ehaase

Most of us can't answer that either, since we don't have information on all the vehicles sold in Asia and South America.

Since you quoted my post, I never criticized minivans. I like them myself and would prefer one to an SUV. However, GM no longer has the resources to compete in every market segment. GM needs to put its limited resources to the segments where it can make the most profit, which is not minivans at this time.

Few of us can answer this question because we have no access to sales figures outside North America. I know that Toyota and Nissan have numerous models sold in Asia that we don't have. There are many interesting South American cars from Ford and GM we don't know about. I miss the book "World Cars" that came out each year in the 1970's and 1980's because I enjoyed reading the data on all the interesting European and Asian cars that aren't sold in the U.S.

Foreign corporations that do business in the U.S. pay already pay income tax on their U.S. income, but not on income earned outside the U.S. Domestic corporations pay tax on their worldwide income, but may get credits or deductions for taxes paid to foreign countries on foreign income.

GM obviously cancelled the Lambda minivans because the program wouldn't make any money. GM couldn't charge the prices for its minivans that Toyota and Honda can, it wouldn't generate the sales volume that Chrysler does, and it couldn't build them as cheaply as Hyundai/Kia can. It all comes down to money, not just sales volume.

I wonder how well profitable the Sigma platform (CTS/STS/SRX) is compared to comparable platforms at BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus. I am sure that the Escalade is extremely profitable.

This tells me GM is being sensible and not wasting time and money on unprofitable segments.

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That's the way it's always been. I remember reading rumors of the Ford Taurus back in 1981, more than four years before it debuted. The automakers just can't whip up a new platform and get the car in production as quickly as we enthusiasts would like.

A little history may help here. Prior to 1982, the depreciation rules for cars and trucks were no different from any other asset. In 1982, Congress passed a new tax law called TEFRA (Tax Equity Fairness and Responsbility Act). The law contained numerous tax increases. However, Code Section 280F imposed limitations on depreciation on cars with unloaded gross vehicle weight under 6,000 lbs and trucks with loaded (truck + passengers + cargo) gross vehicle weight under 6,000 lbs. Consequently, the depreciation limits did not apply to heavy duty trucks. The purpose of the law was to limit tax deductions on luxury cars. Only some Rolls Royces weighed over 6,000 lbs; all other cars were under 6,000 lbs. Back in 1982, the truck market was much smaller than now, and the only SUV's were the full size, relatively low volume Suburban, the Bronco, and the Grand Wagoneer. Exempting trucks protected businesses, such as contractors. Another provision of the tax, Section 179, allows expensing, instead of depreciation of assets. Back in the early 1980's, the deduction was only $3,000, but over the years has increased substantially. By 2002, the deduction was about $24,000. At the same time, sales of SUV's exploded. In 2003, Congress increased the Section 179 deduction to $100,000. Since full size SUV's were considered as trucks, not cars, and were not subject to the depreciation limits for cars and small trucks, by 2003, the cost of an SUV used 100 percent for business could be expensed up to $100,000, just as for any other truck with an unloaded weight over 6,000 lbs. In 2004, under some public pressure, Congress limited the Section 179 deduction for SUV's to $25,000. Therefore, currently a business could expense the cost of a full size pickup up to $100,000, but can only expense the cost of an SUV up to $25,000. I guess a solution would be to increase the weight limits for vehicles subject to the 280F depreciation rules or to reduce the Section 179 deduction limits even further. Of course, it all really is a timing adjustment.

Chrysler would have been better off just making this look like a little 300C, which is the only Chrysler product I really like.

Based upon your excellent posts on the Camaro board, the Zeta G8 that people keep bringing up is not definite.

Buick and Pontiac are one division now, and there is no need for a plethora of models that will create more overlap in the showroom. LaCrosse, Lucerne, and Enclave are enough, supplemented with some new small RWD Pontiacs and GMC trucks.

Probably because Ford has not earned a profit on Taurus.

If Ford went out of business, only Mustang fans and contractors who buy the Super Dutys or Econolines would care. The folks buying Toyotas, Hondas, and BMW's could care less.

Take out the Taurus and sales are down. The situation at Ford is pathetic, and there is little good news here.

Any ideas for the niches that GM, Ford, and Chrysler can successfully fill? http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/business...agewanted=print October 29, 2006 Now Playing in Europe: The Future of Detroit By MICHELINE MAYNARD VALENCIENNES, France WALK inside Toyota’s five-year-old factory here, an hour’s drive from the Belgian border, and step into a world stuck on fast-forward. Yellow forklifts speed down aisles bearing fresh supplies of parts, forcing visitors to flatten themselves against the concrete walls as the deliveries go by. Huge stamping presses beat out an ear-splitting rhythm of “ca-chunks” as they bang out metal sides and roofs for the small Yaris cars built here. Deep inside the plant, injection-molding machines spit out brightly colored front and rear bumpers, looking like so many Lego pieces, which are loaded onto racks to be towed to the assembly line. By contrast, the atmosphere at BMW’s plant in Leipzig, Germany, is decidedly more refined. Its soaring gray and silver factory, designed two years ago by the architect Zaha Hadid, is the equivalent of automaking by Armani. Unpainted car bodies, their sheet metal the hue of brushed pewter, ride silently through the plant lobby, lighted from beneath in blue, providing a perfect accent to the colors of the building. Outsiders are not allowed near these 3-Series models; instead, they must observe production from a catwalk above the assembly line. Below, in what seems more like a very expensive kitchen than a factory floor, workers clad in neat coveralls stroll along an assembly line that spreads into a series of fingers, the places where the real work goes on. These two plants, one high-volume, the other high-end, may seem to have little in common with each other, let alone with the United States car market. But together, these plants — and the niches they serve — may offer some idea of what lies ahead for American automakers on their home turf. During the past, awful year for Detroit, industry executives and experts have been puzzling through what will become of General Motors, Ford Motor and the Chrysler Group. One potential future consists of total disaster, with the Detroit automakers vanquished by their Asian and European rivals. This is an option that only those with a doomsday complex really believe, given the Detroit companies’ billions in cash and broad infrastructure. Another potential outcome is that the Big Three vanquish the competition to again rule American roads, a prospect that has faded in 30 years of fighting the imports and is even more improbable now that foreign companies hold nearly half of the market. A third option, much more likely than the others, is for G.M., Ford and Chrysler to adapt to a new American market that in many ways resembles Europe’s: a fragmented bazaar that has little in common with the mass-production ethos of Detroit’s first century. In this new American market, it is very hard to profitably support enough different brands and models to guarantee “a car for every purse and purpose,” which Alfred P. Sloan, as G.M.’s president, declared to be the company’s mission in the 1920s. RATHER than trying to be all things to all people, Toyota, BMW and other successful carmakers on both continents are concentrating on a different strategy: find a niche, hone it and own it. In Europe, for example, the market is not dominated by any single player or small group of players with market shares that dwarf smaller competitors the way G.M., Ford and Chrysler once did in the United States. Instead, Europe’s car sales are splintered such that 5 percent is enough to make a difference, and 20 percent is more than anyone can expect. “There’s no case anywhere in the world of any previously dominant manufacturer retaining much more than 20 percent once the market is opened to full global competition,” G.M.’s vice chairman, Robert A. Lutz, said in a recent interview. As is the case in Europe, no auto company in America can automatically count on selling hundreds of thousands of one particular model annually as they could even five years ago, meaning that they must find ways to profitably stay on top of market trends — or be left in the dust. In Europe and increasingly in America, consumers are demanding the latest in environmental technology, both to save gasoline, as with hybrids, or to avoid using it altogether, as with diesel-powered cars. While some national loyalty lingers in Europe, as it does in the United States, no company can rely on such loyalty to sell cars. Carmakers are forced to continually update their brand images in order to stand out in a crowded market. At the same time, like their European counterparts, America’s unionized autoworkers must also adjust. They cannot count much longer on the cushy contracts that typified their jobs in the past, because new deals at new factories have chipped away at pay and benefits while emphasizing more-productive work methods. European companies have long competed this way, but it is a new reality for American carmakers who were so dominant for much of the last century. As recently as 1990, G.M., Ford and Chrysler together sold more than 70 percent of the cars bought in the United States; G.M. alone accounted for more than one-third of auto sales. Now those companies’ American market share has dropped to around 50 percent, while the influence of Toyota and other foreign manufacturers is growing. Though G.M. remains on top, its share has slipped below one-quarter, and the battleground has become the section between 10 percent and 20 percent of the market. That is the area where Ford and Chrysler have slipped and where Toyota and Honda have grown. In many ways, the changes in the United States have European parallels. Toyota is also rising in Europe, where its market share has more than doubled over the last 10 years, to about 5.7 percent. It has forged the gains by focusing on one segment, well-made small cars, and pursuing it with single-minded determination. Its factory here in Valenciennes is evidence of that focus. Inside the factory offices, the plant manager, Didier Leroy, sits in front of an electronic tally board that shows the plant’s production goals for the day and the number of vehicles it has actually built. This board, along with others inside the plant, gave a disappointing picture on a recent afternoon, showing that workers had fallen behind their target. But Mr. Leroy, who resembles a red-haired version of the actor Marcello Mastroianni, confides with a smile that managers intentionally set the targets a little too high, to keep workers focused on their tasks. If employees believe that they are falling behind, he says, pointing to the board, they will work more vigorously than if they think the day’s objective is easy to achieve. The workers in Valenciennes need little reminder of what happens to people who cannot compete. Only about 75 miles up the Paris-Brussels highway are the remnants of a factory in Vilvoorde, Belgium, that Renault shuttered in the late 1990s because it could not operate it at a profit. There is little chance of the Valenciennes factory meeting a similar fate. It is among Toyota’s most important plants worldwide — ranked even above its American operations, to hear some inside Toyota put it. An important reason lies inside the body shop, where major structural parts of the car are welded together. Valenciennes was the first Toyota plant outside Japan to receive what the company calls its Global Body Line: a configuration of robots that can be programmed to build a number of different styles of vehicles without having to modify the entire factory. Today, that same body line is in Toyota’s plants in Kentucky and Indiana, and has been installed in the pickup factory that Toyota will open next month in San Antonio. While the Valenciennes plant builds only one model, the Yaris, it produces it in four configurations — left-hand and right-hand drive, and equipped with gasoline and diesel engines. Each configuration requires different parts and production steps. That flexibility, which can also be harnessed to produce wholly different models on the same assembly line at the same time, is a hallmark of Toyota’s factories around the world, and an example that other companies, both in Europe and the United States, are striving to emulate. Just last week, for instance, Alan R. Mulally, the former Boeing executive who has been Ford’s chief executive for less than a month, stressed that Ford’s plants must become more flexible if the automaker is to pull out of its sales tailspin. The company said last week that it lost $5.8 billion in the third quarter amid plummeting sales. David E. Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., said that American carmakers must change, and fast, or risk disaster. “For an automobile manufacturer, big and slow doesn’t work anymore,” he said. “Big and fast gives you a chance.” In Valenciennes, the word “big” is not in the vocabulary. Even a few years back, Toyota might have allowed more room on the assembly line to accommodate differences among the various kinds of Yaris cars it makes. But the crowded floors suggest that it decided otherwise, and Toyota is deliberately keeping things that way. As the company builds more plants around the world — including another in the United States that could be announced soon — they are more likely to be compact facilities like the one here in Valenciennes; it would fit into a corner of Toyota’s sprawling factory in Georgetown, Ky., which produces hundreds of thousands of Camrys and other models each year. EVEN more important, as Toyota considers how it will operate its factories in the United States and elsewhere, it is monitoring how managers and workers in France handle a 24-hour operation. Toyota’s sales in Europe are growing much faster than expected — it is on a pace to meet its 2010 target of selling 1.2 million cars a year by 2008 — and it needs to wring every possible vehicle out of its factories here to meet that demand. The same is becoming true in the United States, where Toyota passed DaimlerChrysler this year for the No. 3 spot in sales, and now seems likely to pass Ford as No. 2, behind G.M. Still, the constant production here is a risk for Toyota, which has had a long practice of sharing ideas among its factories around the world. As the company’s only 24-hour-a-day production site, Valenciennes now has no such sister plant and must act as an independent player, Mr. Leroy said. By contrast, BMW’s sparkling factory in Leipzig has a distinct New World relative: BMW’s plant near Spartanburg, S.C., the inspiration for the factory’s layout. The German facility, which is fast rivaling Bach’s grave as Leipzig’s favorite tourist attraction, has a legion of similarities to the South Carolina factory. That is no surprise, because the Leipzig plant manager, Peter Claussen, was in charge of developing the American plant. The Spartanburg facility, which began production in 1994, was BMW’s first venture outside Germany, and it initially prompted a debate over whether Americans could produce real BMWs. Likewise, the decision by BMW to build a factory in Leipzig, in the former East Germany, instead of in a cheaper location in central Europe, raised eyebrows for the same reason. But just as BMW scored valuable political points by setting up shop in the America’s rural South, it won hearts in Germany by building its showplace in a region where the unemployment rate is 20 percent, twice as high as it is in the rest of the country. “It’s unbelievable,” said James Oehlschager, 31, who works in the plant’s body shop. “I can’t describe the meaning for East Germany that BMW decided to come here.” One reason BMW went to Leipzig was labor costs. While the factory is unionized, its pay rates average 20 percent less than what BMW pays its workers at its home base in Bavaria. The company also has the flexibility in Leipzig to vary the working hours, a perennial sticking point at other European auto factories. Despite that, Mr. Oehlschager said workers did not feel like second-class citizens. “Compared to other salaries in the region, it’s a top level,” he said. Like Spartanburg’s factory, the Leipzig plant is divided into three main sections: body shop, paint shop and assembly area. Each can work independently, so a bottleneck at one need not stop the whole plant. Visitors who gaze down at the section of the assembly line available to public view are missing the part of the plant where the real work occurs, a series of mini-lines that shoot off from the trunk like branches. Forklifts do not race down the assembly line the way they do at the frenzied Toyota factory in Valenciennes. Instead, they deliver parts to the end of each branch, and then components are sent down the line to the spots where workers need them. If BMW needs to increase production here, it will not rip up the main line; it will just extend the length of each limb. Even with that capability, BMW is not itching to expand. Nor is Toyota. The companies have similar shares of the European market, each just under 6 percent, and are leery of the hazards of growing too quickly. “We do not believe in this incurable bigness,” Michael Ganal, a member of the BMW board, said last month in an interview at the Paris Motor Show. “Yes, you can create economies of scale if you grow, but it is better to run a fast and successful manufacturer.” In a separate interview at the Paris show, Dieter Zetsche, the chief executive of DaimlerChrysler, agreed that reflexive pursuit of market share is not necessarily the right strategy. “If you have strong brands and satisfied former customers, you already have a brilliant strategy,” he said. Such caution has historically been rare in the United States, and John Casesa, managing partner of the Casesa Shapiro Group, an investment advisory firm, said American auto executives must come to grips with it. “The concentrated oligopoly structure is gone,” Mr. Casesa said. “Plant by plant, Detroit has had to adjust its thinking. Detroit doesn’t have any products that can fill a single plant any more” except for a handful of high-volume vehicles like Ford’s F-Series pickups or the new trucks that G.M. is about to introduce. THERE are signs, however, that American executives are getting the message. Ford shocked the automotive world this summer by announcing that it would cut its production by one-fifth during the final three months of the year, its single-biggest reduction in more than two decades. Nearly all of the cuts are at plants that built only sport utility vehicles or pickups, whose sales plummeted as gas prices spiked. In an interview last week, Mr. Mulally said it was incumbent on Ford to end its dependence on big vehicles and to turn to the more-nimble production model provided by Toyota. That makes the flexibility of factories like Toyota’s in Valenciennes even more important as American companies stare at their European-influenced future. Yet Mr. Leroy said the factory had been valuable in another sense. As with its American plants, Toyota’s French factory has helped convince Europeans it is acceptable to own a car built by a Japanese company. Customer surveys have shown that they think of the Yaris as a French car, he said. If such blending of perception is possible in Europe, where national identities have long been strong, the American market cannot be far behind. But for their part, American executives need not fear that their industry’s influence will be forgotten. On a recent weekend, Mr. Claussen of BMW went to his bookshelf to seek guidance on solving a problem in the Leipzig factory. He found a solution in “My Life and Work,” written by Henry Ford in the 1920s. Back then, Mr. Ford offered advice that still sounds appropriate today, as American companies look to Leipzig, Valenciennes and elsewhere for hints of the future. “If there is any great secret of success in life,” he wrote, “it lies in the ability to put yourself in the other person’s place and to see things from his point of view — as well as your own.” Nick Bunkley contributed reporting from Detroit.

I think he's right. http://www.thecarconnection.com/Auto_News/...192.A10986.html Back in my army days they used to tell us, "Take the high ground." It's better to be on top of the hill shooting down than on the bottom, climbing up. I found this was true in the luxury car business, too. To succeed you had to take the high ground. Sell the higher-priced luxury car with the advanced technology, not the lower-priced one. Don't be worried about costing more. Glory in it. Our Cadillac forgot this lesson long ago, went for volume, lost the high ground to Mercedes and Lexus and BMW, and really is no longer a luxury nameplate. It's what Buick used to be. I recall long ago, a General Motors executive told me of his talking to a union leader at a now-shuttered Cadillac plant. The union man told the GM executive something like, "I hope you haven't raised the price much. I want to be able to afford another one." The GM man told me he was thinking: "You SOB. You shouldn't be able to buy one in the first place." Cadillac went for volume rather than exclusiveness. Now they pay the price. Look at the new Lexus LS460 or the Mercedes CLS. They push past $70,000. Cadillac isn't there except with some of the "V" models, limited-volume cars to compete with the AMG and the S and the R and all the other special initial hot cars. It's said but true. We all wrote about a Cadillac renaissance, but it's over. Look what's happened in the luxury field below. These figures count cars and SUVs.Lincoln is included as a laugh because Ford treats it like a joke. 2006-E 2005 2004 % Cadillac 230,000 235,002 234,217 -2% Lexus 325,000 302,895 287,927 +13% BMW 275,000 266,200 260,079 +6% Mercedes 245,000 224,269 221,366 +11% Lincoln 118,000 123,207 139,016 -15% BMW excludes MINI. The estimates for this year may be off since the fourth quarter is an unknown and there are lots of new luxury models coming out. But the direction is clear. The foreign luxury brands are growing and Cadillac, at best, is standing still. You could say that half of those Lexus models are "trucks," compared to only 35 percent of the Cadillacs. Or that more than 40 percent of BWW sales are the 3-Series while only a quarter of Cadillac sales are the CTS. But I'll stick to my guns. Its badge is getting a smaller share of the luxury badge group, and today's big money doesn't consider Cadillac in the luxury class - with one big exception - Escalade SUVs. What's wrong with Cadillac? For the most part Cadillac designs are boring compared to competitors. The Escalade is a huge exception, an "over the top" look that should have pointed the way, shown that Cadillac designs must be head-turning to win back customers. The CTS with its sharp edges was successful, too. But new models are designed to please - what? Even bankers want Lexuses nowadays. General Motors bureaucrats even eliminated Cadillac's own styling studio for a while, if you can image that. Pinching pennies and throwing away dollars. There was one exciting Cadillac design: the Sixteen show car. Of course, they aren't building it. The Escalade and CTS were successful. But that's all. The SRX SUV sells around 20,000 a year; the STS rear-drive sedan is dropping toward 25,000. That's failure to me. The DTS, the renamed DeVille, sells around 65,000 a year, near the DeVille level. The Escalades are new this year and are holding their own. A new CTS is coming but it will be doing fine to match the success of today's model. Cadillac failed to build a serious rear-drive large car. They did well by making the CTS rear-drive, but that's not a large car. Cadillac has two larger car models, the front-drive DTS and the rear-drive STS, which actually isn't so large. What they need is to do a great rear-drive car with take-your-breath-away looks. One model, not two. But GM isn't willing to invest. The fact is Cadillac never recovered from the GM decision to go front-drive, a mistake they have yet to correct. I don't blame Cadillac's managers. They've done the best they can. GM's top management just hasn't been willing to create a real division, giving its leaders enough money and power to compete with Lexus and Mercedes and BMW. They went part of the way, but not nearly far enough. We still have Cadillacs using four-speed automatic transmissions. What's sad is that Cadillac did have some momentum with the Escalade and CTS. But the moment is over and the division seems to be slipping farther behind the leaders as that chart shows. The luxury market continues to grow, but alas, our Cadillac isn't getting any of that growth. Like John Greenleaf Whittier wrote: For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: "It might have been."

I hope people will soon stop talking about the non-existent Chi platform. The 2008 or 2009 Impala will differ from the current model as much as the 2005 Impala differed from the 2000 Impala - hardly at all. Less than 3 years from now, the Impala will be RWD, with an SS version that may feature a 6.2L V8 with 400 hp or more.

This new "Alpha" platform would be too expensive for a Vibe or G5 replacement. It more likely would replace the G6 as well as be used for an entry level Cadillac. I can see Pontiac's lineup around 2013 be Solstice, RWD G6, and Commodore based G8 from Australia, while Buick's lineup will be FWD Epsilon II LaCrosse, RWD Zeta Lucerne, and Enclave. This gives Pontiac a RWD lineup and eliminates overlap between Buick and Pontiac.

I believe in keeping cars 10 to 14 years, so my next car will probably be a 2014 to 2018 Impala with a V8 if gas prices are reasonable. If not, my next car may be a Honda Accord with that new diesel.

For what it's worth. my prediction is that Cadillac will have - all on Sigma - CTS and a larger sedan, whether it is STS/STS-L or DTS/DTS-L. I don't think it matters whether the larger sedan is STS or DTS, but it does appear that thegriffon's information is similar to what Evok posted in June.

See Evok's post here and a few posts down. http://www.cheersandgears.com/forums/index...27entry144327

Having your best selling car be a fleet only vehicle that is about to be discontinued is pathetic.

http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti.../309180001/1128 BEST OF EDWARD LAPHAM Ed called it 17 days ago 9/1/2006 column: Coming soon: The hookup of the century! Edward Lapham | | Automotive News | 6:00 am, September 18, 2006 Ford and GM sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Yuck! Ptooey! I know that may sound like an unnatural act. But sooner or later -- probably sooner -- General Motors and Ford will need to consider hooking up. It would be more like an arranged marriage than a passionate liaison. And for a while, it may seem like two drunks trying to hold each other up as they stumble out of a Las Vegas wedding chapel. But, face it, all the wooing and petting with charming suitors from faraway lands won't amount to much more than a summer romance; nor should they if they aren't in the best interests of all stakeholders. An alliance would allow GM and Ford to stop beating each other bloody in North America and would create a powerhouse that could compete from a position of strength globally by sharing components, innovations and resources. Of course, as with any marriage, there will be issues. The old fear about creating a leviathan that will dominate the market doesn't loom as large anymore, given the strength of automakers from overseas that establish most of the price points. Between them, Ford and GM control less than 45 percent of the U.S. market. Yes, there would be way too many brands. Whenever you combine households, you need to dispose of stuff. Of course, you'd start by selling Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover and probably Volvo rather than Saab because Saab shares more with other GM brands than Volvo does with Ford brands. In the rest of the world, you ought to be able to look for ways to share platforms and reduce costs without major changes to the brand lineup. But in North America, you'd want to ditch some or all of Lincoln, Mercury, Buick and Pontiac. That leaves the Ford vs. Chevy puzzle. One solution would be to let Ford be the rock-ribbed, all-American brand and move Chevy downmarket to compete with the entry-level Korean and Chinese brands with Daewoo-based vehicles, hopefully built in North American factories. After all, that is the way the Chevy brand is heading in Europe and Asia. There will need to be big-time buy-in from the stakeholders, especially the UAW. There also may need to be federal legislation that makes it easier to do what needs to be done. But that shouldn't be a problem if the Democrats capture control of Congress in November. The tricky part could be getting President Bush to sign the bill. But jawboning by Rep. Donald Manzullo, R-Ill., might convince him that it's a matter of national security. Why? Manzullo chairs the House Committee on Small Business, which issued a 25-page report in March linking the need to protect the traditional auto supply base in the United States with maintaining the defense industry's supply base because the two overlap. I can almost hear the logic of it now: We need to keep our defense suppliers strong, Mr. President, so we can fight the war on terror. What more logical way to protect the defense industry's supply base against outsourcing or a foreign takeover than to make sure U.S. automakers remain strong and free? Still don't like the idea of a GM-Ford alliance? OK, it's not ideal. But merging two domestic competitors isn't a new idea. Don't forget that Chrysler Corp. bought American Motors -- which was itself a consolidation of feeble U.S. companies -- before Daimler-Benz grabbed Chrysler. In France, Peugeot and Citroen formed PSA. In Korea, Hyundai got Kia. In Germany, Porsche owns about a quarter of the Volkswagen group and its various brands. Sometimes, hooking up domestic competitors is just doing what comes naturally. You may e-mail Edward Lapham at [email protected]