Do oil prices put the nail in the coffin of GM and big pickup trucks?

Question

GM stocks have dropped 38% since last year, a 30 yr low.

It's been 35years since the Arab oil embargo and still, the management at GM (up till recently) thinks that there's a market for huge gas gusslers!

Is their marketing plan just a loser? Do they HAVE an intelligent marketing plan?

Answer 1

Big pick-up trucks?  Yes, for now.  GM?  Not yet.  GM could be 5-10 years away from climbing back on top of the world car market.  You may have heard that Honda now has an Accord that runs on water, and a bunch of brain-dead Holly-weird pseudo-ecologists are leasing some of them...Well, GM has had a fleet of busses in DC that have been running on water for three years.  The Chevy Volt will be released in 2010, and GM is predicting the release of their first fuel-cell powered vehicle in 2012.  Yes, Honda got the first one out, but they didn't do nearly as much R&D as GM has already done, so don't be surprised if their eco-friendly Accords are full of bugs that will take several years to work out.  GM is playing it very close to the vest because they want to be sure that their first release is a good one.

P.S.:  Yes, it has been 35 years since the Arab oil embargo, but up until the past year pick-up trucks were still the #1 seller in the U.S., except for a couple of instances where SUVs were outselling pick-up trucks.  So no, their marketing plan was not a loser by a long-shot -- they simply churned out what Americans wanted.  Now that gas prices have shot up, they have to scale back on pick-ups and SUVs.  Don't blame GM, blame the American consumer who still doesn't have to pay as much for a gallon of gasoline as they do in Canada or Europe...