So, when is enough, enough?

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I’m watching the auto makers attempting to join with the Wall Street crowd to scam the taxpayers out of billions.

When is enough, enough? What do we tell them when they come back in a few months? What do we say when they come back again and again and again?

I could join the choir and say something cryptic like, “when do I get MY bailout” but I am extremely fortunate not to need one. But there are many hundreds of thousands of small and medium businesses around this country that due… businesses that I would venture to say employ tens of thousands more people than the Big 3.

I support American manufacture (except all of the Big 3 have been manufacturing American market cars outside our borders for some time, now… so really, what, exactly IS an “American Car,” anyway?) of motor vehicles. But at least part of this concerns innovation, design and quality control.

Mini Cooper sales, for example, are up 30% year to year over last year.

So… how come Mini sales have skyrocketed while the Big 3’s have tanked? The Big 3 build small cars. Why aren’t they selling?

In the end, $25 billion won’t bail these people out. $250 billion won’t bail these people out.

What’s their business plan? Exactly how much money do these people have? Do they even HAVE a business plan? Is this like that idiotic $700 Billion bailout where promises were made, but then immediately violated?

In the end, what concessions are the unions willing to offer? I haven’t heard anything about that.

Would those people rather be laid off… or would they be willing to absorb a substantial pay/benefit cut?

Terrible cars. Bad marketing. Service that sucks. (Recently, for example, I went to Vancouver Ford for yet another recall on a sedan I own. They told me that it would take 45 minutes (it took two hours) and that they didn’t have one of the recall parts I needed (They’d have to order it and I would have to come back 2 weeks or so later) and even THEN they failed to fix one of the recall problems that caused me to bring it in the first place… and THEN they fudged the amount of time I was there on the work order, so that while I was there for 2 hours, the work order said I was there for something like 50 minutes… proving once again that figures don’t lie, but liars figure.)

Add that to design for parts and maintenance that would make a grown man weep… and have to be preformed on an increasing basis by factory technicians because no home wrench could hope to have the diagnostic equipment needed to tell the end user what the problem is.

They have to fail. Then we’ll see what we can get to rise from the ashes.
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