Z28Wilson

Not to nit-pick but that figure is not right. Lexus alone still builds 100% of their vehicles in Japan....

Fenster

Infinity (built by Nissan) builds all their cars in Japan also. Nissan itself actually only still has one car back in Japan, the 350Z. Everything else is North American built. Be it US via Canton MS or Smyrna TN, Mexico or Canada.

Doug Harden

Built or assembled here?

Don't forget that the people who build the parts also sometimes fall under the legacy costs.

R377

The RX300/330 is built in Cambridge, Ontario.

Chris 96 WS6

Well, we can split hairs but my point is still valid....the competition isn't govt funded healthcare in foreign countries. That's just shifting the final payor and the employer is still paying whether directly or indirectly.

SFireGT98

I missed it but I heard it was pretty good. A guy I work with who is kind of anti-GM even said he liked some of the decisions that Rick Wagoner apparently was talking about, especially the one about bankruptcy.

Fbodfather

99% of the foreign branded cars are not built in North America.

None of the Korean brands are.......and many of the Japanese are built in Japan........further, most of the components in a "U.S." built Japanese car are built in Japan or places other than North America. And we won't even get into the European brands..........

R377

I can only guess you're trying to bait people with that statement. So I'll take the bait.

Toyota for example produced 1.5 million vehicles in North America last year, out of sales of about 2.4 million. Not a bad percentage. I know you've posted in the past about their relative economic contribution and I can't argue with that, but your above statement is plain not true.

Hyundai has a plant in Alabama churning out Sonotas as we speak. And Kia is in the process of building their own North American plant.

Chris 96 WS6

I said 95% but whatever. OK, so I grossly overestimated. Still my point is GM's troubles aren't because the US doesn't have socialized medicine, and I thought that was a gross oversimplification on 60 Minutes' part and it shows their agenda.

Other than that I thought the piece was very good....best thing I've seen on that program in years.

km9v

Another problem that was pointed out was the paying of idle workers from clos(ed/ing) plants. That crap has to stop. I do think the UAW is coming around realizing that there's only so much they can leech off GM before it dies.

Chris 96 WS6

That was perhaps the most heartening part of the whole segment...when Kroft was talking to the union guys in the restaurant and they pretty much acknowledged things have to change for them to keep their jobs.

anasazi

arn't all honda's other than the S2000 made here?

guionM

You aren't thinking globally, and you are forgetting that foreign car makers who produce in the US are fairly recent in efficiency.

Toyota makes a godawful number more than 2.4 million cars worldwide.

The cars made here in the US are from plants that use far fewer people to make a car than it took to make a GM (or Ford, or Chrysler) up to about 10-15 years ago. There have been many hundreds of thousands of GM employees that have retired.


So you have a one-two punch at work. First, GM is responsible for every worker who has ever worked for GM all the way back to when it took 10 people to do the work that one does today. Second, Japan, Canada, and Germany especially have a health care system that takes care of everyone in their respective country.

There probally isn't too many retired Toyota or BMW workers drawing pension in the US, being that their plants have been in operation only within the past 15 to 20 years.

You can't do a snapshot today and make a judgement that Toyota has to pay health care too, so where's the problem. Instead you have to look at Toyota's worldwide operations, and see what the burden is compared to GM. GM's biggest operation and largest number of employees (by a humongous amount) is right here in the US.


Scotts not baiting anyone. He's stating the facts.

Chris 96 WS6

And I'm saying who specifically is paying for the health coverage isn't the problem either. If you want to get real picky the German automakers are saddled with much higher total taxation in their home country along with ridiculously lax worker vacation policies, etc. So again, its a Red Herring IMO to single out who specifically pays for health care as THE reason GM is in trouble.

You have to think GLOBALLY, right? Govt health care doesn't happen in a vacuum and if you are going to say govt healthcare makes foreign automakers more efficient then you need to step back and look at the total buearcratic burden they have to deal with in these respective countries.

Lack of Govt Healthcare is NOT the reason GM is in trouble. There's a lot of reasons, health insurance legacy costs being one of them, but specifically govt vs. private insurance isn't one of them.

If we got universal socialized medicine tomorrow, GM's wagon would not be fixed. Anybody at GM who believes this sets themselves up for a big fall, because there's a ton of other bigger issues that need to be fixed to fix the company.

I suppose going to govt healthcare would take all those pensioners off GM's healthcare rolls, but would an overnight 20% increase in taxation to cover the cost of the govt program help? Probably not? In the end it is not due to a lack of Govt Insurance, it is due to overly generous policies at GM over the last 30 years. That's not the fault of government in any way, GM knew what it was promising before hand and there are countless other unionized and non-union companies in the US that have not promised the moon...and consequently they're not out there carping about needing Govt Healthcare to compete.

I guess I should have kept my trap shut in the beginning because now we're off on this tangent and no one can seem to get off of it.

R377

You're right, I wasn't thinking globally (although I didn't think that was the thrust of this thread). However even so, to go back to the Toyota example they produced 1.5 million cars in NA and sold about 8.5 million worldwide; still a pretty good percentage.

As to the rest of the points in your post, I wasn't challenging that, I was merely pointing out the production sales/numbers. I'm sure RP knows the real numbers are not what he posted, so either he was exaggerating for effect or trying to elicit a response. Either way, I just wanted to bring some of the real numbers out.