General Motors Corp. expects to sell more cars and trucks in foreign markets than in the United States this year, its top executive said in an interview. "There's a lot of good things that happen if we're successful around the world," chairman and chief executive Rick Wagoner was quoted by The Detroit News as saying.
"We're long past this idea that, gee, we should only be good in the US and shouldn't invest somewhere else."
Wagoner told The Detroit Free Press that he was surprised recently to learn from the automaker's marketing analyst, Paul Ballew, that GM likely will sell 4.5 million vehicles in the US and 4.6 million abroad this year.
"That's a trend that's going to make the company look very different," Wagoner said.
In 2004, GM sold 4.7 million cars and trucks in its home market and 4.3 million in other countries, according to the newspaper. In 2003, GM sold 20 percent more vehicles at home than abroad.
Nonetheless, Wagoner said GM still must stem losses in its North American operations to reverse the company's slide.
"Our fate is going to be determined in the next three to five years on getting this business in the US turned around and profitable," he was quoted as saying.
Wagoner said he has concerns about the situation at bankrupt Delphi Corp., GM's former parts subsidiary where a showdown is looming with labor.
But he said all three parties need to find a compromise that averts a catastrophe.
"If we all act purely in our self-interest," he said of GM, Delphi and the United Auto Workers, "any one of the three of us could blow the place up. That doesn't sound like a winning strategy ... If everybody steps back and thinks about what we really need to do here, the possibility of coming to a reasonable agreement is much, much better than the possibility of the thing blowing up."
