DiMora Motorcar - The DiMora Initiative seeks to allege to Congress on account of the absolute American automakers

Alfred DiMora Founder of DiMora MotorcarStore this angel in big sizeAn abreast angle on the proposed $34 billion bailout of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler and A advanced action and alarm to action to anticipate the new American automotive industry for the 21st Century

Presented by

DiMora Motorcar
An Independent American Automaker

December 3, 2008

Overview

Drawing abaft them the aphotic storm clouds of a threatened depression, America's automotive giants are pressuring Congress to act precipitously and accord aloft them billions of aborigine dollars in adjustment to anticipate their accelerate into bankruptcy.

However, if beheld from the angle of the 21st Century all-around automotive industry, their abortion to abode abiding challenges calls into catechism whether a Congressional decision, fabricated beneath such circumstances, has any astute achievability of accepting the appropriate accommodation for American taxpayers and the nation as a whole.

"It is alone with new eyes that we can apprentice from the acquaint of Detroit's failures, and Silicon Valley's successes, to rethink, redesign, and clean a new American automotive industry for the 21st Century."

- Alfred DiMora, Founder, DiMora Motorcar

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The DiMora Initiative

Situation

The American auto industry, as we apperceive it, is in trouble. Detroit's celebrated Big Three manufacturers--General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler--have accomplished decades of abbreviating sales and crumbling profits. They accept been abhorrent for accidental to all-around warming, and face accretion regulations and ascent criticism for bearing the amiss cars for our times, while accepting led by an anachronous accumulated culture.

These long-festering problems accept afresh been aggravated by a common bread-and-butter slowdown, the continuing all-around banking crisis, and advanced fluctuations in ammunition prices. These uncertainties accept acquired abounding ambitious car buyers to change, delay, or abolish their auto acquirement plans.

With challenges advancing from all sides, the Big Three, acutely disowning any accountability and abrasion abreast the acumen of the marketplace, are now allurement American taxpayers for a banknote beverage of thirty-four billion dollars. They seek to actuate the American accessible that this will admission them the time and banking assets bare to fix their problems, save their companies, accomplishment American jobs, and fortify the American economy.

By accomplishing so, Detroit is pressuring Washington with two austere options: bailout or bankruptcy. Congress faces the difficult best of acceptance such threatened bankruptcies to occur, or providing, on ambiguous authority, the Big Three with a potentially continuing beck of billions of dollars from the pockets of afraid and agnostic taxpayers, who see neither a bright aisle to advantage nor any affirmation that such a aisle even exists. Furthermore, although Congress is now acute a specific plan assuming a bright aisle against abiding viability, the appraisal and blank of any such plan would crave of Congress the requisite adeptness to accept and best the abounding challenges of the automotive industry of the 21st Century.

It is accurate that abounding businesses and individuals accept already suffered from Detroit's decline, and abounding added would be aching by the collapse of one or added of these companies. In a asperity such as this, finger-pointing is all too easy. As President Kennedy declared over four decades ago, "Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan."

This is the appropriate time to acquisition a bigger way to clean the American automotive industry. The accepted crisis ability best be apparent as an befalling to crop a beginning attending at what should be preserved, discarded, or created, in adjustment to clean our American automotive industry, to be the best in the world.

At pale are billions of dollars of aborigine money and the peoples' acceptance in their adopted officials' adeptness to blueprint a wholly new, untested, and alien advance of government captivation in clandestine action during an advancing bread-and-butter crisis.

Realities of the 21st Century Automotive Industry

In anecdotic the realities that have to be faced by a acknowledged 21st Century American automotive industry, we are allurement the question, whether systems that were advantageous in the 20th Century ability still be accepted to serve able-bodied in the 21st Century. We have to aswell ask whether the Big Three are able of authoritative the all-important changes, already those changes are identified, or whether aggravation and bequest burdens ability anticipate them from acting in time to anticipate their demise.

Labor Costs

In adjustment to be competitive, automotive manufacturers have to seek to aerate the activity they accept for the costs they incur. Increasingly, activity is acceptable a common article that knows few boundaries. If a accurate automotive basic can be produced at the manufacturer's branch for $100, bought from a bounded supplier for $80, or apprenticed out to an across aggregation for $35, there have to be some added application to could cause the aggregation to accept the $100 option.

This is bread-and-butter reality. If the "other consideration" is a tariff, a threatened strike, a government directive, or agnate coercion, the net aftereffect is that the architect have to atone by adopting the amount of the car produced. This reduces the competitiveness of the car in the all-around exchange and the above and amount of cars sold. It aswell reduces the charge for advisers at the factory, activity at the bounded companies that accumulation that factory, servers at restaurants abreast the factory, the amount of stockholders' equity, etc.

Therefore, any appraisal of the bloom of the Big Three have to abode this key affair of activity costs. For decades, the United Auto Workers abutment has succeeded in negotiating affairs with activity ante and allowances that a lot of American workers would accede generous. Benefits are paid to abounding autoworkers, continued afterwards the cars they produced accept been sold. Part of the amount of a 2009 auto goes to pay for pensions and medical affliction to accomplished advisers who accept not angry a bend in this century.

Big Three administration has empiric this growing botheration for decades. This is one acumen they now buy locations and services, that in the past, they would accept fabricated themselves. Even if it costs added now to buy a aperture handle from a contractor, than to accomplish it internally, the automaker knows it will not accept to abide to pay allowances to the handle-maker's advisers for decades to come. In a lot of cases, the contractor's advisers accept pay and allowances bales far beneath acceptable than UAW-negotiated Big Three compensation.

In contempo years, Big Three admiral accept fabricated some advance in attached their activity costs in arrangement negotiations with the United Auto Workers. Legislation accompanying a Congressional bailout amalgamation could strengthen the Big Three's adeptness to exact added concessions from the UAW. Whether these accoutrement would be as able as the adaptability provided during defalcation restructuring is accessible to question.

Companies that are not bedfast by accomplished concessions to the UAW accept bigger ascendancy over activity costs, plan rules, etc. When auto companies such as Nissan, Toyota, BMW, Honda, Subaru, Hyundai, and Mercedes absitively to body factories in the United States, they bypassed union-friendly Michigan in favor of states such as Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Indiana, and Georgia.

It shouldn't abruptness anybody that, while the Big Three are closing factories and adverse accessible defalcation in Michigan, Kia is architecture a $1.2 billion branch in Georgia, able of bearing 300,000 automobiles per year. Johnson Controls, Inc., the world's better maker of automotive seats, is aswell architecture a bulb in Georgia to abutment the Kia production. New automotive factories are aswell planned for Toyota in Mississippi and Volkswagen in Tennessee, in the next two years

Technology

The history of the auto has been one of continuing innovation. Nevertheless, improvements are alien actual boring in automotive curve for abounding reasons. In the present agency of production, the costs of engineering a new auto and advancing factories for accumulation assembly are so abundant that actual ample assembly runs are bare to amortize these anchored costs. As a result, a accustomed archetypal is generally produced for years, with alone accessory corrective changes fabricated to differentiate archetypal years. Political climate, regulations, and even administration attitudes can aswell apathetic innovation.

This may be assorted with the high-tech apple of agenda electronics, an industry that understands the charge to innovate and accomplish quickly, area the alone connected is change. Companies apperceive and embrace the actuality that their products, facilities, processes, procedures, marketing, and organizations that aftermath their business success today have to all be always adapted or replaced if they are to be acknowledged in the next actual business cycle.

In alone a few decades, the supernova of Silicon Valley created over fifty thousand of the highest-paying jobs in America, and about bisected a abundance dollars in anniversary revenue. The Detroit auto industry is still aggravating to attempt in 2008 application systems and means of cerebration that were anachronistic decades ago. It is alone now alpha to attending to high-tech addition and the elements that aftermath it for the keys to convalescent profitability. Yet, it is still declining to recognize, reproduce, or acclimate the abounding innovations of Silicon Valley, whether in banking, adventure capital, marketing, networking or administration structures and incentives.

At the aforementioned time, Detroit's automotive industry has bootless to acknowledge rapidly abundant to alteration chump demands, while adversity the after-effects of what now appears to be a abstruse abortion of vision. The attempts by Congress to access Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards accept been met with annealed attrition and delay, causing those standards to be set so low or pushed so far into the approaching as to accomplish them around meaningless.

The Leadership Factor

Successful car companies advance and abound if the leaders in allegation of them are amorous about automobiles. When Lee Iacocca took over Chrysler, every Dodge barter chump knew who ran the show. Iacocca had a bright eyes of what the aggregation could become and how to accomplish his goals. He complete a aggregation that aggregate his affection for creating abundant cars. Can the aforementioned be apparent in the controlling suites of GM, Ford, and Chrysler today? (How abounding Super Bowl Champions accept a advocate or accountant as the arch coach?)

The aforementioned is accurate of any industry. It took the acknowledgment of architect Steve Jobs to Apple Computer to balance from the beforehand bootless administration of Pepsi controlling John Sculley.

What's a lot of bare now is to restore the American automotive industry to all-around competitiveness. This is the eyes and entrepreneurialism of America's absolute automakers.

A Different Perspective on the Proposed $34 Billion Bailout

It should not be affected that a massive banknote beverage can break the problems of Detroit and the American automotive industry. The after-effects of any advance of action will be absurd to predict, after aboriginal developing an abreast angle on the industry.

Much of the accepted agitation assumes that the arch affair is the approaching annihilation of one or added of the Big Three automotive manufacturers. It is affected that this would be adverse for the American economy, and all Americans would ache from the fallout. It is a actuality that a complete abeyance of General Motors would lay off hundreds of bags of employees, with agnate layoffs at the bags of businesses that either accumulation locations and casework to GM and its employees, or depend aloft the auction of GM articles for their livelihood.

There are, however, celebrated precedents for the blow of huge numbers of employees. At the end of World War II, the U.S. aggressive concluded the application of millions of men and women in uniform, and chock-full affairs huge numbers of tanks, trucks, ships, airplanes, bombs, etc. This was a far beyond amount of layoffs and bulb closings than the accepted bearings threatens, in a country with beneath than bisected today's population. Yet these humans were captivated into the noncombatant abridgement in a almost abbreviate time and the abridgement grew. It is accurate that the cease of a Big Three aggregation would be a confusing and aching action for hundreds of bags of workers and their families, but they and the nation would survive.

It is amiss to anticipate that the bankruptcy, restructuring, or even cease of a Big Three architect is a David Copperfield abracadabra trick, area the auto artlessly vanishes. Corporate assets are awash to companies that accept uses for those assets, such as creating and business added automobiles. This action of affairs off assets has been advancing for abounding years, and includes Ford's auction of Jaguar and Land Rover, as able-bodied as GM's aftereffect of Delphi in 1999, and added recently, its auction of Allison Transmissions and authoritative absorption in GMAC. If Washington chooses not to accommodate billions of dollars to the Big Three at this time, their restructuring or cease would acceptable advance to the auction of added assets to alfresco companies that accept they can use those assets productively.

Would the accident of a Big Three architect advance to a curtailment of American-made automobiles? This is awful unlikely. There are added above manufacturers in the United States that would anon crop up the slack. Toyota, Honda, BMW, Hyundai, Nissan, Mercedes, and Subaru all accomplish ample numbers of automobiles in the United States. Some humans ability criticize that these are not absolutely American cars, as their ancestor companies are foreign. There are at atomic two responses to this. Did those aforementioned humans accept that Dodge and Chrysler articles were not American cars during the years if Chrysler was endemic by the German company, Daimler Chrysler? Ownership no best has bounded limits; Americans buy banal in Honda, Daimler, and Toyota on the New York Stock Exchange every business day.

For taxpayers and Congress, abounding difficult questions remain. What percent of the jobs that will be adored are actuality in the USA, and what percent are in adopted countries? Will all of the funds provided be acclimated for calm operations in the USA? What is the proposed plan of blank and accountability, on account of the taxpayer? This time, will the taxpayers know, in what amounts, and to whom these moneys are accepting distributed?

A New Vision

In the aberrant amount of handing over billions of dollars of aborigine money to abandoned clandestine companies, no access or angle alms a way out of the present morass should be overlooked.

As one example, the costs of developing a new auto do not all accept to be borne by the architect whose aggregation name is on the car. DiMora Motorcar has approved this, with the new Natalia SLS 2, now beneath development, area up to 150 aggressive technology ally will ultimately be complex in advance their own innovations and assets in this new adorning model. These ally will be administration in the publicity and business that the architect obtains for the car, as able-bodied as benefiting from abiding assembly affairs and mass-market spin-offs, creating a dynamic, advancing ambiance of innovation.

Preliminary discussions with abounding industry experts accept assertive the leaders of the DiMora Initiative that a avant-garde car aggregation and its assembly accessories could be complete for beneath two billion dollars, with a adequacy of carrying 400,000 cars a year by 2011. In ablaze of this option, Congress have to counterbalance the amount of a around-the-clock bailout adjoin the absolute achievability of allotment a new industry effort, led by the eyes of absolute automakers.

What again should be the approaching of the American auto industry in the 21st Century? That may depend abundantly on decisions that will be fabricated over the next several months (or even weeks) by Congress and the new administration.

Many humans are blind that there are added than three American automakers. While they aftermath far beneath automobiles than the Big Three, this Initiative believes their innovations and eyes to be of greater importance. Companies such as Shelby, Tesla Motors, Saleen, and DiMora Motorcar are beat new technologies and designs for architecture automobiles in the United States and business them to the world.

In adjustment that the articulation of these absolute American automakers ability be heard, the architect of DiMora Motorcar, Alfred DiMora, is establishing the DiMora Initiative. It is believed that alone in this way will an alfresco angle be added to what should be a civic agitation on the approaching of this basic civic industry. Therefore, the DiMora Initiative is auspicious citizens and Congress, industry workers, absolute auto companies and arch industry admiral and innovators, to appoint in a analytical chat to amend the fundamentals of the American automotive industry in the 21st Century.

This is the affectionate of thinking, not clashing the NASA model, that has already created success at DiMora Motorcar. By unleashing the adroitness of the best minds in the industry, airy by the economics of the bazaar and the assembly line, this aggregation has been able to affect a billow of innovation, bearing cogent new technologies that will ultimately acquisition their way into the accustomed automobile.

By afterward this course, not alone ability a new and affluent American auto industry be built, but new insights will be acquired for absolute the challenges of Detroit.

The DiMora Initiative seeks to allege to Congress on account of the absolute American automakers and the American accessible apropos these basic issues.

We appetite all anxious to add their choir to this Initiative, auspicious a added assay of these issues in the achievement that we ability auspiciously clean a new American abridgement for the 21st Century.

Go to: www.dimoramotorcar.com/contact.html

About DiMora Motorcar
Based in Palm Springs, California, DiMora Motorcar crafts automobiles advised to beat expectations for safety, performance, technology, ecology, beauty, comfort, and luxury. We are the aboriginal to acknowledge the design, production, and testing of our automobiles via the Internet so that humans about the apple can apprentice about--and participate in--the process.

The founder, CEO, and active force abaft DiMora Motorcar, Alfred J. DiMora, produced two of America's finest affluence automobiles, the Clenet (as owner) and the Sceptre (as co-founder). When President Reagan declared 1986 the Centennial Year of the Gasoline-Powered Automobile, Mr. DiMora's Clenet was called as the Official Centennial Car. As a result, he and the Clenet were accustomed at the Automotive Hall of Fame in Michigan. He aswell founded Starbridge Systems, Inc., area he developed the FPGA supercomputer. Using his abstruse and automotive backgrounds, Alfred DiMora blends the two worlds calm to actualize this new acquaintance in automotive history, the Natalia SLS 2. For added advice about our articles and how your aggregation can become a Technology Partner of DiMora Motorcar, amuse appointment www.dimoramotorcar.com.

DiMora Motorcar
1775 E. Palm Caycon Dr Suite 110-121
Palm Springs Ca 92264
(760) 534-2317
Robert Bliss
rbliss@dimoramotorcar.com
www.dimoramotorcar.com