General Motors has reported a three month net loss of $15.5bn (£7.8bn) as North American sales fell by 20%.
GM took a $3.3bn charge for buying out the contracts of 19,000 hourly workers who left at the end of June.
It also wrote off $1.3bn because of reduced values of big, used cars, which cut the value of formerly leased cars owned by its financing unit, GMAC.
Without one-off charges, GM lost $6.3bn compared with a net profit of $891m in the same period of 2007.
t is the third biggest quarterly loss in the carmaker's history.
GM shares fell 4.7% in early trading.
On 15 July, GM announced the latest stage of its restructuring plans, which include laying off thousands of workers, speeding up the closure of truck and sports utility vehicle (SUV) plants, selling assets and suspending its dividend.
On Friday, the carmaker said it might offer another round of buyout and early retirement offers to its 74,000 workers in the US.
About a quarter of its US hourly workforce took the offers in the last round, which ended on 1 July.
The staff cuts are needed because GM is cutting production as a result of falling sales of vehicles, especially SUVs and trucks.
GM is not the only company suffering from the state of the car market.
