Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

I say “NO”. These days, GM and Ford, stand for ‘Gimme More’ and ‘Forgive Or Refinance (my) Debt’. With the Federal government handing out our tax dollars to Wall Street and the Mortgage industry, our so called “American” auto makers claim they also need a piece of the bailout pie, or they will be forced to declare bankruptcy. The threat of bankruptcy being a gun to the head of Congress – in other words, if you don’t give them billions of those tax dollars, they will put thousands of Americans out of work – and then they wrap our flag around their nameplates as if there is something patriotic about buying a Ford or Chevy and that those of us who bought those little cheap foreign cars are traitors.
So why are these car makers drowning in so much red ink that they have to stand in line for a handout? Well, first they refused to change with the times. Asian car makers figured out years ago, that you only needed one main auto line and one upscale line – like Toyota and Nissan respectively have Lexus and Infiniti. On the other hand, General Motors has Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick, Hummer, Cadillac, Saturn and GMC – SEVEN different lines of vehicles – some of which the only difference being the logo on the grill. Ford at least has been divesting itself from this type of redundancy, but still has Mercury, which is a carbon copy of Ford’s main lineup. Second, Detroit has refused to learn from history. Back in the early 70’s during the Arab Oil Embargo, Detroit was filling our highways with low mileage family sedans the size of land whales and over-powered hot rods. However, the Asian auto makers, specifically Toyota and then Datsun, (now Nissan) had fuel efficient cars ready to sell that allowed them to make major inroads into the American marketplace. A foothold they have exploited to make their nameplates today a part of the American culture. But when 1970s Detroit finally responded to the need for high mileage vehicles, GM gave us the oil burning Chevrolet Vega and Ford the exploding Pinto. Now fast forward to 2008 when gas prices jumped to $4.00 a gallon – while Detroit was filling their showrooms with behemoth gas guzzling SUVs and Pickups, Toyota introduced the Yaris, Honda the Fit, and Nissan the Versa – all high mileage vehicles – again providing America with the right vehicles at the right time.
It seems history repeats itself.