jafo

You also have to ask, why they allowed themselves to get in position that they had to rely to gas guzzlers to stay in business(this goes for all the big 3). Surely someone at each company knew that was a considerable risk to operate in that manner.

It is going to be a disaster either way. GM has to significantly downsize and change the way it operates, bailout or not. The longer we subsidize incompetence, the more of it we are going to get.

That is nice work on the website, but pretty close to unwatchable on my machine. They need to rework so it runs better on older hardware(3 year old athlonxp 2500 with a gig of ram)

Why would they. All they will learn is someone will bail them out. I would hate to see any of the big 3 go, but I think bankruptcy is better coarse than a government bail out.

IF they have excess capacity, they need to get rid of it. They can rebuild capacity after they have downsized. We should not be subsidizing their production until they figure out what they need to be making.

There is no good away to avoid pain. We can feel it now or we can feel it later. If GM has too much excess capacity, it has to sold off. I want the big 3 to survive, but we should not subsidize excess capacity. Subsidizing their excess capacity only drags out the pain. And if you going to throw management out, you might as well throw out the union contract and start over on that too.

It is only a minuscule amount of fuel until you realize how much fuel is simply wasted when by the 200 million cars that idle everyday. IF each of those cars wasted 1 cup of fuel everyday when idling that translates into 300,000 barrels of oil.

Just in case you did not get the memo, Today the US has more manufacturing output that at anytime in history. We produce more, but we do just do it with fewer people. 100 years ago damn near everyone was involved in farming, now it only takes 2% of our population to grow our crops. Manufacturing is heading down he same road.

And how long is it going to take ford to produce this 5.0 engine?

I am aware the 4.2 is the base engine and the other 2 are optional, but if memory serve me correctly the 5.4 is standard on the higher end trim packages. With the improved performance of the 4.6 and the 6 speed, there is really is no need for the 5.4 to standard on any package or trim level.

I think what ford really needs to consider is making the updated 4.6 with the 6 speed standard and leave the 5.4 as optional across the line. Most people wont need more than the 4.6.

It is happening, it just does not happen overnight. US active rig count in the highest in 25 years. Brazil is leasing 3/4 of the worlds off shore platforms right for its new off shore fields. bakken shale in in North Dakota is about to get developed. Saudi is supposed to be bringing some big project online in the next year or so. But I agree $3 gas is good for us in the long run. It is going to force us to economize as world demand for this resource is going up.

At $130/barrel more supply is going to come online, so it is just a matter of when on prices coming down.

The time to buy is when the 2009s come out. The upgraded 4.6 and a six speed will make the f-150 far more attractive than the current drive train options.

That is right. I hate it when I mangle my posts. Trading in an f-150 for focus may or may not be a bad call. Just depends on what the trade is worth and how many miles they are actually driving. But I generally agree if it is paid for, gas prices would remain manageable even with $4 gas.

I was out carshopping yesterday, the salesperson said he had 3 people come in with a f-150 and drive out with a focus. Looks like htere could be a very large product shift ahead of us.

Actually I think the 4.6L with 292/320 will win some advertising wars. The war in the near future is going to be over fuel economy, not HP. The 4.6L with a 6 speed is probably going to perform pretty close to the old 5.4 and better fuel economy. So for all those folks that want a truck, but usually only use it carry groceries, this will help sales quite a bit.

let me ask again, what should their margins be?

on revenues of 116B, so it looks like they are clocking in less than 10% profit margin.

This was to point out here that big money is in rewards as it takes big money to play. This is one of many of their platforms. This just happens to be latest, biggest and most advanced. On top of cost 5B to build, it also has quite significant operation costs. So tell me, if you were build and operate such a platform, would you do it for free? or would you seek a modest return on investment? IF you wont do it for free, what level of return would you seek. So let me ask you, what level of profit should oil companies have?

All the big ones are public companies so you can read all their financial statements if you wish. And yes tens of billions of dollar is alot of money, but consider this: The last off shore platform built by shell(i think) is capable of drilling in 5000 foot water and then can go another 15,000 feet below that. This cost only 5 billion to produce and it puts some of those huge profits into perspective. Oil that is cheap and easy to get too is about gone and world demand is going higher. High oil prices will either bring in more supply or it will bring demand back under what we can supply.

Record profits because of high prices, but they still have about 10% profit margin. How much profit should a company be allowed to make?

If this is the case how did the big 3 ever fall behind the non union imports when it came to quality in reliability. Now that quality is improving in the big 3 what role did the UAW play, since they typically hide behind "bad management decisions" when it comes to bad quality?

You are right, productivity continues to go up and required man hours continues to go down. This is part of the big 3s problem. They are stuck with a boat load of retirees from a time when far more man hours were required to build a car. No matter how efficient they get, they still have to carry this anchor. No doubt big problems exist when a robot goes down it causes a problem, but that is a small price to pay for increased productivity and increased quality.

You are right, UAW is not responsible for the design, engineering or marketing of the big products, but they are not blameless either. Billions have been spent paying UAW workers to do nothing(jobs bank) and stupid work rules that keeps more idle bodies on the payroll. Dont you think this money would have been better spent on improving quality, productivity and marketing? Instead these billions of dollars are wasted instead of being put to good use. One of the key things to improved quality is increased automation. More automation means more consistant and typically better quality end product. Since UAW is more concerned about headcount, automation is resisted. This leads to lower quality. The UAW needs to realize that is taking fewer and fewer people to build a car and they need to allow for this happen without killing the big 3l