Nissan Cummins matchup

In a world where top executives get paid $XX millions to run a company well and 95% of that if they wreck it what do we expect?

Now back the the topic

BenK wrote:
Gotta start somewhere...

Detroit lost me in the late 60's to Japanese and European 'cars' and generally
do NOT like Detroit iron over foreign 'cars' to this day.

Same thing happened to me, only in the early 70's. My very first car was a BMW 1600. The other kids in high school had no idea what it was. I remember them all thinking my parents bought it for me. I walked to work for six months to buy that car. Anyway, I eventually became a dyed in the wool Honda/Toyota guy. I couldn't believed I traded in my beautiful, wonderful, dependable, Toyota Prerunner on a Dodge!!! I never in a million years thought I'd own a Chrysler product. I'm a believer now. The Dodge, one ton SRW auto Cummins, has been a superb truck. I've got over 120,000 miles on it now and, although I do my routine maintenance, I beat the stuffing out of my trucks.

I think it's great to have more choices.

Also, the crew cab of the Titan is very spacious. Friend of mine has a pop-up truck camper on it and loves it.

Never a lack of power on it. It is a bit thirsty with the 5.6 gas motor, which he complains about sometimes.

Truck is looking a bit dated however. They need to do a redesign.

As for the Detroit corporate thing. I agree completely that idiotic managers can ruin good companies. That's probably what happened to Sun.

Pathetic.

Parity is now here, of sorts and in spots that come and go...

Like when the new seat belt law that had ratchets...couldn't touch anything on
Detroit car's dash board without unbuckling...Japanese cars came up with control
stalks on the steering column and did not need unbuckling.

The insanely blind 'loyalty' today of Japanese badged vs Detroit...where the
differential is zero to even better for Detroit...because of the decades of
'better' both product and service from the Japanese

Am loyal to Detroit, as it is American...but not blindly so...


Also, 'they' know where their expertise is and where they want their
expertise to be...guessing they, at this time, do not wish to have
that expertise (cost of R&D)...

Plus, gain huge market badging with one of the most or best recognized
names in diesel...Cummins

Also, betcha after a few years...'they' will then come out with their
own, or switch to another, or stay as they will now have a foot hold
in the +8K GVWR market

GM did that in reverse by partnering with a Japanese Diesel manufacturer
and one of the largest suppliers of diesel engines in the world...to
then initiate a contract clause where they now produce the Duramax
themselves (all based on that Japanese firms IP and even factories)

A ditto for Subaru who licensed the Porsche box six for their WRX,
which they now own and improved significantly. Another betcha will
be that Subaru will soon have one equal to or higher than the Porsche
911's flat six...

When still in college and minority partner (he gave me 3% to keep me)...boss assigned
me to a large contract (we were 2nd or 3rd...can't remember now) to automate
a Ford Factory

We were the controls and the prime did the mechanical stuff

In presenting to Ford's GM of that factory...my business class kicked in with
the issues and risks section

During that section...the Ford GM leaned over to his #1...asking 'what is ROI' ??

Amazing...but kept going

The GM then asked the prime if they agreed with that...the prime said maybe not
the 4-5 years he said...more like 2-3 (trying to recoup). GM said why the difference
and I responded that it depended on sales and numbers shipped.

He got up and walked out and heard him tell #1 to "kill this"...even though he
authorized the ~$50M seed money for this venture

Learned during my 'royal chewing out' by the Prime...that GM's raise/promotion
and the biggie...his BONUS was based on quarterly performance

He was NOT going to risk his quarterly and yearly bonus, as he would NOT get
any bonuses for a few years.

BAD decision for the corporation, but a GREAT one for himself

Been watching, reading, etc ever since. As Detroit got their lunches eaten
and sadly...we too, as we lost out the Japanese and German controls corporations
during that decade

Not just automotive, but everything. Ditto all that during the decades after
that both in the industrial controls market and my last at Sun Microsystems
as an acquisitions manager....to continue to see that to this day in retirement
and consulting

Got tossed out of executive staff strategy meetings (my group was the
'strategy and planning'...the old M&A moniker) because spoke up saying outsourcing
was okay for the assembly (still said not a good idea...bottom line mentality)
but worse if they outsourced engineering and our crown jewels

They continued and foresaw how 'we' paid 'them' to become our peers and competitors
with 'our' money and 'IP'...

Common thread for those who understand the big picture, but lost to those with
'bottom line' mentality and vision.

This article says it on a one pager, where it takes me several, but smack on
topic and has mention of Detroit being one the ground ZERO for the change from
'managing their product' to 'managing their bottom line'. Huge arguments with
my last boss (he finally laid me off after being save by CEO and other GMs)

He became the CEO and ran a $17Billon per year corporation into the ground
where Oracle scooped it up for a song. He also made the #1 spot on the Wallstreet
listing of the worst CEO's in American history

He did NOT understand, nor cared to manage the corporations 'product'
but always referred to managing to the stock price (bottom line
or as the below article refers to...'financial management' instead
of 'product management'

Will say that have noticed that some of the Japanese corporations now
also manage to their bottom line. The Toyota throttle issue is a prime
example of that. That is part of the 'lean' methodology that is now
the rage in the US...as was 'just in time'...all miss the mark as
they only took a 'component' of the whole...it is more a culture of
HOW2 manage...sorry, will get off the soapbox, as on this topic can
go on for hours...

The Big Picture- Street Smarts
Who else should be blamed for the decline of America's two remaining automakers?

Text:

MotorTrend wrote:

Wall Street hasn't done Detroit any favors over the years. The Street is supposed to be the hard-nosed arbiter of success for corporate America, the white-hot cauldron of capitalism that's made this country's economy the most powerful in the world, the place where the money talks and you-know-what walks. (Though having allowed Enron to happen, Wall Street seems no longer to see the difference.) And, yes, Detroit has hardly covered itself in glory over the past 30 years. But I can't help wonder whether Wall Street should share some of the blame for the decline of America's two remaining automakers.

Let's be absolutely clear up front: Few people buy stock in a company for any reason other than they expect a return on their investment, and stockholders in auto companies are no exception. But in an era where screen jockeys zap billions of dollars a day through the ether at the touch of a computer keyboard, Wall Street's institutionalized ADD has resulted in a feverish short-term view of a business whose lengthy product cycles and huge investment costs are just too damned difficult to deal with.

Maybe that's why many of today's most successful automakers--Toyota, BMW, Porsche, to name three--are those who've never had to sweat a quarterly earnings call with a posse of skeptical Wall Street analysts looking for an opportunity to make a fast buck and ready to trash the stock price when they can't see one. To these companies, the concept of shareholder value has a very different meaning: "I don't watch {the stock price}," Dr. Shoichiro Toyoda once told Toyota North America president Jim Press. "I'm not going to sell my stock. If I worried about that, the decisions that I make wouldn't reflect the fact my name is on the back of every car."

Most Wall Street analysts will tell you Toyota, famously stingy with dividends, doesn't treat its shareholders well. But its stock is worth roughly four times that of General Motors. Go figure.

As Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist David Halberstam records in his book, "The Fifties," Bunkie Knudsen, who ran Pontiac and Chevrolet in the 1950s and 1960s,

reckoned it all started to go wrong for Detroit when Fred Donner became president of GM in 1958. Knudsen was outraged that Donner would insist on talking about GM's stock price, and what the analysts on Wall Street thought about it, at his daily meeting with the heads of GM's divisions. Before Donner, those meetings were mostly about making cars.

Financial engineering quickly replaced product engineering as Detroit's primary business. GM and Ford essentially morphed into highly profitable finance companies with an auto business attached. That meant you could easily get a great deal on a new car. Only problem was, that new car wasn't always so great anymore. But the fat earnings on the loans and lease deals made the business look good and that kept the stock price pumped.

It's a sign of how entrenched this view of Detroit's business model has become that GM's decision to unload a majority share of its finance company, GMAC, earlier this year was treated by many as something akin to selling the family farm. But the sale is good news, because it means GM is shifting its focus back to its real business: designing and engineering cars and trucks. Meanwhile, over at troubled Ford, there are rumors the company may buy back its stock, now worth barely 15 percent what it was in 1999, and become privately owned. I hope the rumors are true, because Ford will then be free to concentrate on what it needs to do best: make cars and trucks.

Bunkie Knudsen, David Halberstam writes, believed in a simple concept: The people in Detroit had to make good cars, and if they did, the people in New York would take care of the stock. If only it were still true...

BenK wrote:
Gotta start somewhere...

Detroit lost me in the late 60's to Japanese and European 'cars' and generally
do NOT like Detroit iron over foreign 'cars' to this day.

Japanese and some European corporations understand their life blood is based on
something other than the quarterly bottom line that Detroit lives by. They (not
Detroit) *WILL* go years negative or low margin or zero knowing they will
gain market share. This is the key to getting their lunches eaten, often. First
hand experience with a Ford GM's $50 million decision based on his bottom line
and his bonus

Prime examples of that are the 70's when Japan ate Detroit's lunch. Ditto into
the 2000's. Mainly cars, but look around the cities and towns along all three
coasts. Foreign badged 'half ton' pickups and SUV's either are even or out number
Detroit half tons

Been saying Detroit has primed themselves to have their +8K GVWR lunches eaten, again

Datsun is my fav foreign badge, which is Nissan...because back then...they thought
the American public would not take hold if badged Nissan.

Ben there are very few times that you post something that does not make since, but this is one of them.

Both the Japanese and their Euro neighbors are no different then the Big Three. I have never owned nor will I ever own anything from the rising sun.

I have owned both a BMW and currently own an S-80 Volvo. Both are nothing to brag about. The leather in the Volvo started cracking at around 60K miles and the repairs started at about the same time. The whole front end has been rebuilt, fuel system rebuilt, emission system rebuilt so sorry their JUNK!

The BMW needed brakes and front end work every year. But it was a fun car to drive and to BMW's credit I did beat the you know what out of that car. But then it was supposed to be made for that. And talk about a rust bucket man did that car turn to dust. Kind of like all the Datsun's from that era. Nothing but rust buckets, but then so where the US vehicles.

My dads last Caddy had 140K when he traded it in and the front seats looked as good as the day he pick it up from the dealer. As far Jap junk, sorry they are no different then anything Detroit built back in the 60,70,80 or 90's. I have worked on enough to know.

But that is what makes the World go round.

Don

Let me add this, if the imports are so good why is Datson....Nissan using an American diesel and not building their own? Might want to look at the ratings of American cars they are out performing their Import competitors now.

BenK wrote:
Gotta start somewhere...

Detroit lost me in the late 60's to Japanese and European 'cars' and generally
do NOT like Detroit iron over foreign 'cars' to this day.

Japanese and some European corporations understand their life blood is based on
something other than the quarterly bottom line that Detroit lives by. They (not
Detroit) *WILL* go years negative or low margin or zero knowing they will
gain market share. This is the key to getting their lunches eaten, often. First
hand experience with a Ford GM's $50 million decision based on his bottom line
and his bonus

Prime examples of that are the 70's when Japan ate Detroit's lunch. Ditto into
the 2000's. Mainly cars, but look around the cities and towns along all three
coasts. Foreign badged 'half ton' pickups and SUV's either are even or out number
Detroit half tons

Been saying Detroit has primed themselves to have their +8K GVWR lunches eaten, again

Datsun is my fav foreign badge, which is Nissan...because back then...they thought
the American public would not take hold if badged Nissan.

Nissan used to be my favourite brand, but that was a long time ago. I still recall the Datsun 510 sedan and wagon....also the original Datsun 240Z with fondness.

Did I mention the Datsun Patrol....a very competent, rugged, early 4WD SUV.

Les

yr2017 wrote:

john&bet wrote:

ghostrider421 wrote:
Nissan is adding a 5L Cummins V-8 to it's Titan lineup. Supposedly mid-way between the 1500 and 2500 Ram in capability.

http://www.worktruckonline.com/channel/vehicle-research/news/story/2013/08/nissan-to-equip-next-generation-titan-pickup-with-new-cummins-turbo-diesel-engine.aspx

I hate to say it, but that is old news, especially around these parts. Cummins let the cat out weeks ago. When driving thru Columbus a week and half ago I saw one of the Nissan NV 2500 Vans( a test mule) pulling a trailer with concrete weights, probable 8k or more. Cummins has several running around for testing purposes.

Really - old news - Nissan just made it public a month ago, so I guess we are all in the dark when it comes to press releases.

How about this one - Navistar and Cummins - is that old news too?
Or about KW making medium duty COE's.

Yes, it's really old news....Information like the above has been discussed ad-nauseum on this forum, as well as others....sounds like you were offended because some one posted that this is "old news" about the Cummins engine being put into a Nissan truck....The rest is of no particular interest..just need to know what is rumor and what is fact......

Should be good for Indiana and Mississippi......550lbs torque and 300+ hp should be fun for Nissan fans.