Another icon in trouble
Apparently my friends at Ford have been taping a couple pictures of Grover Cleveland to every car for the last year.
Ford fed and clothed and housed me for the first 18 years of my life. And did so well. Dad worked at the Chicago Heights plant, quite literally, until he died. Had a grabber running up the stairs to his locker. Mom lives off his pension, what there was of it- he wasn’t quite at optimal retirement age yet. SHe also has his insurcance benefits, thank god.
Fact is, ford has made a good vehicle for a long damned time, and though the ford/chevy thing is always a matter of preference, (I’ve had both) I always keep coming back to my blue oval.
I think they have management good enough to turn them around. They’ve done so before. They will have to work hard to do so. I hope they succeed- I like toyota, honda, etc., but an America without Ford is… well, it’s unthinkable.
Ford, GM, and Chrysler will all have to break away from the Union to ever become profitable in this day and age.
I know some folks will argue this one til their blue in the face, but the bottom line is that unions kill businesses and the Big Three are living proof of this fact.
Pretty much yeah… of course making cars that people actually want to buy, for prices that people are willing to pay for them would help too.
Unfortunately none of that will matter; because no matter how much they sell, they’ll be bankrupt from their pension obligations in the next ten years anyway, as weill GM, and any other company who didnt convert their defined benefit pensions to defined contribution pensions in the 80s.
All the baby boomers retiring will simply destroy every large company that still has those pension loads.
IBM was smart, and didnt have the unions to deal wtih; so they converted all their pensions 15 years ago. Its the only way they would ahve avoided bankruptcy. Now it’s too late, because the load of benefits is too high for them to possibly meet, and still continue doing business.
Thank you UAW, and stupid management.
On WLW News (on XM) today, someone said Ford was losing up to $4400/ea on some models.
I fear Chris may be correct.
I don’t get the reference to Cleveland.
Rick: Grover Cleveland is on the $1000 bill. Yeah, I never seen one either.
GOtcha.