Stocks: (GM)(DCX)
With the auto show in Detroit in full swing, the pronouncements from the domestic companies are all about how well they will do in 2007. Amazing.
DaimlerChrysler’s Chrysler unit expects to sell more cars this year than the 2.7 million it did in 2006.The company still expects to cut $1,000 from the cost of producing each vehicle. For a company that lost 6% of its sales last year, the amibition seems grandiose.
GM expects sales gains as well. Forty percent of the cars it will market in 2007 are brand new, a higher percent that in recent years. It will market new crossover vehicles, which are more fuel efficient. GM’s sales in China were up 32% in 2006 to almost 878,000. If it can continue those gains, it goal to increase units in 2007 may not be quite so wild.
Ford seems to have refrained from thumping its chest on the sales increase front.
But, the issue remains that the large Japanese car companies have been relentlessly taking market share for years. There is nothing in the forecasts from GM and Chrysler that would seem to negate that.
Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.
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