Big Three

Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Consumer, but may I have a word with you?

I couldn’t help noticing you over at the auto lot. You gave a quick once-over to the high-mileage sedans but lingered quite awhile by the SUVs. That concerns me.

I know what’s going through your minds. Average gas prices have fallen below $1.80 per gallon. The automakers are splashing out incentives to move the sport-utes off lots where they have been hanging around like unwanted in-laws since last summer. You’re figuring, maybe that gas price spike last summer was a fluke, the oil market is settling down, and it’s time to spread out on the road again with a 4 x 4.

You’re not the only ones figuring that way. The Chicago Tribune reported Friday that GM has ordered overtime for workers at the plant making the biggest honkin’ SUVs in GM’s fleet: Yukons, Tahoes, and Escalades.

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When the congressional enablers of the Big Three automakers proposed a bailout for Detroit, I got to thinking about a friend of mine.

He took pity on a female acquaintance with a somewhat chaotic lifestyle and loaned her $200. I told him that he would never see that $200 again.

I was right.

Call me cynical, but I am not sanguine about handing over large gobs of public money to manufacturers with a rotten business model that has exacerbated U.S. dependence on a fossil fuel supplied by assorted crooks, cartels, and despots.

Call me someone who dwells on the past, but it’s difficult to forget that Detroit and its unions spent years stonewalling and stomping on reasonable legislation to boost fuel economy standards – until public outrage at high gasoline prices in 2007 finally shouted down the Big Three and their can’t-do culture of complaining.

Call me hard-hearted, but when companies are run into the ground by sclerotic executive bureaucracies that failed to anticipate oil price risks, failed to fix their product development systems, failed to sharpen their brands, and failed to bargain hard enough over labor costs, they deserve to die. ...

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