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Sorry to have been so long since the last entry... been a wild year for me. Let's see, what's been going on?..

From the Wall Street Journal:  Mark LaNeve, General Motors sales chief and a longtime executive, will leave the company Oct. 15 for a job with a company in another industry. LaNeve headed sales and marketing until GM Chief Executive Fritz Henderson restructured the management team and put former product head Bob Lutz in charge of marketing...

DETROIT — Auto parts maker Delphi ended four years in bankruptcy court Tuesday, emerging as a private company and removing a major uncertainty for former parent General Motors. The group acquiring the now much smaller Delphi will forgive nearly $3.5 billion of bankruptcy loans and will invest $900 million in capital. It may remove some uncertainty from GM's situation, but that doesn't mean GM should plan on being the big dog in town any time soon.

AR Index     572.45  -39.10  (-6.39%) Stocks of individual interest Toyota  75.07  -5.56 GM        0.64    -0.07 Ford      7.05   -0.44 Dow 9599.75  -189.61   (-1.94%) So you wonder why the "imports" (you can hardly call them that anymore) are so attractive to people? Check out "Saturn and Me: GM Loses a Customer" by Allan Sloan in the Washington Post. Once a customer loses trust in a brand, it's very difficult to get it back, and GM has managed to do that with so many customers who used to be loyal buyers that it's hard to envision them regaining even a shred of their former status in the automotive world.

Seems like the demise of Saturn might have been an iceberg waiting to be hit. Part of what happened when Saturn was born was an attempt to change the relationship between GM and the UAW. Saturn sales peaked at 286,000 cars in 1995.  But that year saw another, more menacing development...

DETROIT (AP) -- General Motors Co. will shut down Saturn now that a deal with former race car driver and auto dealer magnate Roger Penske has collapsed, marking the end of a brand that was supposed to revolutionize the way small cars were built and sold in America. The deal with Penske was supposed to be finalized Wednesday...

Interesting anniversay today that absolutely nobody remembers, well they remember it for a reason other than the way Ford intended it. In 1957, Ford proclaimed September 4th to be "E-day" to mark the introduction of the Edsel. Slick marketing and upbeat claims aren't enough to keep a sales dog on the production line...

DETROIT — General Motors Co. will begin removing its "Mark of Excellence" logo from vehicles as the company places greater emphasis on its individual brands. GM spokesman Terry Rhadigan said Tuesday the company would phase out the placement of the GM logo on its cars and trucks, leaving just the GMC, Chevrolet, Cadillac or Buick logos on the vehicles...

Don't you just love it when you can look at two things and just see that 2+2 does indeed equal 4? Consider these two headlines: Toyota Motor To Begin Talks With GM On Pull-Out From US Joint Venture Toyota Targets Profitability in North America by Next Fiscal Year Isn't that a remarkable coincidence?  

"So we are acting as reluctant shareholders, because that is the only way to help GM succeed. What we are not doing, what I have no interest in doing, is running GM." You know what they say about a politician's moving lips. This past Thursday, a spending bill was passed in the House...