GM Says ‘Nobody’ Makes Money Amid European Car-Price Cuts

[ALS]

“The biggest problem for the industry is the complete meltdown of pricing discipline,”

Craig Trudell, Christian Wuestner And Mathieu Rosemain - BLOOMBERG - September 27, 2012

General Motors Co. said Europe’s car industry will remain unprofitable at current vehicle pricing levels, while Volkswagen AG said some competitors are at risk of going out of business without state aid.

Competitors Fiat SpA and PSA Peugeot Citroen are producing “very scary numbers” with discounts of as much as 30 percent off gross sale prices, Susan Docherty, who runs European operations for GM’s Chevrolet unit, told reporters today at the Paris Motor Show. “Nobody can make money in Europe when you’ve got incentives at that level.”

Demand has plunged so much that deliveries continue to tumble, even with such large discounts. Although discounting in Germany is at the highest in more than a year, according to industry publication Autohaus PulsSchlag, car sales across Europe may fall to a 17-year low, the region’s main auto- manufacturing trade group has predicted.... [Read More]

[50 mpg by 2012]

Yup ...

And there is "self registration", the practice of an OEM buying and registering their own vehicles to reflect higher sales ... and then selling the vehicles at steep discounts as "used" ... sometimes through brokers.

Too bad we can't get some of those "fuel frugal diesels" brokered in NA.

[Carcus]

A credible source. GM certainly knows how to sell cars and "not make money".

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

"We'd have been able to stop the bleeding at Opel, honest."