Cash for Clunkers: Dumbest Program Ever?

Hondas are US made - the Accord 60%, the Civic 70%. Or so sayeth this link.

barfo

 

The honda car forum says all the profits go to Japan (go Obama!) and most of the parts come from there, too.
http://www.hondacarforum.com/honda-...cord-most-american-made-car-what-i-heard.html

 

Well, honda is a japanese company, so it makes sense that the profits go there, no? Not sure what Obama has to do with that, Honda has been a Japanese company since before Obama was born.
I suppose nothing prevents Americans from buying stock in Honda, and I suppose some do.

Well, that directly contradicts the link I provided, which was quoting part content percentages. But I don't care enough to look to see if your link is more or less believable than mine.

barfo

 

If there was $4500 profit per car for Honda, the entire amount came from the puny % of the stimulus package that was this program.

 

Well, Honda says it will make a 55 billion yen profit this year. I don't know how many vehicles they plan to sell, but they sold 1.4 million last year. Assuming they sell 1.2 million this year, then their profit per vehicle (and I realize Honda makes all sorts of stuff, so this isn't an accurate calculation) would be about $450.

barfo

 

If treehugger.com says so, it must be true.

Honda & Toyota Making About $3,100 in Profits Per Hybrid

 

Well, with a name like treehugger.com, I'm certainly inclined to take their word on faith, but I suspect in this case they were using pre-crash profit figures. When the car companies started selling less, profits went down. In fact Honda is the only Japanese car company that will be profitable at all this year.

barfo

 

You're not factoring in their other businesses, as you said.

GM had GMAC. A finance company. A really big one. GM had troubles more because of the financial meltdown than anything else.

 

Well, we were talking about honda, i thought. As far as I know the lawn mower business has not tanked. But maybe it has.

barfo

 

Or the motorcycle business. Or airplanes or generators or financing.

 

Motorcycles have presumably fallen off. Airplanes I don't think are a big part of Honda's revenue. Generator sales are probably way up from the "got to stock up on ammo" people. Not clear to me how much financing Honda does or doesn't do.

barfo

 

http://world.honda.com/news/2009/c090729Financial-Summary/

Consolidated Unit Sales Forecast
Fiscal year ending
March 31, 2010 - units - Difference (% change)
Motorcycles - 8.950 million units - (-11.5)
Automobiles - 3.295 million units - (-6.3)
Power Products - 4.355 million units - (-16.0)

 

Interesting. So, I guess people are putting off buying that generator. They'll be sorry when Obama shuts off their electricity.

Edit: since you've got 3.3 million cars in there, I guess the 1.4 million I quoted must have been only US sales. My bad. However, that just makes the profit per car that much lower.

barfo

 

Looks like they sell more motorcycles than cars and generators combined.

 

Yeah, that doesn't surprise me given the asian market, it's very bike-heavy.

barfo

 

From the link you posted is another link to the top 10 most american made cars. 2 of the 10 are not big sellers for Toyota, the third is one by Honda.