Atman
I'm tired of hearing that Detroit only built crappy cars that no one bought.
I'm not a defender of GM or Ford. I owned a Ford Windstar which I literally had throw away after a few years because it was such a piece of crap. My GM S-10 truck was rugged, but it was heavy and sucked gas. We did buy our son a 2002 Saturn L200 which seems light years ahead of either the Windstar or the S-10 in terms of quality. We'll see how long it lasts, though. Now that I've made the disclaimers, on to my sub line...
It is disingenuous to say "no one wanted" or "no one bought" Detroit cars. That's crazy talk, often uttered by people whose last American car experience was a Chevy Monza or an AMC Pacer. To see who that "no one" is who isn't buying American cars, all one has to do is look out their car window next time they're out for a drive. You will have Fords, GM's and Chryslers in front of you, behind you, next to you. LOTS of people wanted them and bought them. LOTS of people bought other brands, too. Me among them.
But I think some people are really projecting with the whole "Crappy cars that no one wanted" meme. Even if you hate American cars, the fact is, millions and millions of people didn't hate them, wanted them, and bought them. In addition to millions of GMC trucks and construction equipment. Millions and millions of people bought them. The trouble wasn't the cars, per se, it was the HORRIBLE GM AND FORD MANAGEMENT. Their failure to push true innovation over gee-whiz gadgets like OnStar, which seems more like it was designed to help cash--flow by signing people up for monthly subscriptions, without really offering much to car owners, helped bring them to their knees.
Did GM and Ford really have 80mpg cars in 2000? Probably. And that's what I mean by poor management. The cars they WERE making may not have been you [sic] cup of tea,...which is why you purchased something different. But let's stop saying that "no one bought American cars." Just look around you.
Oh, btw...part of GM's financial trouble has nothing to do with their supposedly crappy cars...they also own DiTech, the cheesy online mortgage huckster of the Bush years. I wonder how that's working out for their bottom line? Again...more bad management, taking the eyes off their core business.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4473430&mesg_id=4473430
Pedro, as far as the "no one wanted" or "no one bought" comments at the DUmp, those are your little nimrod comrades, and no doubt they believe it. As for those who are normal, we fully recognize they're prone to exaggeration.
As to what management was producing at the Big 3, hind-sight is 20/20, at least to those of us who observe, a burden I would never place on you or your fellow idiots at DU. Your statement is essentially saying they intentionally committed suicide by promoting bells an whistles rather than substance, an accusation which is more accurately directed at liberalism as an ideology, but I digress. They evidently were doing something right, or at least enough for some people, otherwise the "millions and millions" of cars you claim "all one has to do is look out their car window" to see wouldn't be there. Given the scenerio you painted, what is occuring now should have happened to all of the Big 3 around 10 or 20 years ago.
Granted, the quality of work compared to foreign auto makers did take a dive around 25 years ago, and as a result they lost market share they never really recovered. Not out of lack of trying, or at least claiming they were trying. The "Quality is Job One" slogan comes to mind.
No, what really took them down are these stupid contracts they made with the unions. When the consumer is paying on average $1500 per new automobile that immediately goes to fund the worker's pension, that's a receipe for disaster. There's no way a company can compete when the other auto makers are only around the $200 level. For the same money, one could get a better product that was generally more reliable. And I'm not the only one who noticed this and felt this way about it, as evidenced by the Big 3 falling upon hard times due to lack of sales.
And your last paragraph; total non-sense. They also own GMAC Financing. Insurance companies take the premiums you pay and invest them in mortgage lending. Should insurance companies not loan money, too? So big companies like GM investing their profits into diverse enterprises in order to create additional income is nothing new.
If GM needed to retrench (get back to "core business"), they should have scaled back to just 3 divisions: Chevrolet could have handled all the small and mid-size autos and sports cars, GMAC could manufacture the trucks and SUV's, and Cadillac could build all the luxury autos. There, everyone's covered. Instead they had Chevy and Pontiac and Buick all building essentially the same cars with a few variations and slapping on their own label. Waste.
Now if you want to blame the current crisis on anyone and be accurate about it, blame your own liberal Dems in Congress who relaxed the lending practices of Fannie and Freddie that created this sub-prime mess, which in turn has caused a world-wide recession. I'm in the financial industry, I know exactly what caused it, as does Wall Street and all the major players, and they know it was the idiots lib Dems, and they're going to invest accordingly and with the proper precautions knowing that the very one's who caused the problem are now the foxes claiming to be guarding the hen house. You and your fellow Dems/libs may get away with your lies to the general public to some degree, but the people who *know* who the culprits are, the overwhelming majority of people with money and who don't believe your lies, aren't going to play along unless the upcoming administration does it according to *our* rules. Live and learn.
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