Choose wisely

[Lubbockguy1979]

If you are following the news you know the only american car maker now is ford. The next closest brands nissan, toyota, honda..... With help from the government the uaw got controling interest in chrystler and gm is now government motors.... Thus making them no longer a private american company...... Scary glad I drive a ford

[Fordfanatic4life]

yea tuff times to be a chevy fanboi...

indeed..

if u got a Pontiac u better stock up on parts soon..i wonder how much longer before GMC goes on the chopping block followed be the complete collapse of GM...

personaly i think GM is trying to get as much govn. handout money as they can before they file for chpter11 in teh end anyways....

[skip mitchell]

The pontiac will be like the oldsmobile a few years back,after they gave up on them their value went in the toliet

[Greg B]

I doubt GM will completely collapse, But it'll seem like it to their employees and retirees after they get through with Chapter 11. It could very well mean that Ford will be the largest American car company once everything is sorted out. As for Pontiac parts, most mechanical parts are the same for all GM brands. None of the manufacturers support the car models that they make for all that long any more. That's why there is an aftermarket. I'm more curious about the merger of Chrysler and Fiat and how that's going to shake out.

[makomaker]

I hope they fold. It's disgraceful how an American icon can be run down into the ground by poor mgt, greedy, lazy unions and a basically poor product.

[LMS Residential]

Don't hope they fold, there's economies of scale at work here. Ford NEEDS GM...and Chrysler...and Honda and so forth. At worst, the demise of any of the big three will cripple many, if not all, part and component suppliers. After the dust settles, Ford will be lucky to obtain some parts at all and if they can, the cost would be driven up exponentially due to decreased production and loss of orders. Not to mention the further devastating effect all of those now unemployed autoworkers would have on the economy. Pray for the relative success of Fords' competitors through this mess. Failure will cost all of us.

[tex25025]

Originally Posted by LMS Residential

Don't hope they fold, there's economies of scale at work here.

To a degree, a certain amount of purging is good. Even though you feel bad for the workers in those respective companies, sometimes there has to be some failure that happens.

As to economy of scale, that will only happen with mergers, which look at about 50-50 right about now(and I don't consider that good considering the contect of it all).

There are arguments for both, but I don't think the government should be helping in such a manner as they are. Now if they want to do policy that uses market incentives to figure things out, that's one thing, but to just come in and do their thing, no that isn't good at all.

[brian42]

When a forklift driver can make $85,000/year, living high on the hog can't last forever. The salaries just go up from their as you work your way up the skill and management chain. Without regulation, it will end sooner. Sure it would suck to make $60K instead of $85K a year, but would you rather have your job for 10 years or 20 years? Too many people see only in the short term and what their take is, not what would benefit the company and their stability in the future. Look at the retail market. There was a Good Guys and Circuit City always within a block of each other. Same goes for Bed, Bath and Beyond and Linens & Things as well as Home Depot and Lowes. The market supported it, so it thrived. Now people are smarter with their money (since there's not as much of it anymore) and the market can't support that kind of glut.

I LOVE the GM acronym by Lubbockguy1979 (Government Motors)! Pontiac is a goner this year. By the end of the year GM will be down to Chevrolet and Cadillac. The rest will find a home elsewhere (Hummer, Saturn, Buick, GMC and Saab). I don't know what they'll do with Holden (Australian Pontiac). With the White House having a person on the board of directors (with over 50% ownership of GM they just want to have eyes on the board...so far), I don't know if I would feel comfortable about the direction of my car company.

I am thankful every day that I own a Ford, especially now!

[Krewat]

Thread moved to the Ford vs. The Competition forum.

Not Superduty related

[Greg B]

It looks like the course is charted. From what's being reported on the news today, GM and Chrysler are both going into Chapter 11 because the greedy bondholders in the hedge funds won't accept the concessions that the unions, vendors, and salaried workers accepted. What this is going to mean is that many parts suppliers will probably fold because of the fact it'll take way too long for them to receive their money from GM and Chrysler and they don't have deep enough pockets to wait it out. They will also not have enough orders from Ford and the transplants to keep going. The worst thing about this development is that sales of autos will not recover and our manufacturing base will be further weakened to the point that our overall standard of living will go down also. And there will be more foreign content in the vehicles that will be built in the future because of the decline in the domestic supplier base. I would hate to think that my beloved Ford truck had a high content of made in China parts in it from the factory.

[dkf]

I knew they would end up filing bankruptcy sooner or later. Its just too bad they basically stole the taxpayers money.

Hopefully Ford and any other company for that matter will be rewarded for taking care of themselves and not leeching off of others.

[Freaksh0w]

FYI, Ford had the government to set aside their bailout money, so that it could be used at a later point IF NEEDED. I'm a Ford man, but I gotta tell the facts.

BTW, what's going on with Chrysler? Are they really going to merge with FIAT? Talk about going to hell in a handbasket. I don't know wtf that phrase has ever meant, but it sounds appropriate here.

[brian42]

If I thought I could make it, but I could have a loan pre-approved IF I NEEDED IT and could grab the money when I wanted to...heck yeah I'd say yes to that. It never hurts to plan ahead, especially if it means the difference between success and bankruptcy.

I don't fault Ford for making sure that they had a contingency plan. They're still coming out smelling like roses in all of this. It was good timing to re-negotiate their debt when the did, just before economy collapsed. Sometimes the race is won in the pits...

[Greg B]

GM bankruptcy isn't done yet, but that certainly looks where their headed. Chrysler is going to merge with Fiat according to the recent news reports. And they have filed Chapter 11. GM probably will follow suit for the same reason as Chrysler, their greedy bond holders (hedge funds mostly) won't accept concessions like everyone else has for the company to succeed. Though Ford hasn't taken any money from the government yet, they have mortgaged everything that they own including their trademark blue oval to remain solvent until sales pick up. However, if 2010 is like 2009, they'll need the bail out money that they arranged for last winter also. The way things are looking, Chrysler will pay back the taxpayers eventually. The bail out money was in the form of loans, not charity. The thing that worries me the most is the demise of many suppliers and further erosion of our manufacturing base. That will lower the standard of living for everyone eventually and make it much more difficult to supply our military with the equipment that they would need in an all out war such as WWII. It could very well be a national security issue as well as a living standard issue. Had our manufacturing base been in the state during WWII as it is today, we most surely would not have prevailed due to lack of supplies.

[Tony1790]

Originally Posted by Greg B

GM and Chrysler are both going into Chapter 11 because the greedy bondholders in the hedge funds won't accept the concessions that the unions, vendors, and salaried workers accepted

And who might these "greedy" bond holders be? Be they teacher pension funds, school system investments, etc that were betting on "safe" investments. And let us not forget that the rule of law says your secured creditors get payed before the unsecured ones do, so yeah, the bond holders should be PO'd that Obama has seen fit to put the unions ahead of them for political reasons.

Let us also not forget that when those same pension funds go belly up due to this political decision, it will be the US taxpayer that bails them out as well, so we get to pay for Chrysler's sweet heart deal to Fiat, the banks and the pension funds, sweet

The non-ending scams from AIG, Tarp, etc all end up at the same place, Wall street getting rich and by Wall street, it's mostly Goldman Sachs, you know the former CEO of which was recently the head of the Treasury and made all of the plans that we are still going with on the bailouts.

It's sad that the banks are getting rich at taxpayer expense but they are taking a big stinky doo doo on the car companies.

tony