Amid anticipation for the upcoming Woodward Dream Cruise -- Metro Detroit's nostalgic celebration of Detroit-made metal -- auto executives gathered in Traverse City this week and acknowledged a painful truth: The good-old days are over and they're not coming back.
The challenges that automakers and their parts suppliers have been grappling with in recent years are not cyclical, but sweeping and structural. The industry is global now, the competition unrelenting. Low-cost rules. Every company must adapt to this new reality or die trying.
That was the message delivered by speaker after speaker at the Management Briefing Seminars, an annual auto industry conference organized by the Center for Automotive Research, an Ann Arbor think tank.
The official theme of the event was "The Auto World Future: Round or Flat?" General Motors Corp. Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner spoke for many when he said he didn't know the answer.
"I do know the world is changing," he said, "and fast."
In recent years, the conference has focused on what organizers dubbed "the perfect storm" -- the convergence of increasing competition, rising raw material prices and growing labor costs.
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