Cars That Go Boom: Detroit's Big Three & Me

[Pugwash]

GM and Ford have profitable overseas divisions. It's in North America where they are loosing money.
So why is it they can make a profit selling cars to Europe and not in America? They are also profitable selling cars in South America as well.

Look at the cars they sell outside the Americas.

Ford US:


Ford EU:


GM US:


GM EU:

We all saw it coming? Who are you including in the "we all"?

Um, didn't you see this coming? Come on, you must have.

In Europe, we've had crappy gas prices for decades and our car market adjusted accordingly. We call 2l cars large and can't get our heads around why anyone would need 5l V8s. Big engines go in luxury and sports vehicles, not runabouts.

It was common knowledge that gas prices would not remain low in the US. A finite resource that retains demand throughout its life-span will always have increasing prices over time.

[The_Monkey]

Look at the cars they sell outside the Americas.

Ford US:


Ford EU:


GM US:


GM EU:

Honestly, if GM were still making Pontiac GTO Judges, they'd probably be in a lot better position.

GM US:

[Dave123]

Honestly, if GM were still making Pontiac GTO Judges, they'd probably be in a lot better position.

No kidding....that GM comparison backfired on Puggy....

[Pugwash]

No kidding....that GM comparison backfired on Puggy....

No, I don't think it did.

I picked that GTO because it's a gorgeous car, and completely impractical. The fact you're lusting over a car like that shows you're still struggling with reality.

[The_Monkey]

No, I don't think it did.

I picked that GTO because it's a gorgeous car, and completely impractical. The fact you're lusting over a car like that shows you're still struggling with reality.

Muscle Cars are actually surprisingly practical, the engines and transmissions are basically indestructible, you have to try really hard to kill them... the suspensions are on the stiff side so you can load a surprising amount of crap into them, most of them can actually seat four adults, they've got mountains of torque so, should the urge strike you, you could use it to pull a trailer or boat... and since the cars are devoid of all the heavy modern safety equipment they're fairly light given their size so the fuel economy isn't nearly as bad as you'd expect.

Besides all that, they sold. The end of the Muscle Car era was the beginning of the Malaise era, which started the downward death spiral of the US automotive industry.

One of the largest mistakes the US automakers have made in my lifetime was basically abandoning cars in the late '90s and focusing, almost exclusively, on the SUVs and Trucks people were buying up as fast as they could churn them out until just this year... they got greedy and then got caught looking... when gas hit $4 a gallon it was like someone flipped a switch and the US automakers, GM in particular, got caught with massive surpluses of monster SUVs that nobody was buying... they'd retooled a bunch of their car plants to SUVs because cars weren't selling and SUVs were , then everything switched over the course of a couple months... and they got caught.

[MrZoSo]

I just heard Ashton Kutcher state the best idea ever: "You know who should bail them out? The oil companies."

[MrZoSo]

We need our private jets so please give us the money...<~~Click