GolfHos

http://www.clusterstock.com/2008/6/general_motors_gm_ceo_wagoner_we_re_not_the_only_morons_who_make_suvs

umm, he's absolutely correct. certain people want to pick on the us auto industry for the manufacture of behemoth suv's but they all make them and it is the consumer who makes that call.  ;)

 

but why does japan for example have brands that BALANCE out the line by having a good distribution of vehicle sizes/efficiencies... (if anything skewed towards efficient cars in favor of SUVS) whereas  detroit does not (opposite scenario)?
 :)

the consumer gets to make a 'call' (for suvs) at least in part, if they have any "allegiance" to "us brands" regardless of whether they necessarily want one
 :)

anyways, this is essentially what i said (err, implied far less eloquently) in the last detroit-auto-bashing thread.







and whether we agree with it or not, it sure looks like this guy   (http://static.10gen.com/www.clusterstock.com/~~/f?id=48490894796c7a5100e61b04&maxX=290&maxY=279)   is feeling it (and by it i mean a giant UFIA) .





clearly the big japanese co's are far more in the position to give us what we 'want' in 2008/2009 because they didn't put all their 'eggs in the basket' so to speak       



notice the seeming absence of the "UFIA face" on this guy   (http://images.motortrend.com/features/consumer/112_0602_12z_the_power_list_2006_takeo_fukui.jpg)

while GM posts a $40B loss in 2007 on $180B of revenue,

  [sm_shock] [sm_shock] [sm_shock]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Wagoner
(toyota posts $14B profit on $200B of revenue)



*feces*, i'd "stay the course" too.
 [sm_shock]

dude you are sad. you are so biased against us manufacturers that you rarely ever make sense anymore.

so now it is the suv's are being shoved down the consumers throats by us car companies.

lets see, virtually every honda ad i have seen in the past 6 months is either for that poor excuse for a truck, the van or the latest ad blitz for the all new 8 passenger pilot. obviously your too blinded by your bias to notice.
hondas line up is evenly split between 4 cars and 4 vans-suv-trucks

toyota 6 cars- 9 trucks-suv-van

what was your point again? ::)

http://www.cars.com/go/advice/Story.jsp?section=fuel&story=cafe&subject=fuelList

This article is 7 months old it is still a good measure. GM is not that far behind. The difference is the Detroit big 3 are more known for the big trucks and the big Japanese 3 are more known for the fuel efficient cars.

I think if they change their image it would make a difference. And yes maybe a bit of giving the consumer what they need instead of what they want could help but I don't see a for profit organization doing that.

But then again being an owner of a said gas guzzling SUV I don't have room to talk.

I don't disagree with birdymaker here. All companies will sell what consumers are buying. My coworker just bought a Titan and gets like 15 MPG. Another got the Tundra, again 15 MPG.

It's not the manufacturer, its the consumer.

my point was there's a lot of folks of my parents generation (such as my parents  :sad3:  [sm_chairshot])  who will "only buy usa!"  ...when the choice is therefore given to them to pick either a low fuel economy car or a low fuel economy suv/truck from ford/gm,  duh, many times they pick the low fuel economy suv/truck  because gas was effectively cheap until last year.  now these people don't want the low fuel economy SUV, they want a high fuel economy car.  however, the choice is to abandon this "usa only"  or stick with the low fuel economy... since unfortunately japan has far more offerings in this segment of the market ALREADY in production, including by far the best hybrid vehicle.----  the ENTIRE point of the article posted----

the bottom line is that while i feel sorry for the ford/gm employees (except that *feces*head CEO, etc),  they didn't learn the lessons from the 70's oil shock.... no sympathy for the 'korprashun' ... short term gains.... *fudge* the future!


i know, i'm biased to hate 'merka.... wishing we had taken a smarter approach for long term sustainability and all that.
i'll quit serving no purpose here and move along.  :sad3:

Bu, bu, but he's got a Harvard MBA!

Naw, don't sell yourself short. It's not the message its the delivery.

Your point is not really lost.

The irony is that the Japanese exploited the 70's oil crisis to great advantage, proving themselves far more nimble.  They were able to move in and fill the demand for small cars and trucks, thereby gaining a toe hold in the US market.  By the time the Big 3.5 came up with their small vehicle answers, the crisis had ended.  By then, the Japanese had proven their worth, and became worthy players in the guzzler sectors.

A safe bet is to assume history will repeat.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v725/mfawg/story.jpg)

Now, that isn't to say that GM in particular and Ford and Daimler Chrysler to a somewhat lesser extent don't bear some responsibilty for not getting out in front of the problem like Toyota and Honda did.

I'll wager that Toyota sells more Tacoma's and RAV4's than they do Tundra's and Landcruiser, and all you have to do is look around and see that Nissan sells more Frontiers, Xterra's and Pathfinders than they do Titans.

from here (no idea as to veracity)
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3652154

What really happened is that GM in particular abandoned the subcompact and small truck segment of the market when they found out that people would buy really fancy large trucks if they put  cupholders and leather seats in them. It made fantastic short term economic sense, because the margins were enormous in these types of vehicles. The fact that they spent the next decade and a half working on not much more than cupholders and nicer leather interiors wasn't really any concern of anybody's.

It's a prime example one of the problems with postmodern American style capitalism, which puts way, way too much emphasis on annual and even quarterly gains, especially in top-tier executive pay.

if in short term you mean 20 years.  ;)

I always thought Detroit dominated the SUV and large-truck market because Big Japan couldn't make a competitive model.  It's not like Big Japan didn't want to sell more large, high-margin vehicles ... folks just like the F-150 and Explorer much, much more.

Now the pendulum swings back to cars, and especially to fuel-efficient cars.  And that's where Big Japan has held its edge this whole time.

Not that GM couldn't have spent a little more effort on their smaller cars ... but just how agile do you expect a $200,000,000/year company to be?

$200B you mean?     well, if they were operating in the regime of toyota, they would have about $15B they could use towards retooling.... heh.

anyways, while i'm not exactly sure what the r+d budget on 1 great new quality, fuel efficient car is,  i'm sure it's at least one order of magnitude smaller than the $40B they lost last year....

I just looked down, and there are three zeros lying on the floor here.  ;)


I don't know, but I'm guessing they've done non-trivial market research on what consumers are looking for, both generally and in a US-made car.  For all we know, the "I want to buy US" crowd specifically wants those thick, heavy doors and flat, unsupportive seats.

As for powerplants, I can't understand why the US companies haven't invested in a serious project.  Geez, buy a Civic, a Corolla, a Camry, an Accord; take the engines apart and study the Villegas out of them; then make one that incorporates their best features.  And develop from there.  There's no shame in building on success, even when it belongs to someone else.  That's how innovation happens.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/6/b/4/6b479c964c05142f9376aa6de5f14e07.png)

I agree.  Big Japan already kicked Detroit to the curb on small cars in the 70's and 80's.  But Detroit could have been doing more to develop a better small car while the high margin SUV's were rolling off the lots.

They weren't a  high margin proposition for the Japanese. Only Toyota built anything resembling a full size body on frame truck, and none of them built a V8 engine of any kind until the middle 90's. They basically had to start from scratch, where Detroit had been building basically the same sleds since the middle 60's.