I have owned Ford's for nearly 20 years. If I do have to buy a new car it will be for now a Ford.
Last week I had a 2010 Ford Fusion 4dr rental car and not only did it handle well that car had some giddy up under the hood.
I’ve been a Ford guy since my old man shoved me under the hood of a ‘63 Falcon to change the water pump around my sixth birthday. Every time I have to help someone change the starter on a GM or the transmission on a Dodge, I reaffirm my preference for Ford.
All us “Ford guys” tho cannot change the over-capacity in the auto industry issue tho. A whole lot more capacity has to be shut down before profit margins stabilize. The GM/Saab story is very instructive for people to study. A whole car company, a point of big political turmoil in Sweden, is ready to be simply shut down and written off by GM... because it is cheaper than the alternative of keeping it open. It will take billions of dollars to turn Saab around, and every dollar GM flings into that black hole is another dollar they don’t have to prop up their main operations.
Saab sales in the US are down something like 61% this year over last year - and Saab US sells something like a few hundred units per month. IOW, it is a statistical noise blip on US auto sales - and it isn’t much better overseas. Saab hasn’t been profitable since 2001 (if my memory serves, so double-check that stat).
That’s the sort of over-capacity that needs to be shut down - and yet, there are European auto interests trying to buy the “whole company” to keep it alive. Lunacy. If one were a competent manager of an auto company other than GM, they should let it die and consider the 93,000+ vehicles that won’t be Saab next year to be a partial move towards margin support for the rest of the manufactures.
Yet, that’s not how these idiot auto execs seem to think. There’s at least two companies twisting themselves in knots trying to buy Saab. Lunacy.