The car has always been of keen interest to me. I tried to remember how many I have owned recently, and as near as I can remember, it is about 93. Currently, I have a 1941 Plymouth truck, (very rare),1947 Jeep, a BMW motorcycle, and four old Mercedes Benz cars, of 1973, 1974, 1985, and 1989 vintages. Everything I have runs perfectly, and I can get into any of them, and instantly go where I choose to go with total dependability. The 1973 is a 450 SL sports car, which I have owned for six years, and it has only been driven about a thousand miles. I am going to sell it for that reason, and it has only 89,000 original miles. Want it? Call me, and I’ll end pictures of it.
But that’s not the point of this. All the auto manufacturers are in deep trouble, and Uncle Sam is bailing them out with taxpayer money. Why are they in trouble? Several reasons, including unions, stupid design and appearances, and government regulations and mandates. The latter, the manufacturers have no control over, but the rest they do and did, and that’s why they’re in trouble. Hard times come to everyone and every business at times, and it’s wise to prepare, which the car companies didn’t do.
Why should a worker who builds cars, get $175 an hour? That’s what the average union worker makes, counting all the extras, long vacations, and perks, such as lifetime pension and medical care, 95% pay when they get laid off, etc. Can you imagine what this adds to the cost of a car? The big cheeses gave in to commie Walter Reuther for years, and now look where they find themselves. (He was head of the UAW (United Auto Workers) for years and years.
Has Cadillac ever built a pretty car, other than perhaps the 1962 Coupe De Ville, or 2000 De Ville? Remember those horrid Chrysler products in the 1960’s, like the Dodge Dart, and the trash Chevy Vegas? Chevy would like to forget those things, I am sure, as Ford would like to forget the Edsel. It was Edsel Ford who convinced his old man to build the Model A in 1928 and stop making the Model T. Edsel Ford was a smart man, and I’ll bet he turned over in his grave when they named that bomb after him. Volkswagen made the same car for 13 years, I think, and the Model T Ford was built for about 20 years. The Model A looked virtually the same for four years, and they sold like hotcakes. Why hasn’t an auto maker made the same car and avoid all the re-tooling costs, for maybe four years? Mercedes did it for several years, in all models, and suffered no sales losses. Wouldn’t it make economic sense? With the same car being made for four years, the price could be a lot cheaper, thanks to not having to re-tool each year.
Wasn’t it smart now for GM, Ford, and Chrysler to build those mighty office buildings, and wasn’t it smart to buy Volvo, Jaguar, and Saab, plus others? Wouldn’t it have been a lot smarter to pay off corporate debt? Wouldn’t it have been smart to stand up to unions? Wouldn’t it have been smart to have built the same car for several years? Wouldn’t it have been smart to build small, compact cars, rather than letting the Japs take over back in the 70’s and 80’s? Wouldn’t it be smart to have guarded their reputation for building excellent cars, rather than gifting the reputation to Japan? Detroit is now building excellent cars, but they have lost their reputation, and most women wouldn’t touch an American car, even though Toyota has had lots of complaints, recalls, and problems since 2002.
Fuel Pump gone bad? In an American car, you have to drop the gas tank, but in most foreign cars, you merely have to uncover a plate in the trunk. Big difference in costs to fix it. I still believe that America has the best engineering in the world, with the possible exception of Germany, but I also hear that Mercedes in the last few years are really problematic, and they certainly aren’t very pretty any more. Air bags have killed a lot of children and punctured a lot of ear drums when they went off, and I wonder how many millions of dollars, each life has cost when saved by an air bag? Why shouldn’t they be voluntary, and now they even have side air bags? Not cheap, I’ll bet, and they add tremendously to a car’s cost. Tell the feds to stop forcibly ’protecting’ us. We can do it ourselves, at much lower cost…if we choose to do so.
When the economy bit the dust, and it’s not at the bottom by any means, I’ll guarantee that, all the bad decisions, ugly cars, bad design, and giving in to unions, have come home to roost. If the head honchos had paid off corporate debt, had decent wages paid to workers, without the billions of dollars in perks, they wouldn’t be in trouble now. And now, the taxpayers are bailing them out to the tune of tens of billions of un-backed, paper dollars? You say, ’we aren’t bailing them out, the government is?’ Typical American mentality, and it’s that mentality which got us here. We’re all paying for the bailouts with soon to come hyper-inflation, when all tangible things, such as oranges, tires, lumber, carpet, gold and silver will go through the roof in dollar prices. These tangibles, and a million others, aren’t changing. They’re the same oranges, lumber, tires, carpet, gold and silver. It’s the payment things used to buy them which change and will change radically in the future. Are prices going up, or is the dollar going down?
Why shouldn’t all the failed banks and auto manufacturers be made to sleep in the bed they made? They’d suffer for their misdeeds, and not all of us. Our dollars wouldn’t decay as quickly, and there wouldn’t be the inevitable hyper-inflation. Now there will be a car czar? I’ll bet the Detroit heads are thrilled at that! After all, doesn’t government do everything economically, sensibly, practically, and efficiently? Isn’t it wonderful that millions of kids stayed home, thanks to a government edict? Isn’t it grand that 435 morons in D.C. have destroyed a once wonderful nation?