GM’s grand plan to make money on small cars, by developing them jointly with Fiat SpA, was crashing.

As it became clear that GM’s planned Chevrolet Cobalts and Saturn Ions wouldn’t get made on a money-saving global design, Gary Altman, the models’ chief engineer, told the group they needed to find other ways to reduce costs, including a suggestion to pull parts from existing models, said a person who was at the meeting in the automaker’s suburban Detroit technical centre.

Those same Cobalts and Ions are among 1.6 million vehicles that GM recalled last month over an ignition-switch flaw the company says is behind 12 deaths. U.S. investigators and regulators want to know what went wrong, who knew about it and why the nation’s largest automaker took so long to mount a recall of models made a decade ago.

Altman’s message, while by no means a directive to build unsafe vehicles, reflected the environment at GM: The cars were the product of a culture of cutting costs and squeezing suppliers, as described by five people with knowledge of the automaker’s engineering, management and suppliers in the decade preceding its 2009 bankruptcy.

More: The Rot at General Motors: How Its ‘Counting Pennies’ Days Led to Cars With Faulty Ignition Switches

Eight companies—including General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, and Gap—did not answer the reporter’s repeated emails, phone calls, and social-media queries over the course of several weeks. Nine other companies—including Chrysler, McKinsey & Co., and Citigroup—responded only to say they would not comment. Eleven companies—including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Ford—claimed that they do not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, but they don’t provide health insurance to same-sex partners, either. Along the way, the reporter unearthed the Russian version of Coca- Cola’s statement issued last summer in response to Queer Nation’s protests against its sponsorship of the Sochi Olympics—it omitted all references to LGBT people and issues. (And yes, that means it made virtually no sense in Russian.) Only six of the 34 companies contacted said they provide health insurance to same-sex partners; these were Nike, Deutsche Bank, Dell, Boston Consulting Group, Disney, and Google.

More: Coca-Cola, Ford, IKEA: Pro-Gay in America, but Not in Russia.

Detroit’s boom-and-bust history was built on a dependence on big, fuel-thirsty vehicles. Now, with freshly stocked showrooms of new cars and more-efficient trucks, U.S. automakers are gaining ground on their Asian competitors with the best lineup in a generation.

“No matter what the economy does, no matter what fuel prices are, I’ve got a car for all seasons,” said Chuck Eddy, a Chrysler dealer in Youngstown, Ohio, who is seeing sales boom for Dodge Dart compact cars and Ram 1500 pickups. “I didn’t have that in ‘09.”

General Motors Co (GM), Ford Motor Co. (F) and Chrysler Group LLC — which all gained market share in the first quarter for the first time in 20 years — exceeded sales forecasts last month and led the industry to its best April since 2007.

Ford sales rose 18 percent and GM and Chrysler deliveries both increased 11 percent. That beat forecasts by analysts of a 17 percent rise for Ford and 10 percent for Detroit-based GM and Fiat SpA (F)-controlled Chrysler.

Sales successes came across the board for the U.S. automakers last month. Ford had a record April in Fusion family- car sales, which rose 24 percent and topped Nissan Motor Co. (7201)’s Altima. GM’s hot-selling new Cadillac ATS sports sedan drove a 34 percent increase in the surging luxury line’s sales. Chrysler’s redesigned Ram 1500 pickup jumped 49 percent.

More: American Auto Industry Has Best Performance in 20 Years - Bloomberg

The Chevrolet Corvette is 60 years old this week, and that’s a miracle. Many miracles, in fact.

The iconic American sports car has survived a troubled birth, quality problems and development delays. it has overcome threats from recessions and regulations. And it has outlasted waffling by Chevy parent General Motors over whether such a car should exist at all.

It appears, through all that, to have become younger than ever.

The all-new 2014 Chevrolet Corvette. Alan Vanderkaay

More: Corvette Celebrates 60th With Stunning Makeover

A1953 Chevrolet Corvette. The Corvette concept roadster was a big hit at the 1953 General Motors Motorama, so Chevrolet put the fiberglass-bodied two-seater into production. General Motors via AP

Chevy Volt Owners Take Flack for GM Flubs - Rick Newman (Usnews.com)

General Motors earned considerable enmity in 2009 when it declared bankruptcy and accepted a $51 billion bailout from the U.S. government. Some GM customers have since discovered that they’re in the crossfire as well.

A few owners of the Chevrolet Volt, GM’s innovative plug-in hybrid, report that they’ve been booed, heckled and vandalized, presumably because they own a car deemed offensive to fellow taxpayers. These tales of Volt rage were uncovered by the car-research site Edmunds, which runs several online forums where owners swap stories.

[SLIDESHOW: Twinkies Join Other Extinct Snacks]

A Michigan Volt owner, Dave Muse, told Edmunds that he drew boos when driving his Volt in a famed Detroit automotive parade — a town, of all places, that gained as much as any city from the auto bailouts. Another time, a stranger insulted his car in a parking lot, then slammed the door shut while Muse was trying to get out. Muse also says his plug-in generates occasional family arguments.

Scott Leapman, a Volt owner in Florida, once stopped at an intersection next to a pickup truck whose driver rolled down his window and asked, “How do you like my car?” When Leapman asked what he meant, the driver answered, “My taxes paid for it!” then sped off.

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usatoday.com

- Mitt Romney’s meandering statements and plain falsehoods about the auto industry finally caught up to him earlier this week when he told a big whopper that cannot be squared with the truth during a speech in Defiance, Ohio. He said that Jeep, the American icon and great Toledo institution, “is thinking of moving all production to China.”

Everyone paying attention to the election called him on it. Chrysler Group LLC has set the record straight, stating it has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America.

Defiance is an Ohio auto town whose most important employer is the General Motors (GM) plant that was saved by President Barack Obama. Voters there recognize that Romney’s claim is just plain foolish, because Jeep is expanding, not contracting — it’s been all over the Ohio press for a year.

Auto Industry Touted by Obama Still Rubs Some Industry Retirees the Wrong Way

This story is one of the most read on Fox News right now:

It was the nightmare scenario for Delphi retirees. The monthly payments that were to be their financial bedrock through retirement years were slashed. The cuts were staggering, ranged from 30 to 70 percent.

After 39 years on the job, Rose’s pension was clipped 40 percent.

You might be thinking: What? Since when does Fox News care about people’s pensions? Pensions are too damn expensive and the evil unions need to stop holding the job creators hostage. Well, I guess Fox news cares when they are non-Union workers.

The upshot of the article is that Union pensions were given a priority in the deal between GM and the gov’t. Fox News implies it is unfair that Union workers got a deal that was not available to non-Union workers.

Well guess what, Fox News? Businesses don’t make decisions based on the best interests of their workers. That’s why Unions are essential.

GM Discounts Electric Chevrolet Volt Up to $10,000

General Motors is offering big discounts to boost sales of the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in extended-range electric car that struggled to attract buyers until its price began dropping early this year.

Discounts run as high as $10,000 per Volt, according to figures from truecar.com, an auto pricing website. They include low-interest financing and subsidized leases. Leases have run as cheap as $250 a month

Sales of the $39,995 car have quadrupled this year, and set a monthly record in August. They show that Americans, who have been slow to embrace electric cars, are willing to buy them if prices are low enough.

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blogs.ft.com

Brazilian carmakers were happy to take the handouts when the government offered them. Now they are realizing they may have made a bargain with the devil.

After car sales plummetted earlier this year, the government granted tax breaks to the industry, which is dominated by the big four - Fiat, Volkswagen, General Motors and Ford. The measure slashed the retail price of cars and helped manufacturers clear a build-up of inventories that was burning a hole in their balance sheets.

Now many manufacturers would like to go a step further and begin rationalizing some of their operations, such as through cutting jobs or production lines for obsolete models. Uh uh! Not so fast. If automakers thought the tax break was for free, they were drastically mistaken. In recent weeks, everyone from President Dilma Rousseff down has made it clear to the big four that there will be no redundancies, please.

The latest to do so was Finance Minister Guido Mantega, who echoed Rousseff on Monday when he said he was happy to see General Motors resolving a dispute with its union over potential layoffs that ended in a decision to delay the proposal.

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