Re: And NOW, the Big 3 are doing what Packard couldn't do...

Posted by Owen_Dyneto On 2008/12/5 17:24:59

Gerry (GTO), I get your point and don't disagree. I've been attentively watching the automakers hearings in Washington and two things occur to me. Firstly, I wish they'd quite saying that the Big 3 haven't been making what people want to buy. That's only true for the last half-year, up until then they were making exactly what too many Americans wanted, big guzzler Hummers, etc. With the kind of obscene profits that those vehicles generated and with seemingly endless demand, why should they try to make anything different? Of course they had long since given up making Toyota and Nissan etc.-like bread-and-butter sedans and coupes. But if they had made such cars, with their incrediblely disadvantageous labor/benefit costs, the content of equivalently-priced cars would have to have been much less in order to make a profit and hence, who would have bought them? So GM etc. receeded into the niche where they could best be competitive and profitable.

Secondly, I was waiting for some committee member to pose the question, if the Big-3 made cars price and quality competitive with Toyota, Nissan, etc., would American's buy them? It's so ingrained into our psyche that "American-made car" = "lousy quality", that situation first has to change, and then the perception of it has to be changed. Now, how do you legislate that?