Three years ago, analysts were predicting the end of America’s automotive industry. Today, the Big Three’s turnaround has become a model for corporate America in battling adversity, the competition, and winning back long-lost customers. Are Orthodox Jewish buyers joining the Buy American trend, and if not, why not?
The sky didn’t fall after all.
A confluence of positive moves including corporate restructuring and retooling giving consumers what they wanted plus negative factors that played into Detroit’s hands such as Japan’s tsunami and rising gas prices has led the US auto industry to an unexpected renaissance.
In 2009 GM and Chrysler received $80 billion in controversial government bailouts while Ford barely avoided dipping its hand into the government till. Now all three companies are reporting healthy profits GM and Chrysler are repaying their loans ahead of schedule and May sales’ figures show that the Big Three increased market share between 7–19% in the past year while Japanese competitors Honda and Toyota experienced declines of 16% and 28% respectively.
“The Japanese auto companies haven’t been dethroned” says automobile industry expert Dr. Clay M. Voorhees a marketing professor at Michigan State University’s Broad College of Business “but the American companies have made great strides and are once again relevant in the conversation.”
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