Did you recently take on (or consider) a loan of 84 months or longer on a car purchase?
A reporter would like to speak with you about your experience; please reach out to PR@Edmunds.com by 7/25 for details.
A reporter would like to speak with you about your experience; please reach out to PR@Edmunds.com by 7/25 for details.
Options
The Big 3 and the domestic issues that will affect them
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061012/AUTO01/610120367/1148-
Rocky
Rocky
Rocky
Well I don't know about you guys, but I really did see this coming. CHIN-E class Smart Car copying. First it was them trying to copy Mercedes, now it's the Smart Car. It must be nice to live in your own little world where Copyrights don't mean squat. :mad:
Rocky
Rocky
Rocky
El camino time ?
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061018/AUTO01/610180399
Rocky
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061018/AUTO01/610180345
Rocky
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061018/AUTO01/610180333
Rocky
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061017/AUTO01/610170410/1148- /AUTO01
Rocky
P.S. I wonder if this is the beginning of the end of Chrysler ???? :surprise:
That is true but Bill Ford, approved alot of good designs for Lincoln. MKS, MKZ, Lincoln Continental, MKX, Navigator. :shades:
Rocky
The thing of it is I don't want a buncha Lexus Clones at Lincoln.
Rocky
Last login on: July 18, 2006
I can't believe Socala4, has been gone that long. :surprise:
I really hope he is taking a long vacation and nothing has happened to him.
Rocky
SHANGHAI — It has been a miserable month for foreign brands in China. Three of the market leaders have been forced to recall a total of nearly 200,000 vehicles built in local factories.
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=117198
Rocky
I hope it costs them the moon !!!!!! :mad:
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=117195
Rocky
HOW BOUT MY DETROIT TIGERS !!!!!!!!!!!
Rocky
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=117404
Rocky
http://www.detroitnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061103/AUTO01/611030340
http://info.detnews.com/autostalk/lettersindex.cfm?topic=slave_labor&forum=autos- talk
11 % thinks its okay :surprise:
:sick:
Rocky
Rocky
Rocky
http://www.detroitnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061102/AUTO01/611020367/- 1148/AUTO01
This is really too bad. :sick:
Rocky
http://www.detroitnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061102/AUTO01/611020379/- 1148
Rocky
P.S. My god, these corporations due to their bad management skills make the past pay for their blunders. What ashame. :mad:
Rocky
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061104/AUTO01/611040344/1148-
Rocky
I betcha women will be the primary buyer, just as they are for every other little SUV
I'm not sure about that. Did you read a buyers demographic on that subject ? I do agree I see alot of women drive small-midsize SUV's
Rocky
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061107/AUTO01/611070344/1148-
Rocky
Rocky
Some good reads....
Rocky
Some other good reads....
Rocky
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061106/METRO/611060351/1148/- AUTO01
Rocky
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=117478
Rocky
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=117500
Rocky
Rocky
Rocky
Rocky
Rocky
The CEOs, who will drive up to the White House in a Ford Escape hybrid, Saturn Vue Green Line hybrid and a Chrysler Sebring, are likely to get a warmer reception from Bush than they have received in recent months.
President Bush wants "to reaffirm his support for the American auto industry, and his support for its growth and success," White House spokesman Tony Snow said during Friday's press briefing.
That endorsement and the face-to-face meeting has been a long time coming for the automotive executives, who initially planned to meet the president in May.
After numerous cancellations and, at times, a contentious relationship with the Bush administration, Mulally, General Motors Corp's Rick Wagoner and Chrysler's Tom LaSorda will finally meet with the president.
The auto companies have emphasized that while they would like help on trade and currency regulations, as well as health care and improving access to alternative fuels, they don't want, or need, a bailout.
"I'm looking forward to this because I've had chance to work with President Bush at Boeing on global trade issues," Mulally told The Detroit News in an interview Friday.
"He believes in competitiveness, he believes in the United States, he believes in taking the actions required to improve your competitiveness," he said.
Mulally specifically mentioned tariffs on imported steel that have driven up the automakers' purchasing costs.
GM's spokesman Greg Martin called the meeting "a good opportunity to talk directly to the president about critical issues that affect not just the auto industry but American manufacturing as a whole."
Despite the fact that GM and Ford are shedding 74,000 jobs and closing more than two dozen North American factories, there isn't a sense of a crisis atmosphere in Washington, experts said.
"It's no longer a doomsday scenario that GM or Ford would go bankrupt. It's not like 1980 with the bailout of Chrysler. The tension is out of the relationship," said Dan Sperling, a professor at the University of California, Davis and director of its Institute of Transportation Studies.
It hasn't been the friendliest year between the administration and the automakers.
Bush said the automakers needed to build "relevant" cars in a Wall Street Journal interview in January, a comment that steamed American auto executives.
"I was surprised and shocked over some of the highly uninformed and inaccurate comments that President Bush made about GM, its ability to compete, and the 'relevance' of its products," GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz later said. "Rarely have, in any country of the world, the foreign companies experienced the joy of seeing the head of state bash his own national industry."
In April, the president called for lifting the cap on the hybrid tax credit -- a move that would only benefit Toyota Motor Corp., since the automaker is the only one to hit the 60,000-vehicle cap.
However, the president doesn't want to overlook Detroit's contributions, Snow said, and he wants to thank them for "creating flex-fuel vehicles and hybrids that enable us to find new ways to power our large and always growing automotive fleet in this country in such a way as that it gives us a little better ability to try to wean ourselves from an addition to oil, especially foreign oil."
The trade association representing the foreign automakers, the Association of International Automakers, isn't upset about being left out of the meeting but noted they have a lot of issues in common.
"To the extent that their conversation focuses on issues related to the rising cost of health care, the promise of alternate fuels and international trade, these issues affect all manufacturers producing vehicles in the United States," said the group's president Mike Stanton.
http://www.detroitnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061111/AUTO01/611110380/- 1148
Rocky
Rocky
http://www.detroitnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061111/AUTO01/611110395/- 1148/AUTO01
Rocky
http://www.detroitnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061109/AUTO01/611090433/- 1148/AUTO01
Rocky
http://www.detroitnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061110/BIZ/611100306/114- 8/AUTO01
Rocky
WASHINGTON -- When the heads of Detroit's automakers finally take their seats at the White House on Tuesday across from President George W. Bush, their concerns will boil down to the old Aretha Franklin song: R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
From the rising cost of retiree health care to the advantages a weak yen gives the Japanese, the Detroit automakers will press for more recognition for their issues, something industry executives say has been lacking from the president. They'll also attempt to draw distinctions between themselves and the foreign automakers whose U.S. branches generate record profits.
But they will make clear that their concerns do not add up to another seven-letter word: B-A-I-L-O-U-T.
The meeting should "enhance the president's understanding of the importance of the domestic auto industry to the economic health of the United States," General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said in a recent interview, emphasizing the word "domestic."
Foreign automakers that build cars in the United States help the economy, "but it's not the same as a fully integrated American auto company that retains the intellectual property in the United States, has primarily American shareholders," he said, so "the wealth gets reinvested in the U.S."
Ford Chief Executive Alan Mulally said Friday of the meeting with Bush: "What I'm looking forward to is just sharing with him the state of our industry and also talking about competitiveness going forward."
All sides expect no firm commitments from the scheduled 45-minute session in the Roosevelt Room, which will include Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Al Hubbard, director of the National Economic Council.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said Friday that Bush planned to use the meeting to "reaffirm his support for the American auto industry, and his support for its growth and success." Snow said Bush also will thank them for their progress on flexible-fuel and hybrid vehicles.
Whether or not GM Chairman Rick Wagoner, Mulally and Chrysler Group Chief Executive Tom LaSorda can get their points across to Bush, the industry does have a louder voice in Washington thanks to the rise of its most ardent backers in a Congress that, after Tuesday's election, will be controlled by Democrats.
"I hope this meeting produces some evidence that this administration finally understands the needs of the American auto industry to be treated fairly in the world marketplace," said U.S. Rep. John Dingell, a Dearborn Democrat who is pegged to reclaim the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which handles many issues important to the auto industry.
Added Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.: "We need a government that's a partner with the auto industry and manufacturing sector. Our companies do not compete with foreign companies. They compete with foreign governments."
While congressional Democrats had pushed several pieces of legislation that would help the industry, their prospects are questionable, as the party's leaders and Bush have yet to discuss their priorities in depth.
Here are the three topics that will dominate Tuesday's meeting, and the outlook for each.
Health care: Perhaps the single greatest threat to the automakers' finances, health care adds $900 to $1,400 to the cost of every vehicle GM, Ford and Chrysler make. All three spend more on health care than on steel, and GM's estimated costs for future retiree health-care benefits could wipe out the shareholder equity on its balance sheet later this year because of an accounting rule change.
Despite the gravity of the health-care issue, there's been little movement in Washington toward major health-care reform. The health-care bill closest to passing Congress aims to lower costs by setting standards for computer systems, benefits that would mainly control the rate of inflation years from now.
Democratic leaders have pledged to rework part of the Medicare drug plan benefit to allow the government to negotiate drug prices and close the so-called doughnut hole, the gap in coverage when seniors spend between $2,250 and $5,100 a year on prescription drugs.
Sean McAlinden, chief economist for the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, said such a move could save GM alone "hundreds of millions of dollars a year" by providing drugs that GM pays for today. But most observers expect Bush would veto major alterations to the Medicare plan, and closing the hole would require $200 billion over 10 years -- more than might be saved through price negotiations.
Dingell said that while broad reforms would be difficult, even changes that worked around the edges of the problem could benefit metro Detroit.
Trade and currency: A chronic complaint of the domestic automakers -- the unfair advantage of a weak Japanese yen -- has grown in Detroit's executive suites as Toyota, Honda and Nissan rack up impressive profits.
The automakers contend that Japan artificially suppresses the value of its yen, making imported goods from Japan cheaper and boosting the profits exported from American customers. The automakers might press hard on currency issues because Bush is scheduled to meet with Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Saturday during his visit to Vietnam.
Energy: "Energy independence" was the one Washington buzz phrase shared across party lines before the election, and will only gain momentum with the Democrats' elevation in Congress.
The Detroit automakers pledged earlier this year to double the number of vehicles they build annually that can run on 85% ethanol fuel, and have pushed for more incentives to spread E85 fueling stations.
Bush has proposed revising fuel economy standards for passenger cars, which the industry hasn't opposed, but has not supported the kind of higher standards many Democrats back.
One type of proposal that could gain momentum would be some sort of industry Marshall Plan, which would give Detroit automakers help with their benefit costs in return for increased spending on new fuel-efficient technologies such as plug-in hybrids.
Some lawmakers also have called for large boosts in the federal research spending on new vehicle technology such as fuel cells, which could allow automakers to do less of the heavy lifting in that type of research themselves.
"That money they must spend on these things now comes from the bottom line," McAlinden said. "The money not used from the bottom line could be released for more prosaic product development."
The trouble for Detroit in pushing for these issues is that the automakers' concerns contradict Bush's portrayal of a vigorous U.S. manufacturing sector and a healthy national economy.
Those concerns might fall on deaf ears in Washington, where many see the domestic companies' troubles as self-inflicted rather than structural. Bush himself said last month that the automakers' accumulated health-care and retirement promises to their workers were their burden, not the government's.
"The U.S. remains a competitive place to make cars and many components, but GM and Ford labor under a $2,500 cost disadvantage thanks to clumsy management and unrealistic labor contracts," said Peter Morici, a business professor at the University of Maryland.
Consider last month's jobs report. While most measures of manufacturing output have remained strong, manufacturing jobs shrank again, accounting for the lowest share of employed workers in modern times. Part of that decline came from lost jobs in auto factories, where employment hit a 14-year-low as thousands of workers took buyouts or early retirement from GM and Delphi Corp.
Ed Lazear, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said the decline in manufacturing jobs over the past couple of years was a result of more productive factories and that jobs lost in manufacturing were being replaced with higher-wage work in other industries.
"One of the things this economy seems to be best at is figuring out ways to produce more output with fewer resources," Lazear said. "That's a good thing because what it means is that we can release labor to work in other sectors and to be more productive in other sectors."
Bush last met with the heads of Detroit's automakers in Dearborn in 2003, as he canvassed the country to build support for his tax-cut package, which all three of the companies' then-CEOs pledged to support.
The last White House meeting with Detroit's Big Three was in 1997, when auto and union executives warned President Bill Clinton that the Kyoto greenhouse gas reduction treaty could hurt their business. Clinton also chatted with CEOs during a 2000 visit to the Detroit auto show.
None of those events carried the anticipation of this meeting, because most of the automakers were healthy at those earlier meetings. But with roughly 70,000 jobs being cut by GM and Ford, and the German-owned Chrysler Group losing money, the political pressures have risen exponentially.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061112/BUSINESS01/611120574/10- 14
Rocky
P.S. Hope y'all enjoyed it as much as I did.
Rocky