Further bad news released today actually:
GM today reported that February sales were a whopping 13% below expectations, Ford still down but with only 3%. Both announced they'd be cutting production as a result, GM just shut down their Lansing plant. Most of the downfall is Trucks/SUVs, the bread and butter of American manufacturers, which have been on the downslide in sales the 3 years or so. Increasing competition from the Japanese in the truck market isn't helping matters any as the market gets further diluted.
Not good news considering all the new models that both were betting on being big hits. Asian manufacturers reported a gain of 4% market share last month. Toyota and Hyundai recorded record Februarys, Toyota with an increase of 11% in sales, Hyundai a huge increase of 19%. Honda on the other hand, with it's aged-looking models, down quite a bit -- 7% for the month.
For Ford though there is a silver-lining as of late.
The 500, Montego, and Freestyle are up 35% over January -- not a bad feat considering the bad weather in much of the nation and being a short month. The Mustang also up 32%. Volvo and Land Rover are also expected to do very well this year. Ford cars are up a pretty strong 8% -- trucks are down 8%. So, despite most of Ford's cars not doing well critically, perhaps Ford hasn't done so bad. And with the Fusion coming along, things could be looking up for Ford as long as they don't botch it up.
Financially, Ford is far from the horrible shape it was just a few years ago. It's beaten expectations 12 out of 13 quarters -- far from an easy task. And Ford made $3.5B in profit in 2004 -- 7 times what it made in 2003.
It's not all about marketshare, although that really is very important. Marketshare doesn't mean anything if you're not making the money you need to improve existing products and develop new ones. That's exactly where Ford, and the rest of the US auto industry was at just a few years ago. The Daimler buyout of Chrysler gave it the funds and expertise it needed to be the absolute powerhouse that it is today. Ford had a much-needed CEO change and did a lot of restructuring, which, yes, meant that people had to be laid off. But today its' making money. Quite a bit of it. Financially it's as competitive as any of its' rivals and more competitive than many more. GM is launching new products out the wazzoo and claims to be making significant strides to improve quality -- unfortunately that isn't panning out for them yet; but it could be too early to tell. GM has massive potential, it's an absolute powerhouse, ,but there's a whole lot of fat to be cut. And it needed to cut it yesterday.
Last edited by sigma; 03/02/05 08:43 PM.
