The DS
Posted on 03/14/2012 11:47:06 PM PDT by Lazlo in PA
General Motors CEO Dan Akerson sat down for an interview with Fortune Magazine’s Adam Lashinsky and admitted that the Detroit automaker might close some of its European plants.
“In the U.S., GM was able, through an extraordinary set of circumstances, to take some drastic action: you closed whole factories, you closed whole historic brands in the United States. Can you take, and will you take, drastic action like that in Europe?” Lashinsky asked.
Well, just so you understand, prior to their kind of crisis of confidence, if you will, Europeans must, uh, we in America hear about it every day, they must hear about it every morning and every evening of every day.
And is Greece going to go under? Is Italy going to go under? What’s going to happen to the euro? The banks are on stilts…it has echoes of what was going on here 2008 and 2009. Coming out of bankruptcy, [GM] did close a plant. There are only two plants closed in Europe. Fiat closed one and we closed one in Antwerp, Belgium. We laid off about 4,000 people and were were profitable for the first half of 2011 in Europe.
Now we, Ford , Fiat, Pugeot, Renault — they’ve all come out and said, ‘Yeah, we have profitability problems in Europe.’
And you’re right. We had to close 14 plants in the United States when we had our crisis.
We think we’re going to have to adjust our production levels in Europe over the next couple of years in order to get our house in order in Europe.
-SNIP-
Given the fact that even the CEO admits there are “profitability” concerns in Europe, why did the Detroit automaker, which still owes U.S. taxpayers approximately $25 billion, invest $400 million in France’s fledgling Peugeot?
(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...
The Peugeot 403 was one of the finest cars ever made. Sturdy, like a rock. Fast. Cheap to run. And really very comfortable. Colombo knew what he was doing. The answer to "Just one more question, Mam," was Peugeot!
The Peugeot 404 is one of the great cars, too. It can bound over African potholes and in the Diesel version, gets 45 mpg. Millions of'em running all the globe.
Now it is true that modern Peugeots look as if they were designed in the Affirmative Action Engineering Department of a Gay Rights organization. But please, some respeck pour la histoire.
The DS
This pix looks newer than the car I was thinking of. More 1960s/early 70s vintage.
It was the Renault Caravelle “sports car.”
Citroen also was one of the pioneers of aerodynamics for automobiles. Thanks to an extremely low coefficient of friction and light weight, they were able to get excellent performance from very low-powered, sturdy, and economical engines. One of the most comfortable-riding cars ever, too.
But, lots of luck getting one serviced in Senegal. The older Peugeots, OTOH, were easy to blacksmith back into shape after hitting an elephant.
BTW, your ordinary everyday Frog is a terrible, almost oriental, bad driver. The shifting, the steering, the round-abouts ...painful to watch and hear. Better than the Belgians,(totally inept, with some sort of national hand-eye handicap) Greeks or Portuguese,(these last two quite suicidal) but not by much. Stay off their roads after lunch.
If I am going French, I am going Citroen. D'accord.
I had a rental Peugeot hatchback in Nice a couple years ago. It seemed pretty decent, actually.
Their cars in the 80s here were a disaster, one of my business partners at the time had one, and it was far from just his that was an issue. Then again, American cars of that era were no great shakes, but Peugeot was definitely worse.
“Their cars in the 80s here were a disaster”
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Yes, I remember when the French cars were a joke, but when I moved to Slovakia, one of my best friends, a French guy, had been the Slovak sales manager for Peugeot.
A few years later I was friends with French families that were there to set up the new high tech Peugeot factory north of Bratislava.
The men, executives, were away during the week, while I tutored the wives and kids in English conversation.
The new cars were said to be quite high tech, and to rival
anything in their class.
I have not had a car since I left the USSA in 2004, so I would not know, but to generalize Peugeot as a junk car is not fair game today.
I imagine that they are just as competitive, quality wise, as the Jap cars.
“Coefficient of Friction” really meant to say “Coefficient of Drag” Cd.
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