George Pipas Quotes (46 Quotes)

We're not going to hit 60,000 for years.

Ford's F-Series truck was up again to start the year. This product over the years and continuing into 2006 has really been rock-solid for us and really provides a lot of the profit and cash on a go-forward basis for our plans. So it's important that sales remain solid, and they are.

Next-generation mid-size cars are an area where boomers will be looking very closely,

I think all truck-based S.U.V.'s are on a downward path, It's pretty eye-popping.

I can't think of a better time.

People that are buying are using some of the incentives in the same way they're using the interest rates on mortgages. There, they're buying more home or financing renovations. Here, they're buy more features on cars, or buying the next class up in cars.

If you were just looking at it for the first time, you'd say, Holy buckets -- a 10 percent decline in truck sales. That is very un-Ford-like,'

Once we get the rate of decline starting to narrow on a year-over-year basis, then we can be thinking about stabilizing. But right now we don't have that situation.

I think it's going to be another solid car year, for both Ford and the industry.

Today premium branded products account for 11 percent of new vehicle sales. In '96 they accounted for 6 percent of the market.

There is a lag factor. A year ago, even six months ago, we were sitting here wondering when consumers would sense that interest rates were going up. I don't think this significantly affects the first quarter.

I feel good about our prospects, given the cars and crossovers in our lineup.

We've put out our production plan for the third quarter that is something we feel like we can live with for the next three-month period.

The segment is always going to be important. But come on. Baby boomers won't want to be driving the same vehicle when they're 70 that they did when they were 55.

October wasn't a very good month for anybody. It was pretty much weak from the start and showed little improvement as the weeks progressed.

I predict that in June we'll show improved performance in the retail end of the business,

There will be some attention and buzz on '04 F-150, ... But they won't be talking about '04 model line for other vehicles.

but the sales pace may outstrip our production for the foreseeable future.

A 16 million sale rate is a rate we can live with, ... The transition period going from high point to low, that's always going to be difficult. There's a lot of white water, but it looks worse than it is.

That's not to say Mercury will not get new product. But in terms of the number of new products that the Lincoln-Mercury franchises are going to see coming to showroom, more investment and more product news will be on the Lincoln side of franchise.

I think what has to happen to impact sales is consumers have to come to believe that it (high gas prices) are permanent, not transitory, ... Buying a vehicle is a long-term commitment -- it's not easy to get out of it tomorrow. Gas prices have spiked in some regions in recent years and we haven't seen any significant impact on sales.

The Nissan and Toyota products will carve out a niche in the full-size segment, but the Big Three and F-series will continue to dominate for years to come, ... The products and brand names offered by domestics are very strong and getting stronger. The Nissan product is great, but it still has a way to go. So does Toyota.

While February was not a gold medal month, I think we definitely got back on the medals stand due to better-than-expected retail sales.

When you've got a well-established brand, you can't just walk away from a market as big as 800,000.

Our main contention here is that we do expect sales to fall off from these levels that are obviously quite high, and I think it's fair to say you can't maintain a sales rate which for the industry we estimate is going to be a at or near record levels, ... If you analyze this from a macro view, it's clear there is going to be payback from this program in the year ahead.

Whatever level of incentives you start out at the beginning of model year, it rarely gets less expensive it generally gets more expensive.

Anytime you go from higher sales rates to lower sales rates, you're going to have to make some inventory adjustments. And it's clear there's more capacity being aimed at most profitable market in the world -- the North American light truck market. But you could see this coming a mile away. I think we are well positioned.

If there was ever a time to try to make value pricing work, this is the time. If the economy was weak, and if you had a glut of old models, you wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of implementing value pricing.

Consumers will have less money to spend on new cars and everything else. Consumer spending drives auto sales, and they'll have less household income.

With these levels of inventories, we probably need to replenish inventories to a level that will support a - for lack of a better term - 'normal' level of sales,

The level of offers out there today are very similar to the offers out there in October of last year, post 911. Last year it generated the best month in industry history. That same level of program will not come close to generating the same volumes this October.

Whenever production and demand are out of balance, you have incentives. Toyota and Honda have the advantage of a more clean-sheet approach, so they have capacity more in balance with demand.

Even at 4 a gallon, buying a hybrid is not a financial decision I'd make because you've got to pay about 4,000 or more upfront in higher sticker price for the privilege of driving around in a hybrid.

If you can sell 100,000-plus Fusions and 100,000 Five Hundreds, you are back in the car business.

About the only thing I could say is I have expected and would expect our year-to-year decline to be more than the industry.

We know the concept of 'pull-ahead' is a valid concept, but the question is, what's the magnitude.

This is a period when we've just got to take the medicine and swallow it.

January is easily the slowest selling month of the year. We don't want the inventory situation to get ahead of us.

sales declines, this year at least, in the traditional S.U.V. segment are becoming the norm, and we expect that to continue to be the case in the near future.

We weren't disappointed on overall sales, but cars did better and trucks didn't do as well as we thought. I think it's more fuel than anything. When you see these very rapid run ups, people get a little cautious.

If you're going to be serious about trucks, and maybe after 15 years Toyota is really serious, you've got to be big in the commercial vehicle market. Something like half of our customers are using their vehicles to some extent in their business.

We'd be in Chapter 11 if we hadn't made so much money on SUVs in the 1990s.

We can only ride on the back of F-Series for so long. The key to our long-term success and long-term viability is turning around the car business.

In the New Orleans area, many of our dealers are out of business and have lost their entire inventory.

This is the first year we have the Fusion in our lineup. So the prudent thing for Ford to do is lower Five Hundred production so we don't end up with an excess inventory of that car at year's end and be forced to sell Five Hundreds not bought by retail customers to daily rental fleets at a large discount. We'll probably sell fewer Five Hundreds in its second full year on the market than we did in its first full year.

We're optimistic that we'll see more good news in these areas in coming months.