I’m thinking more like 10mm sustainable rate. I’m not pulling this number out from ‘twixt my buttocks — this is a number that Toyota’s management thinks is sustainable in the US going forward.
This was one of my major problems with the “recovery plans” promulgated by GM/Chrysler last autumn — they kept babbling about a) the US auto market returning to 16mm units per year, and b) increasing their share of this market!
Talk about drinking one’s own bong water. These guys were out to lunch.
“These guys were out to lunch.”
And still are of course. I’m naturally pessimistic, but it’s hard to see a way out of this economic funk. I don’t know whether it will be the simple passage of time; a change in sentiment; a reset of stock market expectations so that anything not implying imminent collapse is big-time bullish. (We’re already at “no bad news matters”) But just using those car numbers, for an economy 70% consumer-based to make a smooth transition to 10 MM/16 MM; eg, to lose 3/8ths of its ooomph, all the while shouldering the tremendous debtload and fighting an administration possibly the most anti-business in history; is smoking the strongest of hopium. It’s a damn big, muddy cesspool of a hole to dig out of.