Lee Iacocca was alarmed by the massive amount of unsold cars sitting and decaying on the Michigan State Fairgrounds near Detroit back in late '78 when he took over as chair of Chrysler Corporation. This was the notorious "sales bank," the repository of overproduced,undersold product that would be given away under wholesale to dealers at the end of fiscal quarters to just get rid of the inventory and make the books look a little better.
Guess what...it's BAAAAAAACK!
CNBC moments ago showed the same, exact place where Iacocca was alarmed by the "sales bank"...chock full of pickups and SUVs. Turns out all the Big 3 have been lying about their inventory overstock, as well, by cutting the amount of inventory by "future fleet sales." As IF they know exactly when and who's going to buy these things for fleets! After cleaning up that little slight of hand, it's apparant now that Chrysler has a 120 day inventory of Jeeps and pickups sitting at the fairgrounds...and those cars are just sitting there, decaying, and the harsh Michigan winter is coming.
Meanwhile, Ford announced the end of the Taurus, the car that saved Ford from the mismanagement of King Henry II in the '80s. Now, after years of mismanagement by Billy Boy, they're in worse trouble than before.
The Taurus was another place where Iacocca was wrong. When it was introduced in '86, he called it "the potato car." Wrong...that was one hot selling potato for many years...until Ford, by then headlong into systemic mismanagement by the Ford family (again), refused to spend any money keeping it modern and fresh. Seems that Billy Boy was more interested in 2 seater T-Birds and hulking "Eddie Bauer" Expeditions and Explorers. Then the Firestone disaster hit, and it's been downhill with no brakes for Ford ever since, despite a period of robust sales for the gas guzzlers...for awhile....until gas hit $3/gallon.