The history of GM cars

In 1908, William C. Durant founded General Motors, which initially owned the Buick brand and later that year acquired Oldsmobile. In the 1920s and 1930s, General Motors bought all the property rights of Yellow Coach, a public automobile company. Helped it establish long-distance bus lines to replace intercity rail transport. It also established a subsidiary to buy out the trams and replace them with buses. In 1930, GM bought the Electro-Motive Corporation urban rail transit company and its engine supplier Winton Engine, merged and renamed it General Motors Electric Vehicle Division. Over the next 20 years, diesel-powered locomotives and trains, largely manufactured by General Motors, largely replaced other types of locomotives on U.S. railroads.

In 1923, Alfred P. Sloan, the famous new president of General Motors, planned General Motors' brand strategy, with Cadillac as the highest-priced brand. This brand strategy basically continues to this day, and uses installment payment, annual Strategies such as launching new models forced Ford to adopt the same strategy in 1926 to launch new colors and models. In 1927, General Motors' market share reached 45%, leaving Ford with 15%. Ford therefore abandoned the best-selling Model T and launched the Model A. car. Sloan also established GM's management system and focused on financial performance.

In the first half of the 20th century, General Motors' famous designer Harley J. Earl (General Motors' vice president in charge of automobile design) established the majestic and dreamy style of American cars. In 1939, he designed the sleek and streamlined Buick Y -Job is the world's first concept car. The large fin-shaped rear wing of the Cadillac designed in 1948 has an air diversion function and is very dreamy. It promoted the popularity of various car manufacturers at the time and became the image feature of American large cars.

On December 31, 1955, General Motors became the first company in U.S. history to pay more than 1 billion in taxes.

General Motors was once the largest company in American history, and its financial revenue can be measured by GDP. In the 1950s, General Motors President Charles E. Wilson declared: What is good for General Motors is good for the United States. Many of General Motors' top managers started from the grassroots level. For example, Roger Smith, the chairman of the group in the 1980s, gradually rose from the position of accountant to cashier. Chairman and CEO. At that time, General Motors was one of the most employing companies in the world; only Soviet state industry had more employees. On June 5, 1998, a workers' strike broke out at the General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan, and quickly spread to five other assembly plants, lasting for seven weeks.

In 2004, because General Motors, like Ford Motor and Chrysler Motors, has always provided employees with excellent lifetime pensions and high medical benefits, the number of retired employees is increasing, and high-profit SUVs and trucks Moody's rated GM's bonds just one grade above junk bonds as sales slumped due to high oil prices. One glaring factor is the rising medical costs for U.S. employees. Detailed analysis shows that amortized to a car is $1,800, which means that the amount of money GM pays for employees and their families to pay for medical expenses is more than the amount of steel it buys. The huge losses in 2007 were mainly caused by General Motors' decision to allocate all the losses accumulated over the years that could be tax deducted, but the tax deduction period was about to expire, in 2007 to the financial report for tax deductions. It was not an operating loss of 300 yuan in one year. Billions of dollars.

In 2005, General Motors successively sold all its shares in Fuji Heavy Industries to Toyota Motor; in April 2006, it also officially announced that it would sell all its shares in Isuzu and withdraw from the shareholder group.

The shares were also purchased by Toyota Motor in November of the same year, making Toyota one of Isuzu's largest shareholders. In March 2006, GM announced that it would sell half of its shares in Suzuki Motors. In 2008, it sold all its shares in Suzuki Motors and withdrew from the shareholder group.

In November 2008, General Motors announced its third-quarter results of that year. Due to the short-term rise in oil prices and the subsequent financial tsunami, SUVs, the fastest growing car category in the U.S. auto market, were Cars and trucks have declined sharply. Although the market share of American automakers in SUVs and trucks has always been significantly ahead of Japanese automakers, they have been hit hardest by high oil prices. Sales of high-profit SUVs and trucks by American automakers have dropped significantly. , cash flow is seriously tight, requiring at least US$11 billion per month to operate, warning that it must obtain capital injection from the US federal government, otherwise there is a risk of immediate bankruptcy. The famous rating agency Moody's believes that General Motors has a 70% chance of bankruptcy due to excessive debt. [3][4]

At the end of 2008, the U.S. government passed a bailout of US$13.4 billion to GM, but it must submit a plan with proven profitability before March 31, 2009, otherwise all taxpayers will be recovered Funding, GM decided to lay off 47,000 people and close five high-cost factories in the United States as the first wave of cost-cutting plans, and auctioned many of the company's antique cars and classic commemorative cars.

And abandon the four brands of Saturn, Pontiac, Saab and Hummer.

The global economy continued to deteriorate in early 2009. New car sales in January were lower than expected. Even Japan's Honda and Toyota reported layoffs, work stoppages and replacement of managers. General Motors' stock price fell 11.5% to 1.77 in New York on February 20. The dollar closed at its lowest level since the Great Depression. General Motors' European and Asian branches have reported financial difficulties. In addition to Sweden's Saab subsidiary, which has formally applied to the court for reorganization, Germany's Opel (Opel) Motors and South Korea's Daewoo (Daewoo) Motors have also expressed the need for bailout funds. , showing that GM's finances are deteriorating rapidly. [5]

General Motors applied for bankruptcy protection to the Manhattan Bankruptcy Court in the United States on June 1, 2009, in accordance with Chapter 11, Section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code. [6] The plan shows that General Motors has a total asset value of US$82.29 billion and liabilities of US$172.81 billion. The number of creditors exceeds 100,000, including bondholders, labor unions and many auto parts suppliers. The largest unsecured creditor is Wilmington Trust

Co, which holds $22.76 billion in GM claims, while the United Auto Workers holds $20.56 billion. debt.

On August 19, 2009, General Motors confirmed that it had signed a share transfer agreement with Koenigsegg Group for the sale of 100% of Saab Automobile Company, but the transaction ultimately failed. In mid-December, General Motors sold some assets of the Saab brand to China's BAIC (Beijing Automobile Holdings).

In January 2010, General Motors confirmed that it had signed a share transfer agreement with Spyker Automobile for the sale of 100% of Saab Automobile's shares, and a new company, Saab Spyker, was about to be established. On November 1, Pontiac, a brand owned by General Motors, announced its official bankruptcy on October 31 due to the expiration of the contract between General Motors and Pontiac dealers.

On November 18, 2010, General Motors successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange, issuing 478 million common shares at US$33 per share, raising US$15.77 billion. If the underwriters exercise their over-allotment option and issue an additional 71.7 million shares, the total offering of common stock will reach $18.1 billion, and 87 million shares of statutory convertible subordinated preferred stock will be worth $4.35 billion. ***Raised approximately US$23.1 billion.

General Motors sold 9.03 million vehicles globally in 2011, an increase of 7.6% from 2010, surpassing Germany's Volkswagen's 8.15 million vehicles and Japan's Toyota Motor's 7.9 million vehicles, regaining the title of the world's largest automobile manufacturer business status. Among them, GM's sales in the North American market reached 2.9 million vehicles, an increase of 11.4%, sales in Europe increased by 4.4%, and sales in South America increased by 3.9% [7].

On November 22, 2012, GM Finance, a subsidiary of General Motors, agreed to purchase Ally’s European and South American automobile financing business for US$4.2 billion (approximately HK$32.7 billion).

Ally was originally GMAC, GM's auto financing arm, but GM sold its controlling interest in the business to private equity fund Cerberus in 2006. After the financial crisis in 2008, GMAC was provided with a US$17 billion bailout loan by the U.S. government, and changed its name to continue its auto financing business.

On September 24, 2013, General Motors will spend approximately US$3.2 billion to repurchase 120 million shares of preferred stock from the United Auto Workers (UAW) retiree health care trust fund VEBA. The share price is 27 yuan.