Word: detroit
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...estimated $1,500 (beyond the dealer's profit), contributing to the company's fat overall operating margin of 10.8%. You know the joke about the merchant who loses a little money on each sale but says, "I'll make it up on volume"? Don't tell that joke in Detroit...
...share slipped to 61.7% last year, an all-time low, and it has declined an additional 1.6 points in the first quarter of 2003. Toyota is just a couple of market-share points from passing Chrysler, the smallest of the Big Three. Though it is narrowing the quality gap, Detroit today squeezes almost all its earnings out of "light trucks," an industry category that includes SUVs and pickups. But the transplants are attacking that bastion. Toyota is adding capacity for its full-size pickup, the Tundra, with a new plant set to open in 2006 in San Antonio, Texas...
Nissan's strategy, championed by turnaround CEO Carlos Ghosn, exemplifies the latest transplant wave: a direct assault on Detroit's most profitable models. The Titan was designed by a California-based team of mostly Americans, who Nissan thought could best understand the U.S. truck crowd's preferences. About 85% of the Titan's components come from U.S. suppliers. And it will be built in the pickup-loving South, which Nissan hopes will add credibility. Says Ghosn (pronounced Goan): "The market is sensitive to the fact that this product is assembled...
...make Sonata sedans and Santa Fe SUVs. Mercedes-Benz (owned by DaimlerChrysler, based in Stuttgart, Germany) is doubling capacity at its SUV facility in Tuscaloosa, Ala. And BMW recently expanded its plant in Spartanburg, S.C., where lines run overtime to produce Z4 roadsters and X5 SUVs. Detroit's automakers are by no means sitting still, as we'll see, but the additional transplant capacity can only make their challenge harder. "The Big Three are less in denial than they used to be, but I can't see anything causing import market-share gains to take a downturn," says Bear Stearns...
...angry white middle-American male, disenchanted by the increasing flow of PC into our society. Frankly, the label Samoa was quite appropriate—perhaps the name was meant to conjure the pervasive coconut taste for which the Samoa Islands are known. After all, if Detroit was famous for a fattening food that tasted like smog or whatever else Detroit is famous for, would we refrain from calling it a “Detroit” because the city’s average resident is overweight? I think...