General Motors bankruptcy is imminent,likely to happen within the next week as it's Market Shares plummeted from 80 dollars a share to just 30 cents.
Lets all take a moment to reflect on this once-glorious leader of the Automotive World.
General Motors got it's start around 1905 as other companies saw an incredible way to make the Big Bucks Ford was making when a few years earlier,Henry Ford designed the first "car for everyone" the venerable Model-T and put America on four gas powered wheels!.
A few of GM's early models were quite noteworthy!
It's "Gangsta Cars" of the 1930's were legendary like the one Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow got riddled with bulletholes in!
It's 1950's "Muscle Cars" like the 57 Chevrolet were the cars EVERY American Boy wanted!
It's Corvette looked like a car of the future and Cadillac became the Platinum Standard in Luxury Cars!
It's 67 Camaro was the envy of every High School Boy as was the 67 Pontiac GTO!
Then came the 1970's and powerful United Autoworker Unions,BIG Pensions for employee's and the quality of GM's vehicles began slipping down the long ladder to extinction.
The 1970 Chevrolet Corvair earned the reputation as the most unsafe car on the road with it's rear-engine design and several of them exploded in rear end collisions.
The 1975 Chevrolet Chevette earned the "smallest most useless car" award complete with it's tilted (crooked!) steering column so "bigger" people could actually FIT behind the wheel. and by 1981,got "escorted out of the marketplace" by the roomy Ford Escort
The 1981 Chevrolet Citation,GM's venture into the compact 5 door front drive Market was famous for chewing up CV Axels and was plauged with "other issues" resulting in it's being dropped quickly.
When Ford introduced it's ALL NEW Ford Explorer in 1984,GM was desperate to compete so it just re-sheet metaled and shortened the chassis on it's decades old "Chevy K-5 Blazer" into a "New" model and called it the GMC Yukon Denali,complete with ALL of the Blazer's engine and drivetrain Issues.
This Regurgitating of "old models as NEW" by putting a flashy new skin on them would plauge GM right to the present-day.
What followed after 1985 was nearly 20 years of some of the CRAPPIEST built Cars to ever roll off an American assembly line.
GM made a desperate stab in 2005 to "produce quality vehicles" and actually had two models that made it to the top of JD Power and Associates "best cars list" but by now the mere mention of General Motors conjured up the image of "rolling junk" to about 70% of the American public,the HIGH quality vehicles made by Toyota,Nissan,Honda and three Korean Companies were "America's Cars of choice" and GM's good name was forever tainted,associated with a legacy of failed designs,poor fit and finish(remember their PAINT JOBS?) engines that blew head gaskets at 120,000 miles trunks that LEAKED,and no one wanted what GM was making anymore.
Personally,I hope GM files for Bankruptcy and perhaps emerges as a Quality Car Company,it's never too late to start over from scratch. any "thoughts"?