Posted by
OldRelayer on Monday, March 30, 2009 2:16:45 PM
Today the name of GM is officially Government Motors. Obama and company plan on remaking GM in their image of a Green car company, in other words making cars that nobody wants to buy. GM left itself open for this where as Ford when thinking it over said, you know what, we don't need your bail out money, we can restructure on our own without your help Thank You.
The F150 is the best selling truck in the USA and I suspect that will continue. Although all their attempts at better gas mileage have been foiled by government regulation and Ethanol, leaving them and all car companies not really knowing which direction is up. When Ford deals with the Unions they are really dealing with the Administration, we will have to see how that works out. I suspect the Administration will put as much pressure as they can on Ford the make them say uncle and take their bail out and loose control of the Family owned business. We have 4 cars and one driver, will sell a couple. Our 1998 Lincoln Mark Viii which we don't intend to sell is a 4.6l 300 hp v-8 and before Ethanol was getting 25mpg after Ethanol 22mpg, now that is progress, if you remember that was a whole other post and rant. Our 2007 Ford 500 3.0l(can't get out of its own way) gets about 22 if we don't use the remote starter, this car should get 35mpg but for the government. The car is half the weight and a much smaller engine, how can this be? It is called government, requiring the car companies to increase gas mileage but at the same time chocking their engines with stupid inefficent emission standards. We hit the point of diminishing returns on emissions a long .... long... long time ago, somewhere in the 1970's. It is nice to breath fresh air, I have been to countries that don't have such things and the air will gag you, that was true in 1968, we could have stopped then.
Yes all the American auto makers loose money on every car, that doesn't mean they loose money because someone bought a car, it means the lose is amortized over the number of cars they sell, the more cars they sell the lower the lose. I say this because I have heard the lamest excuse for not buying an American car so they won't loose money, get a clue. Getting the immovable force of the unions to budge is going to be a trick and the only way that Ford is going to be able to survive. You just can't pay people for not working and pay them twice as much as the competition and stay in business. Toyota pays $45 an hour(withe benefits) for their floor works, sounds like a pretty good wage to me, UAW workers did get $85, hopefully that is changing to a more competitive number. Given the disadvantage, all American car companies have done remarkable well producing cars of equal quality.
The way things are going Ford, Toyota, Honda and BMW will be making the real cars of the future and GM and Chrysler(maybe) will be making cars that will need to come with a 5 year tax incentive.