Well GM has got to be grinning on this entire scenario. Ford has just screwed itself out of a response like we want to hear such as they have a Corvette competitor for the market.
I don't think that GM considers the entire Corvette line as a loss leader? Apparently Ford would on a GT?
Ford's got a GT that they can't fit a V8 in and they want out of the V8 business anyway. VERY shallow thinking here.
I've got to give this to GM in this case. They just out maneuvered and out smarted Ford on this one. They didn't do so well on the Cosworth Vega though did they?
Chrysler will just continue to offer taxi cabs. It works for them so who am I to criticize. That's their market and they just never could compete with the other two.
Ford has never had a car to compete against the Vette. They built the 55-7 Tbird to compete against the 53 Vette. But had already lost when the 56 Vette came out - so they turned it into their first personal luxury car. They brought it back almost 50 years later as a 2 seater with fiberglass body but when one of your main design criteria is getting 2 bags of golf clubs in the trunk you might as well not even print the brochure.
The latest Ford GT was not a loss leader. It was a profitable product at it's price point. Ford learned with the 05-6 and added the expected dealer markup to the base cost.
When the next gen Mustang comes out Ford will be out of the V8 business (except in heavy trucks F450^). They have completely laid down and accepted what the Green New Deal will bring to the auto business.
The Cosworth Vega was a much better car than the Mustang II.
Chrysler has been bastard child in the big 3 family since the 50s. Iacocca brought it back from death but it wasn't all his brilliance that did it. The US was coming out a recession and gas prices were high. People were looking for a cheap gas sipper and the K car fit the bill. The fact that .gov had basically put out the edict to buy Chrysler so they would be able to pay back the bailout didn't hurt. Iacocca's brilliant Minivan was a project he had worked on at Ford and they scrapped it after the Deuce canned him. Nobody wanted to push Lee's projects for fear of following him out the door.
The fact that FCA has been looking for a buyer for Dodge tells me they don't want to be in the Taxi business. They broke up into Jeep, RAM (trucks) and Dodge (cars vans) just so they could divest the money losing Dodge.