At a briefing in Traverse City, Michigan, Ford outlined its plans for tackling the twin challenges of Asia and Europe. Despite the capacity crisis facing the industry, Ford is aiming to avoid any European factory closures, while also expanding in Asia.
What’s up this month at GM? Inventories of full-size trucks. What’s not? Sales of full-size trucks.
An Australian financial publication is quoting two auto industry players who say that Ford will exit their Australian manufacturing operations, taking the Ford Falcon and Territory with them.
Just when you thought shares of Ford and GM can’t get any lower, major brokerage Morgan Stanley “lowered its 2012 U.S. auto sales projections by about 3 percent and cut its earnings-per-share estimates for the North American auto sector due to weaker-than-expected sales in the United States and Europe,”Reuters says.
For what it’s worth, Morgan expects U.S. auto sales to be 14.4 million this year, down from its earlier projection of 14.8 million. What is more disconcerting is Morgan’s outlook on financials of U.S. makers. (Read More…)
Sergio Marchionne has been one of the most prolific alarmists regarding European overcapacity, and who can blame him? The economy is in the dumps in Fiat’s home market, as well as crucial export markets, and closing a plant would come with all kinds of blowback.
A report by Alix Partners, an automotive consulting firm, spells out what we at TTAC have been saying for some time; Europe’s auto industry is facing a major crisis of overcapacity, but no steps have been taken to remedy the matter.
Since I started my career, I’ve been asked countless times, whether by acquaintances, friends, reader emails and just about every male with a pulse and a drivers license; how do I get your job (or, for our readers, how can I start writing for TTAC). I’ve seen a few lame, generalized articles about “how to be an automotive journalist”, but this one will tell you how to actually make a career out of it, rather than simply spending your days as an “independent blogger” while working at the Verizon store to pay the bills.
Optimism sure ain’t what it used to be. Introducing its latest survey of auto industry executives [PDF], Booz & Co. proclaims that “optimism is skyrocketing,” and that “a new wave of optimism is overtaking the U.S. auto industry.” They’re not wrong, but for those used to the pre-bailout days of unabashed optimism dressed up as analysis, the “new optimism” is remarkably guarded. And it’s all relative to the pessimism that was beginning to set in when the industry began to realize that the “old optimism” was wildly at odds with the slow-motion market recovery.
So, just how optimistic is the “new optimism”? Which companies have the most reason for optimism? What do industry executives worry about most? When do they expect a Chinese invasion? The answers to these questions and more after the jump.
Exports have been mentioned before as a way to help improve Opel’s precarious near-term fortunes, and now one of Germany’s state-level Prime Ministers is throwing his support behind the export plan.
A day after a government commissioned report about the auto industry surfaced, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty told reporters that he would seek ways to help assist the auto industry as a thank you to the province’s “…leading goal scorer”.
Old habits die hard. Whether it’s GM’s desire to slice-and-dice its fuel economy achievements to make them look better than they are, or our instinct to correct the record, it’s all just a little bit of history repeating.
When government, media and industry agree that a trend exists, it’s generally taken as fait accompli. After all, these three institutions wield immense cultural power, and together they are more than capable of making any prophecy self-fulfilling. But there’s always a stumbling block: acceptance by the everyday folk who actually make up our society. And when a trend is taken for granted, the ensuing rush to be seen as being in touch with said trend often generates more heat than light. Such is the case with the trend towards “green cars.” Few would deny that they are “the future,” but at the same time, there’s been precious little examination of how this future is to be realized. And when such examination does take place, it tends to raise more questions than it answers.
(Read More…)
Kizashi apparently means “omen”, sign or “warning” – it also means “something great is coming”, but the only thing on Suzuki’s American horizons is a bleak future.
A Financial Times report on the “de-industrialization” of France (sub. required), and the erosion of the country’s manufacturing base took a trip to a Peugeot factory, where the new 208 is leaving the lines and gearing up for a big launch. Peugeot has been suffering financially in recent years, amid a backdrop of a declining manufacturing industry, some employees are blaming the heavy burdens of France’s welfare state.
The scuttlebutt on Mazda is that Japan’s favorite independent automaker is in the toilet, having to shed jobs in America and assets in Japan just to stay afloat. While Mazda may be strapped for cash, their less-than-liquid holdings, like a baseball team and $5 billion worth of land, don’t look so bad.
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