Dear Liza, dear Liza. There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza a hole.
With every major company on earth begging the taxpayers for money they didn’t earn because they made some bad choices and bad investments the auto industry has felt left out. Looks like they will continue to feel that way with the news out of congress today.
Even with all the promises of becoming good socialists like the banks are saying they will, congress is starting to realize that those of us holding down jobs, paying taxes and trying our best to put a few bucks aside for the Hover Round years are not a bottomless money well that they can just continue spend from to their heart’s content. OK, maybe not but some of the morons in congress apparently understand that the bailout of the banks has become a joke and are starting to think that maybe people won’t be quite as excited if a second bailout comes this quickly for another industry to piss down their legs.
So GM is saying that they will embrace socialism in order to get money from the government with salary and bonus caps, government ownership of “preferred stocks” among other very bad ideas all so that they can beg for some handouts from the all powerful government. Ford is running out of cash too apparently and I am sure it won’t be long before they explain that they will restructure to a fully communistic company where everyone gives according to his abilities and takes according to his needs. So now the janitor’s and CEO will make the same amount of money and all will be well in the world. Chrysler just wants to be dead apparently as they tried to sell themselves to GM as a bank account with Jeep attached but when that fell through Chrysler started complaining about how horrible everything is.
It’s a bit odd that all these major companies can’t handle a slump considering that the economy was doing just fine 12 months ago. Did all these high paid and highly educated executives actually think they could just spend money like a government with no consequences? Are they really “too big” to be allowed to fail? Or are they just whiny bitches who couldn’t see the writing on the wall about building cars people WANT to own for the last decade or so while they watched the Japanese and Europeans take marketshare point by point until there was little left. We heard about the unfair advantage all these companies had by having their goverments paying for healtcare and other things rather than adapting to an ever changing marketplace. I am not trying to say that other auto manufacturers are somehow better because they aren’t. The problem isn’t that competition got too hard or that the unions in the US are somehow more powerful than in other areas of the world, it is a simple matter of understanding the market and catering to it as quickly as possible. Building trucks was the best way to make money in the 90’s and first half of this decade as that was what everyone wanted. Toyota’s little coup was not caused by the development of the Prius although it was important. They sold piles and piles 4-Runners, Tacomas, Tundras and Highlanders that gave them a healthy bankroll to work with on their other products. They have always produced small cars and some smaller trucks but they built trucks for us that were larger and more powerful.
They still can’t compete with the trucks built by Ford, Chevy, and Dodge just like we can’t seem to build a small car that is both efficient, well designed and built with precision to make it last. Our last attempt was the Saturn and GM gave up on that by just rebadging European cars that the Europeans don’t think are all that great to begin with. Dodge builds ugly small cars now and can’t make them desirable or exciting like they can with their larger cars and trucks. And Ford builds great small cars but won’t sell them here because the just “know” we aren’t ready for them here yet.
So what do we do to fix this. We could rebadge Toyotas and sell them as Fords, or we could just stop trying to be all things to all people and understand that focus brings better products than market research. If you have the brain power to make the new Ram as good as it is then why on earth did you release the Caliber or the Avenger which are both lumpy and slower versions of the Charger that look like they were parodies rather than tributes to the original. I could go on and on about all the different manufacturer’s major malfunctions but I will save you that pain for now and maybe post my complaints about each manufacturer another day.