Na na na, NA nA NA NA, HEY HEY HEY GOOD BYE!

Good bye GM, and congrats to Ford on a well played nail in the coffin for a desfunctional automaker of General Motors. I am all for Union rights, but not union abuses which the UAW has become because the economy was letting them get away with it. For GM to think that it is fair to give the UAW 30% in future stock options for the canceling of $10Billion Dollars in payments owed to them, give the US government 50% in future stock options for saving them and spending stupid money, and then offering the Bondholders who hold more than $30 billion dollars in bonds a 9% stake for the forgiveness of those bonds. YOU DESERVE TO FAIL. So this is my good bye letter im sending you, I guess there wasnt a need for the same vehicles from two of their companies in GMC, and Chevorlet. Who whould have guessed that, the Tax payers are never getting their money back from this company, I wonder if they are still arrogantly defending their rights to fly in on private jets everywhere. When they should have be focused on......MAKING A PROFIT. Thats Bad Money, and for some good Money I present Mickey Factz, if you dont know about him now you will atleast know 1 song.

Another Crappy Excuse for the Auto Industry by Newsweek

Car Sales Docked in LA

Newsweek article"So gas just hit another miserable milestone. Unleaded regular is averaging a record $3.30 a gallon and seems likely to blast past $4 by Memorial Day. Wouldn't it be great if you could drive a car that gets 50 miles per gallon? Well, you can. Just hop on a plane and fly to Europe, where all new cars average 43mpg, or Japan, where the average hits 50mpg. Here in the United States, we're stuck at 25mpg...

all auto companies are focusing on jacking up fuel economy, especially
since Congress just mandated that all new autos sold by 2020 must average 35mpg. The new mileage mantra also is motivated by the fact that car sales are weak, partially because of panic at the pump. But putting out a 50mpg car any time soon is daunting even to the maker of America's mileage champ, the 48mpg Toyota Prius...

Consider the exercise Ford just went through. It ran a computer simulation on what would happen to the mileage of a Ford Focus small car if you built it entirely out of lightweight aluminum. Losing the steel allowed the Focus to drop 1,000 pounds—30 percent of its body weight. That enabled Ford to outfit it with a tiny one-liter engine, half the size of its old engine, but far more fuel efficient because of new technology. Best of all, the small motor goes just as fast as the big one because the car is so much lighter. The result: fuel economy on this fabulous Focus went from 35mpg to 50mpg. What's stopping Ford from moving this car from pixels to pavement? The cost of an all-aluminum car could top $50,000...

Back in the 1980s, the Honda CRX-HF and the Geo Metro each got more than 50mpg, but they didn't have airbags or steel beams in their doors to protect occupants in a crash. " (Newsweek)

So this article is trying to convince me, that the reason that the BIG 3 don't have a fuel efficient car yet is the consumers fault? Because consumers want size, power, & comfort the Big 3 cant increase fuel efficiency by 3% every year. What the hell, we employ engineers that can make Nuclear Subs, Satellites, Go to space, Land on the moon, Fight the moon monsters, unmanned flying drones that can take high speed photographs and drop missiles, but asking car companies to increase their fuel economy by 30% in 15 years is asking to much? Why run the test with the focus if the metal cost $50,000, there were no other materials available for the engineers to use in conducting this test. The only reason the companies aren't in a rush to increase efficiency is they still have to sell all these 2008 and 2009 models sitting on some dock. For the article to acknowledge that within the last three decades two car companies had a car with 50mpg, that were deemed unsafe due to removed features. Shouldn't 30 years be enough to make an unsafe car that gets 50 mpg a safe car with 50mpg? That's just lazy on behalf of the automakers, and the govt is encouraging it with these auto bailouts, if they let these companies fail. There cars would be liquidated so people who need vehicles could get them cheap and make room in the market place for fuel efficient car companies so people would buy them. And not this volt shit, Electricity is expensive.

Cspan Senate Banking Hearings: Automakers

The Big 3 and UAW are back on capitol hill today, Begging.

- Senate Banking Hearings: Automakers CSPAN.ORG

- UAW made an obvious but strong point about the lack of oversight or guarantees of T.A.R.P.

"If the government could provide a blank check to Wall Street, then the government should be able to provide a bridge loan to the automakers."
Ron Gettelfinger

- Once again Chrysler has nothing to offer. Robert Nardelli their C.E.O made a point to say that all Chrysler vehicles will increase in fuel efficiency from the 2008 to 2009 model year.

As opposed to coming out with the same model every year, just charging the consumers more. That is essentially admitting to fraud by the automakers, if all they were doing is changing badges on the cars and paperwork. Chrysler needs to go, they are a company that has historically lacked vision and creativity. How hard is it to ask the automakers to fire ineffective people.

- Ford really sounds like they try harder than any other automakers in their business plan, and in their proactive reorganization plan that was implemented before this most recent economic downturn.

Wish Farewell to Chrysler

"It's like...an open book test...writing an essay where each automaker's allowed to bring whatever books they wanted with them into the test. Chrysler brought crayons and a coloring book."

The Big 3 auto makers are mighty optomestic about their sales the next couple of years. [Jalopnik]

Fords Plan

GM's Plan

Chrysler

Ford wants you to buy more of their crappy cars.

The Ford motor company today released its new buisness plan for congress to review and hopefully incorporated within their decision when they grant this bailout.
FORD MOTOR COMPANY BUSINESS PLAN [CSPAN] PDF

overview & Key Points page 1-7 out of 33

What ford wants you to know:
-the Auto industry supports five million jobs in all 50 states and spends $12 billion
annually on research and development in the U.S. pg. 2

-"While we have much more work ahead of us, Ford did not wait until the current crisis to begin our restructuring efforts, but has already begun a fundamental restructuring in the way we do business. Our early efforts showed promise before the credit and economic crises hit earlier this year." pg. 2

-"The auto sector is one of the first to suffer from bad economic conditions –
indeed, spending on new vehicles historically represents about 4% of GDP and
therefore is closely tied to economic conditions." pg. 4

Translation, we were the first to suffer in this recession, because consumers stop consuming unnecessary crap. Like a new car every 2 years, why is it necessary to have the exact same car come out with relatively few improvements every year? The 07 Ford f-150 looks just like the the 06 f-150. How about alternating production lines every year to avoid over saturation

-The recession and financial crisis has resulted in automotive industry sales volumes at the lowest annualized level in 25 years. pg. 5

- We ask congress for additional incentives incentives for consumers to trade in

older vehicles and move to more fuel-efficient vehicles.
We need the consumer to buy more crap, and we will make it look like we are doing something environmentally friendly. If a person has a old Monte carlo that still gets 20 miles per gallon but have no note to pay or full coverage insurance. It is not in the persons best interest to buy a 21,000 dollar car at 350 per month(That is 5 years of payments with no interest calculated.) in financing fees and insurance for a new car will at least run 150 a month for full coverage insurance and drives 3000 miles a quarter. Then that cost a boat load more to drive and be environmentally friendly. 3000 divided by 20 equals 150 gallons of gas per quarter for the monte carlo equaling 420 dollars spent every quarter on gas which is 1680 per year. Mean while the "Fuel efficient" car gets the recommended mileage which is 35 miles per gallon. Using the same formula as for the Monte carlo would equal out to 240 a month in gas. That is 960 dollars spent on gas per year, now add in the 350 dollar a month car note and that is 4200. add in the additional 1800 dollars in insurance per year and that is a grand total of 6350 a year to go green. Hating the environment would save you $4670 dollars. Now this number doesn't include maintenance for oil tires and all other things that are necessary for maintenance of a car. But no way does the maintenance of the Monte Carlo wost 15,000 every 5 years. I vote no on this part, you want a loan from the people so that you can try to trick them in taking out a loan from you for the next 5 year?

- Ford plans to consolidate their 4 divisions(North America, South America, Asian Pacific, European) Deemed no longer neccessary do to the advances in communication. pg. 7
LAYOFFS

-blah blah blah blah blah lies blah blah lies blah 7-33
Im tired of reading it. Hope that is a good overview..

Sounds like a good start, I am sure they are way ahead of GM or Chrysler. Due to the fact Ford identified the market shift earlier than the others.

2008 Ford Recalls

May 14, 2008 Ford recalls over 650,000 pickups for brake hose
April 28 2008 Ford Recalls F-250, F-350 Trucks for Fire Hazard
Feb 27, 2008 Ford Recalls 470,000 Mustangs to Update Air Bags
Apparently Ford thought it would be fiscally conservative and install the wrong airbags
Feb 11, 2008 Ford Recalls 57,000 More Trucks, SUVS for Fire Hazard
Feb 11, 2008 Ford recalling vehicles over door handles and fuel hoses
Jan 21, 2008 Parts shortages delay repairs of fire-prone Fords
Dec 6, 2007 Ford recalls 1.2 million trucks for engine flaw
Aug 3, 2007 Ford recalls 3.6 million vehicles
in less than two years ford has recalled over 5.9 million vehicles in 2 years. If they made a good product they can sure save money from repairs and lawsuits. Or take their time building a car they can find these problems before you let these deathtraps on the road.
If every repair takes 200 dollars not including lawsuits that is 1.19 BILLION in loses over your own product.

Take the number of vehicles in the field, A.
Multiply it by the probable rate of failure, B.
Multiply the result by
the average out-of-court settlement, C.
A x B x C
equals X.
If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

Edward Norton "Fight Club'
Its clear that that is the formula, hurray unregulated capitalism.

Congress wont help because of a lot of things

Dean Baker is the Co-director, Center for Economic Policy Research as well as a contributter to The Arena @ Politico.com.
Dean Baker had this to say about the situation the Big 3 & the UAW have put themselves in.

"The Big Three have a problem in that there is a fundamental conflict between the interests of the top executives and the interests of the workers and the most affected communities. The latter should be perfectly happy to accept a bailout that has as one of it main conditions that the top industry executives get put out to pasture and that whoever remains on top also gets big pay cuts. Reduce...

Obviously the executives themselves are not interested in such a package and would rather try to milk the companies of every last penny before they go under.

Congress will also be ambivalent about a bailout package that imposes real restrictions on executive pay because it will yet again highlight the fact that they handed over hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to Wall Street bankers without any real restrictions. In short, you have a situation where is it difficult to justify to the public a bailout that hands millions more to auto executives with a track record of dismal failure. On the other hand, a justifiable bailout would call attention to the completely outrageous terms of the Wall Street bailout.

Will Congress be willing to embarrass itself to save economies of Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana? Probably not."

Everyone has egg on their face :(

G.M. is just another badley run company

Generals Motors spent over $800 million dollars on just sports advertising in 2006 [Fanleader.com]

General Motors spent close to $578 million on TV sports advertising in 2007 [NYTIMES.com]

An article questions the future of NASCAR(Left turn driving league) amidst the problems in Detroit[Boston Herald]