When I was growing up, some kids dreamed of owning cars like a Trans Am, Camaro, Firebird, Corvette, Chevelle or GTO. Stock or tricked out, owning one of the fastest street cars that American automakers turned out was a dream come true. Mustangs were for the West Coast. Chevy ruled the road on Long Island in the1960's and 70's.
Back then, in the middle class neighborhood where I grew up, foreign cars were for foreigners. As fuel economy began to become an issue, NOBODY in my neighborhood gave a thought to buying a Japanese car. Nobody. OPEC appeared and gas shortages came and went. You went Ford, Chevy, Chrysler. That was it. I have a feeling that it was like that in most American middle class neighborhoods back then.
The fact that we have arrived where were are now is painful. Americans, who are being asked to invest billions upon billions of dollars in US automakers and their employees' futures, have already been investing in those companies, against their better interests, for decades. Now Chrysler is dead, GM is on critical life support and Ford has cancer but may beat it.
What do you care?
The heads of these corporations did not spend the last thirty years lying in bed each night, sleepless. They did not turn their spouses in the wee hours and say, "How do I serve the automotive needs of the American public and better protect their health and safety AND help them conserve energy?" They never said that.
Instead, they spent billions of dollars attempting to bribe the Congress to avoid putting in seat belts and air bags, installing catalytic converters and reaching more ambitious fuel efficiency standards. For the most part, they succeeded. Congress approached those issues with the same combination of sentiment, fealty and fear that Detroit's customers accepted. It was said to be "bad for Detroit." Little did we know that falling for that bull for so long was what was bad for Detroit. Now, the American automotive industry, once the industrial pride of this country and a source of so many great paying jobs that changed the economic fortunes of millions of Americans in assembly, parts, dealerships and service, is about to go away.
What do you care?
I feel horribly for every single man and woman who will suffer as the result of this heartbreaking turn of events. I was the voice of Chevy Tahoe TV spots for five years in the early 90's. I drove a Tahoe then and loved it. Now, I drive a Prius.
I've owned Mercs, Chevys, Fords and Jeeps. I'm in the market for a new car now. I'll probably get a hybrid from a Japanese company, manufactured at a transplant factory in the American South. (Read the excellent recent article in the New Yorker by Peter Boyer about the path the Big Three and the UAW took to get here.) I'd like to buy an American car, but I'd feel like a fool doing that now. The leadership of the biggest automakers made sure of that.
There can be only one legitimate response to this crisis. Let energy conservation and fuel efficiency rule the day. Let the carmakers go under. In the same way we have subsidized Big Oil by destabilizing the governments of petroleum rich countries, or outright invading them, we have subsidized Detroit long enough. Just as every barrel of oil is undervalued because we do not factor in that portion of the defense budget that helped bring that oil to market, so we have undervalued our government's, and therefore our, complicity in producing cars that not only were inferior, but drove Detroit itself right off a cliff.
From the ashes of such great innovation, hard work, beautiful design and extraordinary branding-as-myth-making, let's have better cars.
From the ashes of arrogance, greed and corporate cowardice, let's have better cars.
Until then, pull the plug.
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Long ago the average middle-cla
This is the true genesis of a major crisis based on a fatal political choice in order to enforce global power instead of striving to acquire true authority in the managment of natural and human resources.
The more lucid among the readers may have grasped that the real challenge we face is called "Transfer of road traffic into the airspace", i.e. "Democrati
The time has come for a flying model T!
Sorry, kizzi, the tenants of power promoted the automobile to cater for individual mobility since WWI, and so much the more since WWII because they wanted their citizens grounded and confined within a closed-cir
The lack of real individual mobility to go all places the beauty of which woud be destroyed if roads were leading to, led to the frustratio
Getting out of a rolling saloon (and bedroom at times) to reintegrat
You get paid to put on makeup and read other peoples’ words into a camera for our amusement. You are nothing more than a marionette
Not everybody wants, or can afford a car that needs a new $3000 battery every few years--one whose battery production melts a decent-siz
Shut your big, overpaid yapper.
How many of the 702 comments here are from people who directly work in the auto industry? Probably not many.
Just because one has money doesn't mean that one can't sympathize with those who don't.
Whether I agree with Alec's opinion or not, I think that he (and the other celebritie
Why all the vile and hate?
Detroit was making and selling what the people wanted!!! The bigger the better!!! Until gas got crazy, and then GM, Ford, Crysler got beaten to death with a big club and blamed for the problem we created to begin with. We weren't forced to buy these vehicles, we chose to buy them instead of more efficient cars. It was cool to have a SUV by God!
If you had a company, would you sell what people wanted ,or what you thought they should have--of course not, you would sell what people wanted or your business would go under.
The Big 3 deserve to turn things around, and we should back their efforts--w
Most people have really only been asking the big 3 for trucks and SUV's. So that's what they build. Car companies do not build random vehicles and then "convince" the public to buy them. Supply meets demand. And until gas prices started rising over the last 5 years and people started to finally pay attention to global warming and environmen
The crisis is never going to end, basically it is an assault against the American worker and no American worker should want to pay an automobile manufactur
Capitalism has a price and it's always going to be a struggle
The American way is competitio
http://www
Why don't you direct your comments to the responsabl
Too many people are going to pay for the mistakes of a few really bad leaders.
Paisa from Detroit
Of course they didn't! Why would Detroit build something the consumers didn't want? IT WAS TRENDS OF THE AMERICAN BUYING PUBLIC. Big cars/truck
For years WE ignored safety/env
One question since Alec knows what we NEED: Does HE lie awake at knowing he's NOT advocating what the economy/wo
Better idea: Close Hollywood, make the "stars" get middle class jobs. They tell everyone how to live: conserve, buy/be green, yet they fly on private jets, have 12,000sq/f
Baldwins article is more suited for the "Onion"
STOP WATCHING TV
OR appreciate why the free market chose him to have all that money and not you.
but overall, i liked you're ideas.
-blame us
-he writes about it but doesn't really care (i think he cares! what a dumb liberal i am)
-close hollywood
-wasteful lives- i'm sure you've never owned a car getting less than 20 mpg have you! oh no! i'm guessing you're a secret battery storage tech guru actually contributi
-shame!
-HYPOCRITE
i really enjoyed this :)
too much
Yes. Let Detroit go bankrupt. I think we also should also let California go bankrupt. With educationa
Thomas Paine
When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.
Thomas Paine
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary
Thomas Paine