Re: Asian brands dominate reliability list; Ford Motor is best domestic

Under the current situation they are going to get several billion of debtor in possession financing exactly where? If they could do a pre-packaged Chapter 11, they probably wouldn't really need to do a Chapter 11. Although DIPF might be more palatable to the Feds since it is about as Senior as you can get.

Can they impose new contracts or would the UAW still be able to strike? If striking is still an option, this may be less helpful.

They can strike if they wish, I guess, as long as their current contract is valid, but they can be replaced with nonunion workers if their contracts are cancelled under bankruptcy. There are plenty of people who would like to have good jobs now, and union workers would be very ill advised to press the issue to the limit.

Retired workers would continue to receive benefits as they are insured, IIUC, under the present agreement.

Unions do not have the power they once had. Unions were needed badly by workers back in the sweatshop days, but I believe they went overboard.

Airlines have declared bankruptcy on occasions when they could not be profitable because of their union issues.

IF health care costs are a major part of the problem, then we have a more urgent and perplexing issue. Everything regarding healthcare in the USA is too expensive, IMHO. If we try to extend healthcare to autoworkers, we will also have to extend them to the some 40,000,000 people who have no access to healthcare in the USA.

ANd the automakers and unions played a rather interesting role in that debacle too. Around the 70 and early 80s it was actually cheaper for the automakers to increase health insurance benefits than to give real money, so they did. Ford, GM, et al began to subsidize more of the premium and more of the actual cost of the product (lower or even non-existent copays). And other non-union plans also began to follow suit. If you look at the annual reports on total healthcare expenditures from the Office of the Actuary at Medicare, you see a trend developing where the out-of-pocket expense for healthcare (including the out-of-pocket part of the premium) dived from around 50% in the 60s to less than 18% in the early 2000s. This means that, across the population someone other than the patient (or person insured) pays over 80% of the costs. What they neglected to consider, or more likely considered and blew off as Someone Else's Problem, was what happens to demand when something is subsidized to the tune of 80 cents on the dollar. It skyrockets. But since the barriers to entry are large in medicine (you can't crank out a new doc all that quickly) this increase in demand brings about VERY big increases in costs. While the Automakers aren't by any means the sole reason for this happening, they certainly were among the first to come up with the "gold plated" health insurance policies. (BTW: This subsidy (and attendant problems when the user of a product (me) is largely different from the person who pays for it (the employer)) is one of the main reasons I suggest we shouldn't dismiss a market-driven healthcare system until we actually try it.

The best thing for the automakers at this time would be to follow the example of the airlines and reorganize under Chapter 11. The government should not be bailing out the big 3 in their present condition.

The new GM, Ford, and Chrysler will have to decide whether they will build vehicles that people want to buy, or shut down entirely.

Next thing you will be telling us is the Toyota executive come over on the ships in which they bring most of those vehicles they sell here in the US. LOL

Of course they have. You cant build that many cars and have all losers. They still lose on long term quality. I have several friends who bought GM & Ford trucks last time around - the quality has been so poor at 60K miles that they are looking at Toyotas this time. You figure it out.

That must be why GM & Ford are doing so well.

I'm no Japanese worshipper and I'm not particularly fond of Toyota or Nissan. They dodge warranty issues now like the US makers. However, they are smart enough to do the marketing so that they have a MIX to sell. They make their investments smartly and in the future. As the evidence shows, the "US" auto makers don't.

You mean all those crappy cars that were outselling all the crappy imports of the seventies? You are glossing over the fact the imports were growing selling small cars but more of their mid size cars, Vans, SUVs and trucks to THEIR customers over the same period of time and the fact the imports were not able to compete in that market. The growing market for American buyers. LOL

g>>imports. Some of which do as good or better in fuel economy as any of the

How does you personal opinion square with the fact GM today still outsells any import brand?

Yeah, but Tundra sales have shown that most truck buyers aren't looking at long term quality when they purchase a truck, especially when that quality comes at a price.

You have got to be kidding, right? On what planet do you live? The first thing long term work truck users look at IS long term reliability. That why the F150 has been the best selling vehicle in the US for thirty one years and so for in the 2008 model year as well. 60K my a$$, I've seen thousand of Ford trucks in fleet service in use for five years that were run up to 300K and more. The only thing 'quality' about The Tundra is Toyota finally started to build a work truck that was getting closer to the quality of the trucks Ford and Chevy have been building for ten years or more.

How can anybody compare a Tundra to the F150 or the Silverado? Real truck buyers do not even LOOK at the Tundra. The only people even looking to buy the Tundra are those that want to move up from their small Toyota truck or their T100. Tundra sales have been in the dumper all year, Toyota closed down the Texas plant that builds them for THREE months. Toyota has been dumping Tundras a the Manheim Auto Auctions for months. Brand new RWDs are going for as little as 25K. I would not be surprised to see Toyota converting that truck plant to build something they can get people to buy, hybrid cars LOL

--Vic

Holy shit. You manage to amaze me so very often. You are a Toyota-loving-nutjob, and you make excuses for anything and everything. The reason more people buy GM and Ford trucks is because they are better then the shit Toyota makes. Have you taken a look at the recall list for the Tundra? They recall more of them then they actually sell. Where do you get your facts from, which say the Tundra is so much better then the GM and Ford trucks?

Toyota manages to.

I already did. You have 3 friends who have problems with there GM and Ford trucks. So they forget the entire brand. They obviously aren't that smart.

Don't like the fact that a GM and a Ford truck sell better then any Toyota, or any other vehicle? To bad, get used to it.

Wrong. They manage to brainwash people like you. They manage to make it seem as though they make great vehicles, even while recalling most that they sell.

Buyers have a tendency to blame auto manufacturers, that make their vehicles in the US for the paint and gasket problems they had with vehicles they owned previously. The truth is the US government was the cause of those problem NOT the paint or gasket manufactures or the manufacturers of the vehicles.

The government set arbitrary dates at which certain materials in paints and asbestos could no longer be used. They should have set goals rather than dates certain. By setting dates certain the government did not allow time for field tests to determine if the replacement materials would actually hold up. Every manufacture domestic or foreign who made or applied paint or used the gaskets in the US were the victims just were those that purchased the vehicles. Those that assembled their vehicles off shore were not effected.