September 6, 2009

American 3 After The Shake Up

One website coined the phrase the "Carpocalypse." In my blog reading I came across an article on Autoblog.com that pointed to Mint.com which had this pretty interesting graph of the before and after ownership matrix of Ford, GM, and Chrysler. I broke the graphs down a little with my amazing "Windows Paint" skills. (I need a Mac.) Below is the full graph embedded from Mint.com; then below that are my cuts for each major company. AutoIndustryFinal2
Personal Finance Image from Mint.com Here's Ford (click image to enlarge): I think they are staged to do well. Here's GM (click image to enlarge): I think they are still looking weak. Here's Chrysler (click image to enlarge): They are still hosed. Poor Fiat. Honestly, Ford looks okay. It seems they could still do a lot better without the union making horrible decisions and costing so much money. I can guarantee that, if given the opportunity, I could help shape a smarter, even more lean, company. The problems I see are: the over sized and over powerful unions, too many politics involved in company business, so much wasted money on things like bad advertising methods and an R&D department that doesn't seem to do any research or development among true automotive fans or around what consumers really want, decisions to give up huge market shares like the 85% of police and taxi vehicle sales for reasons that probably stem from tired vehicles and lagging sales of those vehicles among the civilian consumers, and so much more. I have ideas that I know would work. They have to do with what vehicles have been successful and why. It's about making the best, safest, sexiest vehicles available. Get rid of the politics, the back room deals, the greed and lies, and simply make great cars and trucks that are designed around quality of build and the desires of the consumers. Reduce the overhead and reduce the costs. Remove the waste and become a more profitable company. Create a company that is well respected and grow through that reputation.

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