Motor City Looks To Rev Up Operations Abroad

Council on Foreign Relations by Lee Hudson Teslik | Aug. 1, 2008 (Special Report)

The outlook is especially grim for sales within the United States, where market share has fallen dramatically (WSJ-chart) for nearly all U.S. automakers. With average summer gasoline prices in the United States over $4 a gallon, buyers are increasingly keen on fuel efficiency, while U.S. automakers have for years focused on trucks and larger vehicles. The expense of overhauling U.S. production facilities is high, and while U.S. automakers have set up ... Full Story »

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2.7

by Vincent Caminiti - Oct. 1, 2008

This article lacks depth and data. The obvious hyper-links were essentially for window dressing and not essential to the story in any way. The author identifies Chrysler as being 'taken-over' by Cerberus without the requisite hyper-links explaining the additional failures of the Daimler Benz marriage and financial two-step that was done in order to hold shareholder confidence - while market share played second fiddle to prevent their bonds dropping like a rock. Speaking of market share (I elaborated below) the simple fact that the author refers to market share as though it were an act of God as opposed to a direct result of leadership is astounding. This at the very least, would point the reader in a direction of creating some questions about the legitimacy of the next business cycle of the US Auto-makers. The article does not elaborate in the market share by offering data of products considered to be of foreign auto makers, although they are manufactured in the US by Americans; which, forces the natural questions: why are they successful? and What makes the US auto-makers believe they will be successful in markets that are more challenging than the US market? Like many others - I smell a cadre of rats. Apparently this data or inquiry is inconvenient to the author although, it would force one to understand the market and further question the strategy of Motor City revving up Abroad.

The outlook is especially grim for sales within the United States, where market share has fallen dramatically (WSJ-chart) for nearly all U.S. automakers.

The authors voice is that of a reviewer. He is not proactive in this article but rather has compiled information from a series of other articles. this is particularly evident in the sentence below. ‘Market share is not something that raises or declines – it is the product of a business asserting itself or failing to do so. It isn’t passive – it is a reaction to action on the part of a business.
The outlook is especially grim for sales within the United States where the US automakers have lost market share, and have not articulated a strategy to recapture their lost ground.