Well have heard the Found-on-the-Road-Dead and Fix-Or-Repair-Daily car company has a lot of problems (for example,
http://boards.msn.com/MSNBCboards/threa ... =Page%3D26 ).
Besides having cars with poor quality, reliability, durability, fuel economy, styling, and even safety, their dealers frequently will not sell the cars to people they want, do not honor their repair aggreements, patch up things just enough to get through warranty after which they break again, and play games with the interest rates to the point of lying. In addition have heard for years that the Found-on-the-Road-Dead car company as well as General Morons have deliberately engineered cars to fail when the warranties run out or within a few years (such as not applying lubricating fixings to the ball joints). In particular the electric car was not continued in production BECAUSE the motors won't break down enough as GM, Ford, and Chrysler managment would like.
In addition Ford would not correct the safety problems in the pinto which frequently led to fatalities because it was cheaper for them to pay settlements for wrongful death suits. [I still think that is is relevant in that it shows a corrupt attitude. I haven't heard about this sort of thing as much from the Japanese.] Similarly the Big 3 pay Congressmen not to increase fuel efficiency (gas mileage) requirments because it is cheaper to bribe the representatives and senators than to produce cars that get better milage. [This is a big part of why Congress and Bush and other presidential administrations will not raise automobile emissions standards.]
As to why the Big 3 push the leviathons here in the states they do so because the production costs per vehicle are fixed but they get the biggest margins per fixed unit production cost by maximizing the size and hence retail price of the vehicle. The big suvs are classified as light trucks as far as emission limits and gas mileage requirments are concerned so they are allowed to pollute more than cars and get lower mileage than cars even though they are used as cars not trucks. Furthermore, business are only allowed to get certain tax write-offs for their work vehicles if they weigh over 3 tons.
Ford (with its $12.7 billion loss in 2006) and General Morons (with its $10.x billion loss in 2005) gambled that the suv craze would continue and that "there would always be people (stupid and foolish enough) to buy their unreliable poorly designed and assmembled big ugly vehicles." They didn't care when people stopped buying their cars because they figured there would always be plenty of other suckers and fools out their whom they could exploit and rip off. However, they didn't count on the sucker supply running out when gas hit $3 + / gallon the last couple years.
They gambled and lost. It would be best if all 3 of these corrupt complacent criminally and idiotically mismanaged domestic automobile companies went out of business permanently {and their managment and sales staff (especially the sales and non-service department personel as well as all their executives) were incarcerated.} [This last statement was and is overly harsh, sweeping, and not well substantiated and I withdraw it. However, believe many of their dealers and managers are deliberately fraudent particularly when it comes to honoring warranties and criminal proceedings should be brought against them.]
Geoff
by Revi » Fri 26 Jan 2007, 09:19:03 
Ford will either evolve to a smaller car portfolio or die the death of a thousand cuts.
