To me how gracefully they age is way more important than how many defects they have under warranty.

While I’m on the topic – what are the defects we are talking about? Cigarette lighter malfunctions versus automatic transmissions that won’t shift beyond second gear? Rear windows that leak vs a window motor that quits after two weeks? A leaking sunroof vs a defect tailight bulb?

I’ll be happy to let the dealer fix a couple 10 min problems rather than the tranny explode at 125K miles.

Wonder how much GM could get out of SAAB?

GM is also discussing the sale of the Renaissance Center in Detroit, their headquarters! Then again, who’d buy it? It’s in Detroit, after all!

It seems to me those people were not more successful than their parents, just better off materially.

I suppose one side looks at that and says they were better off because of governments and unions while the other side says they simply borrowed from the future and the bill is now due.

Put another way, a strong manufacturing base allowed the next generation of Americans to be more successful than their parents.

That’s now dead and buried.

Wouldn’t the best manufacturing company be one where no one works on the line? Isn’t the most efficient factory one that uses the least labor?

We can wax poetic about the days when this was an agricultural country, but the reality is that we are happy that most of us don’t have to grow food. What is the big problem if manufacturing goes the same way? What is the apocalyptic end game where most of the manufacturing is done overseas and they somehow then destroy our country because of it?

Just rough math: 35,000 restuarants times ~10 employees per….yields a whole helluva lot more jobs than Ford is supplying these days….or even ten years ago. Granted, these 350k jobs aren’t receiving free health benefits like Ford passes out…but at least their paychecks don’t bounce.

@ Willman

Delphi was a spin-off, right? How’s that working out? And Visteon?

Sadly, GM reliability at 100,000 miles still leaves something to be desired.

One millionth of a billionth of a second, named after Arthur Femto, whose wife was always waiting for him to get out of his pajamas.

why with all things nano?
a nanosecond is actually quite long…
try atto seconds…
it’s to the nanosecond what the nanosecond is to the second…

just because nanotech is a buzz word doesn’t mean it should apply to a very short time period…

And btw, as long as they look passable, a little advice: Buy All Spinoffs.
-They usu. go up 10x to 20x. YUM did.

Where to begin deconstructing the stupidity of this comment? First, this is about Ford, this isn’t about every manufacturing job in the U.S. There is actually an enormous amount of manufacturing that occurs in this country by companies that are not so shockingly incompetent as the domestic automakers.

Second, the service sector most certainly provides far more jobs than does manufacturing. That is because you can get train a monkey on another continent to manufacture things, but many services actually require human skills and a close proximity between producer and consumer. I realize that probably no one in the entire state of Michigan can grasp that concept, but that explains why the economy tends to evolve towards services.

Try thinking for a bit more than a nanosecond next time.

How many jobs in this country are dependent upon Taco Bell chalupas, and how many upon domestic manufacturing.

Think, for a nanosecond.

Several years ago, Lincoln HQ was likewise moved from Dearborn to California, and then back again. For a blast from the past, read this old NYT piece about Lincoln getting some California groove on from 1998:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0DE7DD173BF930A15752C0A96E958260

I don’t think putting Volvo and Lincoln HQs in California did squat to improve sales of either brand. Companies just love to DO THINGS, even if doing them has no real effect other than the noise and motion.