GM to Cut Pontiac, 21,000 Jobs

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Registered: 03-18-2000
GM to Cut Pontiac, 21,000 Jobs
44
Mon, 04-27-2009 - 11:01am

My heart goes out to all those people without jobs. :(


http://www.wxyz.com/news/local/story/GM-to-Cut-Pontiac-21-000-Jobs/kYLlxaZ6t0KZbtFj5yAwEw.cspx


General Motors says it will cut 21,000 hourly jobs and the entire Pontiac brand in what is being called a major restructuring effort.

Under the plan, GM will cut hourly employees from about 61,000  to around 40,000 in 2010. That represents about 1/3 of the total hourly workforce, and is between 7,000 and 8,000 more workers than the previously announced cuts.

The company will also be cutting about 1/3 of their plants by 2012. The plan calls for them to have 34 plants when the restructuring is complete. That's down from the current total of 47. No details are yet known on what plants will be cut.

GM will also cut 14 nameplates from their current total of 48, leaving them with 34. Again, no details on which nameplates will be cut, but it presumably includes all of Pontiac's nameplates. The company says it will concentrate on its core brands of Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC. It is also accelerating plans for Saturn and Hummer, with decisions expected on those brands by the end of 2009.

The company's dealerships will also be slashed by 42%, to about 3,000. GM currently has over 6,000 dealers.

bird-1.jpg New picture by 1944misty    The WeatherPixie 

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-19-2008
Fri, 05-01-2009 - 3:58pm
The rear seats are very small from the picture. I guess if your family is unusually short, a car like that could work. I have a family of 5.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-03-2009
Fri, 05-01-2009 - 6:12pm

Bull. I've driven small vehicles for a number of years, all the way from a little Datsun B210 hatchback after getting my driver's license 33 years ago, to my current vehicle, a Toyota Prius.

About 12 years ago, I owned a Honda Civic. On a narrow, rain-slicked country road with no shoulders, a pickup which was going too fast as it came from the other direction, lost control on a curve and fishtailed----right into the Honda. Got my front end, and the driver's side.

No injuries to either me or my son who was a passenger at the time. Insurance company wouldn't total out the vehicle but did pay for about five thousand dollars of repair work. Here we are a dozen years later. My two children learned to drive in that car, and DD is STILL driving it.

So I don't buy the nonsense about "small cars are unsafe when they collide with just about anything" and will remind readers here once again about the grotesque costs ("pre-emptive wars", polluted air, tainted waters) of insisting on driving fossil fuel guzzling/bigger vehicles.

http://www.mb-soft.com/public/rollover.html
Read the link for a FULL explanation of what happens when vehicles swerve. Then come back and talk to me about "the blood of those who will die from driving less safe vehicles."

And if safety is truly, truly, the issue, then it must follow that you also support reducing speed limits to 55 mph or less ;-).

Jabberwocka

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-19-2008
Fri, 05-01-2009 - 11:17pm
The stats and laws of physics are what they are.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-03-2009
Sat, 05-02-2009 - 8:45am

Indeed they are. That's why it's so weird to see handwringing over the safety of small vehicles in collisions with large, heavier, higher vehicles; while at the same time ignoring the equally important factor of rollover in SUV's and other high profile vehicles.

And if safety were truly the overriding concern, there would be a movement to sharply drop speed limits on our highways and byways since SPEED is another of the factors which affect impact damage.

But there's no consistency. Rant follows about that lack of consistency so stop reading right here if you prefer to focus on small picture!

It seems far more likely that some people are insisting on their right, I daresay an "entitlement", to a status quo which isn't necessarily any safer and certainly is NOT sustainable. And then the same group cavils at paying taxes or complying with restrictions to clean up the air, water, and land they've polluted. Wars are OK though, as long as there's no draft which might actually entail any truly personal cost or harm.

Most geologists (not those in the lunatic fringe) theorize that the fossil fuel we're burning now was laid down eons ago by flora and fauna which are now extinct*. If we don't want to become extinct too or turn our small closed system into an environmental toxic waste site, it behooves us to make changes--sooner rather than later.

*There are a few interesting exceptions like the horseshoe crab, the roach, and the coelecanth.

Jabberwocka

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-19-2008
Sat, 05-02-2009 - 2:14pm

I think the problem is small vehicles in collisions with anything. They are very dangerous. We will have more deaths to save gas. How many gallons is the life of a human worth?

http://www.iihs.org/news/rss/pr041409.html

Size and weight affect injury likelihood in all kinds of crashes. In a collision involving two vehicles that differ in size and weight, the people in the smaller, lighter vehicle will be at a disadvantage. The bigger, heavier vehicle will push the smaller, lighter one backward during the impact. This means there will be less force on the occupants of the heavier vehicle and more on the people in the lighter vehicle. Greater force means greater risk, so the likelihood of injury goes up in the smaller, lighter vehicle.

Crash statistics confirm this. The death rate in 1-3-year-old minicars in multiple-vehicle crashes during 2007 was almost twice as high as the rate in very large cars.

"Though much safer than they were a few years ago, minicars as a group do a comparatively poor job of protecting people in crashes, simply because they're smaller and lighter," Lund says. "In collisions with bigger vehicles, the forces acting on the smaller ones are higher, and there's less distance from the front of a small car to the occupant compartment to 'ride down' the impact. These and other factors increase injury likelihood."

The death rate per million 1-3-year-old minis in single-vehicle crashes during 2007 was 35 compared with 11 per million for very large cars. Even in midsize cars, the death rate in single-vehicle crashes was 17 percent lower than in minicars. The lower death rate is because many objects that vehicles hit aren't solid, and vehicles that are big and heavy have a better chance of moving or deforming the objects they strike. This dissipates some of the energy of the impact.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-03-2009
Sat, 05-02-2009 - 3:57pm

Yes, you've mentioned repeatedly your concern over small cars. At the same time, you choose to respond not at all to valid information about SUV rollovers (it's also true that there is statistically significant incidence of spinal cord injuries leading to paraplegia and quadriplegia in those rollovers); AND apparently have chosen to utterly disregard the role which speed plays and how limits on speed might lead to safer roads. Moreover, ALL your links thus far address the danger of small cars, when they collide with larger ones. Factor out the road monsters and the statistics would tell a different story.

Tell me you support reduced speed limits and the "safety" card will have far more credibility since not only does "55 save lives" but it also greatly improves vehicle mpg, REGARDLESS OF VEHICLE SIZE.

I am unmoved by crocodile tears about the "safety" of small cars since you apparently do not see those lives lost in Iraq as worthy of weaning ourselves off of "cheap" fossil fuel. 4,000+ in Iraq alone. There's blood in that gas you want to pump--don't forget it.

In sum, seems like just more arrant conservative double-standards and the all-too-common attitude of "I got mine, I intend to keep it regardless of cost to others, and that's all that matters".

edited to correct a misspelling




Edited 5/3/2009 1:46 pm ET by jabberwocka

Jabberwocka

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-19-2008
Sat, 05-02-2009 - 4:36pm
SUV rollovers are part of the SUV deaths. Overall, for deaths, INCLUDING ROLLOVERS, you are much safer in a large 4 wheel drive SUV than just about anything else on the road. IF you die in an SUV, you are more likely to die of a rollover than from other types of death. However you are much less likely to die in a large heavy SUV.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Mon, 05-04-2009 - 9:41am

To see it fully at link it's about 2/3 down the page.


Are SUVs Dangerous?


http://www.lilith-ezine.com/articles/automotive/SUVs-Are-Dangerous.html


Consider the set of safety statistics compiled by Tom Wenzel, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in California, and Marc Ross, a physicist at the University of Michigan. The numbers are expressed in fatalities per million cars, both for drivers of particular models and for the drivers of the cars they hit. (For example, in the first case, for every million Toyota Avalons on the road, forty Avalon drivers die in car accidents every year, and twenty people die in accidents involving Toyota Avalons. ) The numbers below have been rounded:






Make/Model
Type
Driver
Deaths
Other
Deaths
Total


Toyota Avalon


large
40
20
60


Chrysler Town & Country


minivan
31
36
67


Toyota Camry


mid-size
41
29
70


Volkswagen Jetta


subcompact
47
23
70


Ford Windstar


minivan
37
35
72


Nissan Maxima


mid-size
53
26
79


Honda Accord


mid-size
54
27
82


Chevrolet Venture


minivan

51



34



85




Buick Century


mid-size
70
23
93


Subaru Legacy/Outback



compact


74
24
98


Mazda 626


compact
70
29
99


Chevrolet Malibu


mid-size
71
34
105


Chevrolet Suburban


S.U.V.
46
59
105


Jeep Grand Cherokee


S.U.V.
61
44
106


Honda Civic


subcompact
84
25
109


Toyota Corolla


subcompact
81
29
110


Ford Expedition


S.U.V.
55
57
112


GMC Jimmy


S.U.V.
76
39
114


Ford Taurus


mid-size
78
39
117


Nissan Altima


compact
72
49
121


Mercury Marquis


large
80
43
123


Nissan Sentra


subcompact
95
34
129


Toyota 4Runner


S.U.V.
94
43
137


Chevrolet Tahoe


S.U.V.
68
74
141


Dodge Stratus


mid-size
103
40
143


Lincoln Town Car


large
100
47
147


Ford Explorer


S.U.V.
88
60
148


Pontiac Grand Am


compact
118
39
157


Toyota Tacoma


pickup
111
59
171


Chevrolet Cavalier


subcompact
146
41
186


Dodge Neon


subcompact
161
39
199


Pontiac Sunfire


subcompact
158
44
202


Ford F-Series


pickup
110
128
238

Are the best performers the biggest and heaviest vehicles on the road? Not at all. Among the safest cars are the midsize imports, like the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord. Or consider the extraordinary performance of some subcompacts, like the Volkswagen Jetta. Drivers of the tiny Jetta die at a rate of just forty-seven per million, which is in the same range as drivers of the five-thousand-pound Chevrolet Suburban and almost half that of popular S.U.V. models like the Ford Explorer or the GMC Jimmy. In a head-on crash, an Explorer or a Suburban would crush a Jetta or a Camry. But, clearly, the drivers of Camrys and Jettas are finding a way to avoid head-on crashes with Explorers and Suburbans. The benefits of being nimble—of being in an automobile that's capable of staying out of trouble—are in many cases greater than the benefits of being big.


bird-1.jpg New picture by 1944misty

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Mon, 05-04-2009 - 9:58am

"They also make too many feel like they are invulnerable & give them a false sense of safety."


Comment about

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-19-2008
Mon, 05-04-2009 - 4:03pm

You are citing a story from a very far left liberal feminist art magazine as a source for vehicle safety? I'm 100% certain reading the home page, that this magazine is not friendly toward SUV's. I have no idea where their data came from.

Ppppllllleeeeeaaaazzzzeeeee ... ROFL.

Try this source - http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/809979.PDF

Table 2: Total Occupant Fatality Rates per 100,000 Registered Vehicles by Vehicle Type and Size, 2004 Vehicle Type and Size Rate

Compact Cars 17.76
Compact Pickups 16.87
Subcompact Cars 16.85
Midsize SUVs 16.16
Standard Pickups 13.87
Full-size SUVs 12.34
Full-size Cars 12.16
Midsize Cars 11.49
Minivans 11.09
Large Vans2 9.34




Edited 5/4/2009 4:17 pm ET by postreply