There's plenty of blame to go around. some of it falls upon us, the people who buy the industry's product.
Are the "Big Three" US auto makers' problems a result of bad labor contracts? Maybe they make lousy products. Perhaps they have been plagued by incredibly incompetent management. A combination of all of those factors and a few more likely contributed to this mess.
Earlier today I was listening to
Ed Schultz's radio show. Schultz is a left-leaning talker out of Fargo that is carried on most of the nation's progressive radio formats. He tends to be a supporter of unions and labor, but also of the Detroit automakers. I'd like to think his sponsorship by General Motors doesn't cloud his opinion much, but it might. He seems to be more on the side of the workers than management, but is in favor of some sort of federal bailout for the industry. Some of his listeners are with him. Many are not.
Schultz was comparing the circumstances that led to Citi Group getting another $20-some billion in federal float with the situation facing Detroit. His take, if I understood correctly, was that it was a simple difference: white collar versus blue collar. Business versus labor. If GM, Chrysler and/or Ford go through bankruptcy, they can void labor contracts and bring their overall costs in line with foreign auto makers who have plants in the US. One of his callers tried to very aggressively make the case that no money should be given to Detroit, since they have gotten themselves into this mess themselves. The caller then went on to cite the Ford Pinto as proof Detroit was fucked up. The Pinto? That was 30 years ago. Got anything newer you can cite? Marketing. Detroit made people think they needed huge SUVs. OK. Got it. It's because the auto makers made and marketed products that people would buy. Uh huh.
Genius Caller went on to say that people should have to prove need for a pick-up truck or SUV... government regulation of choice of personal vehicle. I can see that being really popular... NOT. Then Big Eddie made a series of great points, in my view. Detroit made and sold what people wanted to buy. Women make the majority of auto purchase decisions, and (calling them soccer moms... aren't we over that?) said moms want a versatile vehicle that holds the kids and, more importantly, is safe. Genius Caller said they should never have stopped making station wagons. Eddie cut him loose at that point.
This whole discussion got me to thinking about the cars we had when I was a kid, and what I have chosen to drive since I began making such purchases.
Like most families living in 1960s suburbia, our family had one car, and it was a whackin' big Pontiac station wagon. It was great for a family with three kids, two of which played hockey and therefore had a ton of equipment. There was room for the dog, big bags of lawn fertilizer, toboggans, bikes, luggage, whatever. My mom pretty much made the final call on the family wagon choice. She was the primary driver, shuttling my dad to and from the train station and us kids where ever we needed to be. It wasn't until we moved to the car culture of Southern California that we added a second car for my dad to drive to work. By then, in the early 1970s but after the oil crisis that led the decade, the flagship was still a Buick Estate Wagon that got 10 miles to a gallon of premium gas.
The fact is, if my mother was a mom with three kids today, she'd probably be driving a Chevy Yukon or the like. Big, powerful, roomy, fast, heavy, and loaded... that's the way she liked her cars. There is no way she would EVER have driven a minivan. Pigs would fly before that would happen. And none of this would be driven by marketing. It would be preference and need... albeit imagined and inflated need.
There in lies the problem. As should be news to no one, once gas got relatively cheap and the economy was strong, people went back to the big heavy overpowered guzzlers. Shit, I did. The first new car I bought, not counting the car my parents bought for me when I was in high school, was a 1992 Ford Mustang convertible. And not the pussy version either. This was the 5.0 liter five-speed rocket of a car. Need? Sure I needed it, in as much as I had just taken a six-figure job, was single, and had a happening place on the water in Manhattan Beach, California. Fuck yeah, I needed a red Mustang convertible that would go 140 mph and get 11 miles to the gallon doing so. Totally impractical but so what? (Well, I learned the so what when a year later I was back in Chicago with a warm weather car that had rear wheel drive and an iron clad lease. But I digress.)
I've learned a lot about buying cars since then. I dumped the Mustang (after six long winters) for a 1998 Ford Explorer. I had a good experience with Ford with the Mustang, weather issues notwithstanding, liked the Explorer, and we now had two Newfoundland dogs and were driving through the lake snow belt of Northwest Indiana going to and from our places in Chicago and Michigan. Truly practical. It actually got better mileage than the Mustang by 30 percent. That Explorer never had a major mechanical problem in eight years and 180,000 miles. Was I happy with the price-value from Ford? I sure was... so much that I replaced the Explorer with a 2006 Ford Escape Hybrid.
With Hurricane Katrina fresh in my memory, I ordered the Hybrid and waited five months to get it. It's as well-built a car as I have ever driven. It holds the two dogs,has four-wheel drive and gets 30+ miles to the gallon of regular gas. Two years and 60,000 miles later, I still love this car and would much rather drive it than Tom's fancier and better equipped Honda Accord.
None of those choices were marketing. Well, maybe the Mustang was... but it was the marketing of the 1960s series of Mustangs when I was in grade school. I made that purchase decision in 1969 but acted on it in 1992. The fact is, an American auto maker had exactly what i wanted to buy at the time I wanted to buy it, so I did. The line of cars that, in this case, Ford offered over the years met me varying needs each time. It's not like I was brainwashed into buying what I bought. And it is not as if the American auto industry is not offering quality fuel efficient cars; they are. People just don't want them... or at least didn't until very recently.
To be sure, Ford, GM and Chrysler do deserve a share of the blame for the financial mess their industry is now in. So do unions who forced some ridiculous contracts years ago that are no longer practical. But as much as anyone, the American auto buyer is at fault too. As a culture, we have always had a love affair with the automobile. Cars are an extension of our individual personas. They are a form of self expression, telling the world that we are sporty, strong, practical, efficient, green, or have tiny penises. Detroit was only giving us what we wanted.
It's time for us to start wanting fuel efficient cars that are also safe. It's time for us to demand alternative fuel technology. It's time for us to get serious about the choices we make and how they impact the environment as well as the economy. Oddly enough, Detroit, and the foreign auto makers as well, are already offering us these kinds of choices. We just need to buy them and recommend them to others.
The US auto makers blew it in the 70s, like Genius Caller pointed out. When people first started looking for fuel efficiency, we got the Chevy Vega, Ford Pinto, AMC Gremlin and K cars. Meanwhile, Japanese auto makers got it, and companies like Honda, Datsun (now Nissan) and Toyota jumped in. That's why I drove one of these lovely Datsun F10s from the time I turned 17 until I was out of college and working. It wasn't the prettiest thing, but I got 120,000 miles out of it, and most of them came 40 to the gallon.
I have no idea what we should do about the Big Three. But I have to think that they can't be allowed to all fail. Too many dependent and attendant jobs and industries would go with them. Maybe this is a good time to think again about national health care, since that alone will make the US auto industry much more competitive with foreign counterparts.
