Detroit To Focus on Selling (Making Good Interesting Cars?)Cars Again

February 2004 (Newstream) -- While domestic automakers are selling SUVs and trucks well, they've admittedly lost their touch when it comes to building cars. In 1985, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler made more than half of the passenger cars sold in the U.S. Today, eighty percent of the market is controlled by foreign manufacturers. Now, the "big three" say things are about to change.

This year, at auto shows across the world, the domestic automakers will launch more cars based on new platforms than they have in any single model year since the sixties. GM has a focused program in which 90 percent of their car portfolio will change over a four-year period.

Experts say domestic manufacturers spent a lot of their product development money on trucks, but now that their truck portfolios are solid, they're turning their attention again to cars. How big is this new focus on the passenger car? GM has allocated 65 percent of its product development budget this year to cars.