eightballsidepocket wrote: Does that mean that GM's MDT trucks will have the infamous 6.0 and 6.4 Navstar engines in them that have been a bain to Ford?
It means that Navistar is NOT buying GM Medium duty.
Dad of Four Girls
Wife
2001 Yukon XL (8.1L, 4.10)
2002 Dutchmen 31BH4DSL
It's is of monetary value, so sell it for money and miss the fact that it's also
valuable to the 'product line'.
Bottom line thinking all the way to the poor house...and why Detroit got and
continues to get their lunch eaten...bean counter mentality...
-Ben Picture of my rig
1996 GMC SLT Suburban 3/4 ton K3500/7.4L/4:1/+150Kmiles orig owner...
1980 Chevy Silverado C10/long bed/"BUILT" 5.7L/3:73/1 ton helper springs/+329Kmiles, bought it from dad...
1998 Mazda B2500 (1/2 ton) pickup, 2nd owner...
Praise Dyno Brake equiped and all have "nose bleed" braking!
Previous trucks/offroaders: 40's Jeep restored in mid 60's / 69 DuneBuggy (approx +1K lb: VW pan/200hpCorvair: eng, cam, dual carb'w velocity stacks'n 18" runners, 4spd transaxle) made myself from ground up / 1970 Toyota FJ40 / 1973 K5 Blazer (2dr Tahoe, 1 ton axles front/rear, +255K miles when sold it)...
Sold the boat (looking for another): Trophy with twin 150's...
51 cylinders in household, what's yours?...
I don't think GM wants to sell their MDT line, its just that they are losing billions of dollars per year and are forced to raise cash to avoid bankrupcy. Most of GM's current products are not suited for $4.00 per gallon fuel. If gas goes back down to under $3.00 per gallon GM's cash shortage problem would be helped and maybe solved and they wouldn't need to sell off product lines. GM is making payments for healthcare and large pensions for thousands of retired workers that makes it difficult for their products to be competive with foreign cars.
ddav15 wrote: I don't think GM wants to sell their MDT line, its just that they are losing billions of dollars per year and are forced to raise cash to avoid bankrupcy. Most of GM's current products are not suited for $4.00 per gallon fuel. If gas goes back down to under $3.00 per gallon GM's cash shortage problem would be helped and maybe solved and they wouldn't need to sell off product lines. GM is making payments for healthcare and large pensions for thousands of retired workers that makes it difficult for their products to be competive with foreign cars.
Management dug this hole over several decades and it will take even more
to climb out.
They sold out their future digging those holes and are now selling
futures again to 'try' and climb out of these holes they dug. Not
just the companies, and also the workers themselves.
Even foreign badges are suffering, but they are doing better because of
their previous management decisions. Albeit 'they' are now going the
same route of Bean Counter management types instead of technically
competent types that they 'used' to favor.
The real problem is 'us', as Wall Street is now managing public firms.
As their Chairman/CEO's 'react' to stock price, instead of managing
their 'product', which includes service.
This Motortrend article sums it up succinctly in a short one pager, where it
takes me volumes to cover...guess why I'm not an editor....
The automotive example spot on for all industries/markets/etc.
Wall Street hasn't done Detroit any favors over the years. The Street
is supposed to be the hard-nosed arbiter of success for corporate
America, the white-hot cauldron of capitalism that's made this
country's economy the most powerful in the world, the place where the
money talks and you-know-what walks. (Though having allowed Enron to
happen, Wall Street seems no longer to see the difference.) And, yes,
Detroit has hardly covered itself in glory over the past 30 years.
But I can't help wonder whether Wall Street should share some of the
blame for the decline of America's two remaining automakers.
Let's be absolutely clear up front: Few people buy stock in a company
for any reason other than they expect a return on their investment,
and stockholders in auto companies are no exception. But in an era
where screen jockeys zap billions of dollars a day through the ether
at the touch of a computer keyboard, Wall Street's institutionalized
ADD has resulted in a feverish short-term view of a business whose
lengthy product cycles and huge investment costs are just too damned
difficult to deal with.
Maybe that's why many of today's most successful automakers--Toyota,
BMW, Porsche, to name three--are those who've never had to sweat a
quarterly earnings call with a posse of skeptical Wall Street
analysts looking for an opportunity to make a fast buck and ready to
trash the stock price when they can't see one. To these companies,
the concept of shareholder value has a very different meaning: "I
don't watch (the stock price)," Dr. Shoichiro Toyoda once told Toyota
North America president Jim Press. "I'm not going to sell my stock.
If I worried about that, the decisions that I make wouldn't reflect
the fact my name is on the back of every car."
Most Wall Street analysts will tell you Toyota, famously stingy with
dividends, doesn't treat its shareholders well. But its stock is
worth roughly four times that of General Motors. Go figure.
As Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist David Halberstam
records in his book, "The Fifties," Bunkie Knudsen, who ran Pontiac
and Chevrolet in the 1950s and 1960s, reckoned it all started to go
wrong for Detroit when Fred Donner became president of GM in 1958.
Knudsen was outraged that Donner would insist on talking about GM's
stock price, and what the analysts on Wall Street thought about it,
at his daily meeting with the heads of GM's divisions. Before Donner,
those meetings were mostly about making cars.
Financial engineering quickly replaced product engineering as
Detroit's primary business. GM and Ford essentially morphed into
highly profitable finance companies with an auto business attached.
That meant you could easily get a great deal on a new car. Only
problem was, that new car wasn't always so great anymore. But the fat
earnings on the loans and lease deals made the business look good and
that kept the stock price pumped.
It's a sign of how entrenched this view of Detroit's business model
has become that GM's decision to unload a majority share of its
finance company, GMAC, earlier this year was treated by many as
something akin to selling the family farm. But the sale is good news,
because it means GM is shifting its focus back to its real business:
designing and engineering cars and trucks. Meanwhile, over at
troubled Ford, there are rumors the company may buy back its stock,
now worth barely 15 percent what it was in 1999, and become privately
owned. I hope the rumors are true, because Ford will then be free to
concentrate on what it needs to do best: make cars and trucks.
Bunkie Knudsen, David Halberstam writes, believed in a simple
concept: The people in Detroit had to make good cars, and if they
did, the people in New York would take care of the stock. If only it
were still true...
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