[Rallyman6]

As I mentioned before - everyone is suffering:

Also not helping: Toyota Motor Corp. Toyota may be Detroit's arch-rival on Main Street, but on Wall Street, everybody shares in the misery. This morning, Toyota announced shrunken profits for the most recent quarter and reduced its revenue and earnings forecasts for the fiscal year ending in March.

On the quarter, Toyota's earnings slipped to 139.8 billion yen ($1.4 billion), a 69% decline from a year earlier, and revenue dropped 8%, to 5.98 trillion yen ($60 billion). Toyota forecast earnings of $5.5 billion for the fiscal year, less than half its original projection of $12.6 billion. As a result, Toyota's shares fell $13.28, to $67.09, a 16.5% decline.

All in all, automaker stocks look terrible, worldwide. Every major publicly traded carmaker was down today, with Honda slipping almost as much as Toyota. And in the medium term, it's not any prettier. A chart of six major carmakers: Toyota, GM, Ford, Honda Motor Co., Nissan Motor Co. and Daimler AG, shows that the best performing among them -- Toyota -- is down nearly 10% in the last two months. Honda is down over 20%, Nissan and Daimler over 30%, GM over 40% and Ford is in the rear, down over 50%.
Just be glad your 401(k) isn't loaded down with companies that make car parts. A quick look at six leading suppliers to the industry paint a grim picture. Since Sept. 5, powertrain and turbocharger maker BorgWarner Inc., along with jack-of-all-trades suppliers Magna Intl. and Johnson Controls Inc., are all down around 40% -- and that makes them relative shining lights in the sector. Battery maker Exide Technologies is down nearly 60%, axle-and-driveshaft specialist Dana Corp. around 70%, while Visteon Corp. and Lear Corp. have both lost more than 80% of their value in just two months.

Some suggest that suppliers may have a larger upside than carmakers, because they too will likely have a crack at the $25 billion in government-backed loans coming out soon. Then again, because suppliers catch pneumonia every time carmakers sneeze, to butcher a common refrain, their future may not be so bright.

In a speech on Wednesday to the Original Equipment Suppliers Assn., a parts-maker group, in Detroit, Troy Clarke, president of GM North America, made it clear that the company expected its suppliers to play nice.

"Suppliers who want to work with GM need to understand our footprint and our areas of growth," Clarke said. "They need to be staffed appropriately to handle that business, and they need to understand what consumers want and help automakers get ahead of the curve. And they need to be ready to change direction as market forces demand."

--Ken Bensinger

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BMW, Mercedes October Sales Drop as Credit Crunch Saps Demand

By Chris Reiter

Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Bayerische Motoren Werke AG and Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz Cars unit, the world's top two makers of luxury cars, sold a combined 31,000 fewer vehicles last month as the credit crunch discouraged large purchases by consumers.

BMW, which also owns the Mini and Rolls-Royce auto brands, said today that sales fell 8.3 percent to 113,005 cars and sport- utility vehicles from 123,300 vehicles a year earlier. Stuttgart, Germany-based Daimler said deliveries of Mercedes-Benz, Smart, and Maybach vehicles fell 18 percent to 93,800 from 114,600.

``Generally, we're feeling the effects of the poor market developments,'' while models nearing renewal are adding pressure, Verena Mueller, a spokeswoman for Mercedes-Benz, said in a telephone interview. Sales of the E-Class sedan fell 35 percent to 12,100 in advance of the introduction of a new version in March, even as the model kept its position atop the segment in Germany, she said.

Auto sales in the U.S., BMW's largest market and Mercedes's second-biggest, plummeted 32 percent in October to the lowest monthly total since January 1991. BMW scrapped its 2008 profit target on Nov. 4, while Daimler slashed 1 billion euros ($1.28 billion) from its 2008 earnings forecast on Oct. 23. BMW plans to cut production by 65,000 cars and SUVs, while Mercedes is curtailing output by more than 45,000 vehicles.
`Extremely Challenging' Market

BMW anticipates a decline in vehicle sales for the full year because of ``the extremely challenging conditions,'' Ian Robertson, the Munich-based carmaker's sales chief, said in a statement today, reiterating a forecast released Nov. 4. ``The retail gains made in our growth markets were unable to fully offset'' declines in western Europe, Japan and the U.S.

Mature markets hurt sales at both carmakers. BMW posted a 12 percent drop in western Europe, a 5 percent decline in the U.S. and a 29 percent plunge in Japan. Mercedes-Benz Cars' sales dropped 18 percent in western Europe, 25 percent in the U.S. and 34 percent in Japan to 1,800.
China was among the few markets to provide increases. BMW's deliveries in the country climbed 36 percent to 5,280 vehicles, while Mercedes-Benz's jumped 43 percent to 3,700.

Year-to-date global sales at BMW gained 0.7 percent to 1.23 million vehicles, as deliveries of Mini cars advanced 11 percent while demand at the BMW brand slipped 1.1 percent. Mercedes-Benz Cars' year-to-date deliveries rose 1.6 percent to 1.07 million cars and SUVs because of a 41 percent jump for the Smart brand, with the Mercedes-Benz brand reporting a 1.7 percent decline.

ME = Again, everyone is suffering - Our Camaro's will be built; however, your local GM Brand Dealership might not be there after this coming year. The owner of the dealership where I work came back from a meeting and they said 25% of all GM Branded dealerships will disappear within the next 12 months!