New Study Reveals US Automakers Lose Money on Every Car Sold

Hehehe... well may be the exit of this situation is to make "United American Motors - UAM" including: Chevrolet, Cadillac, Pontiac, Ford, Mercury, Dodge, Jeep and Chrysler - and just dissmissed all others!

Save these that make really money!!!

they do not lose money with each sale of a vehicle. they do take a loss this time of year especially when they have trouble moving inventory that is backing up assembly lines. they make absolutly no money on a vehicle sitting at a factory somewhere that has not been delivered anywhere yet. so if they take a grand off the vehicle that cost $20K they are actually making money, even if its only $19k, they are still making more money than they had before they sold the car. and i highly doubt with no incentives that chrysler is losing money on every 300 they sell. thats just not true.

right about now you could come out and say damn near anything about those 3 companies and people will just belive it, because people are stupid. and they secretly want them to fail.

Bigslick83 aka Conspiracy Theorist

Just because money changes hand, doesn't mean the company profited.

Get rid of Mercury

Why Mercury!?!

Mercury makes good money in Canada it deserves to live!

Well duh, if your variable costs exceed your variable revenue then you have a loss. If US automakers want higher profits they need to immediately do the following:
(i.) Hire me as a senior executive
(ii.) Pay me a big sign-on bonus
(iii.) Do what I say
(iv.) Ensure I have a Platinum Parachute
(v.) Pay me a huge salary
In return for (i.)-(v.) above I promise to
(a.) Overhaul the new product development portfolio
(b.) Slash manufacturing and distribution costs by reducing the number of configurations [number of paint colors*number of door choices*number of options*number of transmissions*number of suspension choices etc etc.]
(c.) Make the products more desirable by adding relatively cheap features that people actually want like i. iPod interfaces ii. electrical outlets like the ones in our homes and offices iii. room to store a woman's purse, a computer bag as well as the owner's manual

Contributions are welcome!

b can be taken car of by using the same engine/transmission/suspension settups across different lines of vehicles. why do they have different setups of cars that even look similar and are similar in size/shape/capabilities. yet you have to produce a new line of engines and trannies for it.
thats just dumb and cost more

Some of these losses may just represent bad accounting due to misallocation of certain costs. If I had true losses that are expected to be ongoing indefinitely, I would be very tempted to just sell the business and get out while I can.

My solution is to get rid of most dealers and sell the product on the Internet at current "dealer cost". Dealers' sales staff rarely have any product knowledge which makes it difficult to figure out what value they add to the sales process.

Except for certain costly but useless optional features, a luxury car could be built for very little more money than an ordinary car. Therefore, I would make luxury cars in economic quantities and sell them at middle-class prices. Wealthy, mostly stingy, people would welcome the bargain and the lower classes would cheer because they can finally move up to a more luxurious vehicle by simply cutting costs elsewhere e.g give up smoking and drinking.

The above strategy is so foreign to the auto industry that there is only an outside chance that an avant garde manufacturer will adopt it. However, the first to adopt it will absolutely kill the competition, especially if all the others are late to adopt.