Instead of duplicating engineering work from one country to the next, GM's worldwide units now share basic components and work together to design vehicles that with a few tweaks can be sold anywhere in the world.
After modeling GM against Ford on a 11.5 million car year, followed by 12.5 million and eventually 16 million units, GM's market valuation comes in a touch cheaper than Ford but that assumes they hold market share which is not a given.
My assumptions are auto sales next year run around 13 million units and that GM holds market share.
The number of impressions generated by premium ad units of the sort GM unsuccessfully petitioned Facebook for increased from 37% to 70% last year, depending on the exact format.
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General Motors (GM) sold 2.55 million units in Dec. 2011 and the numbers for Dec. 2012 will be proportionally higher.
Last week, GM announced that it sold 183, 392 units domestically in October, a 13% increase from the same month in 2009.
Sales of the GM subcompact rose to more than 7, 000 units in September, up more than 400 percent over a year earlier when the car was just rolling out to Chevy dealers in significant volumes.
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Other deals going ahead include General Motors' purchase of Korean auto maker Daewoo in which GM would acquire all 30 of Daewoo's overseas units.
While GM and Toyota expect sales to be relatively flat this year, at 17 million units (including medium and heavy duty trucks), Ghosn is worried that economic headwinds will lead to a substantial slowdown.
But Cadillac sales so far this year, through July, were down by nearly 13 percent, to just more than 76, 000 units, compared with a year ago, the worst relative performance of any GM division so far in 2012.
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GM's auto sales, which include Chevrolet, Buick and Cadillac, increased to 172, 969 units.
Industry sales are expected to be about 16 million units this year, the lowest in a decade, requiring more belt-tightening beyond what GM had planned when it unveiled a multi-year turnaround plan in 2005.
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