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Inaki Lopez was weird, brilliant and devastatingly effective at bludgeoning suppliers for GM. In her new best-seller on the world's leading car companies, North America's top auto analyst describes Lopez's [...]

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 [...]

Presents the text of a speech given by the managing director of Furman Selz Inc. on April 2, 1997 which deals with the subject of the challenges facing the North American automobile industry.

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 [...]