Before the Michigan primary, Mitt Romney and other Republican candidates were frantically launching trial balloons about what they would do to lift the economic gloom over the state. The answer, any Michigander could have told them, is selling more cars, stupid. Voters seem to want to know how the candidates will get it done. Two vignettes crossed my mind as I read about the candidates rattling off the need for revitalization, retraining programs, and other vague campaign promises.
Driving down Route 202 around Flemington Junction, N.J., it seemed that most of the dealers on the famed Automobile Mile strip seemed to be overstocked with unsold cars and trucks. Fields out back of the dealerships overflowed with SUV's and Minivans.
Then I remembered my last trip to Cuba. There seemed to be a scarcity of new cars in the streets of Havana and environs. A new car was from the 1950's. It was a surreal experience climbing into a 1936 Desoto cab. I expected to see George Raft jumping on the running board with his Tommy gun.
This said two things to me. On the one hand, they made very good cars in the old days, before Detroit introduced "planned obsolescemce," the concept in which cars were made to wear out in time for you to buy a new one.
Cuba must have good car mechanics to keep those old jalopies on the road. They had to be wizards of innovations with the embargo. No brake fluid? I was told, forget about it. Shampoo worked just as well.
As quaint as the 1950's Dodges, Packards, Hudsons and Plymouths might be, somehow the Cuban people might be induced to trade in their junkers for something a little more current.
What an untapped market for unsold inventory, it occurred to me, as I drove past the New Jersey new car lots. And then I started seeing the car commercials during the NFL Playoffs.
A guy was talking about the Event of a Lifetime Sale. Buick Legends were going fast in a famous GM Red Tag event at incredibly low prices. RAM pick up trucks were available at the best price ever. "Live life to the fullest," the TV car salesman was saying. "Get a great deal in the Dodge you always wanted. Grab Life By the Horns." And not only that: "Be covered by the best guarantee in the business... Life-time guarantee for the power train." A sales message like that would resonate in Cuba today.
No dinero? No problemo. The car companies were offering 0% APR for 60 months. Plus, no payments until summer time. As much as those Cubans loved socialism offering them the same kind of deal an American who can't afford new cars either would make cars sell like hot cakes. Cuba will be the only socialist country to go to the poor house in a brand new automobile.
And the auto loans could be guaranteed by the American government as part of its inevitable aid package for the nation's endangered auto industry. Any losses incurred by liberal financial terms could be included in the CIA budget.
Sure they don't make cars in Detroit, Flint and Ypsilanti like they used to. Let them Fidelistas find out themselves later down the road a piece. Caveat emptor.
But how could all of this be done? Remember the embargo?
Here's my plan. Mitt Romney, being a favorite son of the former governor, George, back in the good sales years of the 1960's, should have the courage to advocate giving the automobile industry a break. Give the car companies a waiver on the embargo as the FCC now gives waivers allowing media companies to break the law against owning newspapers and TV stations in the same market.
Allowing cars to be sent to Cuba while supplies last is not only an economic but also a public health issue. It is unsanitary the way Cuban people without cars are now packed like anchovies in their buses, especially the notorious camelbacks in Havana.
Since the embargo, as stupid as it is, remains a pillar of American policy since 1961, call the Save Detroit Now Plan a semi-embargo.
We dump products on Third World countries all the time, so dumping our cars into the Cuban market would be no big deal. It would also be a win-win for us. Not only would it revive the ailing Michigan auto economy, it would be one more nail in Castro's coffin. He's already on his last legs, judging by recent pictures where he always seemed to be held up by somebody with a beard in the background. It will break his heart that after 50 years of socialism the people love capitalist cars more than him.
How the Republicans, the party of big business and special interest, ever permitted American industry to be shut out of the Cuban market for all these years, allowing French, Spanish, Italian and Dutch companies to capture hotels, oil, plastics, drug markets, is stupefying. But all that is ancient history. Let bygones be bygones.
A Republican presidential candidate who came out for a waiver for the auto industry now would be showing his political and economic independence in time of crisis, carving a place in history as Richard Nixon opened China to trade in the 1970s.
"The business of America," as the last great pro-business president, Calvin Coolidge, observed, "is business." "Ask not what you can do for your country," Mitt Romney would be wise to say in future debates, following the lead of another Michigan New Frontiersman, "but what you can do for GM. Ford and Chrysler, too."
It's time the Republican Party woke up and smelled the MTBE, the oxygenate toxic by-product added to reduce emissions in the gasoline.
