Will Ford And GM Be Forced To Sell?

A former Ford-employed friend of mine was talking to me last night about how Jag is hemorraging cash and should be sold off. Probably Aston along with it. Just his 0.02.

 

I think AM is a cash cow, it would be dumb to sell it

Range Rover is probably a cash cow too

Corvette is the best thing GM has now

New Caddies are cool too though

 

I hope they sell AM to BMW.

 

I would want BMW to build Range Rovers again. I'm not a huge fan of the new ones. The 2003s were perfect imo.

 

He said LR/RR makes good money for Ford. Volvo is stable. Ford brand is a net loss. Mercury has really low operating costs, apparently, and does ok considering most of the development is by Ford's line.

He wasn't sure about AM right now (I wouldn't think it's making $), but is a halo line it would be tough to be rid of.

As for the article, it makes good points about China and the world market, but I think the comment that GM and Ford's bankruptcy would bankrupt America are a bit sweeping and fearful. It will hurt badly, no doubt, but a controlled restructuring bankruptcy probably would not destabilize all of America.

 

WTF!

 

Good link to the article, thanks. Definatly was not aware that Bush borrowed more money than every single president combined. That just seems very alarming. As part of the younger generation, I do not look very forward to the future :-\.

 

Ford is doing poorly in the US, but it is doing OK elsewhere. They should keep their luxury car holdings provided they don't debase the brands with crap like a badge engineered Mondeo for Christ's sakes.

I can see them pulling out of the tailspin in the long term, even if really odd products like the 500 and the Freestyle make me think otherwise.

And we have GM, which I think is in very, very deep ****. Aside from their Corvette, trucks and SuV's and Cadillac, what do they have? You can take all of Pontiac's offerings and flush the lot of them and no one would care, the same goes for all of Chevrolet cars, 99% of Buick's crap, everything in Saturn's line and the stupidity that is now SAAB should be written off completely considering how badly they have pooched it.

One could dispose of 50 cars out of GM's lineup and wind up with 35 viable products at best.

 

No, they won't... They are the two biggest American auto makers, and if the start going, though it will be done discretely, the government will step in, and help out... GM seems to be slowly turning around over the past few months, but it may be too little too late. They did outsell Ford in 2005.

 

no

but you thought that was bad what Ford said give when GM goes with what they have to say its gonna stink reallllllllllllllllllllllllly bad.

here is my theory about this

1) Toyota will make a bid to buy a controling share in GM, reason I say this look at the last time Kirk Kikorian did a buy in of a car company ????
MBZ too DCX.

now using an out of the box concept of thought for the case of "FORD"

you will either have VW make a bid for a stake in Ford or even BMW
but ford operations are doing well in other countrys.

so it will be intresting what happens with in the next 24 months.

 

never gonna happen. unless ????


I was at BMW when they bought Rover group an the birtish name plates.

 

When Chrysler went bankrupt the government stepped in and saved the day by guaranteeing bank loans. The US govt did the same thing with the airlines and with the steel companies. I suspect that the US government will guarantee bank loans for the car companies again.

Ford is already cutting back several models in America in order to reduce cost. One of the cars they're dropping is the GT. I figured that car would be a loser from the git go because of the price. The problems they had with the front end didn't help their cause much either. They're also dropping some of the SUV's.

GM is dropping prices on all of their vehicles. That alone indicates that they were asking too much money for their cars from the beginning. I suspect that they will drop some of their models too.

Perhaps the elasticity of car prices is getting more narrow than either company realizes. For the last couple of decades the prices of cars has been crazy high. New pickups cost more than some houses in parts of the country.

Now people in America are running out of money to buy expensive cars and trucks. I'd have a tough time justifying buying a new car at the moment and I don't have any other bills other than utilities. That is to say, I don't have any car payments, credit card bills, or other personal loans. I plan to make it stay that way too. Most American consumers are in debt up to their eyeballs. At some point they will not be able to pay their bills, and that will put the banks in a bad position.

The bottom line is that if GM and Ford fall out of the market place, then the whole world will also fall into a monetary decline, but between America and China, America will hit the wall first. China does not hold life in the same high regard that America does, so they'll grin and bear it until we fall, and then they'll continue to flood the market with cheap goods and American Companies will still be trying to figure out how to pay retirement and health care cost. Our manufacturing has been declining for several decades. American labor has been converting to service jobs because American Corporations have been outsourcing labor for decades for higher profits. The only exception to this is Toyota and Nissan moving their factories to America because of the high cost of labor in Japan and the tax breaks they get in America. Those two items plus the tariff differences will further cause the American economy to decline.

This is my opinion. The future will show us what's really going to happen.

Bob Wassam

 

I choose to defer,The new Range is gorgeous,
my 2 cents..

 

That's a pretty bold statement, you got anything to back that up?

 

You obviously did not listen to your President last week when he specifically said his administration will not help the automakers and that he believes in "market forces".

 

I read another article where an AM exec said they expected to make a profit in 05. They are obviously very expensive cars & luxury cars have the biggest profits for manufacturers

if Ford would make Shaguar do an E type similair in flavor to BMWs Z8 they would sell a ton of them

 

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_feature_item.php?fes_art_id=26984

$34 an hour? No wonder my Econ Professor really hate UAW.

 

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_feature_item.php?fes_art_id=26984

$34 an hour? No wonder my Economics Professor really hate UAW.
We had a comparison of US and Japan auto workers, their homes (cramped apt vs house with backyard), working hours, holiday destination (corporate resort for the Japanese), salary against living cost, etc. The US workers are living in Heaven compared to the Japanese.
Now if we compare them to the Chinese ...

PS
Read the book Warren Buffet Way and you will understand why he thinks that investing in a car factory is a total waste of money (unless, of course, you are talking about Toyota)

 

Before the GT was even released it was known Ford would be dropping it in 2007. The reason I remember seeing was it wouldn't pass new crash test requirements. When did the reason become cost cutting?

 

Excellent read - Thanks for the link

 

Are you talking about the whole statement or are you merely refering to my last line.

Bob Wassam

 

When ford anounced that they would be closing plants it was said in the news that they were doing it to cut cost. In the same paragraph the GT was mentioned to be one of the models that was being cut. Therefore, the two, cost cutting and dropping the GT, go hand in hand. I also recently read another article that mentioned that the GT was not selling as well as they thought it should because of the high entry price. I realize that there's a waiting list to buy one, however, I don't have the details of the inner workings of Ford. Maybe the list is not long enough. Maybe you do, in which case, enlighten us. If the GT was sellling as well as they wanted, then Ford would find a way to up date the car so that it would comply with future regulations. After all, they are in the business of manufacturing cars for profit. If they cannot make a profit from manufacturing a particular model, then they'll drop it. You can argue or discuss that all you want, and it will still be moot.


That's the way I remember the news. I'm not going to dig up all those articles in order to prove my statements. I doubt that you would go back and read them anyway. However, my statements are straight out of the mainstream news. Some of the news is pretty old so digging up those articles would be closer to studing history. The US Government garranteeing loans for Chrysler would be one example.

Bob Wassam