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The next shoe to drop: Ford and GM
- Thread starter Port1385
- Start date
Quote from IShopAtPublix:
In a crash situation I would rather be in an S-class mercedes than in either toyota honda lexus or acura. As to why the answer is simple: better steel and materials.
Your comment is off topic. A Hummer or a Garbage truck will offer better protection than an S class mercedes, so what.
lol GM and ford have zero impact on the US economy. Their weight on the S%P 500 is zero.
Quote from condorll:
I agree. Would be nice to see both GM and Ford taken over by competent management that know how to build cars.
It is not that Ford and GM and Chrysler don't know how to build good cars, it is that they cannot build them at a price comparable to Toyota.
For a long time people at GM believed that "there is no money in small cars" and that "fuel economy is for the poor". Both of those idiotic assumptions are fatal. In japan, Toyota Honda and Nissan had to contend with small and fuel efficient cars from the get go, so when the time of "muscle cars" in the USA passed and the world went with the virtues of fuel efficiency japanese automakers were uniquely positioned to compete.
Because of the assumptions made above, GM is simply incapable of producing a car of similar quality at a similar cost to Toyota(at lower and midsize levels). So when you can't compete on quality, you compete on price and you cut corners which creates quality problems and the end result is a death spiral of poor quality and the need to cut prices to get sales. There is very little loyalty to GM/FORD/CHRYSLER nowadays. It is usually fleet sales and or bargain shoppers.
P.S A lot is made about how the unions priced themselves out of the market and sunk GM. Not surprisingly this explanation comes from the republicans. There is ZERO fault of UNIONS for the current situation at GM.
GM used to be the largest company in the world with immense resources. That it did not use those resources to make their cars immensely better than competition but instead concentrated on selling as many cars as possible ("planned obsolescence", "brand cannibalization, etc) is a direct fault of GM management. There used to be a time when GM produced more cars in one day than Toyota in a year.
I put the reasons for the current fiasco in the following order:
1.Stupidity of the management 95%
2. Japan playing with its currency against the backdrop of USA duking it out with USSR for numer uno. 5%
The future of the US job market lies in the service sectors, government, self employment, and tech. Manufacturing and unions have been going downhill since 1982.