This Date in History

Tough Times in Detroit
October 26,1980

The early 1980s were tough times for American automakers. Sales had hit the skids and companies were quickly losing money. The situation took a turn for the worse on this day, when General Motors announced that it had lost an incredible $567 million during the previous quarter. While this was the biggest quarterly drop ever posted by an American company, the magnitude of the loss was somewhat blunted by GM's tax credits. According to the Wall Street Journal, the auto giant's pre-tax losses for the quarter topped out at a whopping $953 million. With the economy and the auto industry both mired in protracted slumps, GM executives were hard-pressed to see an end to the crisis. Perhaps they took some comfort from predictions that arch rival Ford was about to announce even larger losses for the quarter.



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