a midway bikelog

With the money flying around to save the banking industry, it’s no great surprise that other industries are going to try to pile on to the brand-new teat that that government grew this fall. The latest of these is the american auto industry, who have proven time and time again that they can’t hack it on their own in the modern marketplace. Chrysler has been bailed out at least once, with money to retool their operation, and they pulled themselves up just enough to be bought up by Daimler Benz.

Ford, Chrysler and GM, in general, have been making crap cars for around 30 years now, and the imports have been gaining on them. Despite the recent push to sell Cadillacs to jerks who want to elbow their way through traffic can’t save the company. The only thing that has sold in any numbers are SUVs, which is perfect and ironic in the “polishing the brass on the Titanic” sense. How many people are going to buy a Yukon now just because they’re discounted and gas is temporarily again below $2/gallon?

The Big Fear, of course, is that the loss of the auto industry will lead to a general collapse of many sectors of the economy that rely on them, not to mention the thousands who will directly lose jobs at their plants. With Honda and Toyota and even VW building cars in the US, it may not be such a big hit, just a different name on the paycheck.

These companies have fought regulations for cleaner, more efficient cars that European and Asian builders take for granted. They’ve ignored market trends toward smaller high-quality cars and more efficient cars. Their big response is hybrid SUVs, which truly is a matter of putting lipstick on a pig and only shows how deep the cranial-anal inversion goes.

Auto workers don’t deserve to lose their jobs. Auto executives DO deserve to lose their jobs if they can’t make a product that sells and keeps the company afloat over the long haul. If they’re really in this much trouble now, then they’ve pissed away the profits they’ve made on the temporary SUV craze when they should have been spending it on real innovation. Instead, it seems that they’ve spent their money on lobbyists trying to squeeze a few more years out of a dead system rather than joining the fray of real market competition. If the conservatives are right, and the marketplace demands cars from an American company, then someone will step up and do it. If not, we can happily welcome our new overlords the dolphins Honda.

Happily, the treasury has already rejected the idea of a direct bailout, but it’s certainly not the end of the story. I do like the idea proposed by some that as a matter of policy the government demands ever higher standards for its fleet vehicles. Nothing pushes innovation quite like a customer who demands it. In this, the government can take the lead at a time when consumers aren’t going to be buying enough cars to send a strong message.