GM’s perfect storm

Among the problems dogging the No. 1 automaker: Delphi, gas, falling market share. There’s more.

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – For General Motors, the hits keep coming.

Unfortunately for the troubled automaker, they’re not the kind of hits that bring buyers into showrooms or keep cars rolling out of them.

Instead, the world’s biggest automaker is getting hit by bad news — seemingly from all directions. Some of the problems, such as gasoline prices, issues at its former parts unit, Delphi, and accounting questions, may be short-term. Others, such as health care and pension costs, are long-term and seem intractable.
…While gasoline prices have been falling since hitting a record in September after Hurricane Katrina, they’re still up about 16 percent from a year ago, and both GM and Ford saw a steep drop in sales of big SUVs and pickups in September and October.

Company officials insist not all of that is from pump prices. But GM officials concede they are seeing a shift, with more buyers seeking smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles — bad news when GM’s gas guzzlers are its only profitable products.

“This really highlights one of the weaknesses of our business model is too much reliance on those products (large SUVs and pickups) for profit and not enough profitability from those other products,” Wagoner said last month.

CNN/Money