Today's New Auto Industry: A Cheat Sheet

By Bengt Halvorson

Over the past eighteen months or so, the auto industry has been going through one of the most pronounced periods of change ever. While the Japanese and South Korean auto industries have avoided major upheavals, two major U.S. automakers have gone bankrupt, long-held brands have been sold to overseas companies, and other international companies we'd never heard of have now earned name recognition.

And yes, even a quintessential American brand, Hummer, has been sold to a Chinese company.

Yet other upstarts look poised to break into the market and, even if they're not yet serious contenders, it's enough to keep the major automakers worriedly looking over their shoulders and pressing their innovation buttons.

We at TheCarConnection.com have lost a lot of sleep in order to keep up on all of the action--and it's our job--so we completely understand if you feel like you missed some of it. Enter this excellent infographic from WallStats.com, which runs through most of this information at a glance, including the new owners of brands formerly held by the Detroit Three, new ownership of GM and Chrysler (complicated in itself), total job cuts to date, revenues, sales, and market share--along with a quick look at a few of these upstarts.

Think of this New Auto Industry Breakdown as a Cliffs Notes for the auto industry, and mandatory reading if you want to know where your new-car buck goes today.

Comments

[Mark Bern:]

Interesting graphic summary. The one thing I question is how does Ford retain so many employees (far more than GM), and while in a battle with GM for market share leadership, maintain greater profitability? If one company has so many thousands more employees, how does it have a better control over costs? I guess the one item missing from this graphic that may help would be to include indebtedness and debt service. I haven't researched it, but I thought that Ford was "ok" because they had had the foresight to borrow heavily before the downturn in auto sales. This would seem to be contradictory to controlling costs. See the relative debt and servicing levels might paint a better picture as to the future viability of each company, in addition to the info already contained in the graphic.

I realize it is not your graphic, but I'm just saying that it doesn't explain everything I would want to know.

Sep 23 01:20 PM