Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7085
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 3:47 pm Post subject: Asian autos top U.S. sales in May | |
| The three big U.S. automakers were outsold for the first time ever by their Asian rivals in May | |
Joined: 09 Feb 2008
Posts: 1292
Location: Brand Central
| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 9:27 pm Post subject: | |
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its sad really that its come to this.
have you noticed how many of the foreign manufacturers are now building cars in the US? BMW in SC, Mercedes in Alabama, etc, etc they keep building new plants in the non-union states, while the Big 3 are being strangled by their legacy overhead |
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Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7085
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 12:13 am Post subject: | |||
Yeah... I really feel for the big three. NOT!
As usual, your explanations, while toeing the usual corporate line, try to vastly oversimplify the situation. Yeah, let's just blame it all on the unions. 
And they couldn't have done the same thing? All those years they were building new plants or totally renovating old ones, THEY couldn't have moved into the right to work states? THEY couldn't have spent some of those millions or billions they forked over for Jaguar and Rover and on starting their own banks and insurance companies (all of which are in the toilet with them as we speak) on remodeling and streamlining their infrastructure here in THIS country? Oh hell no. If they were going to do something like that, they could make even MORE short term bucks for their shareholders by outsourcing everything they possibly could to third world countries instead, something they had been doing anyway, ever since NAFTA was approved and which is continuing apace to this day. They just never flipping got it. After the "crisis" of the mid 70s, what did they do? Instead of adopting to the new paradigm, they simply went right back to steering the entire industry to a business model based on high end (high profit) versions of the same type of 400 horsepower gas guzzling behemoths that had damned near brought them to their knees back. Except this time they based it not on a limited demand for specialty "muscle cars" and tacky "luxury" sedans but on massive SUVs and four door pickup trucks for the typical suburban soccer moms and their nuclear families, a much larger demographic. And don't give me that public demand crap. If the fact that over the last 10-15 years they've spent 80% pushing virtually nothing BUT those damned behemoths and even starting whole new lines of them (Did we really ever NEED the "Hummer"?) for divisions who'd never thought of building trucks before and opening plants to build them doesn't tell you who was CREATING the "demand", nothing ever will. If the public sees nothing BUT 30 foot land yachts (from Cadillac and Lincoln mostly instead of from the actual truck divisions) on TV, in print ads and in the front rows of the local car lots, then it's not hard to figure out what's going to happen in this land of sheeple. And if you're going to deny that and try to claim that advertising doesn't have that big an impact, then explain why American companies spend billions of bucks ON advertising every year? I've got six kids, all moms, and not once did I ever hear one of them talk about giving up their 30mpg minivans that hauled six kids wherever they had to go for a 15mpg Abrams tank sized 350-400 horsepower juggernaut that would haul those same six kids to the same places the minivan did. But how long had it been (up until about 2-4 weeks ago) since you saw an ad for a 30mpg minivan on digital cable? And then outsourcing most of the manufacture of these virtual tanks or at least their major components to other countries who still masses of cheap labor to exploit and STILL going into the toilet compared to the Asian companies who come here, built plants and even without the interference from unions, still manage to pay their employees a living wage? Can't blame that on the unions. (Is that what actually rankles there? The fact that those employees make an adequate living working for those ASIAN companies?) Oh yeah, let's all show how shallow we are by simply trotting out all the old anti-union/anti labor rhetoric and pop up the most simple minded excuse we can for why these bozos are in the crapper. Heaven forbid we admit that these giant global corporations simply $#@!ed up. Twice, even. Had they learned their lesson the FIRST time around BEFORE the Asian companies had already established themselves world wide, they would themselves have been as lean and mean and ready for the threat from overseas and this thread probably wouldn't be here. Hell, people were foreseeing this day pretty damned accurately back in the 80s, (even me, an avid fan of the muscle cars and one of the biggest Pontiac GTO fans you were ever likely to meet). It wasn't at all hard to project pretty much exactly what was going to happen once those oil producing companies started nationalizing their oil industries and setting their own prices. They were learning about price gouging from the people who INVENTED price gouging, the American oil companies, after all. So let's all stop for a moment of whining for these noble corporations who have done so much for the American economy over the past 15 years by, through outsourcing and investments to and in the third world countries, shrinking tha manufacturing portion of our GDP to something like 12% of the total while elevating that of the financial sector to 21% and allowing us to be surpassed for the first time since WWII in total GDP. It's all the damned unions fault. |
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Administrator
Joined: 30 Jun 2003
Posts: 1010
Location: over yonder
| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 1:51 am Post subject: | |||||||
What? No love for the free market anymore? 
Huh? What exactly is a "non-union state?"
No. They're being strangled by their inability to produce a compelling product in a competitive market. Regardless, profitability and the overall health and well-being of any company is the sole and exclusive responsibility of management. Employees, either individually or collectively, are little more than a convenient cover for poor decision making. |
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Joined: 04 May 2006
Posts: 238
Location: Your mom's house.
| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 3:54 am Post subject: | |||
Nah, it's not that sad and quite frankly it was inevitable. On the plus side, perhaps the Hummer will be able to regain some of it's lost dignity now that those plants are closing. |
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Joined: 09 Feb 2008
Posts: 1292
Location: Brand Central
| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 1:41 pm Post subject: | |
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actually, the Hummer is finally on the chopping block ... it could be extinct soon .... what a stupid vehicle... only thing fuglier is the damned Escalade...
The Big 3 can build plants in the 'right to work' states, but their contracts call for them to be union anyway... the foreign makers have avoided the unions because 1) they built in Southern, typically non-union states 2) they really can just shut the plant and go home if they want 3) they pay competitive wages and treat their employees right (yes, i said it - its a crazy concept, but one designed for success) and 4) to their credit, there is more esprit de corps between management and worker in those plants... the adversarial mentality is missing, thankfully. and no, i'm not blaming everything on the unions... as stated before, i grew up in a blue collar union household... and i am not hostile to unions, i just believe that most have outlived their original mission, and have failed to find a new one basically, all of what unions were originally formed to combat has been enacted into law, and their existence these days is a major source of continued high overhead for American manufacturers... in case you have not noticed, the more heavily unionized an industry, the more likely those jobs have left the country... its easier to go overseas than to deal with intransigent labor bosses also of note: the only growth in unions in the past few decades has been in 'public sector' or government workers. |
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Joined: 09 Feb 2008
Posts: 1292
Location: Brand Central
| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 2:02 pm Post subject: | |||
oh: neglected to address this:
that was definitely true for a while i noticed that all of Ford's marques and some GM nameplates amongst the 'better' cars in JD Powers' m ost recent initial satisfaction survey 
as to design: J Mays is doing a good job at Ford... whereas Chris Bangle bungled BMW, but seems to be finding a visual language that is speaking to people again... GM has really stepped up to the plate with some of the Caddys... too bad they never built the Sixteen... it was the Halo car that they truly needed 
the XLR has made a sexy statement however 
and the new Buicks have a nice look, and certain Chevys have it happening... Chrysler was the design leader for over a decade, but has lost its way... they need a fresh new approach so, yeah... the cars have to look good too. 
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Joined: 08 Jul 2003
Posts: 5001
| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 6:24 pm Post subject: the 1970s | |
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Yeap,never learned the lessons from the gas shortages of the 1970s and 1980s.
What part of UNrenewable fuel source does Detriot not understand? What part of NON versitile out dated factories does Detriot not get?-I can't believe the technology in the factories of Detriot won't allow them to retool to make cars rather than trucks.I've read reports where some think it would take 10 years Detriot to make their FACTORIES and PLANTs the way they should. How the heck did CAR factories/plants convert from car manufacturing to making tanks & planes during WWII with 60 year OLDER technology and yet the "modern" day factory cannot convert from trucks to cars. How hard can it be for a billion dollar a year corporation to ship the plans,molds and machinery to manufacture cars instead of trucks in a factory.It's a factory.I can see 6-12 month transition time to train the assemblers on cars and refit the factory to make cars. The lack of versatility appauls me.The mindset it ridiculous but the lack of a versatile manufacturing company in which they had over 30 years to become versatile disgusts me even more. Several good thread on the consumerist on this.Must admit I'm one of those conspiracy nuts who thinks big oil/money bought up the patents for high GAS milage engines that were still basically high horsepower V8s.. |
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Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7085
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 1:36 am Post subject: | |||
And convert BACK to making cars within months after contracts were canceled in time to bring out some 45 models before the end of the year and a full line of 46 models. Now they can't make the transition from massive trucks and SUVs back to automobiles in less that ten years? And people really BUY that line of crap? Yep, it's just GOTTA be those damned unions. I get the impression from some of the... "opinions"... I read here that some people actually believe that American workers should try to bear the American cost of living at Chinese wage levels in order to enhance shareholder return. Well, at least OTHER American workers. I don't hear too many saying that they would be happy to expect Chinese wages and no benefits be a sales associate at Sears. The ONLY difference between a skilled machinist being "worth" $25 an hour and the CEO of his company being "worth" 25 million a year is that that skilled worker doesn't have the POWER to set his own price and winds up being the scapegoat your 25 million dollar hinchos totally muck things up. Then it's time to trot out the same old lame, discredited, obsolete and phony excuses that they always trot out... it's the greedy unions and the greedy employees that cause all the problems. EXACTLY like Eddie Lampert does every quarter. You know, I never see anyone jump jump to HIS defense like this anymore. I wonder what makes them think he's any different than any other Wall Street leech. |
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Joined: 04 May 2006
Posts: 238
Location: Your mom's house.
| Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 1:47 am Post subject: | |||
That's exactly what I was saying. Since it is on the chopping block perhaps it will be able to recapture some of the appeal it had before they turned it into a suburban and then into a jeep. Almost sacrilegious. |
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Administrator
Joined: 30 Jun 2003
Posts: 1010
Location: over yonder
| Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 3:07 am Post subject: | |||||
Even easier than both is treating your employees fairly and equitably. And don't get me wrong; I'm not terribly keen on todays unions either. Yet they remain both a check and balance on short-sighted and ultimately stupid management.
The first one you've posted is kinda sexy in a early 80's Roco Vargas sorta way. The second is plain fugly. |
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Joined: 08 Jul 2003
Posts: 5001
| Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 3:52 am Post subject: darn unions | |
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yeap,they keep on comparing apples and oranges with US and 3rd world countries.If one of these overseas factory workers had to pay for things like health insurance,car insurance,house insurance,mortgage insurance-all that capitalist gobbldy gook then those very same workers would be in union asking for alot more.They compare wages but they don't compare standard of living or ones ACTUAL BILLs that need to be paid with those wages.
I too have always wondered about the excuses.I must say though I think the Japanese made the BIG entrance onto the US car market with literally perfect timing by selling a car designed for a smaller individuals-hence the smaller engines and higher gas milage-it wasn't marketing brillance it was timing and luck.But the big three in need of excuses blame the Japanese,the political and public perception follows then the big three keep blaming and start exploiting. And instead of retooling for 4 door sedans what do we get-soccer mom vans.What ever happend to a good old station wagon.Which slowly and steadlly escalates to the Escalades and Hummers along with escalating fuel prices and there is the kicker. Hellooo,history lesson-fuel shortages 1970s and 80s,Hellooo-high gas prices after naturual disasters like hurricanes in the gulf.Aaahhh,the car peddlers did the samething the housing people did-used easy credit and low financing to compensate for high prices.And sheeple fell for it hook line and sinker. And it must agree on the Hummer,do you want and need an off road vehilce or do you want Caddy interiors.Look what Chrysler did with the original JEEP-4 door JEEP with a hard cover and a truck bed.A JEEP should fit a Caddy. |
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