Same price, same quality, same mileage, looks cooler. One classic re-issue per year or whatever they can do. Get people to vote on designs on the internet. Would I have bough an Accord if I could have, for the same money gotten the same quality in an aesthetic package that evoked images of so much of what has made America a so much better place to live than anywhere else? Not a chance.

This thread is depressing. Too many valid points mixed in with gross misunderstandings and mischaracterizations. Not interested in wading into that part of it.

I don’t want the domestic auto industry to dry up or fail. But I want any reform to put the industry and the nation in a better spot.

If someone can find a way to keep ford and Gm alive as smaller, leaner, more nimble, and more hungry companies with similar costs as Honda and Toyota, and workers eager to make cars that compete on quality at comparable cost, I’m all for it. I’m fine with the majority of execs losing there jobs if that happens to be what it takes.

The point is that the reformed companies need to be fundamentally different in many substantial ways. Lower-wage employees with less generous benefits, a far leaner exec structure, less product redundancy, more aesthetic appeal and differentiation.

When gas is cheap, it is hard to sell enough small, efficient cars to be profitable. When gas prices rise, the opposite is true.

You lost me when I got to your last 2 paragraphs. Make up your mind, Gerry…are the republicans in the back pockets of “big business” like most libs claim when trying to stoke the fire of class envy, or are they trying to destroy them like you claim??

The big 3 ARE global co’s but the pity of it is that they’re thriving abroad. Ford (or Mazda?) builds a small deisel engine-powerd economy car that does 60 to 80 mpg without having to re-tool the whole factory. They can not sell that car here because of EPA standards!

I’ve always said that GM is just TOO BIG. Why does one company have to have to sell 5 cars that compete with each other in the same vehicle class? I drive a Saturn Aura, which gets up to 30 mpg and rivals Toyota Camry and Honda Accord on every level. But it needs to out sell Chevy Malibu, Pontiac G6, Buick, and Cadillac midsize cars before it makes a blip on the radar. That’s crazy. Toyota builds ONE car in that class and it’s been the number 1 seller for years.

Why can’t, under bankruptcy OR Federal subsidy, GM restructure itself as 5 smaller co’s. Let Saturn exist on its’ own and sink or swim. Cadillac has a loyal following and I don’t see why they wouldn’t thrive. Buick is loved abroad and would be a much better revenue source to GM if it didn’t have Cadillac to compete against on its’ own balance sheet. Let Cadillac compete on its’ own against Mercedes and Lexus and watch it take off!!

Nobody bailed us out in 2000. To me, it seems quite similar on a larger scale. Poor investments, poor business decisions

For years I’ve been sick how they’re ads tells us almost directly that we will die unless we drive an SUV, that small cars (ie, efficient) are dangerous on the road because the massive size of SUVs will destroy them in an accident (not that the big SUVs are too massive for the road, that other cars need to get out of their way).

SUVs are so large and heavy they exceed weight limits on certain roads – roads restricted for other large vehicles. I wish I had time to find all of the references, but I know San Francisco had issue with this a few years ago. Yet the sheer arrogance of the auto industry and their marketing spin made it impossible to police them.

Big big big – arrogance and contempt are the only words the auto industry knows. Where is innovation?

No one should fail are horribly as the auto industry. I might celebrate as much as I do the ending of the Bush presidency. They deserve ever lost penny they get.

And I REFUSE to let them hide behind ‘the workers.’

I’m sick of wars being hidden behind ‘the soldiers’ when the command makes terrible moves; I’m sick of banks hiding behind home owners when they sliced their mortgages into MBS securities and sold them on secondary markets unregulated and unmitigated; I’m sick of massive inhuman corporations hiding behind the line worker whenever they seem to have a long pattern of arrogance and manipulation.

This isn’t a bailout, this isn’t socialism, this is corporate greed rebranding itself into yet another form to take our money away from us.

I remember being in college and volunteering for a drug hotline. Users would maniulate their families into taking them in and coddling them. Moms would think, if I just loved them more they’d get better. Well, they’d always get worse. Our advise to them? Kick them out on the street – let them sleep on the streets a few nights and see what it feels like. Throw a little cold water on the situation.

What we SHOULD do is let the corporates fail, but have social supports fr the citizens affected by its greed. THAT is responsible government. The people first -

People keep saying that if the Big three go through bankruptcy they’ll come out on the other side stronger or that the brands will survive under new ownership, and tht’s a total lie, if they go bankrupt you can forget about any American car company in the future.

Yea, so ?

What is an American car company anyway ?

The last car from one of the Big Three that I owned was a Pontiac constructed entirely in Ontario, Canada.

Both of our current cars are Hondas built entirely in Kentucky.

What’s the difference ?

http://theglitteringeye.com/?p=4857

For the past few weeks I’ve read time and time again that the Big 3 made “gas-guzzling beats that no one wanted.”

That’s crap. For the past 10 years that is all EVERYONE wanted. That is why the companies made them and couldn’t sell anything else. They made small cars but people didn’t want them. Then like good capitalists, they said well we aren’t going to make something no one wants.

Them the economy shifted–quickly–and they couldn’t not shift quickly enough.

Why is that? Well, to a certain degree, it was some short sightedness, but what really happened is that the foreign car companies once again had an advantage.

The US companies are barred from foreign markets by laws governing imports. The US could not sell its small cars in those foreign companies to keep those lines up and running, so it was make them or stop making them. It was insane to make cars no one would by.

The foreign car companies, which are not restricted from entering our market and at the same time could sell the small cars that were popular elsewhere, were able to very quickly shift and ramp up production to meet a sudden demand in the US.

Once again, the idiotic policies of the republicans of the past 30 years put our industries at a disadvantage. (Dont get me started on the economic disadvantage the US manufacturers face due to our insane healthcare policies compared to those in other countries).

I don’t think the Auto companies are doing a great job, far from it, but unlike the financial industries which the GOP has been falling over for the past 8 years to give them everything to ensure profitability, the manufacturing industry and the laborers have gotten the cold shoulder from this administration and the chickens are coming home to roost.

So, yeah, we need to bail them out. Big surprise.