Motown's been mauled. Despite it's 72-hour sale, GM's June sales dropped 18.5 percent. Despite its reasonably competitive small cars, Ford sales sank 28 percent. Despite uh, not being bankrupt, Chrysler sales tumbled 36 percent. The morning after Black Hole Tuesday, The Detroit News has dropped columnist Daniel Howes' party line– "Big Three in better shape to survive"– in favor of something more closely resembling reality. Former cheerleaders Christine Tierney, Bryce G. Hoffman, Brian J. O'Connor and Eric Morath have put their collective heads together to pen a partial paean to pessimism: "Slumping sales cloud Big 3's prospects." Yes, "This was supposed to be the year Detroit's automakers started to turn things around… But the industry's 18.3 percent sales decline in June, with steep drops for the Big Three, capped six months of bad news. With little prospect for relief in sight, the future of Detroit's automakers has never been murkier." Murky? C'mon, you can do better (worse?) that that! "Bankruptcy rumors are swirling around Chrysler and GM, while billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian continues to amass shares of Ford stock. There is talk of reopening the UAW contract, of using profitable overseas operations as collateral for further loans, and of looking to foreign sovereign wealth funds for cash." Strangely, the article makes only a passing mention of new products (and nothing of the Volt, for once); the D2.8 are "rushing the introduction of new, more fuel-efficient models." Well, they did use the "b" word.
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As soon as I saw this headline, I flashed to
Eminem’s “Lose Yourself’:
“He’s choking, how everybody’s joking now
The clock’s run out, time’s up over, bloah!
Snap back to reality, Oh there goes gravity”
Also, I would note that the WSJ had an article today that was highly critical of Wagoner and basically asked why he still had his job, and why the board let him have his job.
“D.28” Heh – typo, or prophecy?
WSJ: Can Teflon Last for GM’s Wagoner?
Richard Chen:
“D.28″ Heh – typo, or prophecy?
Typo. Text amended.
WSJ: Can Teflon Last for GM’s Wagoner?
Does someone hand-draw all those pencil sketches of people in the WSJ, or do they have a computer effect to do that?
I think Wagoner is a very bad executive but he has kept his job for a long time. And really, is there any executive that can make the necessary cuts at GM. I mean like they have to pay laid-off UAW what 95% of their base pay until the next contract negotiations. Can’t imagine any company agreeing to these terms, yet all of detroit did. It will be a miracle to me if any of them can survive with this ‘fixed cost’ overhead type system.
Axel that would be considered a plate engraving like GW on the Dollar, but I think it’s just a computer program that converts an image into an engraved sketch.
If Rick was replaced what could his replacement really do at this point? Don’t get me wrong I think Rick should have been sacked yesterday, but it’s sort of like replacing the captain of the Titanic while they are taking on water, it’s a little too late. Fritz is just an accountant just like Rick so how would that change anything.
Even if they stole Al from Ford for some obsene amount of money, what could he really do at this point?
Does someone hand-draw all those pencil sketches of people in the WSJ, or do they have a computer effect to do that?
I don’t know, but they run one of W quite often that looks a lot like Alfred E. Neuman, at least to me.
Redbarchetta:
If Rick was replaced what could his replacement really do at this point? Don’t get me wrong I think Rick should have been sacked yesterday, but it’s sort of like replacing the captain of the Titanic while they are taking on water, it’s a little too late. Fritz is just an accountant just like Rick so how would that change anything.
And that is the really scary part. Fritz Henderson is a Wagoner clone. Both former CFOs. Both GM apparatchiks. Both colluding on the current strategy (whatever that isn’t). While I got plenty of respect of Henderson’s number crunching abilities, his failure in Europe proves that no bad deed goes unrewarded in RenCen.
@Axel: a team of artists, currently led by Noli Novak.
NPR Story on Noli Novak
WSJ headshots article from the Smithsonian Institute
I was wrong, they sure look like engravings. Stippling is a pain in the butt, she’s really talented, I hated it in school.
Hey, leave the 2.8 alone. There was no way they could have accounted for the fact that at some point, high dollar amount loans given to people that don’t earn enough income to repay them could go bad. And it’s also impossible to predict that gas would shoot up in price “unexpectedly”. Gas prices always go down, everyone knows that!
All of the Detroit companies get what they deserve after turning out so many shitmobiles for so many years. It’s just too bad that the low-level workers will suffer the most. It’s nice that mainstream news is finally clueing in that these companies are in severe trouble. Katie Couric even reported on it last night. She apparently doesn’t know how to use a GPS, but she knows that Detroit is going down.
You mentioned Ford’s cars – plural. Beside the Focus, what other small cars does Ford North America sell? You consider the Fusion and cousins to be small cars? For me they have always been mid-sized cars. Like an Accord.
Me thinks it is time to start classing cars based on weight, horsepower or interior volume or something…
I guess I would say a Fusion is small parked next to an Excursion. My cars look like toys parked next to one of those.
Rday:Workers recieving 95% of base pay untill the next contract?In real money its more like 65%.
a huge chunk of which come from government run unemployment funds.
Lets not forget people that the while blue collars at
GM have seen thier numbers slashed.GM still carries its bloated management workforce.
The distinctive portrait art in the WSJ is called Hedcut and was invented in 1979 by Kevin Sprouls. Noli Novack is one of WSJ’s current top artists who continues Sproul’s work. To date, no computer or Photoshop filter has come close to being able to produce a Hedcut. They are hand drawn.
Busbodger:
Yea the “Despite its reasonably competitive small cars” line about Ford threw me off too.
Mazda isn’t included in Ford’s sales numbers, and RF was not a fan of the Focus as he personally reviewed it and gave it 1-star. The I-4 Fusion is pretty good, but is that really “small”?
There is the decent Volvo C30, and Ford has some good small stuff in the pipeline, but right now their product portfolio doesn’t seem much better for this market than GM’s.