And, ‘Gundy’, don’t worry about the extra text … it’s LLN and their failure to run a properly working web site … they are clueless about doing things right … just look at the spelling and grammar in their articles.

Maybe you can stand blindfolded behind on of the really big wheels.

sj
When you lose 25% in 25 years that means you suck!
Only you would pat a domestic on the back as they rocket to the grave!
And only those that can’t get a prime loan from an import maker (roaches)will buy you.
Nobody puts money on the hood, and desperation in their voice, like a domestic
I’ll miss those shills
DrFill

That chimp ’1115′ is reincarnated and there are still people wanting to have a tete-a-tete over the same SHIAT?

Ignore the biatch … she likes effeminate design to go with her purse.

You would have to be completely braindead to suggest that entities that control 40% of ANY given market are not making anything consumers want. Would you say the same for the computer industry? Cell phone industry? retail? if Target and Sears have 40% of the department store market would you argue they are irrelevant retail options for consumers? Of course not. Toyota and Hona have about 25-30% of the US market but according to you they dominate US auto sales and are the primary companies giving people what they want. I would hardly call 30% of the market a referendum on their desirability. I would argue that means 75% of the populace doesn’t want a Toyota or Honda product.

1. People in metro areas buy domestic. Trust me. My metro area had 5mil and I see Malibus, Enclaves and CTS’ ALL THE TIME. Get a clue

2. Toyota has projected profits to fall to about $6B for the year. That is a major decline from last year and they are losing money in the US market.

3. GM still sells more vehicles that Toyota in the US so logic dicatates they know what consumers want more than Toyota.

4. Ford’s quality is on par with the Japanese according to CR which calls in to doubt you claims that “they do it better”. Wrong again.

5. Share was 60% 20 years ago because Hyundai was barely on the map, the Japanese didnt make many trucks, vans or SUVS and the German brands only dealt in high end vehicles that were very expensive and inaccessible to most Americans. All that has changed and that has led to more marketshare for the foreign automakers. There was a time when Sears and Kmart had a lot of marketshare to but a juggernaut called Walmart have consumers more choices and diverted those Kmart dollars into their coffers. Increased competition leads to fragmentation of the market. Without foreign competion VW and MB and BMW would have far greater share in Europe. You keep presenting facts in a vacuum. If the foreign automakers had the exact same lineups as 20 years ago your point would be valid.

6. You have completely ignored Toyota’s troubles in the US since you seem to worship them. Lexus and Scion are stumbling big time. The Tundra is a flop and plants have been idled. They have delayed construction of a plant in Missippi due to lack of demand for the highlander. Prius sales are down. The only reason they look OK is because the BIg 3 are doing far worse in 2008.

“Does Toyota know the US market better than the domestics? You bet your ass they do! People don’t buy Camrys and Accords and Civics because they want to buy them. They buy them because they are the best.”

This is one of the dumbest things you posted. The Accord has been outsold by the Impala for two straight months and sales are down big time. The camry is selling with massive discounts. Civic sales have crashed since spring when the civic was the #1 vehicle for a month. The Camry is a mediocre car and reviews support that. The car sells on reputation alone right now but the public will catch on eventually.

For years we have been reeading fawning press coverage of Toyota and their infallable business plan. The pundits said “see, Toyota predicted the gas price increase and is making billions”. WRONG. They were making many b illions when the US economy was strong and their profitable trucks were selling. Now Toyota is using 0% to move metal (something all the critics have beat up on Detroit about) and ther operating profit forecasts have plummeted. I read that they likely lost money in the US and Europe in teh last quarter. If Toyota decison making is so genius how is this happening? Why are sales of virtually every Toyota and Lexus model down for the year? Why is Toyota talking about making production and labor cuts?

Turns out the pundits are no sharper than you or I.
A bad year for Toyota is making $25 Billion.
A good year for the domestics is making $4-5 Billion
Does Toyota know the US market better than the domestics? You bet your ass they do! People don’t buy Camrys and Accords and Civics because they want to buy them. They buy them because they are the best.

You pound your chest like GM and Ford having 40% of the market is some type of referendum on their desirability.

20 years ago it was almost 70%!

You know who buys the domestics now? People who don’t like within 50 miles of an import dealership, out in the sticks, and businesses who can buy in bulk on the cheap.

The normal retail customer has left the domestics, in the last generation. 30% of the market. In a generation. Believe it. Why?

Why make the mistakes my parents made? I lived through it once. Live and learn. Other companies do it better. It’s too far gone to bring them back now. You have to wait for the other guy to drop the ball. We had our chance, and we blew it.

I don’t like it. You don’t like it. But it’s the truth. We are a service society now. Deal with it.

Obama and the government can hand them money, but that won’t solve the problem. Americans don’t want to go back to American cars. Find out why before you blame the consumer.

DrFill

As for SUVs and trucks we should note that EVERYONE got on board with the SUV craze, even Toyota. IN the early 2000s all of the import manufacturers were racing to catch up on the SUV/pickup front in order to cash in on the big profits. If SUVS and pickups were so dumb why was Toyota investing billions into such programs? And dont say “but they never stopped investing in cars”. I cannot stand when people make that ridiculous statement. The CTS, C6 vette, Fusion, Aura, Solstice, 300, Mustang, Taurus/500, Cobalt, G8, G6, etc. are trucks? Do they look like trucks to you people? The Big 3 may have over invested in large vehicles (which made sense when they were profitable) but they never stopped investing in cars. Unlike Toyota these companies are beholden to stockholders and profits. When large vehicles were selling it made perfect sense to invest in them because they were profitable. If they hadnt capitalized the same critics would have been saying they were late to the party and allowed the Japanese to beat them to the punch on SUVs. No one knew gas was going to jump to $4 and if Toyota knew they surely were stupid for investing $1billion in a new plant for the 14mpg Tundra.

But here’s a guarantee … buy gold Monday and make $500 when it hits about $1250 within eight months, maybe far sooner.

One last thing, I never said buy a bar … there are many avenues in gold investing.

Anyway, enough blowing smoke up everyone’s *ss. On October 31st I made a flippant remark (I know, there’s a first) about dressing up as Kerkorian and handing out Ford shares on Halloween night. I think it was Payton Byrd who basically implied he’d take them because should they survive where do they have to go but up? Well, that got the ol’ hamster wheel in Johnny’s noggin turning. I’ve never been a player in the markets other than through my employer, but this week I submitted all the necessary paperwork to my outstanding Canadian financial institution to start trading online. I’m going to put my money where my passion is and buy shares in Ford for sure and maybe GM as well. There’s nothing scientific here, just a gut feeling, but when you drink as much beer as I do that’s pretty hard to ignore.

Did you know that GM & Ford top the list of in terms of spending on research & development in America, spending $12 billioion annually? 3rd place – Microsoft.

GM & Ford combined have nearly 100 major plants in the US. (Toyota, Nissan & Honda have 8 combined!)

GM either directly or indirectly supports the employment of 900,000 americans.

Beginning in 2009, Toyota will no longer make the Sequoia & Tundra.

Didn’t Nissan (a japanese company) almost go bankrupt in the 1990′s? Yes, they did. What saved them you ask? The american economy did.

No company deserves to go bankrupt. We the people of this country lose their jobs, lose their homes to hurricanes, get struck with an illness that keeps them from working the US government steps in to help. If we don’t help the Big 3 there will be alot of people that will need unemployment, WIC, food stamps, free health insurance. I guess it’s just a question of would we rather “loan” some $ to help the economy or just wait until no one has a job or home & help them. I do have a better solution – Give a $5000 tax credit to people who purchase a NEW AMERICAN vehicle. When people buy cars, they borrow $, they pay taxes on the purchase, they stimulate the economy! Then we don’t have to give away any $!

And the UK would be a great example of what’s happening in the U.S…. but not if your blaming it on management. Not to say they didn’t have piss poor management. They lost millions on millions to labor disputes and… unions. Protesting and skipping work for weeks on end. The only resolution they would accept was one that would go their way. That crippled their ability to change and come out with new products. The result was 1960′s and 70′s products built on immediate post war products. And even in some cases pre-war engineering. They spent their last few pennies coming out with a few innovative vehicles, that could have sold well… if there were any workers left at the plant. All of them were gone drinking a beer, “protesting” what they considered poor management and pay. Fact was, they were trying to live off of the industry they worked for. They all ended up collapsing.

I wouldn’t say it’s as bad in the U.S. yet, but some of the rates that these union workers get paid are that ridiculous. Health care and a whole different set of variables that neither the union or automakers have control of also are in play. Fortunately, no major strikes have happened on a huge scale… I thought there would be last year, but fortunately GM came to a pretty good agreement. Also, healthcare will be off of GM’s back by 2010, since the unions are going to be managing that. That’ll save GM somewhere around 50 billion dollars, although their going to have to cash out about 30 billion before 2010. Surely a price to pay, with money that GM is struggling to manage.

I have not argued that the Japanese want our cars and I agree with you that they probably do not at this point. That said, lean on the Japanese to do away with their quota system and the American domestics will have a chance to get their foot in the door. Ironically, even with a large population, the size of Japan and excellent pork-funded public transit mean that Japan will probably never be a great market for the U.S. companies . . . which means China, which a NYT’s reported noted was making all the same mistakes as the U.S. in terms of being a personal auto focused culture, is probably going to be the best export market for Americans. And, even then, it is unlikely the Americans will continue to make gobs of money in China as the local partnering rules and quickly growing Chinese auto industry will eventually halt American inroads. So, the sad truth I have to own is that, in all likelihood, the U.S. domestics will HAVE to flourish in the U.S. long-term. Lariat, you are a smart guy with some pretty insightful comments, so if you can think of a means of re-tooling America’s domestics into winners . . . out with it.

DrFill-

I actually agree with your post to me. I am just not sure if it is feasible to do it fast enough (those Union contracts are tough to renegotiate, so it seems like you would have a glut of cars from just one or two of GM’s brands for the foreseeable future . . . unless they paid the workers to do nothing for a very long time).

Catia-

As far as all the protectionist talk you seem to think I am spewing, I guess I have been unclear. I am not in favor of protectionist measures; but, you have to come up with something better than suggesting the domestics put more quality into their vehicles. At this point, with their books in the red, that is utterly unlikely. Even if we could accomplish what all of us on this site seem to want, which is to reduce the pay of the Allan Mullaly’s and Wagoner types, it would not produce the savings needed to free up the cash to accomplish the betterment of the products. As far as efficiency goes, the U.S. was, yet again, the most efficient manufacturer in the world last year (no doubt the numbers WERE helped tremendously by the foreign-owned factories), so more efficiency is not going to save money.

As much as I hate protectionist policies, we may have to look at anti-dumping laws. Would this result in exactly the scenario you mentioned in your history lesson? Yes. However, you forget that through most of the 1980s the U.S. economy was doing pretty well (admittedly the protectionist American mood did not wane until we were into the nineties and the Asian Tigers went through their own “lost decade” as their economies collapsed). I will admit; however, that I cannot get around your point that U.S. cars were pretty uninspired in the 1980s. So maybe it is all a wash? Maybe no matter what we do, the trend is going to be for the imports to rise and the domestics to fall. I know I am being alarmist when I say it; but, while I have few answers I do know one thing. To paraphrase one of Obama’s cronies who was on Larry King tonight: If we do not do something about the domestic auto industry’s decline we are going to see 3.4 MILLION people out of work in early 2009.

Imports into the U.S. of foreign automobiles, mainly from Japan, have been restricted since April 1981 by a so-called “voluntary restraint agreement.” The quotas were imposed in response to pleas by the U.S. auto industry that it needed time to grow strong enough to compete with the imports on the free market. The’ quotas have not come cheap. Last year alone-, it is estimated that Americans paid an extra $5 billion because of the import limits. At the same time, the U.S. auto industry had its best sales year since.1979–earning a recbrd’$10 billion profit. The import restrictions are due to expire at the end of this March. The United Autoworkers. Union, Chrysler and Ford want the quotas con- tinued. General Motors, on the other hand, opposes extension, and the Reagan Administration seems to be leaning in this direction. Were the quotas to be removed, the winner would be the U.S. consumer. winning too would be the U.S. auto industry, which would become more competitive. The “voluntary” limit on cars imported from Japan was negotiated by the Reagan Administration at the urging of the then-ailing auto industry. From 1981 through .1983 the Japanese were allowed to ship 1.68 million cars annually to the U.S.; last year the ceiling was 1.85 million. By restricting the number of imported cars, Washington made it possible for the auto companies to raise prices without fear of losing business to less expensive competitors. Wharton Econometrics calculates that the average price per new car has risen by $2,600 since the market restric- tions were imposed. Brookings Institution economist Robert Crandall estimates that $400 of this price hike per U.S.-made car was possible .only because quotas reduced competition. With 1984 sales of nearly 8 million U.S. cars, the quotas took $3.2 billion out of the pockets of consumers and gave it to the auto industry. Crandall further estimates that the low supply of imported cars mandated by the quotas added $1,000 to the pricetag of every Japanese car sold in the U.S., a total of $1.85 billion in extra consumer costs. The total 1984 bill for U.S. consumers due to auto trade restraints: $5 billion. Some argue that quotas should be extended because the U.S. auto industry is still not economically sound. This is a strange argument.

-eat your cereal

You are right, good product sells and bad product does not. So, how come something like the Flex, that has been reviewed by Leftlane and has come out with flying colors (other than for looks), does not sell? Are looks really that important? Or, are we sophisticated enough to look at history and go: Oh, years of predatory economic policies that helped to make American products more expensive (which begins the vicious cycle of not selling enough, which leads to not making enough, which leads to not having enough to reinvest in product or lower prices on something like the Flex) are now slowing sales of otherwise well engineered vehicles?

Toyotas are widely renowned as being, like the Ford Flex, well built, but of a design that appeals to some, but not all (or even most). Yet Toyotas keep selling. So, maybe a low price combined with an take-it-or-leave it looking vehicle that is well engineered sells. So, really, the economic argument is utterly germane to sales figures.

btw, I realize I have an unfair advantage of being stuck home all night with nothing to do but study Tax Law (the girlfriend is studying for her MPRE tomorrow) and leave whiny rants on Leftlane. So, I’ll leave ya’ll to criticize me sans my whiny responses.