Want to Buy a Used Finance Company?

Newsweek, December, 2006 by Allan Sloan

Watching Ford and General Motors used to be like watching Tweedledee and Tweedledum. One offered zero-interest car loans, the other offered zero-interest car loans. Both developed an unfortunate addiction to selling high-profit, hot-selling SUVs and pickups, and have been suffering withdrawal pains since those markets cooled.

Both acquired car-rental companies as outlets for vehicles they felt compelled to manufacture because of labor contracts. And lately, both have bought out large portions of their U.S. work forces, and they've extracted similar givebacks from the United Auto Workers. But now, doing comparative anatomy on these long-time rivals has gotten a lot more interesting. They're both hot to pile up cash to buy time to turn themselves around, but they've taken...

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