Quote:
Originally Posted by Quicksilver
One thing is clear: GM and Ford did not lose a million annual sales apiece because their costs were too high. Those sales were lost because the product, particularly the passenger cars, did not hit enough high spots. You want to cover your cost and make a profit? Make a product someone want's to buy.
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Disagree. Everyone's sales are down, bigtime. Toyota. BMW. Honda. EVERYONE. This recession doesn't discriminate. The reason Toyota and Honda aren't on the verge of bankruptcy is exactly BECAUSE their costs are lower. Their "man-hour" on the assembly line is what, like 2-fold cheaper than GM/Ford? The unions have asphyxiated the Big Three. Toyota/Honda/BMW etc. are able to survive the sales drop because there is no union overhead and no Gazillion-dollar Health Pension Plan to maintain. As far as the products: they were in some cases inferior to the Japanese, but not by such a huge margin.