To bad this report did not come 2 weeks ago. Then again, congress would want to challenge gloomy prediction and “save” BigBrokenBankrupt (Big 3). They owe it to unions.

Damn

It’s Jimmy Carter’s fault. If he hadn’t bailed out Chrysler in 1979-80, both GM and Ford would be stronger today.

Thank goodness and good riddance. Soon we’ll have to find another domestic industry to slander and destroy.

I sure wouldn’t feel good if any of my tax dollars go to domestic industries… I’d prefer if most, nay, but all of them go to supporting foreign affairs. Hope my satire is being picked up becuase I am laying it on pretty thick.

Will people quit saying big 3. Its big 2. Ford does not need a bailout. Geez.

Can’t your Republicans just stall this as well?

^^Ford does not need a bailout, YET. While it is the strongest of the 3, that’s not saying it is in good health. Ford has already trimmed all but one brand in PAG and cashed in some Mazda’s shares. It is trying to sell off Volvo as we speak to stay afloat and cut operating cost. So, it is still the Big 3 that needs bailout because the economy is not going to get better overnight with a new president. So yeah, “Geez” to your comment.

Triton: If the other “BIG w/e” go under, you better believe that Ford will be right behind them. All three and many of the imports use many of the same suppliers, transport companies, etc. If GM and/or Chrysler go down, forget about Ford being safe, unless they get a bailout from the government.

and thanks for the humor Trantz, good sarcasm there!

And why is it that nearly every other government that has a major car company is willing to help their industries out, but not our own government? Freaking politicians are so self serving its ridiculous. They would rather gamble with the country going into a depression just to break the unions. They forget that it will hurt the whole country and those they are there to serve: The People.

Well the GOP Senators are balking because they want more UAW concessions. Can’t say I blame them.

If Ford does NOT need bailout, why Mullaly is in DC along with Wagoner? Or he just misses cultural riches of our capital? Or company of fellow exec? He is definitely there with extended hand.

Its too bad our tax dollar did not help electronic, steel, appliance, textile and other industries, why should we rescue auto? In difference to all industries which left our shores and manufacturing occurs in Asia, auto industry is alive and well in US, except BigBrokenBankrupt: Honda, Toyota, Subaru, Hyundai, BMW and Benz are manufacturing their cars right here. Their cars have larger demand and their execs are paid 1/10 of BBB execs and their workforce is payed less then 1/2 of UAW nincompoop. As a result of those savings those companies are screwing together better cars. All those of you who want to save BBB, please give them your money, I prefer my taxes spend on things that produce better results.

When can I get my bailout?

Borat:

Maybe you missed this part of the news, But ALL companies sales are down. It doesn’t matter if your biased towards imports or domestics, but all car companies sales are down and all are making cutbacks to make it through. It seems you have an underlaying hate for the domestics for some reason, but to say they shouldn’t survive because our electronics are made overseas is crazy. I don’t think any of the industries you mention have nearly a 1/4 if you add them all up of the manpower and jobs involved as our domestic auto industry OR contribute as much to the GDP as the auto industry does..

And btw, Honda makes what two or three models in the US. MOST are still made in Japan. Same for Toyota and the other imports. SO just because they have a couple plants here, 80% of the money made by an import still goes back overseas and doesn’t help our economy at all.

and if the imports are doing so great Borat, why are most of them getting funding to ‘make it by’ in this current ecconomic crisis from their respective countries? Whether you want to believe it our not, if we would not have gone into a recession the BIG 3 would be doing ok and on the road to full recovery. Whether you like them or not, the public and critics have felt that the current domestic lineup is the best in along time. WHile I agree it sucks they took so long to do it and that quality used to suck big ones, many of the top rated by 3rd party sites and best sellers come from the domestics. and thats fact. WE as American NEED the Big 3 to survive or at least two of the three(if Chrysler and GM merge, I have no issue with that.)

There does need to be a huge amount of restructering and again, from my previous four years working for Chevy I could see it happening on the sales side. While there is much work to be done and I wouldn’t mind seeing some fresh blood at the top to move things in a better way, to just kill off or BK the domestic industry would be not only embarrasing to us ( could you imagine that? The most ‘powerful nation on the earth can’t even support its own auto industry?????), it would be a national security issue and send us into a deep depression. My father lived through the Depresson. I do not want to be like him or my grandfathers and say I lived on freaking beans and bread for several years. Not to sexy of a life style to me!

Did I miss something or is GM still the best selling company in the US, and still close to #1 in the world? Why then, couldn’t they be successful after getting this kick in the pants that they so sorely needed? I think they can be if the Govt and UAW stay out of the damn way AND they do the right things on their OWN end, and get rid of a lot of Bureaucracy at the top & middle.

Bradley…well said above. But, I would add that the govt should help, but only after C11, because that’s the only way they are going to legally get out of a lot of the agreements that are killing them, including the UAW, and the dealers. I don’t see even the congress to be able to break those outside of BK, as they are already facing constitutional challenges on their proposals. Basically, they cannot take the place of the (bankruptcy) courts.

LOL…………
TELLS US SOMETHING WE DON’T KNOW…

The job market all across the board is not expected to pick-up until the Summer of 09′, It will take up to 4-6 months for the economy to start rolling again, and until then… is when we will see all the markets “PICK-UP”… You can’t sell cars to unemployed people, and people that fear losing there jobs are not buying unless they have to. A BIG positive shift is needed to get the ball rolling again. At the time we are in where all you hear from media outlets, that Banks, Auto Company’s, Construction Company’s, are asking for big loans and thesis same company’s are laying off employees buy the thousands…what do you expect?

Come on now, people are scared to spend, they don’t know if tomorrow they need to go in there saving to pay there mortgage next month, so why blow it in a down payment of a car, or any big purchase? Until the people start hearing that big company’s are hiring and everyone is spending again it is when we will see sales to go back up, and any dealer owner that dose not except this as a fact, will most likely will be closing their doors… soon!

I don’t know mush… but what I do know is a sale when I see one, and where there’s not a sell I look in to the deal to see why, and day in and day out I see the same reason’s why… Everything going on is only the tip of the Ice Berg, we still have to go down hill, and so far our brake’s don’t look good, all we can hope for is that at the end we are still able to pick our self’s up, dust our self’s off, and keep on marching…

And it’s a long way down…

I wonder if back in 1876 they used to track annual and monthly horse-unit sales. You just know Borat can’t get enough of horse-units.

Yeah, “Honda makes what two or three models in the US. MOST are still made in Japan.” <– Riiight. Accord, Acura TL, Acura RDX (Marysville, OH). Civic (Indiana). CRV, Element (East Liberty OH). Odyssey, Pilot, Ridgeline (Alabama). And not US (but not Japan either) : Civic, MDX (Alliston, Ontario).

Made in Japan and imported to NA : Acura RL, TSX. Honda S2000, Fit, Civic Hybrid.

Fit will likely be built in NA before long because demand is good (without the recession anyway). Other than that, TSX/Civic Hybrid are medium volume, and RL/S2K are extremely low volume.

Looks like most of what they sell here, they build here. So what was your point again?

True that Honda/Toyota may build many models here, but in the end, profits are still being sent back to Japan. They’re not creating jobs here just to be nice… they’re doing it to make money. (Nothing wrong with that, but just need to keep in mind that they are still syphoning dollars out of our economy.)

Would you rather have some jobs?
Or NO jobs?

Toyota makes Lexus RX, Toyota Highlander, Tacoma, Tundra, Camry, and Matrix here in North America

And the have the NUMMI plant in Freemont, California, and have showed GM, and anybody else who cares to learn, how the Toyota Production System kicks much a$$!

Problem is, GM doesn’t trust or like it’s $50-70 per hour workers enough to have them actually be a part of the building process.

The execs and designers think, and the workers assemble

That has worked out quite nicely. For the imports!

That is the funniest thing about all of this. Toyota has been more than happy to share the greatest Manufacturing system since the assembly line with IT’S BIGGEST COMPETITORS!

PLUS Toyota has courted EVERY major manufacturer about using Toyota’s Synergy System, which is light years ahead of other market knock-offs. They’ve been almost BEGGING US TO LEARN FROM THE ZEN MASTER!

Other companies have tried, and failed, to copy it TPS and Synergy because they don’t have the cultural, economic, or logistic discipline to apply what they have seen Toyota do. And Toyota knows they can do it better than anyone else anyway, so what do they care.

So before you bash Toyota, read up on how they’ve tried , and tried, to teach Detroit the way of the Samurai!

They have a little something called confidence.

And a pair of grapefruits!

Wish our companies did

DrFill

Chrysler took $18,000 from me in the 90’s for a brand new Intrepid.

Piece of junk, some part or another was always broken on that car……well before 100K miles.

I curse Chrysler to hell, die you garbage car company. DIE

@DrFill
Agreed… Toyota definitely has their s#it together. Ironic that an American (Walter Demming) was the one who taught them, yet only recently has GM is adopted the similar principals. Regarding their Synergy Drive… I’d be curious to know how much they’re asking to license that technology.

This news do not surprise me.

I was planning to get a car this month, but with only terrible news I rather fix my old piece of crap Volvo S70 98 and hang in there until things get better than have a car payment in this struggling economy.

I am sure millions of people are having the same mind set right now so, dealers and automakers are screwed for the next months for sure.

I hope with a new president that actually is intelligent and capable, opposite of our current one, maybe we might have some hope down the road. Really sucks right now.

Detroit watcher please explain what do you mean that Japanese companies are siphoning dollars from the US economy. They are spending hundreds of millions in constructing new assembly plants. Honda just dedicated a $550M plant in Indiana. Nissan will spend millions on its Canton plant to re-tool for LCV production, Toyota is building a $1.3B assembly plant in Mississippi. They all employ thousands here in the US, yet that is interpreted as siphoning from the US economy? When did the Big3 last build an asembly plant here in the US. If they were just importing vehicles to the US, without any US assembly presence, your point would be valid. But what you said is just ridiculous.

I usually sit & read everyone’s critical biased opinions on this board and just laugh, but I think it may be time for some UNbiased facts!

GM employs more U.S. workers than ALL major foreign automakers

Ford operates nearly as many assemply lines in the U.S as Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai & VW put together.

Jobs Per Car (JPC) ratings – Chrysler employs 83 US workers for every 2,500 cars sold in the US, Ford @ 80 & GM @ 71 per 2,500. Toyota only employs 33, while Hyundai only employs 15 US WORKERS per 2,500 cars sold in the US.

Ford, GM and Chrysler sell about half of the cars bought in the U.S., but they buy nearly 80% of the parts made here.

So, you may say that just means they US automakers are less efficeint. NOPE.

Toyota & Ford sell about the same amount of cars in the U.S, so you would think that they employ the same amount of U.S. workers. But they don’t, Toyota employs less than half as many workers because Toyota makes less than half as many cars here.

GM is more efficient than VW (great German engineering?), yet they still employ 40 times more Americans. Each GM worker makes 31 cars per year, while each VW worker only makes 14 cars per year. And nearly 40% of the TOTAL GM workforce is here, but only 1% of the TOTAL VW workforce is in the U.S.

Automakers invest more in R&D than any other industry ($16.9 billion in ‘05), & Ford, GM & Chrysler invest approximaately 80% of that spending here in the U.S.

Ford is second only to NASA in speding when it comes to spending on R&D. In Michigan alone, more than 200 R&D facilities employ 65,000 workers – a $10 billion per year investment in America’s economic competitiveness.

Speaking of domestic content – Ford vehicles sold in the U.S. contain more than 80% parts manufactured in the U.S., GM approx. 80%, Chrysler approx. 75%, Honda approx. 55%, Nissan 45%, Toyota 42%, Hyundai 10%, BMW & VW less than 10% U.S. parts on vehicles SOLD IN THE U.S.

You like apples? …..How do you like them apples?

@risonbluff
Sure… Toyota (or any company based outside the US) is welcome to build plants here. And yes… these plants provide jobs. However, the profits from these cars go back to the parent company, naturally.

The motivation behind building plants here is not job creation (nor should it be). The motivation is to create wealth for the parent company. If the parent company is based outside the US, then that’s where the wealth will go.