Chrysler posted a profit of $116 million for the first three months of 2011, its first quarter in the black since 2006. That means that the Big 3 American car companies are all making money following their restructurings, say Jeff Bennett and Neal E. Boudette in The Wall Street Journal. And in a surprising reversal of fortunes, Japan's big three — Toyota, Honda, and Nissan — "are slipping into a crisis of their own," as a result of a devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown. All three Japanese companies are expected to post significant losses for the current quarter, say Bennett and Boudette, with analysts forecasting a $2 billion loss for Toyota. Here, an excerpt:
That Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and Chrysler are making money while gasoline costs Americans nearly $4 a gallon underscores how dramatically the landscape has shifted. In 2008, they ran up billions of dollars in losses when gas prices spiked, while sales soared for the Japanese car companies.
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