GM has a $530m millstone around its neck. It’s the closed and unsold Antwerp plant. Nobody wants it. The Antwerp assets are turning into a liability which endangers the GM IPO. Now it looks like GM found a savior that could take the plant off their hands. Guess where he comes from. Hint: Not from Washington. (Read More…)

The on-again, off-again, and forget about it romances between BMW and Daimler are legend. So much legend, that they fill pages on Google. Short version: The tops want some kind of a wedding, the bottoms torpedo any collaboration wherever they can. So if BMW and Daimler won’t be able to tie the knots(s), who can? Wait until you hear who dares. (Read More…)

Bloomberg reports that the credit rating firm Fitch Ratings has given GM a BB- credit default rating, the same as Ford Motor Credit. The difference: Ford has over $20b in debt, while GM is sitting on less debt and more cash. So why the identical rating? Fitch’s Stephen Brown explains:

Although they have similar ratings, you sort of get to them from different paths. GM doesn’t have a whole lot of debt, but they have very large pension obligations. Ford’s pension obligations are significant, but they’re lower than GM’s by quite a bit. But Ford has a lot of debt.

At the end of the first half of 2010, GM had $32b in cash and $8b in debt, while Ford had $22b in cash and $27b in debt. GM’s pensions, on the other had, are underfunded to the tune of $27b, while Ford’s are underfunded by $6.1b. Analysts have consistently suggested that GM’s IPO valuation should be in the neighborhood of Ford’s $40b market cap, and an identical credit rating seems to confirm the wisdom (or at least the popularity) of the comparison. Unfortunately, a $40b GM valuation would fail TTAC’s last standard for even marginal bailout “success.” After all, if GM is worth less than the $50b taxpayers put into it, there’s going to be no chance of spinning the IPO as a success.

Popular wisdom was that foreign companies have to tread carefully in China, lest they’ll be robbed blind of their vaunted intellectual property and thrown by the wayside. Now it has come to the total opposite: GM has made a mess out of India. And they turn to their old Chinese buddies at SAIC to help them out. Not just financially. Technologically. “GM hopes to take advantage of Shanghai Automotive Industry’s expertise in making small, low-cost cars to raise its share” in India, reports The Nikkei [sub]. (Read More…)

My time at TTAC has been full of surprises. Some days it seems that every hour holds a new, more gob-smacking shocker. But the surprise I received today, when I learned that I had been invited to the Volt’s press launch later this month, was one of the least expected and most gratifying to date. After all, not only has TTAC been a longtime critic of GM as a whole, but the Volt has been a special target for us since its conception, even earning its own category in our news blog. I’ve even criticized the Volt project (as opposed to the car itself) in the print media, drawing the ire (of sorts) of the White House press secretary. In the old GM, the very idea of rewarding our relentless criticism, questioning and second-guessing with access to the car itself would have been unthinkable. But today one GM rep explained to me that

The Volt’s been attacked at one point in time by just about everyone. Opinions of the vehicle have been all over the map, but fortunately we now have vehicles for people to drive and experience themselves rather than having to defend it with words and Powerpoint

That GM believes strongly enough in its most high-profile car to allow its most strident critic to drive it marks a material break from past practice (documentation of which abounds in TTAC’s archives, but here’s an especially infamous example). Allowing products (especially a controversial, high-profile car like the Volt) to speak for themselves before their harshest critics speaks to a much-improved culture taking hold at The General. This doesn’t mean the problems are over for the RenCen, but it shows that GM’s new managers are building for the future on a solid foundation of accountability. And that is a big enough deal to warrant a tip o’ the hat.

When GM was taken over by the US and Canadian governments, a lot of money was pumped into GM in order to make it a viable entity. After all, GM didn’t go into bankruptcy because it was a well run company with a tight balance sheet, excellent management and brand, spanking new factories. The more money that got pumped into GM, the more pressure is put on the IPO to generate enough money for this endeavor to break even. And according to the press, it doesn’t look like it’s going to hit its mark. (Read More…)

With GM repositioning its IPO to target US retail investors, we find ourselves motivated to once again sound the alarm about one of the major drains facing The General’s taxpayer-provided cash pile: the restructuring of its European Opel division. Opel slated its Antwerp, elgium plant for closure earlier this year, but at the time GM was trying to find a buyer for the plant. In May we noted that automotive overcapacity on the continent made finding a buyer for Opel Antwerp a tall order, and sure enough, Bloomberg reports that a buyer has not been found. What Bloomberg leaves out of its write-up: GM is now stuck with the €400m ($530m+) bill to pay off all those unemployed workers. A half-billion here, a half-billion there… soon you’re talking about real money.

Chevrolet just revealed its latest offering. It’s the all new Chevrolet Montana. It has changed a lot. The last Montana had as its underpinnings the Corsa II platform. Now, it will use the new Onyx platform, which is based on the Corsa I platform (according to Brazilian car mag Auto Esporte’s ). Two steps forward, one step back? Maybe that’s why GM is being coy (or realistic) and is estimating that this trucklet will increase its sales by just 15 percent. This won’t do it a whole lot of good, because this means it’ll just hang on to third place (according to the print version of the Brazilian newspaper Estado de Minas car supplement) . (Read More…)

GM”s IPO scuttlebutt has been dominated in recent weeks by speculation about possible foreign “cornerstone” investors. But, according to five sources who spoke with Reuters

GM is likely to sell about 80 percent of the common shares in its IPO and more than 90 percent of the preferred shares in North America.

Yes, despite deep skepticism about the GM IPO’s appeal to retail investors, GM will sell most of its equity in North America, and it’s even splitting its share price to bring the per-stock price into retail range. Why the sudden back-away from talk of courting global investment and “cornerstone investors” from abroad? Politics, baby! With Chrysler likely to end up owned outright by Fiat, something had to be done to keep The General at least nominally American-owned. Meanwhile, in news that is sure to thrill prospective retail investors, Special Inspector General of the TARP program (SIGTARP) Neil Barofsky is investigating the IPO… and says GM’s per-share price will have to hit $133.78 (pre-split) for the Government to break even. GM’s highest-ever stock price was $94.63, and that was back in April of 2000. Are we getting excited yet, retail investors?

The article I’m about to write may give you one of two reactions:

1. You may shrug your shoulders and see nothing wrong with it.

Or 2. You may burst a blood a vessel.

Ready…? (Read More…)

Having applied for a trademark on the phrase “range anxiety,” GM seemed to have wedded itself to the idea that all-electric cars are fundamentally compromised in their ability to inspire consumers. But with its range-extended Volt costing $8k more than its prime competitor, the Nissan Leaf, GM appears to be backing away from that position as the International Business Times reports that The General will begin testing EV versions of the Chevy Cruze/Daewoo Lacetti Premiere in Korea. According to the report,

The Cruze EV is equipped with a 31-kWh battery that generates maximum power of 150 kW. On specific test schedules conducted by LG Chemicals, the demonstration vehicles may achieve a range of up to 160 km (100 miles).  The vehicles can go from 0 to 100 km/h (60 miles per hour) in 8.2 seconds with a maximum speed of 165 km/h (102.5 miles per hour).

The Cruze EV will be tested as part of a demonstration fleet, so don’t hold out for a Chevrolet EV anytime soon. Reports that GM has “redeemed” itself after “killing the electric car” may yet prove to be premature.

USA Today reports that Tennessee’s 2 Republican Senators, Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander and GOP congresswoman Marsha Blackburn received a rather frosty reception when they went to Spring Hill on Friday to toast GM bringing jobs back to the Ex-Saturn plant. They got booed and heckled. Why the frosty reception? Well, if you remember, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker (along with the unnamed Congresswoman) were very vocal opponents against the bailout of GM and Chrysler. So, for 3 politicians to come back to their state and welcome back the very jobs which they would have been quite happy to see lost in the name of free market economics, probably stuck in the craw of the electorate. Namely, the UAW. (Read More…)

Since I’ve been writing for TTAC, I predicted that Chinese interests will eventually go for GM, if and when price and time are right. GM already sells more cars in China than back home.  GM expects that huge business to grow by 10-15 percent next year. It stands to reason that China wants on (the) board. There has been talk about limiting the share of “foreign investors” in the GM IPO. “Foreign investors” of course are Chinese, and the true number of foreign investors interested in the GM IPO probably comes down to one: China’s SAIC, GM’s Chinese joint venture partner for 13 years now. And now it’s official. (Read More…)

If you think that China’s car market (they are expecting to sell between 16 and 17m units this year) is a bubble about to burst big-time, then GM will disagree strongly with you.  “The market is still quite solid. As you know this year is going to be a strong year. We will see continued growth next year, but growing at a range between 10 to 15 percent,” said Kevin Wale of GM China to Reuters. (Read More…)

Via Hemmings News comes this delightful find from Chevymall.com: an officially licensed poster comparing women to cupholders. So, did Susan Docherty sign off on that when she was GM’s marketing boss, or is this just more evidence that GM really is a “testosterone saturated, white, American male culture”? Either way, it cements the impression that Chevrolet’s values and image stopped making progress around the same time its market share did… which, incidentally, was about the same time the poodle skirt went out of fashion.

It’s just too bad that, between the ’59 Impala, the poodle skirt, GM’s US market dominance and casual sexism, only the casual sexism seems to have survived.