AUTOMAKERS Big Three prepare to do battle in 2004 against imports

The Big Three beef up their weapons in fight with imports.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
After years of promising that an arsenal of new "gotta have" cars is all it will take to regain market share lost to the imports, particularly the Japanese, the Big Three domestics are ready to roll out the weapons for 2004.
Domestics believe that there is pent-up demand for cars after loyalists held off buying them while the automakers revamped their truck and sport-utility vehicle lineups.
Industry observers, however, point out that not everyone waited for the domestics to redo their aged car lineups, and many instead fled to imports.
The numbers back this up: General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and the Chrysler division of DaimlerChrysler AG all lost market share in 2003. Through November, the Big Three's share of the market slipped to 60 percent from 61.9 percent a year earlier. The share for all Japanese brands rose to 29 percent from 27.6 percent.
The primary battle remains between the Big Three domestics and the Big Three imports: Toyota, Honda and Nissan.
Japanese re-emergence
In 1992, the Ford Taurus unseated the Honda Accord as the top-selling car in the industry, a feat greeted by domestic automakers as a sign Japan had been conquered. Taurus kept the title until it was toppled by the Toyota Camry in 1997, and since then the Japanese have dominated, with Camry or Accord the top seller each year. Camry leads Accord by a small margin in 2003.
And with Toyota (800,079 car sales through November) passing Ford (739,948) this year to gain the lead in car sales -- Chevrolet is third (726,897) -- the domestics are preparing to battle back in 2004.
Twelve new or redesigned models are due from GM, including six new cars, plus 17 new versions of existing models. Chrysler promises 11 new models, including the Chrysler 300 and Dodge Magnum sedans and redesigned minivans. Ford will introduce a redesigned Mustang and three new models from its Torrence Avenue plant in Chicago: the Ford Five Hundred and Mercury Montego sedans and the Ford Freestyle crossover.
"Import success has primarily been in the car segment. It will be difficult to win share back, but when the domestics get more new vehicles, they'll be more of a force and are going to make it a horse race," said Alan Starling, chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association and a Florida dealer with Chrysler, Jeep, Chevrolet and Saturn stores.
Looking ahead
With those new cars arriving on a staggered basis, 2004 will show simply whether the domestics can make inroads. More new cars will arrive for 2005, by which time it will be clearer as to how successful the strategy has been.
Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research in Bandon, Ore., sees industry sales rising to 17.1 million cars and light trucks in 2004, the third-best year ever and up from an expected 16.6 million for 2003.
And he sees 2004 as the year in which the hunter becomes the hunted.
Toyota (11.2 percent share of the market in '03) is closing on Chrysler (12.8 percent) to be No. 3 in the United States, but it could lose share in 2004, Spinella predicted.
It faces challenges not only from GM, Ford and Chrysler with their new cars but also from Nissan, with models such as the Titan truck, Quest minivan and Infiniti G35 sedan.
"Toyota is hardly going to collapse, but they're finally starting to get some serious competition from somebody other than Honda," Spinella said. "Sales will be up [in 2004], but there's been some groundwork laid by competitors to take some share from them."