Even the 2007 Tahoe's interior is a big improvement. Almost looks good. I would never buy a GM product in the past because I hated the cheap interiors.
Posted on 01/08/2006 3:22:19 PM PST by Cagey
DETROIT (Reuters) - Irate U.S. auto workers picketing in the streets and bright prospects for competing Asian automakers cast a damper over struggling U.S. giants General Motors Corp (GM). and Ford Motor Co. (F) as the global auto industry's biggest annual show opened on Sunday.
The North American International Auto Show, at the massive Cobo Hall on Detroit's riverfront, showcases the world's latest cars and trucks, including new models from GM and Ford accompanied by optimism from their executives about a rebound in demand from U.S. consumers.
But auto industry analysts still expect GM, which has lost nearly $4 billion in the first three quarters of 2005, to post its fifth straight quarterly loss later this month.
Crosstown rival Ford is expected to eke out a small quarterly profit. But Ford's Chairman and Chief Executive Bill Ford has said Ford's turnaround plan, due on January 23, will include "significant plant closings" and job losses.
Ford Americas President Mark Fields, who is crafting the turnaround strategy, said on Sunday the plan is "not about fiddling around the edges" in terms of cost cuts.
GM has already announced it will slash 30,000 jobs and close 12 plants in North America. Both Ford and GM have had their credit ratings slashed to junk, and GM executives on Sunday again parried persistent questions about bankruptcy.
"I don't know what leads them to bandy it about. From our standpoint we don't think it's in any way, shape or form a good or viable or reasonable approach," embattled GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner told reporters at the show.
But the implosion in the U.S. auto industry, long a bedrock of U.S. manufacturing and source of middle-class wealth for blue-collar workers, has not been lost on the United Auto Workers union. The UAW gave up its biggest concessions in years to GM and Ford in the last year, fearful the companies would face bankruptcy without the savings.
Those concessions drew the wrath of angry UAW members outside Cobo Hall on the first day of the show on Sunday.
The protesters were orderly but held signs targeted at Delphi Corp (DPHIQ), a spin-off from GM a few years ago that demanded steep wage and benefit cuts after it filed the biggest ever U.S. automotive bankruptcy last October.
"Corporate America and Labor Leaders: Traitors of the People" and "Blue Collar Runs Companies/White Collar Ruins Companies" read two signs among the picketers.
Doug Hanscom, who has worked for GM in Baltimore for more than 29 years, said he joined the picketing outside Cobo Hall to support Delphi workers who face steep wage and benefit cuts under that company's bankruptcy filing.
"The struggle that Delphi is having, I think it is going to domino into GM," Hanscom said.
Karie Huntley, a 23-year-old Delphi electrician at the company's Flint, Michigan, operation, was out campaigning for political action to enforce the company's pension guarantees. "This is a middle class issue, this is not just a Delphi issue," she said.
Wagoner said on Sunday the agreement struck with the UAW in October was "historic" and would save GM, the largest private provider of health care in the world, about $15 billion of its $60 billion in long-term health-care costs.
But UAW's master contract comes up for renegotiation in 2007. Prospects for more concessions without signals that white collar workers and Wall Street investors are bearing a share of the burden casts a shadow over GM and Ford operations.
INSIDE -- MORE GOOD NEWS FOR JAPAN
It is a different story for Japan's aggressive automakers led by Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. Ltd. Asian brands in 2005 won 36.5 percent of the U.S. market for cars and trucks, up 1.9 percentage points. U.S. automakers, including German-owned Chrysler Corp. , won 57 percent, down another 1.7 percentage points.
On Sunday, in another blow for GM and Ford, Honda swept the top honors at the Detroit show as its all-new Civic and first-ever pickup, the Ridgeline, were voted car and truck of the year by a panel of automotive writers.
Both models were developed and built in the United States.
"Words can't express the excitement," said John Mandel, senior vice president at American Honda.
Toyota plans to make a record 9.06 million vehicles in 2006, just shy of the 9.15 million analysts see GM building.
Analysts last year lambasted GM especially for its reliance on large gas-guzzling SUV's and trucks, contrasting these with Toyota's pioneering gas-electric hybrids like the Prius sedan, the Detroit show's car of the year two years ago.
But on Sunday, Wagoner stood firm.
"Large SUV's? I have a hard time feeling bad about bringing out an all-new line of products in a 750,000 unit segment, to be conservative, that we run 60 percent of. It's the most profitable segment in the industry," Wagoner told reporters.
Open class warfare is only a few years away.
Actually, the auto market is a pretty good indicator of the economy...much better that the official percent of people who are unemployed, which is only the number of people who would be working if they weren't collecting unemployment checks. Once your unemployment checks run out you are not even in the numbers unless you are employed again.
Four words:
SMALL
STYLISH
CARS
NOW
Detroit needs to get with the program. SOON.
In 1976 GM was predicting they would soon have sixty percent of the US market, and sixty dollar a share stock. They were blind to what the Japanese were building and bringing in to this country and in a very short time all three US auto manufacturers combined will have less than fifty percent of the US market.
The Japanese, and now the Koreans, are building small, stylish, and comfortable sedans and that is the bulk of the market in this country. Pick up trucks and SUV's won't save the big three.
Does anyone know of a study or poll taken that stated the percent of Americans that will not buy a UAW car?
I won't
IMHO it is the class-warfare mindset which is dooming the US auto industry.
A sort of trench warfare mentality has seemed to have taken hold in Detroit. Making big heavy cars was patriotic - simply because leftwing commie enviroweenies kept demanding laws to force Detroit to make smaller cars.
Natural instinct when being attacked - attack back. Do the opposite. On general principle.
What was Detroit's response: "Let the market decide - not laws". Unfortunately the market *is* deciding. Every year.
The market is deciding that Detroit has forgotten how to come up with anything new. The market(s) have decided that Detroit is mismanaging their businesses.
Unions are supplying the coffin nails. Detroit needs to make small, sporty, styling cars RIGHT AWAY. Not because leftwing enviroweenies demand it.
BECAUSE IT WILL SAVE YOUR COLLAPSING COMPANIES.
WAKE UP DETROIT.
Won't be long before the Japanese purchase GM and then move manufacturing to China. Lots o' used cars in my future.
They're making some progress. Just saw the new Saturns, and they're a nice improvement on the consoles and interiors of most American cars, which all too often look like giant pieces of plastic.
American car manufacturers could really learn something from Volkswaggen in that respect. It really wouldn't cost them that much more to spiff things up a bit.
They wouldn't be buying much.
except the VW is hurting badly in the US. the cars have high content, but high prices.
GM is making better cars, much better. The Buicks like the Lucerne and the LaCrosse are very nice sedans.
You over-look one small facts: America is not Japan; it is not Korea; its not even Germany...American is a BIG country. In truth "small, stylish, and comfortable sedans" may be just fine for toddling around from say Boston to NYC or Burlington,Vt. or some such, but that dog doesn't hunt in places like Montana, Wyoming, Texas, the Dakotas, the Deep (non-Florida) South, etc.
And, let's not forget that baby-boomers are getting older (and stiffer in the limbs)...
There's room in this country and on our near endless highways for big cars with thick chrome, little cars with little wheels and a horn that goes "toot,toot", and everything in between.
IMHO, this subtle (and not to subtle) brow beating to get us into "small, stylish, and comfortable sedans" is just a form of leftist Puritanism -- you know, the fear that someone, somewhere, somehow, in someway might actually be enjoying himself.
Thanks for posting.
Watching "The Auto Show Tour" as we FReep on local Channel 4 (Detroit).
As economies in other parts of the world stabilize and grow, the demand for personal transportation will increase significantly.
Long term, I am optimistic.
Short term is anyone's guess for the ailing GM and Ford.
Wrong. With gas now staying above $2 a gallon, people simply can't afford to fill up an SUV 2-3 times a week. Small, stylish cars make economic sense -- and GM better get hip to that fact.
There should be at least two designers sitting at desks in darkened Detroit design studios this very evening.
One at Ford. One at GM.
Each should carefully be designing - by some time tomorrow morning - the initial design for an eye poppingly cute, small car that goes "beep", gets at least 35 miles a gallon, is smaller than a Mini, costs less than $10K, and makes use of available parts so they can start actually SELLING THEM by the summer.
There's no more time.
Detroit needs to act. Quickly. For real.
This is series.
GM makes plenty of small and midsize front-wheel-drive cars that get good fuel economy. The quality of them, these days, is not bad.
But that's not interesting to many people, and their sales are suffering, because they keep trying to beat the Japanese at their own game.
Meanwhile, Chrysler Group are expanding manufacturing capacity, because they are selling interesting, rear wheel drive, agressively-styled, American cars (albeit part of a multinational German corporation).
GM is already selling the Aveo. I don't think many Americans want such a car, though. They're too cramped for most.
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