Did any of you hear? Beginning now you are only able to park at the work parking lot if you purchase the product being produced by your company. If you buy from the competitor you must park across the street. Obviously I am joking about this, unless you work for Ford.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/27/news/companies/ford_parkinglot/index.htmI have written an article in the past about GM and their issues and I should have really included Ford in there as well. Since writing the GM article Ford has announced 30,000 job cuts and I recently read an article where the employees at the plant where F-150’s are assembled are only allowed to park on the company parking lot if they drive Ford’s, all others must park across the street.
Clearly they are resorting to desperation in these bad times. Why doesn’t the CEO just go on public airwaves and scream, “Help us!!!”. Since it is private property they can do what they want but in this country how can you think the tell people where they can park based on what they drive? I forget the exact figure that Ford is currently in debt for, I believe it is $16 billion, which is not bad compared to GM’s $300+ Billion, but it is still a huge hill to climb to restore the company to what it once was.
So how did Ford go from the first company to roll a car off the assembly line, which was clearly ahead of its time back then, to being a struggling company in the automotive industry? In my opinion, it is the same reason GM has gone from a powerhouse to soon handing over the title as #1 automaker in the world to Toyota, poor management. The “Big 3” domestic car companies have been saying for some time that they are at the mercy of the labor unions and it drives their costs up. How is it that Nissan, Toyota, Honda, and even Kia can come into out country and build multi-billion dollar factories covering acres and acres of land and the can do it while putting out higher quality products at competitive prices?
It is clear that once the “Big 3” began to cut corners and ship jobs out of the country and sacrifice the quality of the vehicles they shot themselves in the foot. American people are not stupid, they are not going to keep forking over top dollar for these cars if the quality is bottom dollar quality. It is obvious that these companies were not loyal to the American people so people stopped being loyal to them.
I have had many conversations with people who still buy either a Ford, GM, or Chrysler because they buy “American”. What they do not realize is these companies are no more American than Toyota, Nissan, or Honda. Those companies manufacture most their cars in this country whereas the domestic companies are mostly in Canada or Mexico.
I have personally driven Nissan’s for the last 7 years. I have had a Maxima, Pathfinder, 2 Sentra’s, and currently my wife drives a Murano. On the combined 400K miles we have put on our cars the only none maintenance (oil, tires, brakes, etc…) we spent on those cars was a $20 O2 sensor. It is hard to compete with that kind of quality. It is especially hard for Ford and GM now that they are trying to repair their reputation and crawl out from massive amounts of debt.
Scott Bianchi operates
http://www.best-internet-bargains.com He writes on a variety of topics. If you would like to be added to his distribution list for his new articles when they are published just send an email to
[email protected].
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Scott_Bianchi
