How To Destroy a Car Maker

It takes drive and determination to do but there seems to be plenty of that in the American auto industry and maybe even some in the Australian car industry.

It’s well known right round the world that General Motors and Ford in the US are in dire trouble and are struggling to survive. That’s quite a turn-around from the position they were in just a decade or two ago so how did they get to this point?

Seth Godin is a legend in the world of marketing in the US and he had this to say about the causes of Ford’s problems:

“Making cars is not an unprofitable undertaking, unless you insist on make it one. At just about every turn the company ignored the market, alienated their workforce, distanced themselves from their distribution network, vilified their customers and chose short-term expediency ahead of long-term change.


There were hard things they could have chosen to do, things that would have meant change. There were short-term hardships they could have endured to fix their dealer network or reinvent the way they designed and built cars. Instead they stayed inside the Detroit beltway, played the car game, managed the stock price and paid themselves a fortune.”

Now while not all of those points can be applied to the Australian motor industry I can think of several that certainly do resonate with what’s happening here. It will be interesting to watch over the coming months and perhaps as long as a year how Holden and Ford survive seeing they are still pinning their futures on a 6 cylinder model.

How To Destroy a Car Maker

2 thoughts on “How To Destroy a Car Maker

  1. Hi,
    I am from the UK and if you want to discuss failure in car manufacturing, we have got that one off to a T.
    You wouldn’t belive that in the good old days the UK created some fantastic makes and models like Jaguar, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Austin, MG, Lotus and many more.
    Cars like the E Type Jaguar, Austin Healey, MGB. Now how many of those companies are owned by the British? none! And how many of them even exist any more. Even the great Mini is now a BMW, the Jaguar a Ford, not a UK Ford but A USA Ford. Even the Vauxhall, known in Europe as Opel is owned by GM Motors.
    The small cottage type manufacturers like Morgan and TVR, struggle on to keep their heads above water.
    But it doesn’t stop there, others like Nissan are building cars in the UK and Peugeot until rently, so it can’t be that it is more expensive here.
    We got the history, the workforce, the designers but we would prefer to do it for someone else than ourselves.

    I know how you feel!!!

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