Filed under: AutoblogGreen Exclusive, Legislation and Policy, At Witz End
At Witz' End: What Auto CEOs Should Have Said
Shouldn't those auto/government hearings have been reversed?Did it occur to anyone else that those oh-so-painful auto CEO/government hearings should have been the other way around?
Instead of the heads of America's three remaining automakers groveling, begging and enduring live public floggings trying to sell their case for government loans to get them past the global economic crisis and credit freeze that government greed, corruption and incompetence has created, shouldn't they have been vein-popping outraged and angry? Shouldn't they have pointed accusatory fingers at that sorry collection of arrogant, auto-ignorant Senators and Congressmen who got them into this mess and demanded their assistance?
Shouldn't they have looked those pompous public-trough pinheads straight in the face and demanded to know why investment firms, banks and big insurance get hundreds of billions of taxpayer bailout dollars no questions asked while what's left of America's once-mighty manufacturing muscle begs for loans totaling 1/28 of that initial $700 billion Wall Street bailout? Where were the public humiliation hearings and newly viable business plans for those guys?
(post continues after the jump)
Here is what I'll bet those long-suffering auto CEOs wanted to say, but couldn't:
"You ignorant morons! How dare you accuse us of building cars nobody wants? We sold 8.5 million vehicles in the US last year and millions more around the world. GM still handily outsells Toyota here, Ford outsells Honda and Nissan, and Chrysler sells more than Nissan and Hyundai combined. How many of our new cars have you driven lately? How many quality surveys and plant productivity reports have you reviewed? Have you bothered to check your own EPA's fuel economy ratings?
"Have you paid any attention in the last several years as we've turned our companies upside down, closed dozens of plants, shed hundreds of thousands of hard-working people who did nothing to deserve it, canceled slow-selling models and spent billions of hard-earned dollars redesigning the rest? Are you idiots even aware that we renegotiated our union contracts last year to make our US labor and health-care costs fully competitive by 2010?
"Would you recognize a good business plan if one smacked you upside the head? Have any of you ever run a business, made a business decision or even held a real job? Is there any more dysfunctional organization on the planet, any that more desperately needs a new business plan, than the US Congress? Let's compare our public approval ratings to yours.
"You scold us for using private aircraft? We run global companies flying people, parts and equipment all over the world every day. We use private planes for security and productivity and cost savings over commercial alternatives. If it were not cost effective, we would not do it, and we've been doing a lot less of it lately. Tell us, Ms. Pelosi, how much does that big private 757-200 of yours cost taxpayers to fly you home and back between your tough 3-day weeks?
"For decades, your national energy policy has been summed up by two words: 'cheap gas.' Now you want to punish us for building the big, capable, comfortable vehicles Americans wanted to take advantage of that policy...and for not building millions more smaller, more fuel-efficient cars that, until recently, almost no one wanted, and that we can't make a buck on if we build them here thanks to the high business costs you've imposed upon us through the years.
"You have blocked every avenue of domestic exploration and construction that could lead to eventual energy independence, preferring instead to pump hundreds of billions of dollars overseas to purchase the energy Americans need, much of it from countries that are not our friends. You have piled billions of dollars of unrecoverable costs on us with excessive taxation, overkill regulation and relentless litigation that our off-shore competitors do not have to bear. Then you have rolled out the red carpet to predatory, low-cost foreign competitors who come here to take our market and pump hundreds of millions more dollars out of this country.
"Is there any other country fortunate enough to have an automotive industry that does not support, protect and nourish it in every possible way? We are the only nation on earth too blind and stupid to recognize and treasure the enormous economic and national security advantages of having its own healthy, prosperous auto industry and manufacturing base.
"Now you have passed an enormously expensive new regulation requiring 40 percent higher corporate average fuel economy in hopes of someday reducing the less than 0.2 percent of global human-sourced CO2 attributable to US light vehicles. That will cost us an estimated $100 billion, and even if you believe that is really worth doing at such a cost, where are we going to get that kind of money? Talk about unfunded mandates!
"With recent resizings and restructurings and our new labor contracts, we were well on our ways to full financial competitiveness and profitability. We could have survived and the sudden $4 gas explosion - not our fault - that shifted buyer demand overnight from larger, more profitable vehicles to small unprofitable ones. We have millions of highly desirable, much more fuel-efficient small cars and engines in the pipeline for 2010 and beyond.
"Then came your mortgage meltdown and fast-frozen credit crisis, which no one in this credit-driven business can survive unaided for long: not us, not our suppliers, not our many thousands of independent dealers, not even our most cash-rich foreign competitors. They, too, are asking their governments for assistance. Will they get it? Of course! No other nation will stand idly by and watch its auto industry die.
"There was no end of election rhetoric about creating new jobs. How about saving several million of the ones we have? Can any of you begin to understand how this industry is a huge, fragile, interdependent house of cards? If GM should fail, or declare Chapter 11, so will most of its 3,690 suppliers, beginning with the 2,000 in the US that operate 4,550 facilities in 46 states. Since most also supply key components to everyone else, that will bring down all of us, including US transplant production. Don't believe us? Ask Toyota.
"Vehicle assembly, engine, transmission and parts plants nationwide will shut down. Have you seen a plant town whose plant has died? It's a jobless ghost town whose out-of-work residents, including owners and employees of the small businesses that depended on plant workers' incomes, can't afford to move because their homes – like their hopes and dreams – are worthless. How many of those communities will be in your states and districts? US dealers of all brands, with no new cars, credit or credit-worthy customers, will drop like flies. Without once lucrative auto advertising, many media will shrink and some will die? The predicted initial loss of 3 million jobs will be just the beginning. Can you spell depression?
"Yes, we have lost a lot of market share. Where did you think all those millions of cars and trucks our foreign competitors import and assemble here in taxpayer-subsidized plants in cheap-labor states would be sold, and out of whose hides did you think they would come?
"Yes, we have made mistakes, some bad products and bad business decisions in the past. And so has every one of our competitors. We are entirely different companies today with new leadership and new priorities. We have wide varieties of high quality, high fuel efficiency, highly desirable new products that Americans, as they get to know them, absolutely do want to buy. Why continue to punish us, and the millions of incredibly dedicated, hard-working people at all levels who still depend on us to feed their families, for the sins of our predecessors?
"Why punish the entire country and millions in other countries as well? If you can think of any good reason, we would like to hear it. And don't come back at us with your usual name-calling, finger-pointing, blame-shifting, uninformed opinions, decades-old perceptions and self-serving, grandstanding rhetoric. We have offered our business plans and all the facts behind how we got here and why we need and deserve to survive and prosper for the good of this country and every citizen in it.
"You know full well that this life-threatening position you have put us into is entirely your fault, not ours, and that our future viability depends completely on you. We're anxiously awaiting your business plan for guiding this country out of the economic morass you have created, beginning with the bridge loans we desperately need."
Award-winning automotive writer Gary Witzenburg has been writing about automobiles, auto people and the auto industry for 21 years. A former auto engineer, race driver and advanced technology vehicle development manager, his work has appeared in a wide variety of national magazines including The Robb Report, Playboy, Popular Mechanics, Car and Driver, Road & Track, Motor Trend, Autoweek and Automobile Quarterly and has authored eight automotive books. He is currently contributing regularly to Kelley Blue Book (www.kbb.com), AutoMedia.com, Ward's Auto World and Motor Trend's Truck Trend and is a North American Car and Truck of the Year juror.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
wincros 12:39PM (12/01/2008)
Actually I think the subject auto executives would be embarrassed by the virulent right wing screed put into their mouths by this unpleasant fellow.
Reply
CNCMike 12:47PM (12/01/2008)
"You know full well that this life-threatening position you have put us into is entirely your fault, not ours, and that our future viability depends completely on you.
This statement alone is so ludicrous that the rest of the article is not even worth discussing. Placing 100% of the blame for the failing auto indstry in this country on the government and giving the big 3 a free ride from blame is utterly ridiculous. And if their future viability depends completely on the government, they deserve to fail. If GM and the others are so concerned with keeping money in this country why did they move so many manufactruing facilities to Canada?
Reply
meme 12:50PM (12/01/2008)
Wow, not only does Witz consider his unenformed views on global warming to be expert, but he also fancies himself an economist!
Gary: Let's go through this very, very slowly....
This Is Not A Stock Market Crisis. This Is A Liquidity Crisis.
You come in here and write things like, "demanded to know why investment firms, banks and big insurance get hundreds of billions of taxpayer bailout dollars no questions asked while what's left of America's once-mighty manufacturing muscle begs for loans totaling 1/28 of that initial $700 billion Wall Street bailout?"
Once again, let me stress: This Is A Liquidity Crisis! The entire root of this economic crisis is the fact that few have money to lend, and those who do can't feel confident that their investments will be safe because the insurers are defaulting. You don't address a liquidity crisis by backing up manufactuers; you address it by backing up... wait for it.... *Those Who Loan Money*.
Now, you want to argue that it's *also* critical that we prevent an unemployment crisis by bailing out certain big manufacturers. Fine; I'll save myself the time and let others have that debate. But to pretend that the banking crisis isn't the root of the problem, and that this has something to do with "government greed" is just complete ignorance of the problem.
Reply
anon 4:07PM (12/01/2008)
Yes it's a liquidity crisis and the Big 3 are suffering for it.
Look at it this way: The investment banks, under the government's watchful eye, drove the economy into a ditch. And now some of the injured passengers are crying out for help.
And, your response is to them is: "This is not a medical emergency, this is a traffic accident. You wait for the tow truck!?"
The big 3 need credit and aren't getting it for various reasons (like the banks using their bailout money for acquisitions and expansion).
I think a little anger on the part of the Big 3 is justified.
meme 5:54PM (12/01/2008)
"And, your response is to them is: "This is not a medical emergency, this is a traffic accident. You wait for the tow truck!?""
Completely bogus analogy. A traffic accident happens once and then it's done with. Until the liquidity crisis is solved, it is going to keep hitting companies over and over. Bailing out manufacturers is like trying to cure cancer with pain medicine. Or, to use your transportation analogy, it's like a madman lobbing grenades at cars as they pass on the highway. You're wanting to send an ambulence into the middle of the mess; I'm wanting the madman to be taken out of the picture first.
Kevin 12:51PM (12/01/2008)
Did anyone else yawn multiple times while reading this?
I had trouble convincing myself to read each subsequent paragraph, but kept plugging away hoping for a good point....
Oh well. Ya' win some, ya' lose some. That's a few minutes of my life I'll never get back.
Reply
Alric 1:04PM (12/01/2008)
Whatever. They are still bankrupt after flooding the US market with undesirable cars while selling the good cars in Europe.
I think they should apologize for their incompetence and hubris, and then fired.
Reply
Ian 1:33AM (12/02/2008)
"They are still bankrupt after flooding the US market with undesirable cars while selling the good cars in Europe"
So that's why they still outsell all other auto makers? Becuase nobody wants their cars? Jesus. My brain hurts trying to parse your logic. They built what the customers wanted. Perhaps you know some mystic business tactic that allows you to build cars customers don't want and still turn a profit?
The "big 3" were on track to turn around until the financial market imploded. It imploded because congress and regulators stood by while it did so and with ample warning:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28001417/
meme 1:08PM (12/01/2008)
Oh, and FYI, Lutz:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17035721/
"But Snow said on Thursday that the negotiations over Pelosi's transport have been conducted solely by the House sergeant-at-arms and the Pentagon, with no direct involvement by the speaker or her office -- or the White House"
(That's Tony Snow, Bush's then press secretary)
Anyways, did it occur to you that maybe, just maybe, CEOs coming to beg for money should consider cutting any appearance of extravegance, all practicalities aside? My father was the president of Shell trading up until recently, and he usually flew coach on domestic flights. A 6'5" Shell president in a cramped coach seat, and you're telling me that these people had no better way to go to a place where they were begging for money than *private jets*? Give me a break.
Reply
Doc 1:09PM (12/01/2008)
"Shouldn't they have looked those pompous public-trough pinheads straight in the face and demanded "
Certainly, but that would have angered the pompus pinheads.
Reply
don 1:20PM (12/01/2008)
Gary's ignorance wastes our time --- (ya, the gov. policies the last 8 or 28 years have not promoted oil independence, instead the gov. has given Detroit just about everything they lobbied sooo hard for...)
Reply
Woodenbee 1:34PM (12/01/2008)
this is an interesting premise, but fails in the details, first of all most of the senators on the committee were powerless to restrain the recklessness of the Bush administration in all its neocon, freemarket ,ideological non reality, deregulating madness, second those car exec old boys are no doubt friends/ golf buddies with all the Lehman brothers, citibank, etc etc losers that caused this meltdown and that are now being paid by Paulson to make it worse, whatever happened to investing in new products and ideas? anybody could do a better job than these people
Reply
Woodenbee 1:42PM (12/01/2008)
Another point I'd add is the only reason, conservatives are hesitant to hand over the pork to the auto makers is revenge for their union employees voting for Obama, they see a chance to strike a blow against working people and are taking it as usual... regardless of the consequences, reckless, dangerous, short sighted behavior is the signature of the neocons
Reply
Ed 3:37PM (12/01/2008)
Excellent, well written article! I applaud you for finding the facts and putting the blame squarely where it belongs...on the Politicians!
Reply
Pablo 3:51PM (12/01/2008)
Dear AutoblogGreen,
I have been looking hard, but I seem to be missing the punch line in all of his joke posts. He seems to be overly opinionated, but on the wrong side of the Green spectrum. He comes off as hostel towards your loyal reader base. I have a hard time reading the comments to his posts because practically NO ONE agrees with him. Please consider laying him off or not inviting him back for anymore guest posts. I am pretty sure he could get a great job working for Fox News. Please get rid of this writer.
Thanks,
Pablo
Reply
why not the LS2LS7? 4:37PM (12/01/2008)
Gary, I'm sorry that people crap on you on here. You're a real trooper for coming back each time.
This site is crowded with people who thing that $100,000 (or not even for sale at all) 2-seaters somehow indicate the end of the ICE age.
As much as ABGers would like it to be otherwise, big cars are still more popular with Americans than small ones.
Reply
Josh Monroe 4:49PM (12/01/2008)
I honestly beleive that they should just file for Chapter 11 so that they can restructure the proper way. I am tempted to say they should file for Chapter 7 so that they can truly die and thier property can be purchased by companies that have proven themselves capable of creating good efficent cars.
Serriously, Chrysler doesn't make a single vehicle that gets over 30 MPG highway but, my Civic gets better than that when driving strictly city miles.
And, if you think any American companies consistently builds nothing but reliable efficent cars, you might want to pick up a copy of the 2009 Consumer Reports Buyer's Guide.
Reply
Frylock350 9:00AM (12/02/2008)
And a Chevy Cobalt gets better mileage than your Civic, just like the Malibu gets better mileage than Accord.
In fact if you go down the line GM builds more efficient vehicles than Honda almost everywhere they compete. Honda's lame V6 Ridgeline can't even muster the same MPGs as a bigger and more capable.V8 Silverado Crew Cab. Honda's mommywagon (Pilot) isn't competitive with GM's mommywagon (Traverse).
Josh Monroe 9:19AM (12/02/2008)
I acctualy know several people with Cobalts and one person with a Malibu. One of the things you will find with most Hondas and Toyotas is that they do much better than the EPA determines. From my real-life of two Civics compared to 3 Cobalts, the Civic does 3-4 MPG better every time. Maybe this is due to the fact that the EPA claims 33 mpg highway for my 2001 Civic and I routinely achieve 36 mpg for city/highway (60/40) combined and about 42 mpg for pure highway.
Also, the individual I know with a Malibu gets the same mileage that we get with my wife's 95 accord.
meme 6:08PM (12/01/2008)
I just made myself read more of this tripe, and, would you believe it, it just keeps getting worse:
"Now you have passed an enormously expensive new regulation requiring 40 percent higher corporate average fuel economy in hopes of someday reducing the less than 0.2 percent of global human-sourced CO2 attributable to US light vehicles. That will cost us an estimated $100 billion, and even if you believe that is really worth doing at such a cost, where are we going to get that kind of money?"
I'm not in a position to comment on that $100 billion figure, but given its scale, I'm betting it's as equally out of the ballpark as his 0.2% figure.
The US has 30% of the world's automobiles and contributes 45% of its automotive CO2 emissions. The global transport sector is 13% of all GHG emissions, but is the fastest rising GHG source of all sectors, and is projected to grow 80% by 2030, according to the UN. As of 2002, 55% of transport emissions were from cars, and another 33.4% from other road vehicles, mostly heavy trucks. Given these numbers, show me how you get 0.2%. I double-dog-dare you.
Really, though, I just love the hilarity of how nothing is your fault. It's beautiful. Gas price spike? Automakers had nothing to do with it! Pushing SUVs and fighting mileage standards played absolutely no role, right? ;) Subprimes? Automakers weren't involved! Oh, hey, let's just pretend like GMAC never touched subprimes while we're at it. Everything's everyone else's fault, you poor, poor victims!
Reply