Union, Chrysler may be big losers in bailout plan

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6175429.html

As GM, Ford retool in U.S. and grow overseas, others fade in political drama
By WARREN BROWN
Washington Post
Dec. 21, 2008, 12:01AM

WASHINGTON — The $17.4 billion bailout loan approved for the automobile industry will accelerate a restructuring that has been in progress for nearly 15 years.

The result will be a smaller General Motors and Ford in America, a bigger and more robust GM and Ford overseas, and barring the birth of a truly international labor union, a United Auto Workers that is a union in name only.

There will be no independent Chrysler. That company is bereft of a full product line. It is bleeding cash and top executives. Chrysler is likely to use the loan to soften its inevitable fall into bankruptcy, or to speed its acquisition by a larger entity.

It all means that the restructure-or-perish talk heard in recent months on Capitol Hill and repeated Friday by President Bush is bunk. It's drama put on by politicians trying to make themselves look responsible. It is justification for helping the car companies continue doing what they have been doing all along — downsizing and, in the process, hastening the effective demise of the UAW.

Domestic car companies have been trimming their U.S. market presence for nearly two decades. They've also been integrating more thoroughly into the global automotive business — combining North American and overseas operations for product development and design, streamlining procurement, and using computer-assisted product engineering and development to deliver truly world-class automobiles.

Consumer demands
That means the hot European Ford Focus sold in Russia and London eventually will be sold here. It means an end to cheapskate anomalies, such as otherwise likable cars being equipped with state-of-the-art disc brakes up front and marginally acceptable drum brakes in the rear. GM and Ford already have started making such changes, largely because U.S. consumers have been demanding that the two companies give them the same quality and type of cars they sell overseas.

The world has changed.

FULL story at link.

[oldnslo]

1. I said it before, and I repeat: Chrysler is all but dead.

[dipsydoodle]

2. hot European Ford Focus

This one ? http://www.ford.co.uk/Cars/NewFocusRS

[madrchsod]

3. someone will buy the jeep line that`s made in belvedere il

Daimler/Chrysler spent close to a billion dollars creating a state of the art production line. the plant is the most efficient in the usa.

jeep brands sell well in europe and other countries so there could be a sale of this plant to someone who wants the lucrative jeep trademark. the car line sucks..crappy design from body design to the interior bit`s and pieces. a company that used to make indestructible transmissions to one that shells out at hundred thousand and the maker of some of the best 4-6-8 cylinder engines to one that seizes after a hundred or so thousands of miles...even the guy who bought the company was appalled at how bad these cars are.


i would`t bet the farm on them making it