Word: gm
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...have to be living under a rock-or perhaps driving a Ford Pinto-to be unaware that Japanese auto manufacturers have conquered foreign markets. Toyota recently passed GM to become the world's largest carmaker, and even runner-up brands like Honda are in better shape than their struggling American counterparts. But back home, the news isn't so golden. Thanks to an aging, shrinking population and lackluster consumer spending, sales of full-size vehicles in Japan last year were the lowest since 1977. Mighty Toyota may have posted a record global profit of $18.6 billion...
Really, it's both. Chrysler, like Ford and GM, has considerably narrowed the quality gap with foreign-car brands but perhaps not the perception gap. Critically, though, Chrysler hasn't designed enough vehicles that are attractive and fuel efficient, despite having the Mercedes crew to help...
...Detroit Three, however, and you can easily conclude that they are money-losing retirement and health-care organizations just masquerading as money-losing carmakers. Consider General Motors, which supports three living retirees for every worker now on the job (at Chrysler the ratio is 1.3 to 1). GM long ago lost its status as the nation's largest private employer, but it remains the biggest private purchaser of health care. Investors value GM's business at $18 billion; the fund it has set aside to pay for employee pensions is worth more than $100 billion...
...Detroit Three complain frequently about the cost that health care in particular adds to each car they produce in the U.S.--at GM it's $1,600, at Chrysler $1,500, at Ford $1,200. But the cost paid in management attention and focus may be even greater. The single greatest stroke of Rick Wagoner's seven-year tenure as GM CEO, for example, was probably his well-timed decision to use $18 billion in mostly borrowed money to shore up the pension fund in 2003 (yes, $18 billion does seem to be something of a magic number here). That...
...current reliance on student loans to help pay for education leads to inevitable conflicts of interest. Using a traditional university financial aid office is like using GMAC to finance a GM...