Escalade EXT pickup, psshhhhhhh

I'm classy, but I also need to get mulch sometimes.

Go ahead and make fun, but wait until the government decides to issue you your tax refund in Pontiac Aztecs...

@SpruceStreetPhil - but ya gotta take market, the bridge is ...: My neighbor drives one of those; he also routinely pops his collar. Make your own conclusions.

This is what you get for killing the EV-1.

And selling this full-sized plastic Tonka (Avalanche?) truck.

I work for a company that partnered with Pontiac to promote the Aztec on a tour across the country dealing with a niche group of sporting events. They brought it for some events where I live and people would just look at it like it was a bag of crap. The color palette was horrible too.

It was really handy on the tour I hear but wow, people did not take to it.

The EV-1 bankrupted GM? Right ...

I'll tell you who bankrupted GM: GM.

@SpruceStreetPhil - but ya gotta take market, the bridge is ...:
That is quite possibly the best EXT description I've ever heard.

WWhy use my tax money to try to save two loser companies (actually all of them from AIG to USAir but that's another discussion)???

It's not like someone else won't come in and pick up the parts that worked and put them back together without all the nasty bits.

I wonder this about all of these bailouts.

Stupid Aztec. Ugly, ugly car. I still wince whenever I see one on the road.

i think it would be easier to list 1 or 2 cars that didn't contribute to its demise.

@TCama:

You are only half right. The UAW is responisible as well.

@HIV 2 Elway: I smell jealousy, and to that, I can only say

@Charlotte Rae's Web:

That's too bad because it really is a handy vehicle - just wrapped in a bag of crap package like you mentioned.

Missing from the list :

1) Cadillac Cimmaron. Cynical attempt to re-image a J-car as a near luxury "BMW alternative . Yeah , right. Caddy still hasn't completely recovered.

2) Cadillac V-8-6-4. Trouble prone Rube Goldberg expedient designed to help Caddy get through the second fuel crisis in '81. Sent many owners running for their lawyers.

3) ANY GM Diesel sold in the early 80's. Another annuity- type income stream for the class action bar.
Many didn't last 30,000 miles.

4) X cars. Not, as the name would imply , a car for super heroes to schlepp around in. No, the X-cars were another GM hurry up job that killed and maimed quite a few paying customers. Locking brakes ,faulty transmissions ,insta rust bodies...The X car was the Corvair of its day.

5) Chevy Chevette. I remember a billboad in Knoxville Tennessee (beside I-40) in 1984 that screamed "Lowest Priced Car In America !!!! " for about a year before the Yugo came out. The picture was a blue, no trim, no hubcap Chevette. Seeing that ugly ass car made me develop a drinking problem that still hasn't gone away.

6) Chevy Monza (262 V-8) 1977 -1979. Drove like a bat out of hell...Until it needed a tune up.Then you had to pull the engine up from the car to replace TWO SPARK PLUGS.Tuneups ran upwards of $250 (big money in those days).Thankfully , it rarely needed a second tuneup because its basic structure was borrowed from...

7) Chevy Vega/Pontiac Astre . If yours was just a little rusty, it was still being built. Worst. Car. Ever.

@doctor_cos: I once got into a little battle with an Avalanche. Kind of. I had the door of my SUV open and I was getting something out of the back seat. Well, this idiot in his Avalanche is barreling down the street and his side mirror hits my door. My car door barely moves, but his side mirror is decimated. It completely fell off and shattered into a hundred pieces. The guy looked really shocked, but he kind of mumbled and picked up his side mirror and went on his way. So yeah, the Avalanche is made of plastic.

I drive an Aztek. It was cheap as hell used and I can haul tons of stuff in it. Also, it is extremely easy to find in a parking lot!

@wgrune: The fuck they are. If you had a actual clue what you where talking about and didnt listen to the weekly Republican talking points, you would actually know how little the UAW had to do with GMs downfall.

Piss poor management, excessive management pool, and financial mismanagement killed GM, not the UAW.

Anyone remember those "I got a HUMMER--just because I'm better than YOU" commercials?

@pecan 3.14159265: I point and laugh...and the driver always seems to understand why.

@Jim Topoleski: If you had an actual clue what you where talking about you would know that paying drastically higher hourly wages than your competition is a poor business model.

Okay, I know it's fun to pick on automakers cars when the company is tanking. Then jumping to the conclusion that "they didn't make cars people wanted". Well, I guess no car company makes cars people want, since they are all having problems.

Did everyone suddenly decide that no one makes cars they want at once? Or did everyone suddenly decide the economy is shaky enough to not make the 2nd largest purchase people generally make? On an "asset" that depreciates rather quickly, as well? And consider holding onto the one they have, or opting to buy used?

I'm right there with you, thinking the Aztec is really strange looking. However, let's not make false attributions of causation here.

Is it bad that I crack a slight smile every time I read about how horribly GM has failed?

The only thing Detroit did well was to latch onto fads.

Big trucks? We've got bigger!
You want chrome? You get a chrome grill stock on Focus and Fusion. Bling bling baby!
The recycled retro look? See the new HHR, Corvette, Mustang and the entire Dodge line!

Well I own Ford stock so here's hoping there are people gullible enough to keep that ship afloat. :(

@UnicornMaster: OMG I have to do that in real life now!

Of course, I'll make sure I am bigger than the driver of said Aztec.

@Snarkysnake: Exactly right. It was the dreary succession of Cimarrons, Citations, Corsicas, Berettas, Luminas and every laughable attempt at a minivan that slowly strangled and killed the GM brands. Even now, the Toyota Matrix has much better resale value than the Pontiac Vibe even though they are made on the exact same production line. Trashing your brand value like that takes years of concerted effort, and GM pulled it off.

@WiglyWorm:
Hey, don't make fun of my future boyfriend. He's HAWT!

The cars didn't bankrupt GM.

Poor management, stupid UAW contracts and spotty quality killed GM. Individual products either work or they don't. If they don't make money they eventually go away. Try this as the top ten list: (in no particular order)

1. Quality; A general failure for years to make cars that outperformed the competition. And by outperformed I mean getting the customer from point A to point B reliably for more time than the other guy. Going beyond fit and finish, after ten years GM cars don't stack up well against the competitors, unless you're in the salvage yard.

2. The jobs bank; Paying workers who you had to lay off almost their entire salary. Talk about making it hard to save money when you needed less capacity.

3. Labor contracts; going beyond the "OMG don't blame the workers wharggarbl"- you cannot pay someone $75,000 to put nuts on a tire. Plus pick up gold standard healthcare for him and his family until he dies. The job is simply not worth that kind of pay.

4. Executive opulence; Lavish executive compensation cannot be maintained at companies that are not making a unit profit. Nor lavish offices, lavish executive jets, or executive lavs.

5. Health Care; This is a national problem, but GM failed miserably to deal with the costs. Ultimately companies should not have the burden of paying for health care for workers or retirees.

6. Competing with yourself; This might have made sense when they owned 50% of the market. Not SO Much at 20%. I love my Pontiac, but they should have cut to 3 brands a long time ago.

7. Their dealer network; GM's failure to police their dealers led to lousy service. The dealer is the face of GM to the customer, and that face wasn't very pretty.

8. Worker efficiency; The work rules and the worker's ability to abuse them added costs to every vehicle that rolled off the line. Unions need to learn that there is a difference between protecting the workers and saddling your gravy train with useless mouths.

9. Fuel efficiency; They have it now. They needed it ten years ago.

10. Stupid spending; Saab. Hummer. Buying brands that don't really bring anything to the table instead of innovating allows burning all the excess profits you make. Too bad you needed that innovation when times are lean.

I hope they make cars that people want to buy. I've gotten ten years out of each of the pontiacs I've owned. Sad to say there won't be a third.

I also hope that the government does push GM in a direction that leads to complete liquidation. One hopes once the new GM is up and running, that the government steps back and lets it run.

I don't expect that will happen though.

@HIV 2 Elway: Except they didnt, even WITH the financial burden of legacy costs, the hourly rate of a GM employee was only 5 DOLLARS more than the equivalent Toyota and Honda employee.

And lets get into those legacy costs why dont we, and point out the fact the only reason they where so high was because GM DIFFERED PAYMENT ON THEM while paying its excessive management pool bonuses during the good years. Thus they stacked up years of heath care costs that they then had to pay, after paying out the excess profits they made during the truck boom to a bunch of managers who didn't even need to be working for GM as they where DOING NOTHING.

You know that job bank, the one that people like to bring up, do you realize how no one actually really used it? People love to say it was a huge burden, but in practice it was basically unused and was in the proses of being phased out anyway, and nothing Honda didnt do themselves as well but for the UAW to insist on it, it was BAD!

Seriously why does the public INSIST on believing the very lies being told by the same people who insisted there where WMDs in Iraq?

@HIV 2 Elway: "drastically higher?"

Really?

[www.aftermarketnews.com]
via Detroit Free Press..

@wgrune: @HIV 2 Elway: I'm always amused that, when speaking about unions, people foam at the mouth and blame them for so many problems and seem to forget entirely that Management has to agree to pay those wages. If paying "drastically higher hourly wages than your competition is a poor business model" then GM should have said no to those demands and either negotiated lower pay or taken a strike and let economic forces decide who could dig in their heels the longest.

At the higher level, you have a choice: let unions regulate their workplaces through collective agreements and grievance arbitration, or (and here's the higher taxes boogey man), properly fund the Department of Labor and provide them with the enforcement mechanisms necessary to regulate the workplace instead of the unions. But don't kid yourself that business will take care of its employees. It's a race to the bottom, and businesses would be thrilled to have indentured servitude at their disposal.

So.. does this mean no more horribly sexist/classist "one-ups(wo)man-ship" Hummer H2 commercials?

Or, wait.. was I supposed to buy an H2 to prove I'm better than the commercials?

@Jim Topoleski:

It's been widely known for a long time that auto workers make insane hourly amounts. If the unions didn't keep forcing the makers to pay these wages and other incentives they would have been better off.

I know people who work at the GM Plant in Arlington, they're wallets are quite fat.

@doctor_cos: Someone is coming in and picking up the parts that worked to put them back together without all the nasty bits. Us.

@SacraBos: They sold 8 to 10 million cars a year that people "didn't want".

The issue wasn't the numbers of cars sold. The issue was their debt load.

Who had the balls to put the Hummer H2 on there? That thing has made so much money for GM its unreal. Hell, it probably paid for 1/3 of the loss's on that list.

@Jim Topoleski:

And if you knew what you were talking about you would know that due to Union agreements, some plants have people sitting around in break rooms being paid because their job was replaced by a robot. Just because the hourly wage isn't drastically higher than a Toyota plant doesn't mean that wages are being wasted.

Also, just because I have some anti-UAW sentiments doesn't mean I am some evil republican. I don't listen Rush, or anyone else so shove it.

@Todd Miller: "talking point" ≠ "widely known fact"

@SacraBos:
The problem is GM didn't just not make cars people wanted in the last 9 months. This started years ago. Can anyone remember the last time GM posted a profit? There's your answer right there.

@Todd Miller: I've dealt with UAW people as well (I bought my last two used cars from them as well as other acquaintances) and they seem to have an attitude that they are paupers as long as someone else in the company makes more money than they do. And all of them made more than this college-educated Air Force veteran. Cry me a river, UAW.

@pecan 3.14159265: awww, I loved how unique it looked when it first came out.

@Charlotte Rae's Web: I hated the Aztek with a passion the first time I saw one. I strongly remember being on San Marcos Boulevard and seeing the back of one in baby poo orange/brown color and being instantly so horrified that I had to maneuver up on the right side of it to see what it was - admittedly it's not quite as bad from the side. Then getting back to work and looking the thing up on the web and emailing my friends with 'Look how ugly this thing is, can you believe they thought this was a good idea?'

I'm not sure if there's a point here other than that I have never before loathed a car at first sight, even a Chevette (usually it has to earn it), so I salute the brave people who managed it.

@Todd Miller: The number you're referring to around $72/hr is completely wrong and made up by the auto industry and Fox News. That assumes that these guys pocket retiree's health benefits (which is impossible). The wages is around $32/hr base. That's a few dollars higher than the $28/hr at Toyota.

GM decided to defer payment into the UAW's pension and give the executives big fat bonuses. But once they fell behind in a big way, then they decided to start whining about wages?

@jayphat: It certainly must not be profitable now or GM wouldn't be discontinuing them. You have a point, though, that when comparing the money lost during poor sales times versus the profits made when they were selling like crazy taken in totatility, did this line make money for GM, or not?

But then, this Jalopnik guy doesn't offer any evidence that these cars "bankrupted GM", so I suspect it is mostly conjecture-based.

@doctor_cos: The problem is that its all happening at once. If GM failed in a vacuum, I think you're right, a bunch of companies would buy the remains and that would be that. The problem is that nobody is doing well and banks don't have money to lend, so if GM failed, then it would simply collapse and take down our economy. I forget the exact number, but something like 20% [please verify] of our economy is directly or indirectly related to the auto industry.

@WiglyWorm: I laughed like an evil movie villain.

@dohtem: Exactly, but since it takes a few years to design a car, they were always a step behind. They never bothered to think what the market WILL be, only what it is now. They're like that person who's wearing all the trendiest fashions...from five years ago.

@oldtaku: san marcos blvd? as in, san marcos, ca? have i ever seen you at the 55 yard line and/or katsu?!?

@jayphat:

bingo, people complain about american suvs but those are the vehicles people voted for with their wallets. those kept the production lines running, the workers in employment and healthcare and all that good stuff. people didn't buy the smaller cars, even the good ones.

@HiPwr: I think it's one of those things where an asset turns into a liability. Like 30 pounds of ugly gold chains around your neck when you fall into the water. It /was/ a huge hit with men with virility issues, which seems to have unhealthily fixated GM on that strategy (and not just them - nothing like Toyota of all people coming out with McLargeHugeTrucks just as the market for them tanked).

@starrion: To suppliment your list:

1) GM didn't anticipate trends, they reacted to them and made cars people didn't want because the demand passed three years ago.

2) The union and executive standoff. The unions saw the executives living the good life, so their reaction to any concession was, "why should we give up anything?" The executives saw all the pay and benefits a regular union Joe was getting and said, "he's just some slob, I should make a lot more than he does." So neither side gave an inch.

3) +100 on health care. We're at a competitive disadvantage because we DON'T have universal healthcare.