Wall Street got you worried? Just ignore them and do the job.

“You get the same effect in any production environment, whether crunching numbers and making reports, or crunching tin and CAD output.”

Uh, only in really badly run companies. In many places getting rid of 8 out of 12 professionals has disastrous results. Do you really think Toyota would be a better company if they fired 50% of their white collar staff?

In my company in 2003 we counseled out 8 out of 12 people in one cube row of accountants, which churned out huge batches of things consumed inside their little group but not outside their group (i.e. useless things), and production by the remnant 4 of things consumed outside the group increased as well as quality of the output. Further, they had newfound spare time to take on more real work. This was good cost cutting.

You get the same effect in any production environment, whether crunching numbers and making reports, or crunching tin and CAD output.

+1 on the E30.

I guess these guys are planning buying up Toyota stock for the long term and use the better short term earnings of BMW to fund it. Are these guys truly that clueless to not understand that the entire German auto industry has been taking MAJOR hits lately due to falling quality. Hell for that matter trading quality for profit has doomed the US auto industry.

VW has already turned into a German version of GM in the 1980s. Mercedes is trying its best to be Cadillac of the 1970s. Porsche has been milking what is essentailly the same chassis for over a decade now (should we put the engine in front or behind the rear axle). Now BMW needs to make Wall St. happy? I thought it was the cars that made these folks smile!

You know I guess with over 30 BILLION in bonuses this year on Wall St BMWs are now falling below the status line for the Masters of the Universe, so f$%k em!

A guy can dream, right ?

Update! USA Today reports that Chris Bangle has resigned today to join Swedish pop super group Abba for their 2008 world tour. BMW stock price soared at the closing bell.

My friend and I happened to drive a 1991 E30 325i the other day. Although it was unrefined and seemed a little slow, we both thought it was more fun to drive, and prefered the small size and excellent vision, to his current generation 330. Yikes.

Wall Street: Sounds great, but you really haven’t taken it far enough, I’m going to issue a sell recommendation for your stock. Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to go hype up the stock of a company that produces nothing, has no intellectual property claims to anything, has never posted a profit, and has no guaranteed source of revenue.

Yes.

For the longest time, BMW’s strong point was that they did not listen to Wall Street. (They didn’t have to, because the Quandts had their eyes on the long term). Heck, Wall Street analysts throughout the 1970s and 1980s said BMW was too small to survive independently, and should merge with somebody like GM.

Now, BMW is listening to analysts — but their investor-relations activities are half-assed. The worst of two worlds, so to say.

I thought BMW made a ton of money last year, why do they need a turnaround? Stay nimble for future economic fluctuations yes but BMW isn’t failing or something.

If this continues I guarantee you the family will be searching the couch cushions for enough change to buy back another 5% so they don’t have to be questioned by a bunch of “analysts” whose only accomplishment is to collect a check for criticizing others.

Extending that a little, removing it from their vehicles should reduce production costs, helping them there too.

And that Reithofer increasingly seems to be on the same level as Wagoner when it comes to knowledge abot cars.

Decreasing R&D and product costs? Wake up, your BMW, the only thing you have to do is spend as much money as possible on R&D and good materials, make a nice product, let the brand image do the rest in terms of profit margin and your good to go till the end of the world.

Really annoyed by this, so I’m glad the market punishes these measures, albeit probably for the wrong reasons

By the way, I though BMW was a private company?!