Ah, it never fails. I must be the problem. Well, to the best of my knowledge, Saturn was a losing enterprise. I do know for a fact that management was given a free hand in the business.
Blame CAFE. RWD vehicles are prohibitively expensive to make for the mass market, and it's mind boggling insane to produce a vehicle for the niche market of police. I don't see why taxi-cabs wouldn't use the more efficient FF. That said, I've been an advocate of selling the Zeta platform (Pontiac G8) as a police vehicle, possibly rebadged to a Chevrolet Caprice/Impala. Unless you're complaining about something else. I'll address that as best I can.
Especially when over two grand on every car rolling off the line goes to pensions and healthcare for retired factory workers.
You're gonna have to explain that one 'cause history and sales are on my side. The #1 seller for GM, Ford, and Dodge are still light duty pick-up trucks. The Silverado is still top of the heap for GM and until last year when the Silverado knocked it out of the top spot, Ford's F-series trucks were the top selling automobile in the nation for 16 years in a row. The last time any vehicle (car or light-truck) outsold an F-Series pickup truck was 1991. Even looking at this year, the F-Series is back on top for the year with the Silverado less than 5,000 units behind. The Camry and Accord are 2,000 and 35,000 units behind the Silverado, respectively. Not to mention that the maintenence on a rear wheel drive vehicle is infinately cheaper for the end-user. U-joints run from $15-25. A CV axle will run $150-500. I own an old beater '96 S-10 that I use just to bang around town in. In 12 years it's required two u-joints at $12 a pop. The 2006 Impala my dad was issued has been through six CV axles at $350 each, if they weren't covered by the warranty.
^CAFE was (it's in limbo now) specifically prohibited from applying to light trucks, hence why everyone was making SUVs five years ago. I apologize for the poor wording, I should've said car.
Fair enough. But, I do want to go back and address something from your previous post. My tiny podunk PD (fewer than 40 full-time certified officers) buys 10 new vehicles a year. If each of the approximately 13,000 law enforcement agencies in the nation bought five a year (most buy more, for instance, The Alabama State Troopers buy 100 per year), you'd place 17th on the list of 20 best selling automobiles in the nation (or 65,000 units per year). More than the GMC Sierra and Ford and Chevrolet full-size vans. 65,000 units a year is enough to keep a factory open, no? And, if my math is right based on the last average price for an Interceptor, that's $1.4 billion per year in revenue. Again, after GM discontinued the Caprice, Ford owned the public safety market. Hell, even our Fire Department bought Crown Vics for the Fire Marshals and Supervisors. Now that the Crown Vic is kaput, they're buying them 4x4 Tacoma's.
"If the average fuel economy of a manufacturer's annual fleet of car and/or truck production falls below the defined standard, the manufacturer must pay a penalty, currently $5.50 USD per 0.1 mpg under the standard, multiplied by the manufacturer's total production for the U.S. domestic market."
If I recall correctly, at least here in CA almost all of the police agencies including the CHP were using Chevy's. Unfortunately, GM discontinued making them. I believe it was the Caprice or something like that. They didn't replace those vehicles with anything of comparable size and as a result now most of the agencies in this state are using Ford Crown Vic's. Many of the police agencies out in this part of the country are rather large and do tend to purchase quite a number of vehicles.
Thank you to the wacko environmentalists out there. Oh and I don't think either of the two main candidates this past election cycle were any better on this type of issue. I think McCain would be very similar to Obamessiah in regards to environmental issues.
It is too bad. Because I'm sure included with these new wacko environmental regulations we will see new taxes on our fuel. Not so bad necessarily for gasoline, but folks need to remember how most of our products whether they be groceries, food, and etc. arrive at the stores we shop at, that is via truck. Under the Clinton administration we saw record tax increases which no matter how you cut it, trickles down to the consumer. Lord only knows what will happen under Obamessiah now. Why any politicians would think a tax increase is a smart thing to do under our current economic situations is truly amazing.
I'm just sayin'. If I had a Dairy Queen and I charged $1.29 for a chocolate cone and I was paying the 15 year old kid behind the counter $300 an hour to make them, I'd think my business was a failure because I was selling product at a loss. A simplification and exaggeration to illustrate a point, but still...
So, I have read up on the whole thing a little. Seems like those 25 billion would last about until the end of December, at which point they'd need more. And then more. And more. While I still don't understand the glee some here have at the prospect of 2,5 to 3 million unemployed (yea, I know, they can all get off their asses and become billionaires ) I guess them declaring bankruptcy would indeed be the better way. I mean, the recession can't get any worse at this point anyway. Maybe a clean slate and all the corpses exhumed could even help heal the market. You can expect the Big 3 filing Chapter 11 sending brutal shockwaves thru the global economy in the short run. I would like to see those who drove the companies into the ground be hanged by the eyelids, tho. Alas, won't happen, as usual, and we all pay the bill. Management will just watch the fireworks from their private little islands while Joe Sixpack pays thru the teeth for their mistakes
I don't want to see those people unemployed. What I want to see is the Big 3 fix their problems. The only way they can do it is through bankruptcy.
If $25 billion would fix the industry, I might be for it. Bottom line is that it will do no good. It might push off the problem for a month or two, but Detroit is a fucking mess. It has to go through bankruptcy to fix it. We have to dump the UAW asshat's and we have to dump the moronic leadership that has designed stupid vehicles and stupid business plans. Then perhaps we can have auto manufacturing that can compete. I mean what moron thinks GM needs 8 brands?
What do you keep? Cadillac, Chevy, and maybe one more? I can't think of another badge to keep. Buick is awful close to Cadillac's demographic and that lunch has largely been eaten by Acura, Lexus, and Infiniti anyway. Pontiac has become nothing more than a way to market rebadged Australian cars. Saturn...who knows what the plan is with Saturn anymore. And the others... I can't even think of any. I guess maybe keep GMC to be the truck/sport utility brand.
I keep Chevy, GMC and Cadillac. Any good car is rebadged as a Chevy. The rest are trashed along with the brands into the Oldsmobile heaven. Ford dumps Mercury. Chrysler keeps Dodge for trucks only, Jeep for all SUV's and Chrysler for cars only.
Ford should keep Mercury for minivans, they've still got a good rep, and Ford is nearly unknown is that space.
Fuck, I dunno what I'd do with Mopar. I think I'd just dump the Chrysler badge. They're rolling out the Challenger and as much as I hate it the Charger seems to have some buyers. You got the two Dodge station wagons and the ugly as shit, crappy Avenger--Charger Lite. Chrysler, all I can think of they've got is the fairly ugly but somewhat popular 300 and the very ugly Sebring--which are, like, a Charger and an Avenger, respectively, only with different sheet metal. Yeah, you gotta keep Jeep. But I wonder if they've lost their way with that brand. Used to be just the Wrangler and the Cherokee. Now they have a veritable plethora of vaguely Jeeplike vehicles. I can name maybe one of them--the Liberty.
One way or another those people will largely end up unemployed, and any bankruptcy that allows reorganization will entail a government bailout. There simply isn't the demand for new cars that we've had in the past, and any successfully reorganized big three are going to be, at least for a couple of years, a much smaller and merged sorta big one or two. And, as no one else is lending, any reorganization is going to be financed by the government. Really, rather than spend money on a bailout or bankruptcy, the government should let non-critical functions of the big three fail, temporarily nationalize any critical functions of the big three until the economy stabilizes and they can be reprivatized (which, frankly, I'm doubtful actually exist, but that's what to do with them if they do exist), and spend the money it would have spent bailing them out on something that would actually be useful and a proper function of government, like public infrastructure. Having the government pay for us to build more cars now would just be a public works welfare project with little or no benefit to the public. If we're going to have the government spend lots of money to keep people employed as a form of welfare then it should be doing something a lot more useful than making cars.
THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT NATIONALIZE ANYTHING. GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE WILL JUST MAKE THINGS WORSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Of course, they are going to bail out the big three, but not just yet. They'll let them sweat a little more because, bottom line, it dilutes the stock. Don't think that members of Congress aren't invested. Because they know when they'll finally throw out the lifeline, it amounts to both, naked short selling and insider trader without having the dirty hands of either.
The government doesn't know how to manage their portfolios; they only know how to raise taxes. Good grief, if they were invested in these diluted stocks, then bailed them, thus infusing them with much more liquidity, then raked them as a pattern day trader, the government would get back the price of the bail out and then some.
AFAIK the Mercury's were rebadged Japanese mini's. Ford had the Aerostar, Windstar, and one other IIRC.
