Ludwig,
I agree with your assessment and no I don’t think 4ltr 6s should be built for a myriad of reasons least of which is the cost of fuel.
As I see it the world has a number of problems the demise of the dino3 is but one example.
The problem with putting pressure on Ford or GM to spend money they don’t have to belatedly start building the vehicles that that they clearly should would only result in the Detroit (who have problems of orders of magnitude larger) to close up and go home…one less problem.

Our immediate issue here is to develop a plan ‘B’. What do we do if they crash?
• Should we temporarily nationalize and make and design little cars for Aus? Joint venture, manufacture unde licenceetc.
• Should we break it up into a boutique car industry?
• A new industry?
Either way we and the world has a problem what do we do if all these unemployed hitting the market and social security at once? It would be foolish to think that there won’t be other dinos who will suffer if not crash as a consequence of the dino3’s demise. Where/who is holding all that debt?
In the context of the financial melt down with an estimated $600 trillion in derivatives out there and an est. World GDP of $55 trillion per year (Fora) their crash would arguably be a catastrophe of Biblical proportions.
Industry policy should se such that no one sector be so vulnerable to one or two companies. Hence I reason that unlimited Corporate growth is merely the vector for the economic equivelent of the first law of thermodynamics.

Col Rouge,
Thank you for your comment.
I am well aware of the R&D cycle.
The theory that the dino 3 deserve to die is fine but in practice and at this time ?
Your comments are behind the 8 ball as the issues you raise has beendealt with elsewhere on OLO bringing you up to speed in 350 words isn't possible, thanks anyway.

It seems to me that the government and the car companies are on the horns of a dilemma.
They need to change over to smaller cars yesterday but the tooling time
is so long that they have to keep making the large cars for too long.
They could shut down tomorrow but the government will get a bill for
the dole. There must be a balance point somewhere where they close
down in the next two or three years and the government picks up the
cost of the unemployment. A typical spreadsheet problem for the
government. Minimise government cost and get the car companies onto
small car quicker.

Examinator “Your comments are behind the 8 ball as the issues you raise has beendealt with elsewhere on OLO bringing you up to speed in 350 words isn't possible, thanks anyway.”

You sound very much as if you are right “up yourself”, I suggest you adopt a different personality.

Re “I still stand on my mental machinations about having smaller companies making many different cars rather than what you rightly call dinosaurs.”

Let us look at car manufacture… a few major assemblers… hundreds of small component manufacturers,

that is the “commercial model” which is common around the world.

It seems to me we have already many smaller companies making bits of cars and a few designing, testing and assembling them.

Talking of those component manufacturers, if I was working for one I would have been looking at diversification away from motor vehicles back to the day the car makers started to leverage their purchase pricing to reduce the cost of supply by making arbitrary demands on suppliers for cost improvements. But that’s me, the writing was on the wall over a decade ago and yet, no one does anything “strategically” but just demands handouts from government and we have a government too eager to hand them tax payers money, instead of allowing the tax payers to support the car maker of their choice.

Has been “Much as I hate the idea, I believe in 10, or 15 years, we will have the same car industry as the UK. None.”

Nissan Micra, manufactured at Tyne and Wear UK…

I would suggest, It is not simply cars but the quality and attitudes of the management who invest for the future and the way they manage not just the present business but the long term. I agreed with your comments to UK motors and Leyland on another thread.

It seems the problems of European and American Makers have been more effectively dealt with by Asian makers… facing the same market conditions, I wonder HOW?

I am very glad that the cloud 9 group on OLO posters have previously dealt with the problems of the auto industry. It's a pity they did not tell the industry. I wonder if they have heard of Leyland, or perhaps Mitsubishi. It seems unlikely, or they would not be oposting such rubbish.

If only the road to hell, could be paved with good intentions. Wishfull thinking just won't work in the real world, kids.

Of course, with our mate Rudd throwing money everywhere, if the car industry just stands up, surely enough will land on them to provide good redundancy payments.

It should be possible to devise some plan under which Ford will receive funding subject to compliance with performance indicators , such as :

[ a ] $ x million to retool in order to produce more efficient vehicles , retooling to be completed by a specified date , until which date Ford may continue to produce not more than a specified number of dinosaur vehicles ;

[ b ] dinosaurs to cease being produced by a specified date ;

[c ] Ford to receive a further $ y million by a later date to produce the more efficient vehicles ;

[ d ] Funding to cease completely by a later date . If Ford cannot survive with the more efficient vehicles , no more funding should be provided , any final funding then being used for redundancy and retraining .