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Design, engineering, manufacturing, materials innovation, product development and styling-these disciplines are what the automotive industry is all about. Master them - deliver the right product at the right time for [...]

The challenge at GM is greater today than what Lutz confronted at Chrysler 12 years ago. General Motors Corp. has decided its product problems were sufficiently grave that it called [...]

Ford has locked itself into a portfolio-management game for its PAG brands. More than a decade ago Ford Motor Co. acquired Jaguar in a landmark deal that saw the crown [...]

GM, Ford and Chrysler have spent billions to buy back their stock while product programs suffer. Is this what you thought Shareholder Value was all about? Improving shareholder value has [...]

Stock repurchase programs are a poor use of cash that would have been better spent on new products. Between 1994 and 1999 General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler [...]

Cadillac no longer defines what 'luxury' means--its competitors do. In the early days of General Motors Corp., Alfred Sloan brought order to the chaos among the rival divisions that made [...]

Keeping one auto company happy is tough; keeping five happy will challenge the most seasoned executive. A year ago, amid much fanfare, General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler [...]

The Internet has yet to deliver on its promise of a better car buying experience. But the building blocks are there and traditional dealers are starting to see the light. [...]

It seems that Daimler has decided to take a page out of the Lopez playbook. A rather extraordinary thing is happening at Chrysler that promises to turn upside-down the cooperative [...]

Walking away from contracts, rather than building parts at a loss, is a legitimate strategy if you cannot afford to subsidize your customers. Tensions between suppliers and automakers hit a [...]

With the economy slowing down, how much more will automakers have to spend to get someone to buy a new vehicle? General Electric Capital recently joined the growing list of [...]

GM could ultimately lose more than it gains with its latest small-vehicle development strategy. General Motors Corp. has high hopes for its recently announced small vehicle strategy, largely based on [...]

Acquisitions rarely live up to their expectations. Just ask the survivors at Federal Mogul and Daimler Chrysler. Recently, Daimler Chrysler announced that it would report a third quarter loss of [...]

Round One is over. Explorer demand has not suffered. But the auto industry is still the loser. Surrendering confidential warranty and product defect information to the government under more intense [...]

The marketplace is changing -- and with it come numbers investors don't like. Why is it that automotive companies out-earn many of the so-called high-tech businesses, yet investors value the [...]

Advertising has always been a source of confusion in vehicle pricing. Now the Internet is adding more confusion. During a recent trip to California I found myself watching a television [...]

The Internet is a marvelous tool for auto companies to get the word out about their products, for customers to research the vehicles they are considering and for dealers to [...]

European and Oriental makes have finally figured out how to win American buyers. And the domestics don't have a truck boom to protect them anymore. With new passenger vehicle sales [...]

Crysler's pricing strategy on PT Cruiser has created more demand than the company can fill. Now, with plenty of customers ready to buy the car at a higher price, Chrysler [...]

The GM-fiat alliance is another move that insures low profit margins throughout Europe, even though management believes it will lead to cost reductions. Everyone in the auto industry has been [...]

In the Internet world, direct-to-consumer marketing will be essential for some auto suppliers. It's a great opportunity. The automotive components and systems makers have long lived in obscurity to the [...]

Consumers don't like wading through various option packages. That's one reason Hondas, Toyotas, VWs and other foreign makes are easiest to sell online. Automakers that want to sell vehicles on [...]

While the economic environment in 2000 remains very strong, competition is heading up. Costs won't be an easy to control as they were in the last six years. Globalization, platform [...]

Leasing could get very ugly as the new millennium dawns. It's a volatile situation that has every financial institution that writes leases on cars and trucks worded. The automakers should [...]

Last month's Tokyo Motor Show brought together the leaders of virtually every auto company in the world. But one man and the challenge he faces over-shadowed their presence. Two days [...]

At the dawn of the auto industry Henry Ford offered to build any car the buyer wanted -- as long as it was black General Motors came along and offered [...]

For years we have heard industry gurus pontificate about the customer's hatred of the auto retail buying process. According to their vision of the world, people really want to buy [...]

The Internet can lower distribution costs, which account for at least 15% of the final price of a vehicle. No matter how hard they try, the automakers can't seem to [...]

The recent delay in the launch of GM's first North American Delta small cars after a devastating clinic speaks volumes about a company that has paid more attention to process [...]

The Internet is going to be a major factor that influences vehicle-buying behavior. No one in the auto industry can ignore it. Already as many as 25% of all vehicle [...]

Ford's shouldn't leave Europe but it needs a product portfolio and cost structure that can make money. These are great times for the auto industry. North American profit margins are [...]

Maryann Keller As the year 2000 approaches, the auto industry confronts old and new challenges. Excess capacity, global competition and the need to continuously lower costs are ever-present. The emergence [...]

MARYANN KELLER General Motors just can't seem to be anybody's best friend. Its relationships with the UAW, suppliers and dealers are all dysfunctional. This is nothing new. GM has a [...]

Local labor strikes have become an annual event for General Motors, and the 1998 walkouts have been the most destructive since the United Auto Workers union's 67-day national strike in [...]

The Asian automakers have gotten themselves into a fine mess. When things were good, they didn't set aside anything for a rainy day. Now they are paying the price. The [...]

The corporate landscape is littered with logical deals that fell apart after the champagne toasts were drunk and initial euphoria died away. The Daimler-Benz takeover of Chrysler has been heralded [...]

For the past decade, being an auto parts supplier to General Motors, Ford and Chrysler has been frustrating and often unprofitable. The insults and injuries began with the arrival of [...]

Mitsubishi Motors has been temporarily rescued from oblivion by the members of its zaibatsu who could not tolerate the public humiliation of the great name of Mitsubishi being associated with [...]

Dividends are an appropriate return of capital to shareholders and ought to represent the surplus cash in the business not needed for internal investment or other corporate purposes such as [...]

A few weeks ago AutoNation's CEO publicly chastised the domestic auto companies for pushing too much inventory into his stores. Domestic brand dealers are still struggling with 90 days' supply [...]

The SEC recently sent a request to General Motors, Ford, Delphi and others to understand their actuarial assumptions for pension accounting to determine if changes were made to impact reported [...]

The moment that someone drives a brand new car off the dealer's lot, it is worth considerably less than it was when the buyer was handed the keys. But in [...]

In the last month, crude oil prices soared to near $50 a barrel and then dropped from that level. There are pundits on both sides of the debate as to [...]

During the last decade, Ford, General Motors, Daimler and Volkswagen spent billions of dollars on investments in other auto companies, usually those in need or soon to be in need [...]

In the past month the managements of Ford and Volkswagen both stated that profits and not preservation of some arbitrary market share was their corporate objective. But in the real [...]

The 1990S were a gift to the U.S. auto industry. Low inflation, low interest rates, cheap gasoline, record vehicle sales, especially large trucks, translated into record profits for each of [...]

General Motors continues to provide a glowing assessment of its Chinese investments. In fact, Wall Street analysts recently raised their earnings forecasts for the company because of strong demand for [...]

In the 1980s European auto companies dismissed the Japanese success in the United States as the by-product of a relatively ignorant driving public that failed to understand or appreciate mechanically [...]

In the mid- to late-1990s, German auto companies were posting record profits that were mainly the result of success in the United States and other export markets. Volkswagen's fortunes were [...]

In 2003, giant SUVs and pickup trucks, most of which function a large part of the time as family transportation, posted new sales records. Automakers provided buyers of these vehicles [...]