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>>>In regards to retirement costs, don't you think European car manufacturers are not suffering form the same problem. We have the same retirement costs up here I'd assume. For medical ensurance, things might be different. Because of the free market (read greed), healthcare is about 3 times as expensive in the US as it is here for the same coverage.
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>>Edward is right. Entitlement payments to retired workers explain much of the cost gap between American and foreign automakers. The huge number that was floating around about average earnings per American autoworker ($80/hour? -- something like that) included the dollar value of retiree benefits, spread over the number of active workers. When you eliminate that the gap becomes $10/hour or less.
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>Uh... that does not answer my question. In europe car manufacturers also need to pay for retirements and healthcare. Also any forreign car manufacturer in the US would suffer from the same problem, wouldn't it? My question is why is this so different for US car manufacturers compared to european? After all we europeans have long been critisized to be too social and therefor too expensive :)

Show me some monetary figures and then we can talk. Not being hostile, just trying to keep it on a factual basis.