David Healy Market Quotations

With their sharp decline in market share, they have frankly got too much capacity, too many plants, too many people to be profitable in North America.

Obviously the market likes the Chrysler deal, ... But this doesn't have to cause a cascade of other mergers.

I guess I'm a little skeptical about the product side of this restructuring. Can they turn around the decline in market share with their new product?

GM is losing market share overall, but mostly because of its fleet sales. GM's sales to actual retail customers were up a bit in February, so its total market share is down, but in the units that really count, the results weren't that bad.

My thought is that this will not be a major stock market or earnings event. As recalls go, it's a lot of vehicles, but companies always make a provision for this sort of thing.

My opinion is there's still a lot of upside for Toyota, ... They're expanding capacity, still introducing models (in market segments) where they haven't been. They've got a technological lead in (fuel efficient) hybrids. They're aggressively expanding here still.

I think Chrysler lost a lot of market share, which has not been the case for Mercedes.

While the (health-care) deal is a positive, they have several other challenges. They are losing too much market share. They have too many plants, too many people and too many models.

These are vehicles on the market mainly because of the insanity of regulators in states like California that are worried about emissions standards,

Detroit was an island surrounded by prosperity this year. The big SUV sales collapsed and did a number on their profitability. Both GM and Ford will lose a little market share in 2006, but not at the rate of 2005.

It's more trouble for the suppliers. Partly, it's a reflection of the fact that Ford and GM are shrinking to reckon with lower market share. And so there's less business to go around for the suppliers.

I'm not sure how significant that is because these warped market shares were caused by the strike that is now over.

The market has developed massively over the past five years; this is where the action is and where the growth is coming from.