General Motors boss Rick Wagoner and his Ford counterpart Alan Mulally have admitted making mistakes in the way that they have run their businesses.
So the bosses of the so called Detroit 3 have admitted that they made mistakes, that’s big of them especially as between Chrysler, Ford and General Motors those mistakes are going to cost billions of pounds and potentially thousands of jobs both in the USA and Europe.
The global recession clearly hasn’t helped but I guess turning up with their begging bowls at the senate committee meeting in private jets probably went down like a chocolate fireguard as well! At least they were savvy enough to drive to this latest hearing in hybrid cars but increasingly the sceptics are wondering whether the huge amounts quoted as being needed to keep these ailing giants afloat is going to be anywhere enough. Unfortunately the alternative to the world’s car market would be far worse and the shock waves would reverberate around the world, though there maybe not many tears shed in Germany or Japan.
The major problem these companies have had is building far too many cars in the desperate battle for the largest market share, but as many dealers both here and abroad will tell you that “fields full of cars” and desperate tactics to insure dealers pre-register is leaving some dealer groups in financial meltdown. Pre-registering vehicles is not the same as selling them and therein lays the problems and firms who have been heavily involved in this practice are suffering severe pressure on their profits all in the quest for short term gains at the expense of the bigger picture. Manufacturers are now suffering as a result of these policies in that dealers need to try and dispose of this stock before taking on new batches and because they are haemorrhaging money by doing this they are shutting doors and shedding staff in a frantic bid to cut costs. Getting back to our friends across the water and having lost several billions of revenue this year alone as a result of plunging sales, inactivity is not an option open to the US government as failure to assist would be unthinkable.
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