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  3. With American sales of Mitsubishi, once one of the hottest car brands, in a free fall, the company’s executives arc trying to en

With American sales of Mitsubishi, once one of the hottest car brands, in a free fall, the company’s executives arc trying to en

admin2010-07-06  80
问题      With American sales of Mitsubishi, once one of the hottest car brands, in a free fall, the company’s executives arc trying to engineer a turnaround. It could not come too soon for dealers and employees. "June was a terrible month. I sold 10 cars," said Maria Prendergast-Lunn, general manager of Auddie Brown Mitsubishi in Florence, S. C., 80 miles from the major metropolitan center of Columbia. A year ago the dealership sold 75 Mitsubishis a month. Sales started picking up this month, but even so Ms. Prendergast-Lunn expects the dealership to sell only half the number of vehicles it did a year earlier. "I’m hoping to end July with 35 or 40 sales, ’ she said.
     Other dealers are struggling as well. The market share of Mitsubishi Motors North America, the United States unit of the Japanese. automaker, has been halved in just a year, to 0.8 percent last month from 1.5 percent in June 2003, according to the Autodata Corporation. In June, the company’s sales dropped 45.7 percent, to 12, 301.
      Mitsubishi announced last week that it would lay off 1,200 employees, or about a third of its work force in its American plant, where it produces the Galant sedan, the Eclipse sporty coupe car and the Endeavor sport utility vehicle. Mitsubishi has also decreased its advertising. For years it pitched the brand to young consumers with cheap .financing and emotional eye-catching ads set to the music of Average White Band, Iggy Pop and Republica. That strategy created some of its trouble because it suffered a high default rate on the loans. Analysts say that Mitsubishi needs to write off about $1 billion in bad loans.
     "We were a brand on sale," said Finbarr J. O’Neill, the American company’s chief executive, in a telephone interview. Mr. O’Neill, the former chief executive of Hyundai Motor America, was hired last September to succeed Pierre Gagnon who was blamed for the aggressive financing. "Now we need to establish natural demand for the products," Mr. O’Neill said.
     The American sales slump has been a big factor in the Struggles of the Japanese parent company, but not the only factor. Mitsubishi has also suffered from a cover-up of defects in its cars and trucks for decades. In April, Mitsubishi’s minority owner, Daimler Chrysler, decided not to invest any more money in the troubled carmaker, and Mitsubishi had to scramble for money to cover its debts. The Phoenix Capital Company, a Tokyo-based investment firm, bought a third of the company, replacing DaimlerChrysler as the controlling partner.
     The parent company’s financial and quality problems make Mr. O’Neill’s battle to reverse the fortunes of Mitsubishi tougher. The American unit has only two new models coming in the next several months, a redesigned Eclipse sport coupe and a small truck built by Chrysler.
Up to now, who is the controlling partner of Mitsubishi?
选项 A、DaimlerChrysler.
B、Hyundai.
C、Autodata Corporation.
D、The Phoenix Capital Company.
答案D
解析 根据文中所提到的“The Phoenix…controlling partner”可以得出正确的结论。
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