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N0KFQ > TODAY 18.01.15 17:01l 54 Lines 2596 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Jan 18
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Sent: 150118/1555Z 45088@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.62
Jan 18, 2009:
GM auctions off historic cars
January 18, 2009, marks the final day of a weeklong auction in
which auto giant General Motors (GM) sells off historic cars from
its Heritage Collection. GM sold around 200 vehicles at the
Scottsdale, Arizona, auction, including a 1996 Buick Blackhawk
concept car for $522,500, a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro ZL-1 COPO Coupe
for $319,000 and a 1959 Chevrolet Corvette convertible for
$220,000. Other items included a 1998 Cadillac Brougham, which
was built for the pope. (That vehicle was blessed by the pope but
never used because of safety issues; it sold for more than
$57,000.) Most were preproduction, development, concept or
prototype cars.
The vehicles came from GM's Heritage Center, an 81,000 square
foot facility in Sterling, Michigan, that houses hundreds of cars
and trucks from GM's past, along with documents chronicling the
company's history and other artifacts and "automobilia." Rumors
spread that the financially troubled GM was selling off its
entire fleet of historic vehicles, but that was not the case. As
The New York Times reported shortly after the January auction:
"Much has been made of the timing of the sale coinciding with
G.M.'s current situation, but G.M. is simply doing the same thing
that many large-scale collectors and museums regularly do in
culling certain pieces from their collections. This was hardly a
wholesale dumping of G.M.'s heritage."
Nevertheless, at the time of the January 2009 auto auction, GM
was facing enormous financial difficulties. In June of that same
year, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. At
the time, the automaker reported liabilities of $172.8 billion
and assets of $82.3 billion, making it the fourth-biggest U.S.
bankruptcy in history. Bankruptcy was a move once considered
unthinkable for GM, which was founded in 1908 and became a giant
of the U.S. economy in the 20th century. GM pursued a strategy of
selling a vehicle "for every purse and purpose," in the words of
Alfred Sloan, who became president of the company in 1923 and
resigned as chairman in 1956. By its peak in 1962, GM produced 51
percent of all the cars in the U.S. However, by the late 1960s,
GM had begun a slow, decades-long decline that critics charged
was due, in part, to the company's failure to innovate quickly
enough. In 2008, GM was surpassed by Japan-based Toyota as the
world's top-selling maker of cars and trucks, a title the
American automaker had held since the early 1930s.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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