legacycentral bbs

"plus the cost of your Subaru."

LOL.

eh

So sad but true.

But think about it, if you let them fail thats just more shit the US has to import. ha

Imprezive wrote:So sad but true.

But think about it, if you let them fail that's just more shit the US has to import. ha

actually most of the "import cars" are made in the USA now most of the "American cars" are made in Canada, and Mexico. so honestly i am gonna be really pissed if they get their bailout.

Ford is saying that they probably won't need it.

They secured a bunch of credit a few years ago, did massive restructuring, closed plants and started changing their product lines...all things Chrysler and GM didn't do.

GG Ford.

Everybody likes to skirt around the real issue.

Unless we, as Americans, make a conscience descion to "buy American"* this is just going to keep happening in almost every industry over and over again. If your fine with that, cool. If not, cool too. I'm, personally, almost past the point of caring.

My co-workers and I were talking about this today. We came up with a good visual that, for me, kinda puts it all in perspective. Picture a guy driving his big raised up Chevy truck. 4 foot American flag growing out of the bed like a spike. The rear window had an artistic impression of the Bald Eagle done up real nice, 10 years ago. Of course he's got a "work union/work proud" bumpersticker on the left and a "Buy American" sticker on the right. Where is he going?.........Walmart.



*yes I know we make some crappy products, but just know the consequences of your actions, either way. Crappy products...or lost jobs....we get to decide! Yeah!

But how does a fundamentally 'American' corporation overcome the public's perception? Some amercan automakers (other than the Chrysler group) are currently producing some actually competitive products. But what will it take for them to get past the automatic mental image of the early 90's Taurus, or the Lumina (car or van) one conjurs up when the word Chevy or Ford is overheard.
Consider that the current turbo four in the Cobalt SS makes 260hp. Or that the CTS-V out-handles the current, V8 powered, M3. Ford has been a top sub-compact seller in Europe for a decade with the Fiesta, Ka, and Focus (and RS). None of the latter three being sold here, given, but proof none-the-less that production and sales are there. The Escape hybrid is a step in the right direction for U.S. sales. Albeit a small one technologically, basically following in the footsteps of Toyota, but one more focused on the U.S. market.
The previous all being examples that american car manufacturers are getting it together (execpt dodge, who're just offering more rediculous marketing schemes and more outlandish vehicles). But is that enough to overcome our perception of them, as consumers who's buying decisions ultimately determine their bottom line, or have they, with their past mistakes, sealed their fate?
Personally, I don't think a not insignificant chunk of our hard-earned tax dollars is best way to find out.

I don't know how to change perceptions, but it can be done. The first generation Focus was brought here pretty much the same as the Euro focus, it sold really well and got good reviews. When Europe got the second gen car, we got a rehashed first gen. Why? I can't say, but I will guess it's because thet profit margin was way smaller than an F150.

It goes the other way too. Look at Sony. For years their stuff really was 'the best'. Now many people still think that and will buy it just because 'it's a Sony'. But if you look at the reviews, and sales, Sony is anything but the leader it once was.

Fact remains that 30+ years of "chasing the deal" and "bargain hunting" by us Americans, have all but decimated our domestic manufacturing. Now we even outsource some areas of the service industires (i.e. phone centers). Tech jobs are next. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! LOL

I'll bet that union-proud redneck in his lifted Chevy truck gets gas exclusively from either Saudi Arabia or Venezuela too.

The Big Three shutting down and putting all those people out of work will cause a depression for sure, if not an all-out armed revolt. Do all those people deserve to lose their jobs?

Pretty much... if they were actually doing a good job, they wouldn't be in this mess to begin with. They would be producing up-to-date and competitive cars that would draw us back away from the imports.

So, yeah, we may be guilty for buying imports, but if they didn't make such shitboxes, we wouldn't have to.

So, nobody's hands are clean.

Meanwhile, everyone fails to notice the white elephant in the room. If congress is going to put restrictions on automakers and call for their CEO's jobs, they should do the same with the UAW. They are as much a part of the problem as unprotected sex is to AIDS.

I can only guess that, at best, they'll be asked to the table to make some "major" (though actually only minor) concessions. With the Dems in control, and we all know how much they're in bed with Big Union compared to the Repubs, I doubt many politicians would piss off the group of people who by and large support them with money and votes on a consistant basis.

Politicians aren't dumb. They'll try to help others not lose their job, but not at the cost of their own. At the end of the day it's all about money and power and that's it.

Perhaps what we really need is for this building to collapse so we may rebuild on a solid foundation without all of the auxillary supports. Anything that won't survive on it's own eventually dies. It's the law of nature; why only the strongest or most adaptive to change prosper while the weak fail.

OK, I have to chime in here...
These people are not the only ones with problems.
How many airlines have failed in the last 20 years? How many thousands of workers were laid off, or just woke up one morning and no longer had a job, or a pension?
I don't recall any CEOs from Pan Am, Eastern, TWA, Northwest, et al coming to DC looking for handouts... 'cause they sure as hell would not have gotten anything. The displaced workers went to other airlines, or got the hell out of the business (the wise choice )
If US autoworkers want to continue building cars, they're going to have to do it on a competetive level with other countries..which includes poorly-paid workforces like Korea. You might start with a product people will want to buy and which will not spend a week out of every month in the dealer service shop.
The days of $40/hr 4-day workweeks are gone forever in the manufacturing sector, and lots of other areas, for that matter. Deal with it. Take your pay cut, and get to work. Stay in Detroit, or go to Subaru, Toyota, BMW, etc elsewhere in the US, or shut the hell up, take out a loan, and go back to school to learn a trade that pays well and won't get outsourced. Bunch of goddamn crybabys.
/rant

The airlines have absolutely been bailed out several times. Most recently receiving help after 9/11. Like the auto business, having domestic airlines are a matter of national security as well as economy.

Worthless cocksuckers in the financial industry have been bailed out, no questions asked, to much greater amount already. These pricks were given money by the Fed to secure credit for small and medium businesses to make sure the money keeps flowing in the economy. THEY HAVEN'T DONE THIS! And yet, no fucking heads are rolling. These people should have been walked out the window for their gross failures and their families executed as a statement to greedy douches in the future. If they can take their disgusting over-compensated salaries and bonuses (even when they tank a company), then they can take a harsh punishment. Just like working for organized crime—if they're going to act like criminals, they should be treated as if they are part of a criminal organization. These pieces of shit are a large reason the car makers need money in the first place.

Chrysler was bailed out (this is a loan, people) in the late seventies and paid it back ahead of time.

This is too complicated a matter for me to get into any further and I'm sick from arguing it with people who don't and/or won't understand the whole picture the last few weeks. The leadership of the Big 2 (I think we need to let Chrysler die as they have nothing of value to offer. Someone will buy Jeep) has been terrible, but cumulative over decades. The unions are also a huge problem. I'd be all for bankruptcy, but who will buy a car from a bankrupt maker? Their perception problems are already bad enough. How are they to compete having a name associated with cheapness that forces them to sell to bottom-feeders for very little profit, if any (leadership's fault), and how can they get out of that hole with union legacy costs exceeding $1500/car (union fault)?

Part of the reason domestic autos are built in the other North Americas is due to government meddling in the first place. A triple-hit of gas crises, safety, and emissions standards left them reeling, leaving foreign makers working on good exchange rates, cheap labor, and/or "premium brand" profit margins to fill the void. Fine, but the government also refused to do much about tariffs on these imports that could have allowed them to catch their breath. Fine, except many of the countries we were getting these imports from had their own protectionist measures in place against imports. I believe the only exception was small trucks, which is why the BRAT had rear jump seats—to be classified as a passenger vehicle instead of a truck.

Then I hear that the automakers aren't building anything people want. Except they did. Right up until gas prices went up and the notoriously and chronically nearsighted American public decided they wanted small cars with the bad loans they were taking out against their inflated house values. But then that was crashed by greedy rich pricks we already bailed out who operated with the same nearsightedness as the public. Except, of course, the public isn't getting paid to have decent vision, nor is it their responsibility to regulate the economy. Which reminds me—why was that responsibility given to self-serving private enterprises in the first place? Why is the Fed run by citizen bankers? I always thought Greenspan was an idiot even when everyone was sucking his dick. And now he says he didn't think that greedy people, beholden to their obsessive need to waste money to impress their pathetic peer groups and the companies they're in charge of (this latter point, I don't take issue with—they're hired by their firm, not the US government, and so should think of their firm's interest first) would be so untrustworthy?! WTF? I'll buy the bullets.

There's no single person to point the finger at here, but I really don't understand the virulent hate for the automakers (guys who build stuff people can touch) while the much larger bailout of what amounts to over-wealthy charlatan fortune tellers gets little more than a disgusted shrug. Even the FRENCH had the balls to cut these kinds of assholes heads off. OK, now I'm really done.

I love you Steve .

capitalism is funny

I do not agree that all american cars are crappy. I'm personally a big fan of the Sky/Solstice platform. GM really did their homework on that one along with the ECOTEC. The problem is, they can't seem to produce that platform and make any money with it. I heard a firgure that they loose $10k on every Sky/Solstice, which is absolutely rediculous. It baffles me that they would even produce the car in the first place not knowing if they are going to make any money at it. That's not how you run a damn business.



Also, I want a CTS-V. An older one, or new one. It doesn't matter. They are baddass.

When you have a 40% advantage over wages (Hello Honda, Toyota) it helps your profitability a lot.

I'm curious as to how the wages and benefits of people that work for foreign makes in stateside assembly plants vs. those who work at "domestic" plants. How do they compare? A shitload of "foreign" cars are at least put together here.

Recent articles put "total compansation" (Pay+benifits) at around $75-90 an hour for a UAW plant vs. around $45-55 an hour for a non-UAW plant.

The same articles clain that Ford and GM have to put ~$2000 of each car sold towords people who are not even working anymore (retired pensions and healthcare). The non-UAW plants use traditional 401K and insurance.

^ That's ridiculous.

Hence the need for our money.

I read somewhere that GM pays more in retiree and medical benfits than it does current wages.

Interesting article on wages:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/10/ ... nhardt.php

That's because labor costs, for all the attention they have been receiving, make up only about 10 percent of the cost of making a vehicle.

93forestpearl wrote:I do not agree that all american cars are crappy. I'm personally a big fan of the Sky/Solstice platform. GM really did their homework on that one along with the ECOTEC. The problem is, they can't seem to produce that platform and make any money with it. I heard a firgure that they loose $10k on every Sky/Solstice, which is absolutely rediculous. It baffles me that they would even produce the car in the first place not knowing if they are going to make any money at it. That's not how you run a damn business.



Also, I want a CTS-V. An older one, or new one. It doesn't matter. They are baddass.

That's because they're not crappy. Media gets you to believe they're crappy. Quite a few domestic cars outself their import counterparts... I could careless where the car comes from as long as it suites my needs. GM doesn't make an AWD car, subaru does, Audi does, and so are DSMs. I know enough about DSMs to stay far far away, and wasn't a fan of audi, so I went to Subaru

One thing is for sure you'll never see a domestic car that has a button that voids your warranty

Buffman wrote:

93forestpearl wrote:I do not agree that all american cars are crappy. I'm personally a big fan of the Sky/Solstice platform. GM really did their homework on that one along with the ECOTEC. The problem is, they can't seem to produce that platform and make any money with it. I heard a firgure that they loose $10k on every Sky/Solstice, which is absolutely rediculous. It baffles me that they would even produce the car in the first place not knowing if they are going to make any money at it. That's not how you run a damn business.



Also, I want a CTS-V. An older one, or new one. It doesn't matter. They are baddass.

That's because they're not crappy. Media gets you to believe they're crappy. Quite a few domestic cars outself their import counterparts... I could careless where the car comes from as long as it suites my needs. GM doesn't make an AWD car, subaru does, Audi does, and so are DSMs. I know enough about DSMs to stay far far away, and wasn't a fan of audi, so I went to Subaru

One thing is for sure you'll never see a domestic car that has a button that voids your warranty

Some what. There are aspects to GM cars that leave a lot to be desired. Like their FWD transmissions. They've used the same garbage tranny in the Lumina, Grand Prix, Impala, etc, for some time. Guys that rebuild trannys for a living will tell yo all about these damn things. Then they go and strap a V8 to it....

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