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Before the Wall Street Crash of 2008, GM's funds were likely to last until Volt's introduction in late 2010...now they are likely to run out in the 3rd quarter of 2009 unless it gets even worse. (http://www.newsweek.com/id/163692)

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/Dodge_RAMMER_pickup_310.jpgKeith Naughton - Newsweek – Oct. 12, 2008

Well said -- Ed.

You've got to be kidding me. General Motors and Chrysler merge? If ever there was an example of the old saw "two wrongs don't make a right," this, surely, is it. And yet the news out of Detroit this weekend is that GM and Chrysler have been in talks for a month and there's a 50-50 chance these two ailing automakers will combine their fading forces. This is the worst idea out of Detroit since the Edsel.

What's wrong with a GM-Chrysler motor marriage? Let me count the ways. For starters, there is no white knight here riding to the rescue. Both carmakers are bloodied and battered. GM has lost more than $18 billion so far this year and is hemorrhaging more than $1 billion in cash a month. Chrysler is in even worse shape, with sales down 25 percent this year - twice as bad as the overall anemic American car market. And what little strength these two toppling titans have left is not complementary, it's conflicting. For example, each makes good pickup trucks - the Dodge Ram in Chrysler's case and the Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra in GM's case. But the bottom has dropped out of the pickup truck business, so what company needs that many different models serving a declining market? What's worse, both companies are loaded down with SUVs, which have become rolling pariahs since gas prices spiked and America started going green. That's why GM is dumping dying SUV models like the Chevy TrailBlazer and has put its Hummer franchise up for sale. Why would GM suddenly want to take on Jeep and big, fat SUVs like the Dodge Durango?… http://www.newsweek.com/id/163692

It is just pathetic that the American car industry has come to this. My fearless prediction - Toyota buys Chevy, Renault buys Ford, Chrysler goes broke. You heard it here first :o

OR, worse the government takes a stake in all three :(

jimepting,

That would be a very interesting story if Toyota bought GM or even a part of it.

Imagine the implications if Toyota is the owner of the Volt?

Anyone think maybe GM and Chrysler is expecting to panhandle Washington for money beyond the 25B loan?

It is close to OVER for the big 2.5. Time is running out. If you think they have a future, go ahead and purchase their stock, for it is very cheap. Ford is at 1.99 and GM is at 4.89 a share of common stock. What will the future be?

hm so the auto industry is going to dominated by Japanese and Europeans? More monopoly for them I guess... but I rather have lots of competition to further down prices than one major company calling the shots.

If the Grand American Marque Oldsmobile can falter and die, American motor companies might as well!

Well hey, if GM and Ford collapse, and once the Asian brands take over the market, the US brands can go back to doing what they do best: making muscle cars and heavy-duty trucks for people that actually need them. No more econoboxes, no more "same car with better body", and please, no more SUVs.

Their FE cars are really not much to talk about (except the European versions, which will frankly never make it across in their pure form), so they should just stick to what they do well....once the economy gets out of its funk.

This merger makes about as much sense as a merger between the Titanic and the Maine.

Just thought I'd mention while it's only 1-2 paragraphs, rumor is Chrysler was not the first pick to the prom for GM....General Motors apporached Ford first but declined.

Can the pointy-haired bosses at GM explain why they want to buy the SUV-laden company Chrysler while they are doing this?

GM to close Wisconsin plant in December (http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081013.wgmclosure1013/BNStory/Business/home)

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Imagine the implications if Toyota is the owner of the Volt?Personally with the way things are going.... If Toyota even hinted at buying GM, Uncle Sam would Nationalize the US auto industry faster than you can say "Communist Russia".

Think they'd argue "national security" or something of that nature about Americans needing cars. It would be a definite irony considering that many to most of the computer chips in our cruise missiles are made in either China or Japan. There are still a few chip makers that fabricate stateside, but that number is dwindling fast.

11011011

I can't for the life me think of any advantage that Chrysler would offer to GM. If Chrysler has this $11 Billion cash reserve it comes with a whole lot of overhead that it has to deal with and would effectively cancel any benefit to GM.

GM ought to know this but if the past 8 years in the business sector has demonstrated anything, there have been no new major companies to appear on the market with a game changing technology the way the late 20th century boom in computer technology has had.

The only major advance in the last 16 years was in a technology that GM, Ford and Chrysler walked away from and had deliberately killed and that was the hybrid-electric vehicle that the U.S. government spent $1 Billion of tax payer money on and which Toyota and Honda actually brought to market in the fear of the U.S. automakers cornering the market for that technology.

Well, in spite of my extreme dislike for GM, I hope they make it with the Volt even though it may be that I can't afford one right now.

I can one benefit...shutting down a chunk of the market without looking like it was shutdown.

The two merge & then they cherry pick through both models & employees. They quickly shudown down & sell off as many factories as they can for whatever they can get (scrap?). They combine features between them since a single company now owns more pattents. In the end, you probably end up with fewer vehicles and people than either one company had before the merger, but you don't see a brand name die. Because of the merger, people will expect to get laid-off/fired, so cuts are easier to make after the merger than before.

Auto analysts universally panned the idea of a merger between any two of the three Detroit automakers. Chrysler, in particular, should be avoided according to Merrill Lynch, which offered this searing evaluation: “a company at the cross hairs of the stress in the global auto industry with greater than 90% exposure to North America, about 60% body on-frame trucks, a lackluster product portfolio, and what appears to be its own liquidity issues would not be additive to any manufacturer in our opinion.”