As a GM Lessee, I got a personal note from Troy Clarke, Group President of General Motors North America. I didn’t know he had my email address.
…we need your help now. Simply put, we need you to join us to let Congress know that a bridge loan to help U.S. automakers also helps strengthen the U.S. economy and preserve millions of American jobs.
Despite what you may be hearing, we are not asking Congress for a bailout but rather a loan that will be repaid. (emphasis his)
Despite our successful efforts to restructure, reduce costs and enhance liquidity, U.S. auto sales rely on access to credit, which is all but frozen through traditional channels.
Troy, that’s funny. I went to lease a Cadillac CTS and a Chrysler 300C and what they told me was that neither GM nor Chrysler will lease me a car, but banks like US Bank will. I went to Infiniti three weeks ago and they leased me a car. I tried to buy American but to no avail.
The Americans stopped leasing cars well before the credit crisis.
The consequences of the domestic auto industry collapsing would far exceed the $25 billion loan needed to bridge the current crisis. According to a recent study by the Center for Automotive Research:
• One in 10 American jobs depends on U.S. automakers
• Nearly 3 million jobs are at immediate risk
• U.S. personal income could be reduced by $150 billion
• The tax revenue lost over 3 years would be more than $156 billionDiscussions are now underway in Washington, D.C., concerning loans to support U.S. carmakers. I am asking for your support in this vital effort by contacting your state representatives.
Troy, I think it would be a great idea to contact my State Representative. I agree that we need to do something for you because our government is responsible for some of your issues. I also believe America needs to stay in the automotive manufacturing business. If for no other reason, its a matter of pride, and probably national security.
But you guys have made some really boneheaded moves over the decades and have allowed the unions to run the show. Take a lesson from Northwest Airlines. Price the jobs at what they are worth, let the strike begin, and fire the ones that don’t show up. There are plenty of good people looking for work.
If you won’t, you don’t deserve to exist, you’re not getting my business and you don’t deserve help from taxpayers.
Nonetheless, my wish would be that you get your loan, but only under the following conditions:
- Congress suspends CAFE regulations with an eye to abolishing them completely so that you can focus on making great cars that your customers actually want. Let them buy an Aveo from Hundai. If they can make money schilling them, all the power to them.
- The Unions will have to make a choice. Reduce pay and benefits to bring labor costs in line with the rest of the market word wide or be gone.
- Rick’s gotta go. You need a CEO with a spine. Someone who knows how to run a chainsaw.
- You still have too many brands. Lose Hummer and combine Pontiac and Buick or Pontiac and Chevrolet. Combine Chevy Trucks with GMC. Lose the fat. Badge engineering has to go, once and for all.
- You have to agree never to cancel the Corvette. I want one. A new one. Some day.
- Fix the radio in my Suburban.
Thanks for the email. I hope the wife and kids are well.
It’s the “Bridge-loan to Nowhere”!
I am not, nor have I ever been, Troy Clarke. But I have run a chainsaw.
I don’t think union pay is the big problem. It’s the insane work rules and retirement packages that are killing the auto industry.
We cannot affort to bail out an industry where a guy that bolts on fenders cannot snap in a pre-made wiring harness because it’s not his “trade”. If a guy has to spend 5 minutes to finish a task that has to be completed for the next shift to continue the job, just f*cking do it, and no, you don’t get to punch in an extra hour for it.
It’s also time for the UAW to take responsibility for the retirement of it’s own members, or for the members to take responsibility for thier own retirements.
Before we advocate Al Dunlap’s methods of leadership, look up how he pulled a “Miniscribe” and more or less destroyed the company. GM’s had a few Dunlap types already, and that’s a big part of their problems.
I’m with you on CAFE and the union/pension/medical obligations, but Dunlap? He’s a disgrace to his alma mater. (USMA)
BB: I used the link to illustrate what I meant by “chainsaw” artist generally and not so much specifically Al Dunlap. Good point.
About 6 weeks ago I walked into Rosedale Chev to get a Trade in quote on our Audi (Sue me; my wife wanted heated leather seats. What the wife wants, the wife gets. After 6 months, she missed the Mini Van and wanted to sit high again. What the Wife wants, the wife gets!) We settled on a 2008 Chevy Equinox, but not an agreement in the trade in value of the Audi, so I left.
Within a half hour of being home, they called me back and A) upped the offer on the Auid, AND B) offered my 3.9 5 years on the new vehicle. We closed the deal before the sunset. Didn’t seem to me that their money was tight, then.
So I was one of the few that actually bought new last month, but am leary on their complaing about credit. Maybe it has more to do witht he credit worthiness of the cutomers and they want to be able to sell cars to higher risk customers, I don’t know.
But I still say no to corporate bailouts.
= = = =
“We cannot affort to bail out an industry where a guy that bolts on fenders cannot snap in a pre-made wiring harness because it’s not his “trade”. If a guy has to spend 5 minutes to finish a task that has to be completed for the next shift to continue the job, just f*cking do it, and no, you don’t get to punch in an extra hour for it.”
= = = =
I agree. I think Moonbat Tom might be right twice in one day here. Scary thought!
“We settled on a 2008 Chevy Equinox, but not an agreement in the trade in value of the Audi, so I left. Within a half hour of being home, they called me back and A) upped the offer on the Auid”
LIAR!
The truth is that YOU called THEM back and promised to scrape off all of those idiotic moonbat stickers, didn’t you, DIDN’T YOU!!
*LMAO*
*laughing* That was Funny!
Again, Mitch will confirm, I don’t do Bumpers stickers on the car (but have been known to lay them on the back window ledge) and besides, it was my wife’s car and she is, shall we say, politically agnostic.
But, to be clear, whenever she thinks she catches me in a lie, she calls me a Republican *laughing*
Troy, that’s funny. I went to lease a Cadillac CTS and a Chrysler 300C and what they told me was that neither GM nor Chrysler will lease me a car, but banks like US Bank will.
Why do you think it’s funny? US Bank is being quite rational: you’re a better credit risk than GM or Chrysler. Lending money to a company almost sure to go under soon means you’ll lose most if not all that money in Chapter 11. And they can always send Vinnie over to get the car if you don’t pay; it’s harder to do that to GM with all their lawyers.
Doing a Northwest on the unions is almost certainly necessary. I’ve heard the frustration with the union and work rules from both sides. The guys at the Marysville Honda plant were happier not getting trashed by the union for not following work rules and getting the stuff built (you should hear the stories, like the guy who got disciplined for tightening some bolts he noticed were lose on a car rather than sending it back to previous stage for rework, which would have slowed the line down). The brother-in-law works for Chrysler as a manufacturing engineer and has to deal with the work rules and has nothing good to say about them. Management should have done it when they had a chance, but they’re too spineless to do that. Now it will be up to the bankruptcy judge in Chapter 11, and you can bet that he’ll have to do that. All that doing it that way does is make lawyers a bunch richer and give management political butt-coverage. As I said, spineless management.
You’ve hit the bullseye, nerd. The unions and the Democrat party are frozen with fear that a bankruptcy judge will look at the loony bin that passes for a unionized car plant and laugh his ass off.
A judge, any judge with a lick of sense is not going to sign off on a plan that doesn’t include a top to bottom overhaul of the auto industries…in effect, he’ll lift the curtain and we’ll all see a big fat union boss standing there stuffing cash into his pockets.
And that’s not to say that management should continue to operate a fleet of private jets…a fleet, mind you. Or that a CEO should get paid megabucks for maintaining a failing business model.
They think their going broke now, just wait until they get their goverment money and are told what type of car they can now make, with no changes in the union. Of course then the gov will pass a law telling us what kind of car we can buy, so it will all work out.
First off, we haven’t bought or leased a new car since 1995; the new car depreciation just isn’t worth it. We buy late model used (sometimes premium) and we’ve been very happy and a lot more liquid.
Second, my wife read an article to me last night from a financial consultant outlinging how to be “fire-proof”. He said if you think your employer is in trouble and might be laying people off, go to the person with the proper authority in the matter and tell him/her that if it would help the company out, you’d be willling to take a 10% pay cut. The consultant guarantees that you’ll be on the short “do not fire” list. It sounds counter-intuitive, but 90% of what you’re making is better than unemployment and you’ve got a chance to stick around until things improve.
You’re free to make such an offer if you’re a non-union employee. An individual’s ability to outwork or outthink his fellow employees scares the bejabbers out of the union bosses who couldn’t conceive of or understand such an offer even though if they did it on behalf of their members it might save jobs and the bosses’ relevance.
The unions and the Democrat party are frozen with fear that a bankruptcy judge will look at the loony bin that passes for a unionized car plant and laugh his ass off.
It will be a repeat of what happened when US Steel and the like went bankrupt and the union benefits, pensions, and the like were shredded beyond belief. I believe the effective payoff was less than $0.20 on the dollar of the pensions and benefits, and wages dropped substantially, as did jobs. Chapter 11 will be a death kneel to the UAW, their cushy contracts, and their political power and everybody knows it.
And with the management the Big 3 has now, they’ll never take advantage of their situation to try and save their butts, their shareholders money, and the UAW’s jobs. They’re too much in bed with the UAW to make reasonable business adjustments. It’d require them taking initiative, being proactive and responsible for other people’s money and jobs, and that’s something those pencil pushers aren’t trained to do. If you’re an investor in GM or Ford you should be outraged at what they’ve done with your money, and not just for flying to the bailout hearings in private jets.
Chapter 11 will also be a massive blow to Big 3 management and the Big 3 coffers and they’ll all come out much, much smaller and with a tremendous amount of money gone from their pockets into lawyers’ pockets to get through this. Chapter 11 isn’t cheap, and something on the scale that we’re talking about will certainly push GM down below Honda and Toyota. And given their management and labor right now that’s where they deserve to be.
Heck, the UAW should be pushing for cuts since there will be far less money to go around once the lawyers and accountants suck GM dry in Chapter 11 and they won’t get a better deal on the table than they could do now. Except that politically they can’t do that deal without being voted out of the union power structure even though it’s the right thing to do.
The Pelosi scheme of subsidizing “green” cars and then mandating them in this country would only work short term if at all. The Japs would adapt quickly, frankly more quickly than the Big 3 and UAW, and still eat the US auto market. Toyota could have been #1 in this country any time in the last 4-5 years, but they’ve been politically sensitive and made sure to keep their gains to just under GM levels. With this economic climate Toyota and company need to maximize their returns to minimize their pain, so they’re now saying to hell with playing nice politics.
Chapter 11 is the only hope for the auto industry in this country. And even then I have strong doubts on it succeeding very much given the management in the Big 3. The judge can shred the UAW and their contracts but he has a harder time removing mediocre and bumbling managers. That’s supposed to be the job of the board of directors and the shareholders, but those folks have fallen down on the job.
Ugh, I’ve hit a Peevish length. I apologize and hang my head in shame.
Ugh, I’ve hit a Peevish length. I apologize and hang my head in shame.
One difference though. You actually made sense.