Posted on 10/03/2005 5:10:56 PM PDT by devane617
Brett66, If you are a gambler and like risky investments, I would suggest you buy as many new Escalades as you can afford, while hoping Gas prices drop back to sub 2.00 levels. May be a way to pick up a few bucks, or have a yard full of SUV's that you can't sell.
...and I would add give them their own traffic lane. If you did what we suggest, it would be the top seller within a month or so.
If gas prices stay high, American automakers are dead. Trucks and SUV's are the only money-makers they have.
It may already be too late. How long does it take to engineer, produce, and market new models? Do they have enough time?
"IF true, market forces at work, nothing more, nothing less."
Yep. GM/Ford have discovered that their products are not worth what they'd like to sell them for. Now they simply need to find the price at which their product moves.........and then make sure that their cost of doing business results in a profit.
Of course that last part won't happen until after they declare bankruptcy and void all their union contracts/pensions. It's now clear that this path is unavoidable.
We looked last weekend (?) .... and the prices still hadn't fallen to our budget.
Trust me. I'll keep watching. ;)
BTW....do you know anything good or bad about the Escalade?
Or would the Navigator be better?
My brother has a Navigator and loves it. However, I have always been a GM person when I buy American. Last American car was a Corvette, and it was a great car.
FRmail! ;)
"They must adjust, compensate, "reinvent themselves" or die"
They Adjusted - by selling SUV's at a premium and losing money on just about everything else
They Compensated - by creating financing arms to help move their inventory - becoming finance companies that were actually profitable
.....now for the reinventing. You forgot one other possibility.....a Ford/GM merger That would help their cost structure, especially in light of the reduced need for their vehicles.
It's interesting though - GM/Ford kind of parallel the path of Lucent in 2001 -- raise capital to lend to increasingly marginal customers (who can't qualify for the money themselves) to drive the sales of your product - and lock in recurring service revenues. When people got 0% interest, they didn't really care how much the SUV cost. Now that they can't afford to operate the SUV, can't sell it, or dispose of it otherwise, I wonder if GM/Ford credit arms will have a big spike in repos....
Not all SUV's are doomed. One of the lessons of Katrina is the need for a bugout vehicle and I am looking at a 2006 Nissan Xterra. There are very few hard core off-road SUV's out there and this fits the bill nicely. Its larger than a Jeep Wrangler and the new Toyota FJ doesnt come out until next spring at the earliest.
They're the only American vehicles that have significant domestic content, with few exceptions.
Good luck on the beltway, speedy.
They can do that without bankruptcy if, and that is a big if, they can convince the unions that the only way to remain competitive in today's market is for the unions to agree to wage and benefits returns with a guarantee that if the companies profits increase to a certain level, the wages/benies package is restored. Either that or have the union members swap wages/benies for a commensurate amount of stock in the company. That way, both the company and the workers would be able to survive and benefit in our ultra-competitive world. Bankruptcy gives a stigma to a company that is difficult to overcome. I know many people who will not touch Chrysler products because of their financial difficulties and bailout in the 70s/80s. If GM and Ford can avoid bankruptcy, they might be able to avoid the taint to their corporate names due to that, and working with the unions instead of fighting them might be the better alternative. Of course, that is assuming that the unions will be reasonable, never a certainty, in negotiating with the car companies. Now might be a good time for union members to speak with their union representatives and forcibly remind them that part of a smaller pie is preferable to no pie at all.
Excellent and good for you. I am in sales a need a bit more horse power.
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