It's Time For The General To Go Bye-Bye

For most of the past 20 years, General Motors wouldn't cut the buying public a break, marketing a succession of crapola cars as the rest of the automotive world passed it by and its market share shrunk by leaps and bounds. But now that GM shows signs of a deathbed conversion with an improving product line and commitment to downsizing, it can't catch a break.

The reason is simple: GM's sales have plunged from 17 million a year to 9 million a year, and were down a vertiginous 53 percent in February alone.

Under the company's bailout plan, it needs to sell 11.5 million vehicles just to break even, but the likelihood of sales accelerating another million or three in the next year is extremely unlikely given the rate at which the economy continues to hemorrhage jobs and that GM still has far too much capacity and still not nearly enough good product.

With its own auditors dutifully reporting last week that GM is very close to flat lining and its stock trading at under $1.40, management's refusal to declare bankruptcy looks even more stupid and for all intents and purposes the automaker will have to be destroyed to be saved.

GM already has said it will shed Saturn, Saab and Hummer and fold Pontiac into its remaining product lines, but the most sensible recourse is to cut deeper still with the government backing the warranties that new-car buyers would be decidedly nervous about having honored if the company goes belly up.