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baloo · 11-20-2008, 05:25 PM

Your first mistake is that you're only looking at the US market. The German manufacturers do much more business on the other side of the pond. They've also been selling 40+ mpg cars for over 15 years outside the US. Yes, they sell SUV's too, but they don't depend on them because their cars are profitable and because the product portfolio does not revolve around SUV's.

Government assistance has been rather limited (in fact I don't recall any big subsidies paid to the German manufacturers) and they pay for the healthcare of their workers, too. One difference is that they're not using a ponzi scheme like GM where 150k workers have to support 400k retirees, but that was GM's own decision.

The main difference between domestics and their business model is that the German manufacturers have carved out a viable niche for themselves: premium vehicles which command higher prices. They're not trying to outcamry Toyota like GM does and manufacture low-end products in a high wage country.

11-20-2008, 05:25 PM	#2 (permalink)
baloo 3.6 Liter SIDI V6 Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 1,149	Re: Germans & Big 3 go the same route Your first mistake is that you're only looking at the US market. The German manufacturers do much more business on the other side of the pond. They've also been selling 40+ mpg cars for over 15 years outside the US. Yes, they sell SUV's too, but they don't depend on them because their cars are profitable and because the product portfolio does not revolve around SUV's. Government assistance has been rather limited (in fact I don't recall any big subsidies paid to the German manufacturers) and they pay for the healthcare of their workers, too. One difference is that they're not using a ponzi scheme like GM where 150k workers have to support 400k retirees, but that was GM's own decision. The main difference between domestics and their business model is that the German manufacturers have carved out a viable niche for themselves: premium vehicles which command higher prices. They're not trying to outcamry Toyota like GM does and manufacture low-end products in a high wage country.