It made the Chicago papers too; I can't remember now, but I think there was a brief story on it in the Bloomington Pantagraph. GM & Ford are big news reverberate outside the City of Eddie Guest. :-)
Carrol ^^^^^ CB: Well GM is only about the third largest company in the world now. I wonder if what's good for General Motors is still good for America. Way back in the thirties it was Alfred P. Sloan ( I think) who said GM is in the business of making money ,not cars. Nice slogan for the merger of industrial and finance capital as Finance Capital. Alfred P. Sloan - encyclopedia article about Alfred P. Sloan. Free ...encyclopedia article about Alfred P. Sloan. Alfred P. Sloan explanation. ... Alfred P. Sloan. Word: Word. ... encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Alfred%20P.%20Sloan - Alfred P. Sloan. 1875-1966. ... Alfred P. Sloan Foundation "Too often we fail to recognize. and pay tribute to the. creative spirit.". -Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. ... www.virtualology.com/virtualpubliclibrary/ halloffounders/automotivefounders/ALFREDPSLOAN.COM/ - 22k - Cached - Similar pages Alfred P. Sloan, Late Chairman of General Motors Corporation... The reason is that I have a famous relative, or at least my father and grandfather believed that he was our relative, namely Alfred P. Sloan. ... www.ishipress.com/al-sloan.htm - 7k - Cached - Similar pages Alfred P. Sloan Museum in Flint, MI - Details | MuseumStuff.comAlfred P. Sloan Museum details page from MuseumStuff.com, the web's leading guide to 1000's of museums worldwide. ... Alfred P. Sloan Museum. ... www.museumstuff.com/rec/org_20020201_10164.html - 7k - Cached - Similar pages ^^^^^^ High anxiety for U.S. automakers Big summer sales needed; suppliers, analysts fret July 23, 2004 BY JEFFREY MCCRACKEN FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER About 60 degrees and six months ago, during the Detroit auto show, there was a feeling of hope and optimism that an improving economy and slew of new and redesigned vehicles -- Chevrolet Corvette, Ford minivan, Chrysler 300 sedan -- would combine to increase Detroit automakers' sales while slowing down the rebates and incentives that wreak havoc on profits. Now, just past the year's halfway point, as second-quarter financial results pour out from General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and the area's largest auto suppliers, a new feeling is in the air: uncertainty. Or nervousness. Or concern. Whatever word is used to capture it, there is a definite sense that the second half of the year needs to go better than the first for Detroit's auto industry. Already, some are warning it won't. A number of Detroit's largest auto-parts makers -- such as Delphi Corp. and Visteon Corp. -- have told Wall Street they won't make as much as predicted in the third quarter or have given less-than-rosy projections for the rest of 2004. GM, too, gave the investors and analysts that cover them a cautious view of the year. "I think the real fear among these auto executives is that they only can get better auto sales with huge incentives. The automakers, like GM, misplaced their bets that better employment and a better economy would eliminate the need for these rebates and low-interest deals, and that hasn't been the case," said Diane Swonk, chief economist for Bank One Corp. There is concern that if July and August aren't blockbuster sales months for Detroit's three automakers -- especially GM -- they will have to slam on the brakes of vehicle production, which would cause a ripple effect across the industry and might push small suppliers into bankruptcy. The big fear: GM will need to idle some plants in the fourth quarter, and other automakers will follow suit. Already, GM's and Ford's plans for how many cars and trucks they will build from July through September are lower than they were last year by about 76,000 vehicles. Ford's third-quarter production plan calls for it to build 755,000 cars and trucks, the lowest third-quarter number in the automaker's history. GM's third-quarter production of 1.2 million vehicles is the lowest it has been since the 1990s and down about 4 percent from a year ago. GM and Ford will announce their production plans for the rest of the year Sept. 1, making that an important day in the immediate future of many Detroit suppliers. "There are quite a few suppliers around town that are watching to see what happens because they are so dependent on GM and the domestics. If GM decides to pull back a lot, that will send a message to the whole industry and have some scary ripples for some local suppliers," said Jeff Schuster, executive director of vehicle forecasting at J.D. Power and Associates, the market analysis firm. "Really, what Detroit needs is just a big, big sales month in July and August from the traditional Big Three." Schuster's firm recently lowered its production expectation for the rest of the year by about 100,000 cars and trucks. Schuster called that just a minor tweak. But noted it would have been lower, except foreign automakers like Toyota are "looking to increase production this year." GM refused to tip its hand during a conference call Wednesday with financial analysts and reporters, saying only that it would stick with its current plans for the third quarter and push hard in July and August to increase sales, especially those of trucks. "We will have a strong emphasis on trucks in the summer," said John Devine, GM's chief financial officer. "Our share of the light-truck market is a disappointment. We have some expectation we can increase that, but it remains to be seen." Devine and other GM officials emphasized overall auto sales for July are off to a strong start but wouldn't give details or say whether GM's share was growing. Forcing GM's and Ford's hands is an excess of unsold vehicles. GM and Ford have a sky-high glut of inventory between them: more than 2.2 million unsold car and trucks. Chrysler Group inventories are in good shape, and the automaker doesn't report its second-quarter results until next week. Auto suppliers around Detroit are worried about the second half of the year for more reasons than just production cuts, said lawyers, consultants and others that advise the companies. "Suppliers are really worried about their profits when they see production cuts coming while their health-care costs go up 15 percent and their steel goes up maybe 25 percent," said Craig Fitzgerald, a supplier consultant and partner at Plante & Moran, a Southfield-based consulting firm. "I've got one client who has very good profit margins usually, and he tells me the next six months look really bad. His release, new orders, from the automakers are way down." Fitzgerald estimated 25 percent of small-to-medium-size suppliers locally are bordering on bankruptcy. He said if GM took a big production cut in the fourth quarter -- such as the 20-percent cut some wall Street analysts predict -- it would force some suppliers to go under. "These small suppliers, like with $50 million or $100 million in sales, would probably throw up their arms and say it's not worth hanging around," he said. But some suppliers remain optimistic --at least for the next few months. Tom Martin, vice president and chief financial officer at American Axle, said: "GM today is very bullish on the second half of the year. They feel as we feel: They are going to handle the inventory they have sitting out there. There isn't anything in the schedule that shows cutting back on the 2005 models." The auto industry stands out as one of the few industries that is anxious and forecasting some uncertainty amid an otherwise solid U.S. economy, said economist Swonk. She noted that during the recession of 2001 and 2002, automaker sales held strong and even grew while other industries struggled. Now, as industries like aerospace, heavy truck, freight and even travel all pick up or thrive, automakers are going in the other direction, Swonk said. She said at a time automakers need $5,000 cash rebates to sell a truck, hotels and airlines can finally price their products better. "Most industries and CEOs are optimistic, while the auto execs are scratching their heads and acting nervously," she said. "The auto industry got over the hump faster than other industries and defied gravity during a recession. Now, gravity has caught up to them, and they've fallen back to Earth." Contact JEFFREY McCRACKEN at 313-222-8763 or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
