icandoitdon

The Ford Debt Disaster Continues

user 223180:

whether i always know all the facts is a fair point, but i try not to cherry pick them like you.

in the 2008 powers survey you mention, 8 out of the top 10 brands with fewest defects per 100 were foreign names, half of which were japanese brands. mercury was #6 and ford was #8. yes, scion was near the bottom...right above dodge and chrysler. jeep was dead last out of 36 brands. maybe you want to argue that the germans trashed the quality of dodge/chrysler/jeep products, but their dead-last ranking is consistent with their troubled history.

if some of the domestics are catching up that's wonderful....more power to them. i hope they make it but the odds are against them for many reasons, including the fact that customer perceptions are extremely hard to change once they become ingrained. for too many years, from lee iacocca forward, "quality" was a marketing slogan in detroit...not a commitment. they produced some of the worst cars ever made during the 1970s and 1980s. in the meantime, millions of would-be customers have permanently switched to those affordable foreign brands...mostly japanese...that have demonstrated reliability year in and year out.

as for your contention that this year's market share loss of the domestics is attributable to consumer preference shifts to small cars, you miss the bigger issue. the domestics have lost market share year in and year out since the japanese entered the american market, including recent years in which truck and SUV sales were booming. look it up.

the most absurd of your arguments is that unions are to blame for the fall of these once great companies. management was incompetent, my friend, and unions or not it's their own strategic decisions that have sunk them. if they at any time felt that union contracts would threaten the future of the business they were obligated to take a strike for the good of the business. they didn't do it because they were just as greedy as the unions...too many bonuses rested on their short term financial results and it was easier to cave. these companies were short term oriented, didn't adequately reinvest in the business, overemphasied marketing at the expense of production and engineering, had too many overlapping divisions, and they never took the japanese seriously when they first emerged on the scene in the late 60s/early 70s. they ceded the small car market to the japanese because there was more money in big cars. diversity of product line was never a strategic impertive. this is the second time those chickens have come home to roost and this time it could bury them.

good luck with your investment.



the link to the jd powers survey results is here:

www.caranddriver.com/r...