GM and Chrylser to merge?!

I feel for ya and it is a problem......
BUT
The company has very little control over the dealers and that network.

 

This whole thread is way OT

 

There is a jeep wrangler on every continent built by a different company with a different name!

 

First of all, my 'visits' last far more than a few minutes. I have been on site for 3 or more weeks at some auto plants. Generally they last for 4-5 days depending on how staunch the union is. I have seen an electrician sit in the same corner and sleep his entire shift every day for 8 days. I don't have to prove to anyone what I have seen. 98% of the GP will never see a UAW employee on the clock. The 2% that have witnessed it will scratch their head and say 'what the fuck?'

I know the unions aren't the only cause the auto industry is in the shitter, but when you see what happens behind closed doors you become a little biased.

 

Just wondering, Was the electrician supposed to be working on the equipment that is running? Was his job already done and that's why the line was running?
The DA shouldn't have been sleeping at any rate and MNGT should have fixed that problem with some paper.....
THe union wouldn't defend him sleeping. Sorry.

 

Don't believe everything you read. Accounting is a slippery slope full of loopholes, chargebacks, and "one time charges". Daimler made a lot of money off of Chrysler....

 

I know where the guy was coming from.

Wall Street Journal reporter Dennis K. Berman at Deal Journal does the math, and it looks bad for Daimler: "It's actually going to cost Daimler about $650 million to unload a business it spent $36 billion on about 9 years ago. …
DaimlerCrisis:DaimlerChrysler announced its sale of Chrysler to Cerberus Capital Management, a private-equity firm, for $7.4 billion. It comes nine years after Chysler's merger with Daimler-Benz and effectively ends their partnership

 

No,

Jeep Wranglers are built in Toledo Ohio for the US and export market. U.S. gets a gas V-6, export gets the V-6 and a 4 cyl. diesel. There is a heavy duty variant built in Cairo, Egypt for the Egyptian military using the diesel. Thats it. No others.

This does not account for the rip-off copies that are inferior in every way.



Bejing Jeep in Bejing China, was set up bach in the AMC days to assemble Jeeps (primarily Cherokees) for the China market. These were only sold in China, never exported. China has very high tariffs on imported cars and parts. The only way to be competitive in that market was to set up an assembly plant in country and to built a high percentage of the parts there. In the past, the tooling for models that were dis-continued here was shipped to China to start production there.

 

Hope my GM stock goes up so I can dump it for something more stable.

 

This why DB paid 36 billion

On July 13, 1998, the registrant's parent, Chrysler Corporation,
released its financial statements for six months ended June 30, 1998.
Chrysler reported earnings before income taxes of $1,602 million for the
second quarter of 1998, compared with $811 million for the second quarter of
1997. For the first six months of 1998, Chrysler reported earnings before
income taxes of $3,274 million, compared with $2,515 million for the first
six months of 1997. Net earnings for the second quarter of 1998 were $1,003
million, or $1.55 per common share, compared with $483 million, or $0.71 per
common share, for the second quarter of 1997. Net earnings for the first six
months of 1998 were $2,055 million, or $3.18 per common share, compared with
$1,512 million, or $2.20 per common share, for the first six months of 1997.


They drove Chrysler into the ground, fired 13,000 employees, and then kicked it to the curb. I hope they lost money, it would be nice payback for the good job of destroying Chrysler.
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First statement. What the hell do you EXPECT a business to be in business for, anyway? Or COURSE they are in business to make a profit! You have an obligation to the shareholders to make a profit, that is one reason they invest their money in the company! No profit; the business closes its doors, and NO one there is making money.

Second statement. Patently and provably absurd!!! Jeeps have been made in Kenosha, Wisconsin and Toledo, Ohio (and in Mexico) since friggin' forever! These are the vehicles you find driving around today, whether they be 1988 models (the year Chrysler bought out AMC) or 2008 models. The Jeep products that ARE made there nowadays (old-style Cherokees and ZJ Jeeps) are made by a Chinese company under license for the Asian markets, NOT the North American markets. The Chinese-built vehicles (let's include Buicks, Chevy Cavaliers and light-duty trucks, and Ford Focus) are NOT sent to the North American markets, period!

How can you tell? Look at the first letter/number of a 17-digit VIN and that tells you the country of final assembly. A one, four or five, indicates US-built. A two is Canada. A three is Mexico. A six is Australia. A "W" is Germany. A "Y is Italy. A "K" is Korea. A "J" is Japan. And so on. Google away and you will find every nation that builds vehicles has its own first digit for origin. I forget what China's is, but you can google that, too.

 

"I feel for ya and it is a problem......
BUT The company has very little control over the dealers and that network."

Oh but they do. Franchised dealers have rules they must abide by. Ford and probably others have training for dealer personnel all the time. Years ago as a Parts Mgr I attended many. It might be diff now, but I don't recollect that they offered a PR class for dealer "back room" people who did face to face stuff with customers. Seemed the mentality was to do as little as possible on warranty issues. Customer satisfaction sometimes meant bending certain rules. But that was 25+ years ago. I don't know how it is these days. It'd be interesting to hear from dealer techs or service writers/managers about how it is now?

 

Two Chevrolet dealers in the OKC Metro have closed up shop this week. One of the nation's largest Chevy dealers, Bill Heard in Houston, Atlanta, Las Vegas and other locations, closed up, too. Good Chevrolet in Alameda, California, in business in the same location since 1951, closed this week. Just closed up.

You guys can all place blame where you will, but this is a VERY bad sign of what's to come with ALL dealers by the end of the year, regardless of what make they sell or where their cars are built.

 

I don't know. I had my own shit to worry about. I know every time I walked by him, he was sawing logs. Pretty incredible with all the noise around (GMPT Toledo - 4 speed input shaft line).

 

That comes from living on credit and not sound business practices! Grandma was right, live on what you make. www.daveramsey.com

Our society needs to learn some principals that we have forgotten in the last 50 years.........

 

If you think that kind of behavior is just a Union affliction, I've got news for you. I've seen slackers and hiders in every big construction job I've ever worked, and almost all were non-union. Port-a-lets are gods gift to sleepers...Don't bomb unions for the same thing that non-union slackers pull.
GM and the others had the same union enviroment three years ago when they were printing money with SUV and truck mark-ups, but management short-sightedness didn't want to see any other market reality possibilities besides the one they were making money in.

 

why go union i can run my own self out of biss...?

 

ok by me

 

The more it goes down, the nicer my next vintage car will be. You know, the vintage car paid for with proceeds from parking a thousand bucks in GM and letting it ride 3 years.

Look at how the richest of the rich handled the great depression. They siezed opportunites to invest in critical business and came out the other side with buckets of money once the country recovered and their penny stocks were dollar stocks. I don't think the market has fundamentally changed.

Some would say the glass is half empty. I say paying 1/10th full price for a half full glass is a hell of a bargain.

 

I know a guy that was a roll technition millwright in a steel mill. one time when him and some other tech where in the break room doing nothing. The main boss and some bigwigs came in . It was stated boy we shure like to see you in here. Someone said WHAT? It was explaned that when they were loafing everything was running smoothly but when those guys were busy the line was down and something was broken and production was stopped or slowed. Kinda like a fireman at a fire house. If there had been a electrical problem that sleeping electrican might have been worth his weight in gold. The key to job security is to make yourself so good at what you do that they cant replace you.OldWolf

 

And that's what sleeping tradesmen in factories count on. Instead of keeping the equipment in tip-top shape, doing preventative maintenance and diligently keeping watch for problems, they slack off on all that so a minor problem becomes a major problem.

At which point the sleeper wakes up and gets to play hero and get the machine running. And most of the people above him are too stupid to understand the sleeper was a key figure in allowing the failure to happen. They get all caught up in the bravado of jumping into action and "getting things done"

Been there, done that, worked with sleepers in plants all over this country. They follow the same pattern. And they all harm the company that feeds em.

Try that maintenance/repair program on your own car and see how expensive it is. Don't change the oil filter, just wipe it clean and apply a sticker with today's date. Eventually you can play hero (and earn 3x overtime) while you replace the engine.

You and I as consumers pay for the sleeper's incompetence, because those costs are passed along.

 

Actually more millionaires were made during the 30s than ANY OTHER decade in US history. When things got tight, smart hard working folks found ways to make a buck. When things turned around, those average Joes were in position to move upward instead of standing in a soup line looking for a handout!

 

Yep, and I suspect the average HAMBr will weather the storm a lot better than the average american. Collectively we possess mechanical skills that are timeless, there's always somebody making money that needs our skills, and there's fewer mechanical people in every generation.

Not that long ago the old car hobby went from dirtball to trendy, and made it a lot easier to get pretty girls. Now the economy is tanking and will allow gearheads to get ahead of their neighbors. Girls, money, cars.....ain't america great!

 

Why would they want it. From what I saw on TV at the time the Germans dumped it they kept anything that had an ice cube's chance in hell of making any money ( Chrysler Credit ) .
I bet they wish they left it to now.

 

Empires typically last 200 years, you do the math.

 

Yikes, you're right!

So what do we do now, we're in uncharted territory, we've been here too long..........

 

Rome lasted a little over 500 last I checked.....

 

Yeah, and if you read Roman history, you find the comparisons to our society are SCARY...

I'm against the idea of merger because it means we'll just have that many more shitty cars to choose from. No need to make something better if your only competition is Ford...

 

Have to agree Doc. Just means they will crash a little harder when the dick head execs asset strip what's left.