[emersonbiggins]

It took this long?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')low H2 sales to affect workers
AM General plans to close plant for 2 weeks.
ED RONCOTribune Staff Writer
MISHAWAKA -- A slowdown in the sale of Hummer H2s will impact workers at the AM General plant here.
Because of excess H2 inventory on dealer lots, the H2 plant will be shut down the weeks of Oct. 16 and Oct. 23. Several employees leaving the plant told WSBT-TV Wednesday that they were told by a union steward that between 125 and 175 people could be laid off.
"There is no plan as of this moment anyway ... we have no announcement to make," said Lee Woodward, a spokesman for the company. He declined to make additional comments.
link to article

[KevO]

ho hum. So a 60% cut in emissions eh?
"General Motors (GM) has seen its US vehicle sales soar in October thanks to a fall in fuel prices - though some of its rivals fared less well.
The company's sales grew by 17.3% as it reported strong demand for its trucks and SUVs as filling the tank became less expensive.
Toyota increased its sales by 9.2% in the month and Ford saw an 8% increase "
BBC NEWS

[The_Toecutter]

Surge? Not really, compared to say, 2004. This is just a temporary fluctuation upwards, but the overall trend is downwards.

[gg3]

Stupid f---ing idiots.
Anyone who buys one of those damn things at this point deserves to get darwinized. Which is exactly what they are going to get.
I would not object if someone went around painting on those vehicles, the words "Stop!, you're killing me!", which was one of the slogans of the enviro group in John Brunner's quasi-prophetic sci fi novel The Sheep Look Up.
Paint it on with tempra paint of course, which is water soluable and nontoxic, and can be washed off with a hose (hey it's not vandalism if there's no actual damage!). At least it will get the morons pissed off for a few minutes, which might get them to think.
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed
but swollen with the wind, and the rank mist they draw,
rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread.

[Jack]

And that, my friends, is one of many pieces of evidence that we won't have a soft landing.
People will buy and consume, they will ignore all indications of coming problems, and they will drag civilization over the cliff with them. Humankind is as wise as a colony of yeast, and has all the foresight of a bacterium.

[MD]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'A')nyone who buys one of those damn things at this point deserves to get darwinized. ... Paint it on with tempra paint of course, which is water soluable and nontoxic, and can be washed off with a hose (hey it's not vandalism if there's no actual damage!). At least it will get the morons pissed off for a few minutes, which might get them to think. ....

[TommyJefferson]

This is only a slight delay in the General Motors' death spiral.
Meanwhile, Toyota is spending near 1 Billion dollars in Texas to set up it's new Tundra (17mpg) manufacturing facility: Link

Said Toyota: "When the new Tundra rolls into dealer showrooms this February, we are confident that full-size truck buyers will see Tundra as the most capable, best built, and best value half-ton pickup in America."

[mjdlight]

We shouldn't blame the car companies. If people didn't buy SUVs/trucks, they'd stop making them tomorrow. They're just whores, nothing more.
This is all on us.

[Mechler]

Bill Reinert of Toyota summed up this trend nicely at the PO conference:

"Sheep are made to be shorn."

[dissimulo]

There will always be a place for pickup trucks. (Maybe not as much of a place for SUVs.)
Consider, I have a 2005 Ford F350 diesel. I can use it to move large quantities of stuff with ease, tow a trailer, pull out stumps, move logs, etc. I can do work with it in minutes that would otherwise take hours.
(For example, this weekend, I ran a quarter acre of gorse through a chipper shredder, into the truck bed, and then over to my composting area several hundred yards away. If I had to move all that stuff by hand, it would have taken days.)
Being a diesel, it gets about 20MPG average. I drive it about 400 miles per month. That is 20 gallons of fuel. If the price of diesel goes to $20/gallon, the cost is only $400/mo, which I can easily afford.
I wouldn't want to use it for a 50 mile commute, but for it's designed purpose, it is an indispensable tool. Diesel would have to reach $30-$40 per gallon before I would be sufficiently motivated to park it permanently.

[The_Toecutter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')e shouldn't blame the car companies. If people didn't buy SUVs/trucks, they'd stop making them tomorrow. They're just whores, nothing more.
This is all on us.

[Cabrone]

What were the previous sales though? I thought they had bombed over the summer so 17% may not be as big as it sounds.

Still a bunch of fools though.

[emersonbiggins]

Obviously, the Mellencamp song-and-dance is bringing in buyers by the droves.
"It's my patriotic duty to buy a Chevy!"

[Mechler]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Mechler', 'B')ill Reinert of Toyota summed up this trend nicely at the PO conference. ... the writing is on the wall. people are moving away from oversized pickup trucks. Besides the sheep he is shorning are from his own dumb-ass herd. His children who will reap his stupidity, as will everyones.

[Denny]

Well, I just checked the Chevy website, and as they say, they have made some great strides in the Silverado pickup. The base model one now gets 17 mpg city and 21 highway.
I worked helping to make these vehicles between 1974 and 1979, and they really sucked back then, doing 14 mpg city and 19 highway. That had an inline 6. That was before fuel injection and computerized engine control.
And, just how many $billions in investment has GM put into its truck programs over the past thirty years?

[The_Toecutter]

From 16 mpg to 19 mpg, and it took them over 30 years to do it... They call this 'great strides'?
Just by addressing automobile aerodynamics in the 1970s going to a .16 drag coefficient, we could have had 30+ mpg V8 musclecars, with no other modifications. Instead, the auto industry punished us with overpriced, anemic econoboxes for daring to demand fuel efficiency and reliability, while crying to the covernment to restrict foreign competition.
Today, with aerodynamics, composite materials, diesel/hybrid powertrains, we can have 80+ mpg midsize cars that do 0-60 mph in 10 seconds and a have cost penalty under $2,000(GM Precept, etc.). We could have 300 mile range electric midsize sedans that cost $20,000 and do 0-60 mph in < 8 seconds, and 200+ mile range small SUVs with similar cost and marginally slower performance(See studies by Cuenca and Gaines, among others). We could have 100 mpg diesel sportscars that top 160 mph(Opel Eco Speedster), and 250 mph battery electric supercars(Eliica).
What a terrible web these assholes in industry and government have weaved for us all.

[Denny]

I was trying to show tongue in cheek, not very effectively.

[The_Toecutter]

I didn't mean for my reaction to be misinterpreted. I was by no means accusing you of claiming that it was a significant gain. My comment was towards General Motors.
Don't mind me. I'm just pissed that we have all these solutions to this problem around us, but through somewhat clandestine means, we don't have access to them.

[gg3]

What Dissimulo has is a truck and it's being used as a truck. I don't have the slightest problem with that. One of my coworkers has a great big Ford pickup, with which he hauls PBX equipment to remote sites on rutted gravel mountain roads. I have a minivan (25 mpg freeway) with which I haul PBX equipment around the city (think of a small version of a telco installer's vehicle). These are commercial vehicle applications, i.e. using trucks as trucks rather than as toys.
Same case if you have an "SUV" that's actually utilitarian (those should properly be referred to as 4WDs) and use it to haul enough people around that your passenger mileage per gallon is decent, or if you use it to actually haul goods around on commercial work, on road conditions where a minivan would get into trouble.

What I have nothing but contempt for, is the vanity vehicle whose purpose is to pamper its usually solo occupant and intimidate other users of the road, while navigating the twice-daily stop-and-go over perfectly smooth pavements. Pampering is for infants, and intimidation is for hoodlums. People who engage in that type of behavior deserve the darwinization they are most certainly going to get. And those who enable them, by which I mean the current crop of major automakers, deserve likewise.
If someone wants a truck to use as a toy, they can go buy a toy truck. There are plenty of those available in the shops, particularly at this time of year.