Because this is Jalopnik, there's a strong anti-Chinese bias in this piece. The reason Honda had the biggest single recall probably has to do with the fact that China's domestic industry really isn't up to speed yet and so a very big percentage of the Chinese sales is joint partnerships with foreign companies. I'm at a loss to explain the bit about Mercedes though, but I guess their quality in China is no different than their American quality; I have friends with Mercedes-Benzes and it seems engine failures before 60,000 miles is quite common. This supposedly isn't normal, but it seems to be a rule among my group of friends.
@LionZoo: I'd say it has more to do with Honda being an international corporation, and having to take basic safety precautions or answer to the wrath of its parent company.
@karlsl: That's the sort of mess a car usually looks like after its a) about 30 years old, and b) parked in my barn halfway through a transplant of a malfunctioning wiper motor.
good move GM. Way to do the same as all the other lenders below you. A car you can take back and regain your losses from pretty easially compaired to a house.
Houses are immobile, unlike cars. Houses have land tied to them--even if the house is destroyed, there's still value.
For gross recovery values, a lender usually gets about 70%+ of the value of a foreclosed home (before fees), while a car is usually under 50% (minivans and crappy compacts, about 30%!).
9 times out of 10, a million dollars in foreclosed houses will lose far less than a million dollars in cars.
@jbownsabmw but still wants GM to survive: Let's use the 80/20 rule for profits and losses for a second. The lowest 20% of the credit scores will provide 80% of the profit and 80% of the losses. However, when times get tough, those groups often provide 90% of the losses or more.
So sometimes the easiest thing to do is just to cut off the lower 20% of your customers (or even the bottom 50%, possibly eliminating 95% of all potential losses) in order to simply keep the ship afloat...and to be able to reduce overhead in loan servicing (such as repos).
The rub is that you might break even, but at least you don't get hit with the massive downside in losses. And the other side of that coin is that when (if) things turn around for the better, your portfolio is not profitable because all your customers are upstanding individuals who never miss a payment.
Coming from the world of consumer lending, 620 is about our median customer. That's far from "crappy" in the consumer world. In fact, that's about the highest floor I'd allow if I ever expected to make a profit.
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01/01/09
Did any of the rectification or correction procedures for the automotive shortcomings include execution for hooliganism?
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Just a guess.
12/31/08
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this is good news here.
12/30/08
Houses are immobile, unlike cars. Houses have land tied to them--even if the house is destroyed, there's still value.
For gross recovery values, a lender usually gets about 70%+ of the value of a foreclosed home (before fees), while a car is usually under 50% (minivans and crappy compacts, about 30%!).
9 times out of 10, a million dollars in foreclosed houses will lose far less than a million dollars in cars.
12/30/08
I would venture to guess there was not a single person at GMAC who believed requiring a 700 was good business practice.
12/30/08
So sometimes the easiest thing to do is just to cut off the lower 20% of your customers (or even the bottom 50%, possibly eliminating 95% of all potential losses) in order to simply keep the ship afloat...and to be able to reduce overhead in loan servicing (such as repos).
The rub is that you might break even, but at least you don't get hit with the massive downside in losses. And the other side of that coin is that when (if) things turn around for the better, your portfolio is not profitable because all your customers are upstanding individuals who never miss a payment.
12/30/08
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12/26/08