I provided a cite. Where is yours?
An evidence for this? As far as I’ve seen, the idea of a bailout has been wildly unpopular.
A.E. Sloan must be rolling in his grave! I guess GM is in a bigger hole tha i thought-now that GMAC is gone, they have no profitable divisions. So why are the directors paying Waggoner that $3.5 million salary?
Oh, i get it, they will make it up on volume!
I used the same link, I just pulled the 3rd and 4th quarter reports from the column on the left and added the first 9 months with the last 3 months for the income from automotive operations section.
But you don’t even need to do that, now that I think about it, because the reason GM took such a gigantic loss in 2007 was well publicized. That reason being that they finally had to write off unused income tax credits that had padded their income statements for the previous x years. So take that 23 billion in losses, spread it over a half a dozen years, and you’ve got negative income for that whole time.
Unfortunately, facts listed in your post above makes the possibility of recovery even more unlikely. Why? Despite what they have going for them, they still can’t shake a certain image.
In reality…Nothing Japanese compares to a Corvette, and when Americans wanted the best pickups trucks, service vans and SUVs, no one could touch American products. Nothing touches a Mustang for balance of sport/power/affordability. Malibus, the Focus and the Fusion are darn fine cars. GM is importing their Opel product for Saturn that is spot on good. You can drive GM vehicles 150 - 200k miles, just like a Japanese car, and although the Germans make some of the most unreliable vehicles, no one would ever know. Many products don’t even serve Americans well, but the press has been kissing their ass since forever, so the drones run off to buy BMWs.
The U.S. auto industry is fighting all the UAW issues, but there is ALWAYS a mega-compounding factor that takes down an industry, and that mega-compounding factor is more powerful than even advertising, and that is relentless, non-fact-based propaganda permeating TV shows and movies, and spills over into news and mags: U.S. companies are bad/evil, and U.S. cars are big, unefficient and unreliable.
How does an industry take down the greatest propaganda machine (Hollywood, TV entertainment, U.S publications, etc) in human history? It doesn’t…not overnight for sure, and maybe never.
The big 3 aren’t selling enough cars to support their employee base. I think people get that.
I think there would be a lot more support for either a bailout or guaranteed loans after a restructuring. The government would also have to guarantee warranty service. But until the management fall on their swords, there is not going to be a lot of support for any bailout.
BTW the Times yesterday reported that Chinese automakers are asking for a bailout also, and that imports are piling up on the docks at Long Beach as the ships come in and the dealers back out of their orders. It is bad all over, but the big 3’s problem is that they got themselves in bad shape when times were relatively good, so of course they’re screwed when time are bad. That’s the fault of management.
You can add Congress to that list of propaganda sources.
Detriot can whine about the perception gap, but together they still outsell all the other automakers in North America combined. That’s a very large number of cars to be selling. If they could, you know, make a profit on every one of those, they’d be rolling in gravy. Frankly, when you’re selling that many cars, I don’t see how you can complain that people aren’t buying ENOUGH of your cars because of any reason. What are they saying, that their economies of scale only kick in when they have 70% of the US market share instead of the 55% they have now? Rubbish.
Detriot accepted the fact that in order to comply with CAFE and keep their union labor working (instead of sitting around getting paid for not working), they’d crank out small cars and sell them at a loss and make money on their large cars and trucks. This is not a viable business strategy anymore. VW still takes a loss on some cars, but all the other imports routinely make a profit on every vehicle sale. As their retired workforce aged and health care costs went up, the Big 3 found themselves losing more money on small cars than they could take in with the large cars and trucks. And when the gas prices shot up, that just made the problem 10 times worse, because they had to keep cranking out their profit losers while their profit earners sat on the lots.
I must be living on another planet. Detroit didn’t get its reputation from the “propaganda machine”, it got it from producing a lot of crap cars. That goes back to the 1950s and continued for many decades. Many of us, and the people we know, got burnt by purchasing a badly designed and built Detroit POS. Today, Detroit still has to deal with all of the bad karma generated in the past. Ford screwed my father so badly when he bought his first car that he refused to buy another American car for 30 years. My experience wasn’t nearly as bad, but I resent the hell out of people who think I have an obligation to buy a mediocre and overpriced car from Detroit or I’m not a patriotic American. I’d prefer to buy an American product. Offer me something that is truly competitive with the products of other car companies.
I seriously hope they don’t get bailed out. I really really do.
Why is that? Is it because it’s expensive? Not really, compared to the 700 billion bailout. Do I not believe that i’d cause a lot of economic damage? Oh I do, although not to the extent they’d have us believe.
Really I think that the big three deserve to die. They’ve been surviving on guilting people into buying American, and government kickbacks for years now so it’s time to cut them loose. They’ve resisted change that would have been in their best interest for years now and look where it got them? Now the come to Washington, hat in hand, promising to do better next time. Why can’t they make a decent small car that will go for 100k miles with minimal maintenance like EVERY Japanese car?
As far as anti-Detroit propaganda? You’ve got to be kidding me. Tell me why Ford couldn’t make a car that didn’t have slack in the steering wheel until a few years ago. Tell me why a small car made by Chrysler (PT Cruiser) has such horrible suspension that it is stiff when going slow and soft when going fast? Why can’t they stick with a consistent look or style without trying to be some sort of radical cool look?
Maybe my perceptions are a bit dated, but they’re not THAT dated. And right when they had the chance to make some real efforts at fuel efficiency, they were doing the exact opposite (early 2000’s) by making ridiculous SUVs.
The big three have been in a horrible place for years now. I say let them go bankrupt and let someone else pick up the pieces. Someone will buy the parts that are worth anything and sell the rest. The whole culture is suspect. They need to close up shop and relocate and fire all their employees before I give them a dime of my money.
My family’s cars…
Old Datsun (Nissan) - Totaled by a red light runner at 100,000+ miles.
1985 Sentra (Nissan) - Replaced at 160,000 miles
1992 Quest (Nissan) - Replaced at 130,000 with $2,300 cooling system problem.
1998 TL2.5 (Acura) - Replaced at 130,000 with no major repairs needed.
1991 Taurus (Ford) - Engine needed rebuilt at 70,000 miles. Paint job completely shot by 80,000. In for electrical repairs at least 3 times at $200-$800 a shot. $2,500 repair job to the rack-and-pinion. Alternator failed at 80,000, was probably dying again when we got rid of it.
Not surprisingly, our two current cars are a 2005 Toyota Camry, and a 2007 Honda Pilot.
Anecdotal evidence is cute.
When all those cuties start buying foreign they turn ugly.
I have a SAAB. It has a Ford engine. Nine years old. Never a hitch. The car has been all over Europe, from Spain in the south, Greece in the East to France, Britain and Faroe Islands in the north. Two months ago I drove it to Spain. 170-200 km/h for 20+ hours straight. Didn’t even complain. As far as I’m concerned that Ford engine has been stellar quality.
My question: since the auto stocks have been beaten down, why doesn’t the UAW pension fund BUY the companies? Then they could fire the management, and build cars that people would buy?
Think about it-Marx’s dream come true (the workers OWN the means of production). C’mon-you guys in labor-pony up!
Yes, God forbid someone base a judgement on his own personal experience :rolleyes:
The plural of anecdote is not data, but data is comprised of information about personal experiences given to someone to aggregate it. While the average American might not have the best sample size about what kind of cars are reliable or not, I guarantee you that the public perception is probably pretty accurate. I’ll buy a Ford in ten years from now if they have a solid reliability record from now until then.
Oh and Rune, I don’t know about the engines, but as far as I can tell Fords in Europe and Fords in the US are totally different beasts. American fords seem to be a lot shittier than European Fords.
But one quick question. Wouldn’t bankruptcy allow the big three to get out of their UAW contracts?
I remember the 1970s, when “the most trusted man in America” fed Americans a steady diet of stories about “overpaid, lazy, spoiled Americans vs. oh-so-wonderful Asians”. That bastard can’t die and go to Hell soon enough to please me!
This inferiority complex extends to Asian goods assembled in American plants.
I’ve heard people say things like, “I love my Accord, but it’s from Ohio and I bet the real ones from Japan are better.” and " I wish I could get a real Camry. Not the ones from Kentucky they’ve got to sell to be politically correct."
The constant bitching about the big 3 making huge gas guzzlers misses the point. They made a fortune making them. The profit per vehicle was spectacular . The problem is they did not use the profits to plan on a future for small cars and expensive gas. When they showed huge profits ,they got huge bonuses. To take the profits and spend them on plants to build the cars of the future would have cost the execs millions of dollars. They thought of themselves and short term profits. They were just capitalists.
That’s not completely irrational. I remember when VW opened a plant in Pennsylvania. The “made in America” version of the Rabbit was definitely inferior to the German version. I was told that the engineers had been told to modify the car to be more in line with the tastes of the American market.
Yep. My Wife’s 2002 Jeep consistently cost $1000 every time it got service. I have service receipts in a folder that is an inch thick.
“Sorry, not covered under warrantee, it’s a Grand for a Grand :D”. That’s what the service advisor told us. Heh. Very funny.
The Nissans I’ve owned? Nothing. No problems but regular maintenance. I took my Pathfinder in at 35,000 miles to have it checked out. Got a diagnostics on it and check the brakes.
Nothing wrong with it. No charge. “Thank you for your business”
We’ll never buy another Jeep.