GenVibe - Community for Pontiac Vibe Enthusiasts

Stumbled across this story about a new brand introduced by GM only for CHINA!!!!!I thought China LOVED Buick hence the reason it was selected over Pontiac?http://www.foxnews.com/leisure...tworkGM Launches China-Only Baojun BrandYet another corporate lie fed to Pontiac fans??Dave

...yep!

And I should give a rat's behind why?

Quote, originally posted by jake75 »And I should give a rat's behind why?Cause it's proably in your Chi'neze take out !/lol

Quoted from http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/2...x.htm"Pontiac's problem was not sales, GM Chief Executive Fritz Henderson indicated during a conference call Monday. In 2008, Pontiac was the company's third-best selling brand behind Chevrolet and GMC and sold twice as many vehicles as Buick, a brand that will apparently survive the changes at GM.The problem for Pontiac has been profitability. GM doesn't generally break out profits by brand, but Buick and GMC, which are sold in dealerships alongside Pontiacs, are more profitable, Henderson said."The company I work for has the same philosophy.

Back in the mid-60's when I worked for SuperX Drugs - when chain drugstores were "discount" stores, I used to kid that we lost money on every sale but made it up in volume. Some of the middle management types pulled stuff to make profits look better than reality that 45 years later I recognize as "Enron style" downright crooked. I was just a peon.

Quote, originally posted by Tubaryan12 »Quoted from http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/2...x.htm"Pontiac's problem was not sales, GM Chief Executive Fritz Henderson indicated during a conference call Monday. In 2008, Pontiac was the company's third-best selling brand behind Chevrolet and GMC and sold twice as many vehicles as Buick, a brand that will apparently survive the changes at GM.The problem for Pontiac has been profitability. GM doesn't generally break out profits by brand, but Buick and GMC, which are sold in dealerships alongside Pontiacs, are more profitable, Henderson said."The company I work for has the same philosophy. Determining "cost" and thereby "profit" is not an easy task in a complex organization like GM. A lot depends on how you allocate overhead - what is referred to as the fixed cost. The company could be operating at a loss but the added cost (marginal cost) of producing an additional 10,000 units might be less than the sales price so you are better off (reducing your loss) by producing those 10,000 units. Classic economic theory defines perfect competition as a situation where everyone sells at marginal cost, but then fixed costs never get covered and you go out of business.

If true, the Pontiac brand had a carefully GM-management-manipulated 'profitability problem' = higher-cost-per-vehicle-produced because:1) The typical Buick buyer was 80+ and had the cash in hand to purchase at retail price; 2) Buick buyers had been buying Buicks from the same dealer (and likely same saleperson) since DeSotos and Edsels roamed the earth; 3) while Pontiac buyers were far younger and shopped around, (including them 'foreign' vehicles like Honda, Toyota...4) GM killed off the high-volume ('fleet') cars by the mid 1990's, in search of greater profitability selling lower-volume cars that cost 50% more to manufacture (Olds Ciera vs Olds 'Cutlass', Pontiac 6000 vs G6, Chevy Celebrity/Euro vs Malibu, and Buick Century vs Buick Century ("If you keep the name the same, they'll never notice it's not the same car"); 5) GM killed off the last of the 'performance' (Firebird/Camaro) pony cars in early 2002, then desperately tried to entice their 'performance' buyers back with Australian-built GTO's and G8's; 6) NUMMI (Vibe) production probably cost GM far more per vehicle because it was in northern California, one of most over-regulated and highly-taxed places on earth in terms of manufacturing; 7) GM flatly refused to spend any money (after launch) advertising the Vibe as a high-mpg vehicle the first time gas prices climbed near $4 a gallon, perhaps because the Vibe was 'not invented here', so sales actually dropped; and 8) GM (and Ford and Chrysler) only know how to offer discounts, cash-back, and rebates to move vehicles. The last true 'car salesmen' left American dealerships about 1975.

Funny - I bought a new Buick LeSabre wagon when I was 34, and Pontiac Vibes when I was 60 and 66.