Simon Mainwaring Quotes

Starting in the 1970s, American cars started to lose market share to foreign cars. It was clear what was happening - these better-made foreign car companies were encroaching on the U.S., and the U.S. car makers had less than half of their own country's market.

It's competition that forces companies to get out of their complacency.

S.U.V.'s are under a lot of scrutiny these days, and yet the S.U.V. buyer is a very loyal lot.

I think hybrids are inevitable. The question is not the technology: it's a question of the cost and whether the consumer will pay.

I monitor very carefully, in the automobile sector in particular, the development of new technologies which help to limit negative effects on the environment by influencing human actions.

If there's a car company, and you have another car company, you don't stop building your car and company because there are others.

The three auto companies in the United States, they're all scrambling to come up with a plan, some way to reinvent themselves. Well this week Ford did its part. Ford unveiled a new hybrid, the Ford Fusion, which will get almost 40 miles to the gallon. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, and when asked how much it would cost, a spokesman for Ford said, '$25 billion.' They just want that money; they don't care. That's without mud flaps.

[Could] motor cars could be produced [in a country like Germany] and sold in competition in the American market . . . .In my opinion it is impossible to reach the conclusion that competition from without can ever be any factor whatsoever?

The European auto industry made a commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by an average of 140 grams per kilometer. But then there was a significant change in what customers wanted in their vehicles.

When you make $78 billion a year, as the three large oil companies are doing, you have no interest in changing the status quo…. Oil companies are not interested innovation.

Protecting the automobile industry has always been a very difficult and very necessary task that I have had to undertake.

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner.

Statism is a guarantee of stagnation.

In the economic competition, in the technological competition, we are competitors; we are not allies.

As capitalists are in one another’s hair at home, they are at one another’s throats internationally.

Competition is always there.

I wouldn't single out Facebook as a concern, because we've got different local competitors around the world.

The whole purpose of CAFE standards is to make cars more efficient that people are actually buying.

In terms of building consumer products, the U.S. and China are ahead of India. The interesting opportunity for India is whenever there is a disruption in technology, it gives every country a chance to leapfrog and take a lead. To take an example, China is leaping ahead in growing the China electric vehicle ecosystem.

The entertainment industry is a very noisy, crowded marketplace.

Government is the ultimate monopoly. And monopolies, as any economist will tell you, often breed complacency and a lack of innovation.

At the end of the day, we have to find a way to compete better with the world.

I don't know if a government bailout will rescue America's auto industry, but I do know that if there is a bailout, it better come with a big, bright stop sign and lots of strings attached.

Our target is to compete with Ferrari and Mercedes.

Instagram, Swiffer, and Nest had to compete with consumer habits and perceptions. Breakout products face competition from the formidable inertia powering the status quo.