GM worse off than I thought....

My thought was that Toyota could buy half of Opel, get a large share of decent performing European company and a larger share of the European market.

Ed

Why would Toyota buy Opal? Not worth the problems.

European manufacturing capacity. Engineering talent. Good way to expand marketing presence in Europe. Opel has built some very nice vehicles over the years. Germans tend to resist Japanese products. Owning a large percentage of Opel would allow Toyota to overcome this resistence. Toyota has purchased large percentages of other automobile companies, seem like this would be a good chance to improve their position in Europe. I would not judge Opel buy the few models sold here. The Saturn Astra is an Opel and seems very nice.

Ed

The reason the Japs do not operate in Europe is they do not have the corporate tax advantages they have in the US. In Europe they, like GM and Ford, would have to pay the high corporate taxes on the profits they earn in the Socialists countries in Europe, not take the profits back to Japan tax free, like they do from the US.

Are you saying Toyota does not operate in Europe? I know you typed some words which suggest this, but because you're almost perpetually drunk, we can't really assume you type what you mean.

So again: Are you saying Toyota does not operate in Europe?

Google is your friend Mikey:

Toyota in Europe

Take note Mikey and eat crow:

Tomorrow morning, during the 2 hour window when Mike Punter is sober, he'll claim we didn't understand what he meant.

My reference was to the European Union, where Toyota in what sixth place behind the Smart, making midget cars and trucks? Nothing like in the US were they earn over half of their worldwide profits LOL

This is what *you* wrote:

Fact of the matter:

Toyota in Europe

Take note Mikey and eat crow:

What can Opel build that Toyota can't?

Back in the 1980s, GM invested as much in factory automation as what all of Toyota's stock cost. :(

No, you drunken old piece of s*it. You made an absolute statement. You said the Japs do not operate in Europe. You didn't say anything about the scale of their operations. You said they don't do business in Europe.

Joe should look at:

You should see those SmartCars yesterday, couldn't get out of their driveways. Amazing what 3" of heavy slush snowfall on unplowed slushy streets does to them. Unsuitable as a year around car where I live.

At a New Years party the SmartCar owner bragged, until he had to humble himself and ask the F150 owners to help them out of the 3" of snow on a slipery road. We waited until they left and said Darwin is at work here.

You mean like GM does to Canada and Europe? You know, price the base cost very high in foreign countries to rake back the profits to the USA?

One company I used to work for would ship parts out of Houston we could get locally. Locally they were $10 per. But out of Houston it was $350. The idea was to cost out the profits showing a break even in Canada and transfer the profits via parts pricing back to the US.

So are you telling us this is another process in which Japanese companies bettered the D3 inventors of this process? LOL.

I did. It sat on the screen in my browser until 8:00 PM last night, waiting for Hunter the drunk to try and avoid what he'd said. I expected him to claim that the web site was a fake put up by a liberal in this newsgroup.

And much of it was never used by GM because of minimum labour content rules from CAW/UAW.

I am surprized at how much labour content is in a vehicle today.

LOL. Hunter is myopic for sure. With GM shares almost the same price as Ford, and all the bailout quietness, makes me wonder what GM is up too? Packaged chapter 11 is what I suspect, or I hope for. Because at that time they will be out of the taxpayers pockets.

We can only hope. The auto industry is almost like a religion in this country. If Intel, Kroger or K-Mart completely mismanaged their companies and ended up gone, people would say "Oh well. They screwed up. They're gone." and yawn. Why do we feel the need to rescue car companies?