Automotive companies in the West are suffering. Late last year General Motors announced 30,000 job cuts and production to stop at 12 plants - stimulating none other than Bill Ford of arch-rival Ford Motor Company (itself expected shortly to announce painful restructuring) to plead for one of the US' key domestic industries. Detroit is in trouble. And so increasingly is western Europe's automotive sector as over-production, outdated sales and manufacturing strategies, consolidation, regulation and outsourcing, all take their toll. It's all symptomatic of a very mature, complex, multi-national industry, coming out of government-sanctioned protection and facing huge demands from dealers and customers - alongside crushing competition.
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