Ford, GM have discussed merger, alliance

It's true that Japanese car quality is overrated, mostly because of Toyota, Honda, and maybe Subaru, and Nissan's new models have been horrible. But the Japanese can develop new designs more quickly and produce them with far fewer production hours, and the percentage gap in production hours is wider than it was 10-20 years ago. That, combined with models customers don't like (Name a Ford, other than the F-150 or Mustang. Name a GM vehicle) and flat sales, aren't good signs for the future.

Guys, every empire in the history of the world has collapsed. Civilization is the story of rise and fall. Seriously, why would the US be any different? You can't stop it. Seems like the day is coming. The US will most likely end up like Britain over the past 100 years: it used to run the world. It WAS the world. Today, while it still has a massive military, it also has high unemployment, foreign ownership of everything, depressed wages, rising crime rates, and on and on it goes. The US is probably next in line.

Brad

Throw in benifits too like lnsurance, retirement, days off, pension. vehical purchase options to name a few that they do not pay for and work rules to and the net cost is well over 70K a year. You want to stimulate sales, slash wages 25% and you could slash car price 15% and still make a profit. Year ago I knew a guy that worked at a morane bearing plant. He told me up until mid 70's that when labor cost were lower (though they made a good wage still) that the would reject bearing that looked the slightest bit bad. Afer the agreesive wage a benifit tactics that started in mid 70's in the following years, they where told to pass bearing that were clearly bad to pay for wage increases and it got worse every year. THis was just one area and there were others. I has finailly reached critical mass and quaility and sales have suffered and Toyota and others have stepped it paying a more reasonable wage and being able to spend more time and money on quaility. Unless the UAW realizes that they must change, they will be out of a job one day. They will blame the imports but the blame is with their greed in a market that will no longer support it.

----------------- TheSnoMan.com

Interesting view and point. If the US falls it will because of the people running it (like those now) that are only interested in short term gain and not looking at the long term picture just like some industries today. THe said part is that every consumer will pay for this folly.

----------------- TheSnoMan.com

whitelightning,

i like your stories - especially the one about hte pinto. sadly, a high-milage reliable pinto was not the norm. conversely, most people who had bought toyotas in the mid-80s liked them and kept them for long stretches and loved their reliability, much as you did you pinto.

whatever detroit does, it will take them a generation to win back consumers. to speed up this process, detroit will have to pray that some of the popular japanese models (prius, echo, fit) become as poor and unreliable as some legendary detroit lemons like Kcars, volares, pintos, and citations. (please dont share a story in response about some 1m mile citation that was 'bulletproof' - i just ate my egg mcmuffin and i dont want to barf it up!)

another thing, it bothers me that good hard working americans are being perceived as the cause of detroit's failures. these US conglomerates should be able to pay a 50k wage and care of the health of their people. they should be able to do it. it should not be a focus of blame of a 15% factor in the sticker price of their cars. maybe the US government should be picking up the healthcare costs of these retirees (and all other hard -working americans). i am sure intheir hayday GM paid unimaginable taxes. the cause of their failure is poor product design, and a weak corporate culture.

harry in montreal.

Comparing a pinto to mid 80s japanese car is pretty unfair, since the pinto entered the marketplace in 1971 and left practically unchanged in

It's assembly line work... I'm sorry, but it's not the sort of job that generally needs to be highly paid nor has a bottom line relationship where it pays for its self.

Corporate culture drives the rest, part of corporate culture is the union culture.

Please... Free health care for auto workers is not possible today and be profitable too. They need to choose between a high wage and they pay for insurance and a lower wage with free insurance. I have likely bought my last Detriot vehicle because I will not pay top dollar for lower quality to pay their generous benifits and it is not about being patriotic either and buying them no matter what because that does not wash anymore. We shell out over 300/month for our contribution to good health care coverage and it goes up every year too so I am very aware of health costs and the "raise" detriot workers get every year with free coverage and a COLA. If their coverage was not free they would not run up medical bill as quickly and help keep costs down and I would love to have free perscriptions too like they do which encourges them to do it often even when not really needed. Maybe I cannot stop it but I will not support it and I am not alone because detriot continues to loose market share and will do so until it and its works wakeup and realize that they have two choices, stay the course and go under one day or radically change and adapt with products, wages, quality because they need to get prices down and quality up and it is impossible unless the wage issue is addressed. The economy will not longer support this.

----------------- TheSnoMan.com

Your perception of lower quality doesn't wash. Being a mechanic for a toyo dealership for a number of years, back in the early 90's to mid 90's, opened my eyes to what they really do. Keep everything quite, they had lots of problems with their vehicles, just as much as the domestics if not more. Their customer relations were far better than the domestics, and they bent over backwards to appease the customer, probably what helped keep their perception high.

Razz, it is not my own perception. it is the collective north american market. yes, toyota dealers bend over backwards - that is why they are successful. japanese initial quality is better than detroit. that is a fact, not opinion. just look at toyota's financial results. look at GM's. don't insult me with conspiracy theories that GM makes just as good of a car (reliability and quality) as toyota. if you truly believe that domestics are a better cars, you should lobby for a seat on Ford's board of directors. Harry in Montreal.

brent, you are joking right? verygood, you are correct, they built the Pinto in 1980... long after it should have been discontinued. So, lets compare a 1980 Tercel with a 1980 Pinto. do you think this is a fairer comparison? which do you think is superior?

people on assembly lines buy cars. a huge segment of the US population earns wages in this bracket. they have children that become lawyers and doctors too. besides, i did not say that 50,000 a year is highly paid.

very well, a big part of corporate culture are designers, engineers, and marketers that devise these average products. the accountants, and line workers later suffer at the back-end from this initial weakness.

Harry

companys make 1 good one?

That's a damn good question....

TNS

The Answer: It benefits the execs and members of the board.. They get rich on ridiculous bonuses based on false performance, bleed the post-merger company dry, retire with millions, if not billions, in the bank.. without a care in the world... Why should they care if they leave a dry empty shell behind?

Sounds like a good company to me.. at least, as far as the top level execs are concerned..

Sounds "Not so Good" for the 10's of thousands of people and families that once had jobs there...

(Sorry, just feeling angry and cynical today..)

I would say 70s car to 70s car. Now you might have named the one japanese car of the era that I liked it's styling and was still RWD. I forget which toyota it is... or even if it was a toyota... anyway... in most instances I would end up choosing the fireball ford in the pinto class.

For putting tab A into slot B it is. And ultimately that's why manufacturing ends up going to places like china, because that's all people on the line often want to deal with.

Real engineers (does not include those who couldn't design their way out of a wet paper bag being promoted into management) have little effect on corporate culture in large US corporations. They are a worker bee class that returns far more than their salaries. On just one product at one employer I returned more to the bottom line than probably an entire career's worth of pay. The larger the company, the less impact the real engineer has because he doesn't play the politics.

My father had a work truck that was a 1970 Chevy C-10 6-cylinder. The truck had over 100,000 mi on it. It never needed any major engine work. It went on thousands of trips of less than 1 mi and last about 20 years.

I didnt say the engine WOULD need the work. but it was the mind set then because things like valve jobs and re-rings were considered routine maintenance up until the mid 70's. Nobody kept cars more than 3-4 years or 60,000 miles unless they had to. The drive trains were great. But you can not compare a truck of that era with a truck of today. If you had built trucks to the level of "creature comforts" today's buyer demands as standard equipment, your fathers 1970 C-10 would have cost as much as your grandfather's caddy sedan deville. And would you like to make the average wage from that era? Hell in 73 you could buy a three bedroom ranch with a one car garage, a full basement, on a

Whitelightning

That would be about 2 cents more than it's worth.

The problem wasn't the engine design, but rather the lubrication oil and the fuel. I'd wager that a brand new 60s or 70s, hell even a number of

If these engines survived the 70s, they've been just fine through the 80s and 90s. In fact, many of the engines were made into the 80s with no significant internal changes but with the additional durability indicating the problems were in the engine design and manufacturing but rather the quality of the available engine oil.

I would take the average wage of my profession in 1900 with 1900 prices. It would be a six figure salary today.

It wasn't the oil, it was how often it was changed lol. That was a major reason the ricers seemed to be better back then, the owners took better care of them, because it cost three times as much to fix Toyata in the late 60's early 70's then it took to fix a Chevy. Dino oil is Dino oil, it hasn't changed all that much. detergent oil came out in the late 50's, as did detergent in gasoline. Lead had been in gasoline since 1921.

Whitelightning