While most of the auto industry news of late has been the hubbub over Kirk Kerkorkian bailing out on his investment in General Motors, my sense is that the more interesting (or pathetic) snippet is this one reporting that Ford Motor Company fell in November to fourth place in vehicle sales for the first time in history. Ford sold 10% fewer vehicles last month than it did a year earlier.
Meanwhile, Ford management is pursuing a restructuring plan in which the company is raising $18 billion secured by essentially all of the company’s assets in order to spend about $17 billion in an effort to stem Ford’s current annual revenue loss of close to $10 billion a year. About 38,000 employees — over 10% of the company’s work force — have resigned and accepted a buyout offer from the company. Thus, the new creditors are placing a rather large bet that Ford will be able to service the new mountain of new debt with expected profits from new products generated by a knockoff strategy similar to the one that the Japanese automakers used to make inroads in the US market during the 1970’s (Ford’s new products are expected to emulate the Lexus brand).
My impression of all this is to question what these people are smoking.