| U.S. automakers intensify their recovery bid |
WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 -- General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. have intensified their recovery bids, despite rising gasoline prices and slumping truck sales which have lead to an uncertain economic outlook.
Ford would announce the details of its updated restructuring plan late September, said Ford North American chief Mark Fields on Wednesday, adding that the plan would be "a combination of both" new cost cutting and an acceleration of the existing plan that was scheduled to cut as many as 30,000 jobs by 2012.
Meanwhile, top executives from GM outlined their position that turnaround plans for the world's No. 1 automaker by production were making steady progress, according to Thursday's Wall Street Journal.
GM executives have acknowledged that customers were shifting to more fuel-efficient but less-profitable vehicles, said the report.
However they expressed confidence that GM's new lineup of large pickups would do well, in part because they would outperform rivals in fuel economy, and they sketched an upbeat view of the company's financial outlook while stopping short of predicting a return to profitability in North America, the report added.
GM posted a 19.5 percent drop in U.S. sales in line with expectations, given the tough previous year comparison.
But the No. 1 automaker has narrowed its North American automotive loss to 547 million dollars through the first half of this year from 2.65 billion dollars a year earlier.
GM's progress in turning around its North American operations has put pressure on Ford to step up its own pace, amid high gasoline prices and tough competition from Asia-based auto makers, said the U.S. newspaper.
Ford is committed to shifting its product lineup toward smaller, lower-revenue vehicles such as cars and smaller sport-utility vehicles known as crossovers, as consumers react to higher prices at the pump. Ford said it would have nine new products in six months, including a new luxury Lincoln model, Ford's Fields was quoted as saying.
Ford was also investigating cutting more salaried workers, several Ford officials said. As part of the original plan, Ford cut 10 percent, or 4,000 salaried positions, in the first quarter.
Ford's Way Forward plan, rolled out in late January, is designed to return North American operations to profitability by 2008. But Ford reported a net loss of 7 cents per share, or 123 million U.S. dollars in the second quarter.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Bill Ford Jr. had hired a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive, Kenneth Leet, to head a review of the company's business that could lead to accelerated restructuring or the sale of troubled assets such as the Jaguar luxury brand.
Ford lost 797 million dollars in North American operations in the second quarter, an improvement over last year's 907 million dollars in the same period, but its losses are in the region above 1 billion dollars so far this year.
While bleeding at home, the U.S.'s second-biggest automaker is on track to make money in its international operations despite a few financial hiccups in the second quarter in some regions.
Fields also defended his seven-month-old plan, saying the automaker had kept its market share flat in the second quarter compared with a year earlier and was beginning to improve resale values on products such as the Ford Fusion and Lincoln Navigator.
"Critics or no critics, there are many positive signs of early progress on our Way Forward plan," he said.
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