ford doesn’t include Mazda in its reporting, and its ownership interest is similar to GM’s in one of the Chinese plants.
For whatever reason, being the highest volume automaker is very important to GM executives. It’s probably an ego crisis, an irrational pursuit of irrelevant goals that undermine the bottom line.
According to the news item, Toyota has already passed them up. The GM execs need to get over it, and focus on profitability instead.
http://www.leftlanenews.com/toyota-revealed-as-worlds-biggest-automaker-thanks-to-gms-creative-math.html
I swear they did the same thing last year too, what at first looked like a sizeable lead for GM was much closer after removing some vehicles that shouldn’t have been included in their total.
dug up an article from last summer, they counted these for 2006 also
http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/12/news/companies/gm_toyota/index.htm
Do these guys not care one bit about their credibility? When they play little games with the numbers so publicly like this it makes them look pretty untrustworthy. For a company that claims to have changed they sure do a lot of the deceitful like in the past. Why would a consumer trust that that new car hasn’t been screwed with in the same way, umm like they did in the past.
They haven’t changed one bit, they aren’t interested in building trust just a quick profit regardless of who they lie to in the process.
The sad truth is that GM is a dishonest company — reduced to having to spin and massage the truth in order to hide its general incompetence. They’re simply no longer capable of turning out a car that I’m burning to own … used to be that several of their brands were able to do that to me!
They could take advantage of being number 2 with a little “clever leadership.”
Do we really think they should bank on having “clever leadership?” Just saying.
“Perception gap, media bias, hybrids are a fad, American don’t want small cars”
They can’t handle the truth. GM will never truly be able to fully bring its resources to bear untill they realize that they are not who they thought they were. Their days as the leader are over deal with it.
GM must make and do what the customer wants and not what GM wants.
It probably works for Toyota too. The big T may not want to risk a backlash. A key U.S. player has been toppled from its long run at the top.
Does the SEC look kindly upon such statements? Would someone potentially revalue GM stock based on such declarations from GM’s top executives, and should such statements (when used for bold claims of superiority) be subject to uniform and accepted accounting rules, even if spoken in unit rather than dollar amounts?
Who really cares who ships the most vehicles. The only measure that means anything is sustained and sustainable profit.
” Who really cares who ships the most vehicles. The only measure that means anything is sustained and sustainable profit.”
GM lost that battle so long ago that they forgot it was the one which mattered and instead are fighting a war of attrition for the booby prize.
Doest it really matter that GM was able to hold on to the sales crown? They should focus on their latest hot products and build momentum (and sales) from that core group (CTS, Corvette, Acadia etc).
“They haven’t changed one bit, they aren’t interested in building trust just a quick profit regardless of who they lie to in the process.”
Unlike the angels at Toyota…who NEVER mislead the public. Can you say recalls? Sludge? 10,000 lb Tacoma towing capability? Bloated mpg claims?
If the Big 2.8 could build cars as good as they B.S and lie they would be in much better shape.I will not buy one more American car till the job banks are gone for good,I am sick of supporting some union worker that sits at home and gets a fat pay check at the cost of the car buyer.