January '09 NA Automotive Production Falls 65.6%
Published: February 6th, 2009
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“442,241 vehicles were built last month, compared with 1,170,816 in January 2008. The previous smallest month took place during a UAW strike at Delphi Automotive Systems Corp. in July 1998. That month, North American automakers produced 667,074 vehicles. Total U.S. vehicle output plunged 65.6 percent; Canada fell 58.0 percent; and Mexico shriveled by 49.8 percent.” What else do you need to know?
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Nobody calls it the car bubble but its the exact same thing that happened to housing; cars been handed out like candy to anyone with a paycheck with little regard to whether they could afford it or not.
All of the nattering nabobs of negativism need to go to saturn.com and Rethink! Then walk out with a "Aura Mid-Size sport sedan." Shadow Government Statistics may be a well-run website, but do they know that a 2009 Saturn is so much better built than a 1999 Saturn?! Jump at this opportunity to-day! I've got your CPI, GDP, and PDF adjusted statistics right ere. You should Rethink too. Or not. Unless you're tracking the M3, which the government decided not to report anymore.
I'll over a radical point of view... The global automotive industry is a stunning success! (ZERO SARCASM and I'll back it UP!) They delivered everything we need and most everything we could dream up. The last problem to solve was how to deliver all the same stuff at cheaper & cheaper prices to maintain market share, which is near the end of all development/production business models for a product. Solving that problem resulted in massive efficiencies and created mass overcapacity. Once the mass overcapacity is reduced, the remaining manufactures can enjoy a stable low margin business of simply replacing units that have worn out. So what you have now is a very boring industry. 99% percent of folks don't care about anything other than a nice interior since they have to look at it for a number of years. The unfortunate issue we have is that all those decades of stunning success also resulted in thousands of families betting on continued success. Now those bets are going bad. Think of the folks that are showing up to the RenCen on Monday morning and how it must feel to know that pretty much nothing that you do today, tomorrow, or the next day will make much difference. Very sad and nothing they can do about it, after all they (along with their parents and grandparents) WON. Every one of them is like a war hero coming home... You battled the enemy day and night... you were an Ace pilot that saved thousands of your fellow soldiers from certain death, now you come home to a gutter that needs fixed and some memories.
eggsalad "Maybe Joe Consumer finally figured out he’s been overpaying for cars for a long time." How do you figure that out? Even the most profitable car companies struggle to make 6% ROC by building cars. If you try and set up a new business to take on established competitors with 6% RoC you'd get laughed out of the bank, even two years ago.