FDW
Banned
Making the Detroit automakers into conglomerates might help with the diversification part, too.
Or better yet, preventing them for getting so ginormous might help too…
Making the Detroit automakers into conglomerates might help with the diversification part, too.
most of it boils down to that the US automakers have to be better prepared for the gas shortage in the 70's... which requires a degree of prescience that borders on ASB... basically, they have to be ready with a line of small economy cars ready to hit the showrooms when gas prices start surging up...
Have an early corporate raider á la Danny de Vito in Other Peoples Money try to take over one of the three big. Either he succeeds and can start improving the organisation, drop the "not invented here"-mentality and diversify the company, forcing the other two to follow. Or he fails, and then reveals how badly run the auto industry is, forcing them to improve.
Maybe Boeing chooses Detroit over Washington state for its factories. Have no idea of Boeing's history to say if this is ASB.
Have an early corporate raider á la Danny de Vito in Other Peoples Money try to take over one of the three big. Either he succeeds and can start improving the organisation, drop the "not invented here"-mentality and diversify the company, forcing the other two to follow. Or he fails, and then reveals how badly run the auto industry is, forcing them to improve.
The decline of the US car manufacturers in the 1970s, '80s and '90s had 2 major factors.
- They had an outdated model range by no later than the mid to late 1970s and it took them too long to update it (the first real improvement being the Ford Taurus) opening large windows of opportunities for non-US competitors.
- Ford and GM did not make good use of their european divisions (Ford Europe and Opel / Vauxhall) even though both had the models the US market was waiting for. Why did Ford spend a fortune to develop the Taurus when Ford Europe had developped a virtually identical car with the Scorpio, why was the Opel Omega A / Vauxhall Carlton not used as a basis for mid size models for the different GM divisions.
Ford Taurus 1. generation
Ford Scorpio 1. generation
- US cars were known for their abysmal build quality in that period so that the only reason to buy US cars was their value-for-money-ratio forcing US car manufacturers to sell their products at bargain prices thus further narrowing the operational profits available for future R&D thus further delaying necessary model range updates.
It wasnt just Japans cars. Where was Detroits response to the Volkswagen Beatle and the VW van the hippies loved?
One of the major factors that I can recall from studying them a little at university a couple of years back was that as others have mentioned they didn't listen to their customers and what they wanted. One classic example that I can remember was that even ten years or so back when dealing with their dealership customers they were still doing it how it had always been done since that's how they'd always done it. This meant that the dealers had to take set numbers of different models they were given with little if any thought to local variation so large backlogs of unsold cars could occur, as opposed to other manufacturers that looked at the sales data to tailor what models were sent where and allowed the dealers much more say. Even when the problem had been identified and IT systems proposed to help increase their customer responsiveness the reaction from senior managers was fairly lukewarm, at best a "Well we might look into that" rather than jump on it as fast as possible.
the irony of course is that both Ford and GM potentially had the vehicles there and ready to go with their European Products
if the US car makers had hit back against the VW Beetle with the more sophisticated products of the their 1960s / early 1970s European Divisions ...
multiple brands is something to consider / address in changing things
'rest of the world' GM operates with one or two brands in a territory
e.g. Europe - Uk Opel ( alone for much of the 1980s) and then Daewoo/ Chevrolet as the budget brand
UK - Opel products of the 1980s badged as Vauxhall ( apart from the Manta and Monza - placing Opel as a niceh 'sports' brand) then 1990s onwards Vauxhall and Daewoo/ Chevrolet
Aus /NZ Holden branded Opel products and the range topped with the local Commodore/ Monarp ( which is then exported to Europe in limited numbers and badged as a Vauxhall / Opel to replace the Senator ) then Daewoo/ chev as a budget brand
outside the US - who actually runs a multi brand strategy successfully ?
Volkswagen group ...
Ford in Europe's millenial flirtation with multiple brands fails and sees Jaguar- Land Rover sold off to Tata and Volvo sold off to the Chinese
This is sort of what I had in mind with ~shake up in the 80's~. Detroit had a hothouse atmosphere for decades with too little outside and consumer input and their financial managers were idiots.
Any of the big three at various points would have been ripe leveraged buyout targets for a Warren Buffet/Carl Ichan/Mitt Romney style take over; who would promptly and permanently change the business models of the company
Warren Buffet could have directly bought ford in the early 80's outright; but that may not fit as his history was to buy successful companies in receivership (on the inherritance tax) or just strait buy successful companies; and Ford in the early 80's wasn't that; also his management style after purchase often involves leaving the companies alone to handle their own affairs (more or less) which wouldn't be the sort of big ticket change we are looking for
You could have a Bain Capital leveraged buyout around 1986 and still do it. I don't think it would even have to involve a hostile takeover; the ford family was very unpopular at this point due to loss of market share; and Mitt Romney has a lineage with the auto industry which would at least to start make him a potentially popular new owner. This would be sort of an ideal time since it's during the height of the Reagan economic boom, and it was open season on the unions
Bain, not bound to the hothouse atmosphere could shut down mercury much earlier (as this was wasted duplicative effort) and shift the funds to R&D and marketing; they can also approach the next round of worker negotiations from a position of strength with tacit support from the administration to scab out any strikes until they secure a more favorable salary and benefit structure giving them a lower cost basis than GM and Chrysler and put themselves more inline with the input/output costs of Toyota and Honda; there would likely be immediate studies of dealership inventories and it would be discovered that orders were not being submitted on need which would be quickly rectified which would reduce the need to offer so many incentives/price slashings. Bain would also not be afraid to close/revoke license from unprofitable dealerships and instead focus on good pricing/volume from a smaller number of mega dealerships
Would this garuantee success? Most certainly not; but it's hard to picture that coming out worse than OTL
The Scorpio and its smaller sibling the Sierra were sold in America under the Merkur nameplate, and they didn't sell well at all, while they look similar that's the extent of the similarities - the Scorpio and Taurus are very different cars underneath. The main problem there was that as a vehicle, the Taurus was the better one for the North American market in Ford's mind. I wouldn't bother with the Scorpio in North America (hell, a better idea might be to make the Taurus with better suspension and engines and sell it in Europe) but I would bring the Sierra here instead of the POS Tempo. The Escort was as good as could be expected at the time.
As for GM, the Cavalier could have been a much better car right from the start if GM had listened to its engineers and fitted it with modern engines. GM's engineers wanted to build the Cavalier with the Opel / Vauxhall Family Two engines, which would have given the Cavalier 110 horsepower (instead of 85 it came with in 1982) and much better performance. The Cavalier should have also been built with the better suspension (that was offered as an option) and four-wheel disc brakes (also an option). General Motors figured out its problem with awful build quality but the late 1970s, so an 80s shakeup isn't gonna make that much difference here.
Detroit happened to be a boom town where instead of being based on a commodity, the city was based around a single industry. Once the car industry left, it's no wonder Detroit became a ghost town. It's no different from Flint, Michigan or Gary, Indiana in this respect. It just happened to be bigger.
The only way for Detroit to survive is for it to develop a diversified industrial base.
And no one even comments on my "prevent the monster from getting so big" idea…
the Sierra and Scorpio sold in the US were European built captive imports , the US Escort of the 1980s was not the world car that Ford Claimed the Front wheel drive Escort would have been - so the costs were higher when import completely built up Sierras and Scorpios from Europe than if the plants stateside where producing them
if the Escort, Sierra and Taurus/ Scorpio had been three series of true 'world cars' with te the principal differences for different legislatures being the extent of emissions equipment and the different fetishes over lighting around the world then it would have been a different kettle of fish
as would the US J-cars having the Opel Family 2 engine that did the Cavalier mk2/ Ascona Cavalier3 / Vectra A so well in Europe
ditto for the derivatives of the Astra 2/ Kadett
That's true, but its also worth pointing out the local conditions. The Scorpio was meant as an executive car in the mold of the BMW 3 Series. The Taurus was meant as an everyday sedan. I think the gap can be bridged between them, but building Scorpios or Grenadas stateside isn't gonna replace the need for a Taurus.
Agreed, and really, they should have been. The Taurus tuned first as a European executive car and then made to work as a North America mid-sizer would be, if it could be done correctly, a huge game changer. The Escort began the design stage as a common car for both markets, but at the time US laws on safety and emissions were tougher than their European counterparts, a situation that did not change until the mid 90s. That was why the Escort wound up different in North America and Europe. It's not coincidence that the when said regulations were effectively harmonized in the 1990s, Ford replaced the Escort with the Focus, which pretty much was the same car in both sides of the Atlantic.
Truthfully, the third-generation Opel Kadett and the Chevrolet Chevette were almost identical underneath, differing only in body style - and the Chevette was an utter piece of shit that damaged GM's reputation as bad as the Vega did, and hammered home the point that Detroit couldn't build good small cars. If you haven't massively improved it, keep the Kadett out until the Kadett E in the early 1980s.
As for the Cavalier, GM's goal on that one was to knock the Honda Accord down to size. That didn't work, namely because it was underpowered and overpriced, and did not match the Accord's build quality. (Mind you, it was a damn sight better than GM had done before.) The Cavalier proved to be a pretty solid little car, but it should have been that way from the start had GM's management morons listened to their engineers.
The reality with American cars in general is that they tend to have better body fabrication than many imports do, and as a result they don't rust as easily. The parts put together inside, in most cases, were crap. That was part GM's fault and part poor suppliers. The story of the development of the Cavalier was followed closely and written up by Brock Yates in the early 1980s, and by his account GM was bent on getting it right the first time, giving suppliers hell in not a few cases for shoddy quality parts. The problem was that after so long where quality didn't matter as much as unit cost, Detroit and its suppliers didn't give a damn a lot of the time, and their workforce wasn't a help.
I don't think that's avoidable unless you want to figure out how to turn the four automakers that existed in America in 1973 into six or seven, and I haven't a clue how you do that with a POD after about 1920. Adding to that, all of the American auto industry was based in Detroit anyways, extra car companies probably would as well just to be near the competition and all of the parts manufacturers.
how about earlier gas crisis. We allow Britain and France to invade Egypt in 1957 during the Suez Crisis. Conflict in middle east, reduces the amount of oil coming from there and the Car makers have to start building more Fuel efficient cars by 1960's. The Big Three are then in better shape to deal with the 70's and 80's and will do better than in the OTL.