What? You must be joking? I am a realist! I don't think the earth is flat at all! I know it's round. I just don't care as much about what happens outside my little corner of it! My concern is mainly for this country, NOT others! It's very simple, yet you can't see it.

 

The fact that the transplants depend upon the same suppliers that the Big3 do, which will immediately fail if the Big 3 are allowed to do so.

And, the fact that the transplants are only here because it offered an avenue by which they could avoid trade barriers they could not as import only, that they have been bribed with tax breaks and subsidies our lawmakers were only too happy to give.

And finally, their own track records indicate quite clearly that whatever is in their own self-interest will supercede other concerns. If the climate is not beneficial to the foreign makers, they will leave.

There is a huge difference between a marriage of convenience (transplants) and a home-grown industry. The "natives" don't have the luxury of being able to take their toys and go home, they are tied to this country in an infinite number of organic ways which do not exist for the transplants.

 

No, no, no, no.....wrong, wrong, wrong.

Since everyone loves polls/surveys, here's one I posted in another thread:

 

Somehow I'm not surprised by that statement.


You're right; overly simplistic and unrealistic views of the world are difficult for me to understand.

 

What is unrealistic is to expect benefit from the averaging of global standards of living through trade policies that extract value from our own.

Global bankers are the ones who will benefit from that, not nations or citizens.

 

What will happen to some, a lot or all of the suppliers if one or more of the Detroit Three go under is purely speculation and includes a lot of “doom and gloom” injected into it in order to encourage public/Government action to “save” Detroit.

As with any recession, some businesses will go out of business. However, the assumption that no one will step in to take up the slack; buy up assets and keep providing parts for the manufacturers that need them is unrealistic at best.


Somehow, I doubt you have any real insight as to why foreign nameplates chose to build plants in the U.S. as opposed to just import everything. I also suspect it would probably surprise you to know that “foreign” manufactures build vehicles in the U.S. which are then exported to other countries.

You are right insofar as that they are here because it makes business sense for them to be here but to think they will just close up shop after investing tens of billions of dollars here (just for their plants alone) is a wild and unsupportable assumption to make.


What “track record” are you referring to, specifically?

Yes, businesses do what is in their own best self-interests (hopefully that doesn't come as a surprise to anyone); if they don’t then they don’t stay in business. However, assuming you know that foreign nameplates will simply “leave” is unrealistic at best.

 

I fully understand the natural progression of capitalism, thus the winners and losers.

We might agree that there are other factors that skew the purist nature of capitalism. Purist capitalism is the way I believe it should work. It's the skew that shifts my idealism. Any transplant < including GM's position in China > involves some advantage.

You work for an outfit that shows some deference to the high performance enthusiast. Most transplants ignore the segment.

The advantage of the Japanese companies is based firmly in labor cost advantage. The quality differences no longer exist.

I won't go into some "bladder capacity" competition over who's parent government deferred to who and set the playing field where it is.

I became involved in the auto biz based on my passion for cars that generate an emotional response from folks due to performance prowess.

As far as I can see, Toyota has near zero interest in performance enthusiast interest vehicles.

Honda is a company based on engine building. They got confused along the way, IMO.

Whatever the opinion any might hold regarding GM, one can not state with any true basis that GM doesn't have a segment within which has consistantly tried to carry the ball for the enthusiast community.

Such can not be said for the transplants. Of all the Asian based companies Nissan has tried the hardest. Most of the transplanys have given up and surrendered to GM's dominance of the sporty market.

 

And I would posit that your seeming faith in the converse is "unrealistic at best"

"Free enterprise", like any philosophy, is not pragmatic nor realistic when it becomes an inflexible dogma. As it now stands, it is so compromised by myriad details of actuality, that to hold fast to its absolutes in an unprecedented time of upheaval is foolhardy.


To follow your endorsed path would , at minumum, lead to a protracted period of chaos - if not to the total failure of all auto production in the US. The inevititable major disruption of the supply chain would affect all US auto production for a very long time, if not permanently.

 

I’m not sure Toyota, Honda, Mazda, etc have “given up” on the enthusiast side of things…I do think “performance” has somewhat taken a back seat to more mundane vehicles but let’s face it, that’s where the real market (and real income) is.

Very few manufacturers could survive in the “performance” end of the marketplace…nameplates like Ferrari and Lamborghini, etc. survive only because they make so few units and command such high dollars.

I too recognize that GM has been pretty steadfast in building vehicles for the enthusiast (although my leanings were always to Pontiac)…it is GM’s vehicles that “made” me an enthusiast.

I well remember as a young kid (maybe nine or ten) seeing my first Corvette Stingray (brand new with factory lake pipes and baby blue exterior) at a rest stop on the Pennsylvania turnpike (one of those oasis stops with a restaurant where you could sit at a window and watch traffic pass by underneath you)..the Corvette was parked in the parking lot…I never saw the owner but I hope he didn’t mind the drool on his fender!

I also fondly remember my uncle (barely seven years older than me) bringing hope a candy apple red (with white vinyl interior) ’67 GTO with the chrome package and three deuces sitting on top of a 389.

My first car was a brand new ’73 Formula 400 (burnt orange/white vinyl interior) onto which I transplanted the intake manifold from a 389 Tri-Power!

I do wonder, what with “green” being all the rage, what will happen to “performance”; especially if the dimwits in DC start dictating to the Detroit Three what kind of vehicles they should (or must) build.

 

On this we are in complete agreement.

 

Well, you were kind enough to reaffirm what is, essentially, the enthusiast community, and that is is our common ground.

I'm more than a bit aware that this section of the forum is a home for the highly informed and the highly interested folks with a passion for the car business.

The over riding wellspring for enthusias car sites is the enthusiast.

You and I can meet on that common ground.

I know what makes affordable performance cars possible.

 

Have you been to college, just wondering? How about bringing down this country through the American auto industry doesn't benefit the rest of the world either. What's good for GM is still good for the country, and what's good for this country is also good for the rest of the world! Unfortunately for US all, apparently this is too simplistic a concept for some to grasp, therefore it may seem unrealistic!!

 

Chaos is often the result of major economic shifts.

There was chaos when society changed from primarily an agrarian society into an industrialized one as there was major disruptions in peoples lives as new technologies came along (such as replacing biological horse power with mechanical horse power or replacing line workers with robots)?

We are in a period where manufacturing strength is playing an ever decreasing role in an economy overall; those who adapt will thrive; those who done will not.

That fact there is chaos and pain when such shifts happen in a free enterprise based economy doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with free enterprise. The free enterprise system is simply the best economic system in existence; it is not without its faults but meddling with it generally makes things worse, not better.

Postponing the chaos/pain is not the same as doing away with it. It’s likely that the chaos and pain WILL come no matter what government tries to do about and probably be much worse than it would have been.

 

And so we arrive at a point of insoluable disagreement. I do not accept the prevailing wisdom that we can survive effectively by abandoning our manufacturing base. To me, it is yet another example of foolishly putting all of our eggs in a single basket to do so.

As to the chaos and pain, mitigating it makes sense to me. I believe that slowing the process to allow time for crisis-management and transformation of our industrial base is far preferable to sifting through the debris of massive collapse and starting over at ground zero.

As I said, we will not agree on this - our positons are simply too far apart.

In my view, it is time for pragmatism and the conversion of liabilities into assets - rather than a "survival of the fittest" bloodbath and starting from scratch.

Handled properly, this crisis could be a slingshot to the future.

A reasoned review of our supplications at the alter of globalism is desperately needed.

 

Very well put..CaminoLS6! Needless to say I agree.