The Great Debate UK
from Commentaries:
Why the carmaker in front is cutting back
Good news: global car capacity is being cut by 700,000 vehicles. Bad news: the company doing the cutting is the world's most efficient manufacturer, Toyota.
Across the world, governments are pledging money to keep local plants open, mostly plants which have no long-term future, and which are far less efficient than the production line in Japan that Toyota is closing.
Welcome to the crazy economics of carmaking. According to CSM Worldwide, a consultancy, the world is capable of making about 94 million cars and trucks a year. In 2008, calculates OICA, an international carmaking trade body, global sales of vehicles were just over 70 million. This year may not reach 60 million, after the end of borrow-and-spend in the economies of the west.
In essence, the world is capable of making three cars for every two buyers. No wonder so few manufacturers can make money. Sergio Marchionne, responsible for the "near miraculous" revival of Fiat, believes that 5.5 million cars is the minimum output needed to make money, since it costs 500 million euros to develop a new model.
from The Great Debate:
Fiat’s over-ambitious expansion strategy
-- Paul Taylor is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own --
Could Italy's cash-strapped Fiat, Europe's sixth auto maker, build a workable alliance with Chrysler and Opel to become be a profitable global player? Or would it be a marriage of losers, doomed to fail?
Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has made clear that his interest in Opel, the European arm of ailing General Motors, is more than just a well-timed tactic to get better terms in the alliance he is negotiating with troubled U.S. number three Chrysler. Chrysler faces likely bankruptcy if a deal is not clinched by April 30.
