I think all of us on Wall Street were misled not only by the company’s first quarter guidance, but also by fact back in the fourth quarter, their North American margins were disappointing and terrible....

Considering all the headwinds you had to deal with in the early part of the year, I think it turned out rather well.

October was even better than I expected. Cars are cheaper, GM is back from the strike, and despite what’s happening in the stock market, consumer confidence levels are high.

I would say that’s the best-ever result we’ve had,

These are things they’ve got to do, but there’s a lot more. They’ve got too many models, too many people and too many plants for the amount of business they’re doing now.

It makes the transaction simpler.

It’s more trouble for the suppliers. Partly, it’s a reflection of the fact that Ford and GM are shrinking to reckon with lower market share. And so there’s less business to go around for the...

I think GM’s numbers will be close to 9.1 million to 9.2 million vehicles in 2006 thanks to its strength in the Asia-Pacific market. It’s likely that Toyota will pass GM in volume worldwide, but...

It’s a major step forward but it’s certainly no where near all what they have to accomplish to turn North America around.

Ford is in the intolerable position of having too many plants and too many people, … Cost cutting needs to come before the end of the year — layoffs, plant closings, that sort of ugly...

I think that the sales drop is temporary. Explorer buyers, or some of the buyers, may be buying Ford’s new small Escape SUVs or waiting until the new Explorer itself comes out after the first...

They made history for themselves. We had strength in depth in the Eighties, top-flight players on the bench. Now, we only have four Premiership players in the squad, and two are goalkeepers.

The bearishness is overdone. This is probably the part of the cycle where you’d do well owning auto stocks if you have some patience.

My thought is that this will not be a major stock market or earnings event. As recalls go, it’s a lot of vehicles, but companies always make a provision for this sort of thing.

They’ve decided it’s a non-core business.

I think the companies are coming out of it with a contract they can live with, but not with any major reductions in their employment costs.

That’s the 900-pound gorilla. That could cause enormous swings.

On paper, it could make GM more efficient, but what may work in terms of an engine may not work in terms of styling.

It’s not necessary for a wave of consolidation in the worldwide auto industry,

The question is, does it make sense to pour more money into a new Chevy Cavalier to reduce losses from $3,000 per vehicle to $1,000. It’s probably a necessary competitive move.

Asian makers particularly are exploiting Detroit’s 2,000 dollar per-vehicle cost-of-production disadvantage (which largely stems from the US manufacturers’ enormous legacy costs) to offer stylistically and technologically more advanced vehicles.

The business does not deserve a huge premium. It’s a cyclical business, earnings are erratic.

GM has to solve its problems (in the United States) before it can be profitable again. China is not going to bail out the company.

I don’t think they could have been locked in a room 24/7 over the past week and come up with this retirement agreement without coming closer to an understanding on the Delphi wage situation.

The impression so far is that GM’s portfolio is a little more impressive than the others,

The MHRA is funded 100% by the industry,

I suspect that Wagoner is under a lot of pressure from the board to turn things around. To me it seems the company is in crisis mode.

With GM, I think overall you’ll be looking at a 9 percent increase in October this year versus October last year in GM’s light truck sales, and I think that their SUV sales will show...

It’s still a very profitable segment. That’s why everyone is getting into it. But you will definitely see more incentives.

GM had an unusually weak November a year ago. It made a big push in December last year, a big push in the summer, and November was kind of a lull.

In the light of the fact that GM burned through $7bn in cash last year, it was clear additional urgent action was required.

They’re starting to act like a company that burned through $7 billion in cash last year.

They were pretty much as expected in North America. Where they made gains was in better operating margins in Europe. Given that the market-share numbers in Europe are available and pretty unimpressive, it must be...

The full cost savings won’t be realized until 2008.

Detroit will slap on big incentives, and we’ll be back to normal.

I don’t think Wall Street had fully realized the dependence of GM’s and Ford’s North American earnings on a few light-truck models. That was the nasty surprise that drove their shares down.

Probably half the job is cost-cutting. The new model lineup is the other part of it.

You have to admire them. Even with $4,000 in incentives, they’re still making money…You compare that with how GM and Ford are doing in North America, and you have to give them a medal.

One of the necessities of the restructuring program is to downsize. GM has too many plants, too many people, and too many models.

Sales of gas-inefficient large SUVs are in a state of near-collapse this month, … It seems likely that the shift in the sales mix away from large SUVs will persist and continue to damage Detroit’s...

I don’t want to say anything.

I think Chrysler lost a lot of market share, which has not been the case for Mercedes.

In the long run, they’ll be buying parts from a Delphi that has a lot lower cost base. Several years out, there’s a good chance they can buy parts cheaper from Delphi because Delphi, in...

I think the overhang of this war is affecting car sales, but it’s hard to prove and hard to quantify. It won’t necessarily be $500 (more) a car, but it could be $200 to $300.

I think they’re doing half of the job extremely well; that half is capacity and costs. That half of the job that’s hard to tell is the new models.

The accounting charges seem to be mostly timing — instead of earning in one period they have to state them in another period.

The specialist will then have another look at the ankle to see if the injection has been of any help,

What GM is talking about in my book are not hybrids. These are trucks with humongous starter motors.

Despite concerns that the current sales weakness represents a new recession in vehicle sales, we believe that the explanation continues to be payback for last summer’s excesses,

It’s one of the reasons why GM will lose less money in 2006.