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Automotive News & Views Do You Favor A Government Loan To The Detroit 3?
3958 messages, Last post on Oct 02, 2009 at 4:52 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: tlong (Dec 06, 2008 12:37 pm) Wagoner seems to have been slow on the button, but in all fairness he inherited a lot of this mess. I think they are grooming this guy Fritz Henderson? they brought back from Europe to allow Wagoner a graceful exit in the near future after he wraps up the govt money. |
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Replying to: steve_ (Dec 06, 2008 12:48 pm) |
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Replying to: jimbres (Dec 05, 2008 8:05 pm) Call me cynical - I probably am - but what you see as "the right thing", I view as a calculated attempt to buy labor peace & then stick us, the consumers, with the bill. Rather than stand up to the UAW, Big 3 management took the path of least resistance: give the union what it wanted & then build the settlement cost into the price of new cars. Both management & labor pegged the rest of us as a bunch of passive suckers who would meekly pay whatever they decided to charge us. After all, what choice did we have? What were we going to do about it - buy imports? Much to their surprise - and eventual chagrin - that's exactly what we did. They - big 3 management & labor - badly miscalculated, & now they're running to the government for help. They couldn't win us over in the showrooms, so now they're asking the government to hold us down while they pick our pockets. It's too bad that management didn't do the right thing for customers & shareholders 30 or 40 years ago by walking away from the negotiating table & telling labor, "Go ahead & strike. We'll wait you out." Customers, shareholders & employees would all be better off today if management had shown some courage. I'm angry at the UAW, but I'm far angrier with management. In my view the UAW did what it was supposed to do in our Capitalistic system, i.e. fight tooth and nail for every single dollar in wages and benefits that it could get Management to agree to pay. Detachedly this is what they were supposed to do. As you correctly note it's mostly past management's fault for not being stronger in telling the UAW to 'Go Screw'. "We will put you on the streets and decertify you if you even begin to think the word 'STRIKE'." Managements past didn't act like good Capitalists in fighting tooth and nail on behalf of the stockholders. They though that they were doing the right thing by keeping the peace and keeping the profits flowing from continued production of trucks and SUVs but they lacked the foresight that 2008 might arrive some day. Mulally confirmed yesterday exactly what you said. He said that the D3 since the middle of the last century were of the opinion that 'If we build it they will buy it'. This credo permeated everything they did from crappy cars to bad service to over production to not having a view of the risks in the futre ( Prius, unbelievable fuel prices, death of SUVs ). That's why the three of them were there in front of Congress begging forgiveness for their sins....and for a little bite to eat and a warm cot to sleep on. In a
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Replying to: berri (Dec 05, 2008 5:15 pm) This is mostly inaccurate and I'll explain why with a simple example. I was a direct supplier to the D3 for a long time. Every GM truck, every Chrysler auto, all Jeeps and all Mustangs and Crown Vics used our steel. Major supplier... So here is the example which disproves your fears... Goodyear. As a major corporation and OEM supplier Goodyear supplies every vehicle maker. They supply the most to GM likely simply because GM is the biggest, then Ford, then Toyota, etc, etc, etc. Say GM goes belly up and 2.5 million units of production are taken out of the supply side. Goodyear loses its GM business..that's bad. But hey what's this? Ford's and Toyota's and Nissan's orders are suddenly surging and now Goodyear has to change the destination of their shipments from say Lansing to San Antonio or Dearborn. What they lost at GM they find that they have gained at Ford and Toyota. Why? Because the buyers of those GM vehicles didn't suddenly ascend into heaven. They are still here in the US buying vehicles. Only now they are buying Fords and Toyotas and Nissans and Hondas and maybe but not likely Chryslers. Nothing changed at the Goodyear level. Another fear mongering balloon is shredded and falls to earth with a THUDDD. |
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Replying to: berri (Dec 06, 2008 1:43 pm) Wagoner is an inbred idiot. He may have inherited a mess. He did not change the direction. He continued to make the same mistakes of his inbred predecessors. He had so many opportunities to bust those UAW stranglehold contracts, and for the sake of keeping the constant flow of money into his pocket, he signed on the line. Anyone could see it was not going to be self sustaining much longer. He lost about 20% of the US market share during his 14 year tenure. His multi billion dollar losses are too many to list here. Think FIAT or as we said when we were kids Found In A Toilet. That is where Wagoner has put GM In the TOILET.
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Replying to: kdhspyder (Dec 06, 2008 3:40 pm) I can't see it any other way. GM's losses are Ford, Toyota and Honda's gains. Michigan's losses are Alabama's gain. Been that way forever. Survival of the fittest. Any other way and you weaken the country.
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Replying to: berri (Dec 06, 2008 1:43 pm) Totally disagree. He's been in charge in North America for fourteen years. Just how long do you think he should be given? |
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Replying to: gagrice (Dec 06, 2008 4:11 pm) And that's why GM should be allowed to fail. Ford is making much better moves and the market should reward them for that. If the US props up GM then Ford has beaten their competition but their competitor is artificially allowed to survive. Ford deserves the reward for better performance. |
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for the bailout: to save the economy, somewhat to have american technology to improve the neighborhood to offer engineering advancement in america to keep middle class households to maintain support for 650,000 retirees to keep a million people off the unemployment rolls against the bailout: 1. Japan has slight edge in percieved quality. Only the strongest should be allowed to survive 2. some of our American money might not be harvested and sent to japan 3. we can keep on arguing instead of moving on to the 28 bigger problems facing the US economy 4. what's in it for me? 5. my Honda runs great so nobody should ever need another car company 6. I want my neighbor who works for the Big3 to go into foreclosure so my house value can drop |
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You can google for the entire article. When you take a look at many American cars today, these aren't bad products. They're just not as good as Audi, Volkswagen, Mercedes or Lexus—the list goes on and on. When you see some of the stuff that Pontiac in particular has been doing for the last 20 years—it's insulting. And the interiors especially are insulting.... I don't understand it. We can build the greatest fighter planes on the planet. It's not like technology is the problem. There is no reason why there should be this kind of separation between Europe, Japan and us. Everyone wants to make the product issue about price. But I had a MINI Cooper S for a couple years. That car was sturdy and it looked good. It was smart, it was fast and it was fun. And that's a relatively inexpensive car... If it's a coin toss between buying American or buying foreign, we'll buy American every time. If it just comes down to the exact same product at the exact same price, we'll buy an American car because we're patriotic. We'll do the right thing, but not if it costs more and not if it's a subpar product. What the American Big Three have forced us to do is start being unpatriotic, so we ended up buying cars from other manufacturers. Remember Audi's problems? Audi was a joke 10 years ago. ...And Audi picked themselves up from the ashes. How? Started making good cars. Well, I think that's your answer. |
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