Hollywood_North GT

Wow, while companies like Toyota keep making money, it seems like our died in the wool North American manufacturers keep losing it, hand over fist.

At this rate, and with fuel prices still rising, I wonder how long it will be before GM and Ford are forced to throw in the towel.

jgsmuzzy

I do not think that they will have to throw in the towel, just reallign themselves to the current market.

thanks for the article!

(moving this to Other Fords )

TomServo92

The article states "losses in North America". Is Ford losing money in Europe or are they only losing in NA?

1999 Black 35th GT

Its only in NA for the time being. And to add something, while Toyota may be making money now don't count on it for the long haul. With all of the safety issues and problematic cars they have been producing and their price increasing (there is a post on that around here) they are bound to have issues very quickly.

And no Ford will not throw in the towel LOL... It's a new beginning for Ford. Check out the Fusion when it hits the lots

Zastava_101

Toyota did had some issues, but so did Ford. Remember, they own truck market and they just recalled 3.8 milion vehicles. If Toyota may have problems in the future because of few smaller issues, what hope is there for Ford which just recalled 3.8 milion vehicles?

1999 Black 35th GT

It was a voluntary recall to be safe. There was never any proof. In fact the one gentleman who blamed Ford was in fact at fault. The NHTSA, Ford, and Fire investigators all came to the same conclusion.

Now Toyota on the other hand had to be forced by the government to recall over 345,000 Siennas due to seat belt failure and not doing anything about it.

I'll stick with the company that stays safe rather than sorry. The fact is recalls happen for every company and no company goes under for recalls.

Companies loose business due to bad practices of correcting mistakes. When you sit on your hands like some companies do and wait for the US government to get involved thats when you have a serious issue. Ford has been doing an excellent job of rectifying any mistakes.

Zastava_101

Recall is recall, it doesn't matter if you do it because you want to our because you're forced to. Most of people don't follow auto industry, they don't know if that recall is happening because company wants to do or because company is forced to do. Only thing they know is that get got letter in the mail saying that they should bring their vehicle to dealer for recall.

TomServo92

Toyota just recalled 1 millions trucks for what I would consider a much more serious issue;

http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0.../C01-307688.htm

If you read the article it also states that Toyota had an SUV recall in May of 800,000 vehicles. A recall of 1.8 million vehicles is nothing to sneeze at.

Zastava_101

1.8 milion is a lot smaller number than 3.8 milion.

GhostTX

Well...if they would have sold 3.8M, it would be a 3.8M vehicle recall. <_<

Zastava_101

They're selling more cars in the world than Ford.

1999 Black 35th GT

1 or 1 million, its still a recall. And I believe GhostTX was referring to trucks.

TomServo92

We're not talking about the world. We're talking about truck/SUV recalls in the US. I would bet that 1.8 million represents a much higher percentage of the trucks Toyota has sold than the 3.8 million is of the trucks/SUVs Ford has sold.

Zastava_101

Probably does, I don't know exact numbers. But still, recall that Toyota had are vehicles build between 1989 and 1996. None of them newer. Ford is recalling 1998-2002 Navigator and Expedition, those are newer vehicles.

TomServo92

So? What does that have to do with it?

Wait! I know! It means those dangerous vehicles were in the hands of unsuspecting consumers alot longer than the Ford vehicles were!

mustang_sallad

general public aren't gonna start thinking about the proportion of recalled cars to sold cars or trucks or whatever. General public are gonna hear about one of the biggest recalls in automotive history, that being the 3.8 million trucks from ford, and people are gonna hear "caused fires" whether its true or not. That one was really bad publicity, and i think its gonna have a bit of an impact on sales. I agree that the fusion is gonna help out a lot, but they gotta have more new products in the pipeline and faster. They should redo the 500's nose as soon as possible so that that car can stand out a bit... get those sportwagons out...

I think the article that started this thread isn't a sign of new losses of money, but rather ford doing something about their problems. Right now, they're a bigger company than the number of cars they're selling. Honda's doing really well and they sell a lot less vehicle than ford does (heck, aston martin makes money and they sell a couple thousand cars a year), so it is possible for ford to make money even if they're sales aren't as high as they once were. But they have to make adjustments to their capacity, they have to make sure they don't have plants sitting around not being used. They've just gotta make adjustments to a lower demand, but of course, that means laying a lot of people off.

What we're hearing about now is ford working really hard to turn things around, and i think it'll work, give them a couple years. GM on the other hand....

Zastava_101

Well, I don't wanna go into history now about dangerous vehicles (ever heard of little car name Pinto and problems it caused? )

You know my opinion about Toyota, I know your, we've been through this before, so let's not go again. Cool?

TomServo92

Actually, I don't hate Toyota. I just think the quality thing is more marketing spin than reality (and that's from personal experience).

Zastava_101

Its possible. Maybe I just had good luck with my Toyota (although I never had luck in anything, its always bad luck).

Hollywood_North GT

Word that. I still think Ford has a fighting chance. GM on the other hand needs an enema at the top. I mean, how many crappy platform variations do you need? Chevys and Pontiacs and Buicks with the same platform? C'mon guys, whaddya thinking?

Scrap Buick and Pontiac - sorry to say, and focus on Cadillac and Chevy. Get rid of Saturn altogether and bring the new Sky and Aura into the Chevy fold. Make the Chevy the everyman/performance division to compete with Honda, Toyota, etc...and Caddy the high end/performance version to compete with Lexus, Infiniti, Acura, Bimmer, etc.

Having both a Pontiac Solstice and a Saturn Sky is a PERFECT example of what GM is doing wrong. The redundancy in the company is staggering. What's more staggering is that they just don't seem to get it.