Big Three Auto Makers Compared To Toyota and Honda by ProCon.org on New Research Website

/PRNewswire/ -- ProCon.org, a nonpartisan 501c3 nonprofit research organization, created the new website bigthreeauto.procon.org to explore the question "Should the Big Three auto makers be bailed out by the US government?"

Pro and con statements addressing this question come from President-Elect Barack Obama, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Nobel Prize winning economists Paul Krugman and Gary Becker, General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner, former US Energy Secretary and US Senator Spencer Abraham, and several others.

Also included on the site are:
-- Chapter 11 bankruptcy laws explained,
-- Contracts between the Big Three and the United Auto Workers,
-- Analysis of "legacy" employees and their impact on profits, and
-- 144-point chart comparing GM, Ford, Chrysler, Big Three combined,
Toyota, and Honda.


Some interesting points from this chart comparison include:


* General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler had a combined US market share of 51.8% in December 2007. As of Oct. 2008, their market share declined by 5.1% to 46.5%. Toyota and Honda, during that same nine-month period, increased their US market shares by 3.1% to a combined 28.4%.

* In 2007, the Big Three sold 18 million autos for $387.5 billion. In 2007, Toyota and Honda sold 12.2 millions cars for $304 billion.

* In the US, the Big Three directly employ 242,000 people and an estimated 2.5 to 3 million indirectly.

* Ford received a $1.29 billion tax refund in 2007 while General Motors paid $37.16 billion in 2007 taxes.

ProCon.org made its Big Three research publicly available for free and without advertising on the website bigthreeauto.procon.org.

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