Electrical Failure

Oh, of course, we should have seen this coming.

General Motors is expected to lose $1.6 billion on its electric vehicles as a result of falling sales and the end of government subsidies and tax credits in favor of Trump's policy encouraging greater production and sales of gasoline-powered vehicles.  And it's not just GM that's suffering.  Sales of all EV models in These States, like the 2026 Chevrolet Equinox EV (pictured above), could end up going down by 50 percent as a result of the factors suddenly working against them.

The truth is, though, that even if Kamala Harris had been elected President (I know, a ridiculous idea) or if former President Biden had been elected to a second term (an idea even more ridiculous than the previous one), electric-vehicle sales still would have ended up in the toilet.  Elon Musk was drawing unfavorable attention to Tesla even before Trump got back in power, EVs are still too expensive with few places at which to charge them, and efforts to attract nontraditional customers as with the Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck have failed.  And,, as I noted before - when I pointed out that it took a hundred years for the Fifteenth Amendment, which gave blacks the right to vote, to be implemented - Americans traditionally are stubbornly resistant to change.

It's probably for the best, at least for now, as many if not most EVs are lacking in quality and reliability.  I have been reading horror stories about the dependability of Volkswagen's ID.3 hatchback (pictured above - my own photo, taken in Munich! 😁), which was developed in a contentious period at Volkswagen under the leadership of Herbert Diess, who was trying to get Volkswagen to embrace the streamlined development process that Tesla uses to create electric vehicles.  The EV-platform program that did get developed missed the mark, as it were, and the resulting product recalled the teething problems that the original Volkswagen Golf (marketed as the Rabbit in North America) faced after its debut in Europe in 1974 and in North America in 1975.  At that time, Volkswagen's experience in making watercooled, front-engine, front-wheel-drive cars was limited to whatever expertise was gained in having purchased NSU and Auto Union nearly a decade before.  VW had even less expertise with electric vehicles when it started developing them, so maybe no one should be surprised that the ID.3 - and the ID.4 crossover, for that matter - has had a lot of problems.

But you have to walk before you run, and Trump's anti-EV policies will ensure that GM's and Ford's EV programs don't even make it out of the starting gate - not to mention cause Volkswagen's Tennessee factory to produce fewer ID.4s and more Atlases.  As for EVs imported from elsewhere, well, the tariffs will likely stop them from gaining traction.  Meanwhile, GM has to figure out how to go forward into the future while dealing with a presidential administration that is hostile to the future.  How it does that is, like how Democrats win back power in Washington, anyone's guess.  

When General Motors Challenged the Japanese

I've always maintained that Detroit prefers to make sport utility vehicles because it knows it can't compete in the regular-car market against the imports.  But once upon a time, General Motors accepted that very challenge to make a car that could do just that.

Forty years ago yesterday, General Motors introduced for the 1982 model year its subcompact J-car, designed to compete globally against other multinational automakers but aimed squarely at the Japanese in GM's home market.  It was sold in Europe as the Opel Ascona and the Vauxhall Cavalier, in Japan as the Isuzu Aska, and in Australia as the Holden Camira.  All five of GM's North American passenger car brands of the time offered versions of the J-car (Cadillac too? yes, and I'll get to that later), but for simplicity I'll concentrate primarily on Chevrolet's version, the Cavalier, because small cars are ideally entry-level vehicles and Chevrolet is GM's entry-level division.

The J-car and the Chevrolet Cavalier version of it in particular was the most ambitious product General Motors offered in the U.S. and Canada since the Chevrolet Corvair two decades earlier.  The Cavalier was only the second Chevrolet to feature front-wheel drive, and three of its available body styles (a two-door sedan, a four-door sedan, and a station wagon) were designed in an unpretentious angular style like the Toyota Corolla of the time, while a three-door hatchback aped the styling of Toyota's then-most recent edition of its Celica 2 + 2 coupe.  Needless to say, GM was pulling out all the stops in appealing to Toyota and Honda customers with as many different styles as possible, aimed at youthful sportiness as well as basic practicality.  The car was designed to provide maximum fuel efficiency - no small thing in May 1981, when gas prices were still high as a result of the Iranian revolution - and it came with a long list of standard features plus an improvement in build quality, which GM hoped would not only make the car a success but also blunt the imports' rising share of the U.S. auto market.

But, umm, it didn't quite work out like that.

The Cavalier and its Pontiac counterpart, which went through several names before Pontiac finally settled on the Sunbird name, as well as its Buick and Oldsmobile equivalents (the Skyhawk and the Firenza, respectively, which came out later), were disadvantaged by the very qualities GM hoped that buyers would appreciate.  The cars' long list of standard features and its fuel-efficient engine made the car overpriced and underpowered.  The cheapest Cavalier sold for just under $7,000 at a time when most Japanese imports sold for $5,000, and the new 1.8-liter four-cylinder Chevrolet engine all J-cars used was rated at only 88 horsepower.  It was easy on gasoline, alright, but it could barely provide enough power to propel a car loaded with so many standard features.  With an optional three-speed automatic transmission instead of the standard four-speed manual transmission, the car had even less pickup.  Acceleration was  recorded at about 0-60 mph in fifteen to twenty seconds.  Considering that the Cavalier hatchback (which was dropped after 1987) was meant to be sporty, that had to be pretty embarrassing.  

What also put the Cavalier and its corporate cousins at a disadvantage was what they didn't have.  It was Volkswagen that pointed out in its advertising that the J-cars lacked features that had become commonly available in its own Rabbit, then made in Pennsylvania.  Such features included fuel injection, a five-speed manual transmission, and - remember, this was 1981 - a high-fuel-economy diesel option.  (Chevrolet offered a diesel engine as an option not in the Cavalier but in the Chevette.) Ironically, Volkswagen of America had re-engineered the American Rabbit to ride and perform like a Chevrolet, so if you bought a 1981 Rabbit, you got a small Chevrolet that was better equipped and more advanced than a real Chevrolet.

Also better quality.  The U.S.-built Rabbit had its problems, but the Cavalier and the other J-cars turned out to be mechanically unreliable in their first year of sale - more so than the Rabbit - while fit and finish were only marginally better than the small cars GM had produced in the '70s.  All of the auto magazines hated the J-car, calling it boring and slow and dismissing it as a car meant for people who read Consumer Reports and saw cars as appliances.  But, Consumer Reports didn't like the car either - ironically, for most of the same reasons the car magazines panned it - and it advised consumers against buying it in its first year.  "Should you buy a J-car?"  Consumer Reports wrote.  "Our advice: Not yet.  Maybe not at all."  After a year's worth of data on its reliability, Consumer Reports' verdict was final - definitely not at all.  

Thus, the J-car was hardly a threat to the Japanese, who had to agree to voluntary temporary limitations on the cars they exported to the U.S. in the early eighties to help Detroit regain its footing but still managed to remain strong in the then-vital compact market.

The Cavalier and its J-car siblings were improved going forward, however.  The engine was enlarged to two liters for 1983, producing more needed power, and fuel injection was included, and there would eventually be options such as a five-speed stick shift and a V-6 engine.  A convertible model was added, and a Cavalier Z-24 sport compact was developed in response to the Volkswagen GTI and the Honda Civic S.  (Pontiac would feature its own sport-compact J-car, the Sunbird GT.)  

Before I go any further, the facts dictate that I should briefly talk about Cadillac's version of the J-car.  Yes, this car was sold as a Cadillac - the Cimarron, Cadillac's first attempt at making a compact luxury sedan that could compete with the BMW 3-series and the Saab 900, as well as pre-Lexus/Infiniti offerings from Toyota (the Cressida) and Datsun/Nissan (the first-generation Maxima).  Cadillac was hoping to aim at younger buyers, a departure for a division whose cars were aimed and older customers who had worked their way up the GM brand chain from entry-level Chevrolets and ultimately moving up through Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick in that order.  The Cimarron, only available as a four-door sedan, had no real performance capabilities, few standard features that distinguished it from other J-cars, and was less desirable than a comparable European sport sedan. And no, I'm not talking about the BMW 3-series.  I'm talking about the Volkswagen Jetta, the Rabbit-based sedan then early in its first generation, which offered BMW performance and handling at a Chevrolet price.  How could a Cimarron compete with high-price European compacts when it even paled in comparison to a low-buck European compact?  

The only people who bought Cimarrons were traditional Cadillac customers who wanted something more fuel-efficient than a Sedan de Ville, not the young urban professionals Cadillac sought out for new customers. Despite attempts to improve it, the Cimarron was never seen as being anything more than a Cavalier with leather seats, and it was dropped after the 1988 model year.  Though Cadillac would prefer that we forget about it, the Cimarron is still an important milestone in Cadillac's history because it taught the division how not to make a compact luxury sport sedan; the knowledge Cadillac gained from this mistake of a car led to the much-heralded CTS.  But learning such a lesson and moving on from it with success was an anomaly for GM, as I will explain. 

Eventually Oldsmobile and Buick would drop their J models, leaving Chevrolet and Pontiac to carry the J on.  And in the mid-eighties, the Cavalier would be among the top-selling nameplates in the U.S. auto market - it was the top seller in 1984 - and would eventually sell 254,426 copies before being redesigned in 1995.  It would continue for another ten years after that before being replaced by the Cobalt (below).

Although a car that was a bestseller and lasted two generations for nearly a quarter of a century can hardly be called a failure, there was the sense that GM had missed a perfect opportunity to pull ahead of the Japanese in the small-car market.  The Cavalier was a decent small car, but GM came up short in making an excellent small car, the sort of car that consumers expected from Toyota and Honda.  You don't get a second chance at a first impression, and the first impression GM left when the J-car was first introduced was that its car couldn't measure up to the competition.  GM more or less admitted that it couldn't produce a superior small car on its own, which led to GM chairman Roger Smith to start the project that eventually yielded Saturn at the beginning of the nineties. By the middle of the 1980s, GM found itself collaborating with Toyota to make a Corolla-based Chevrolet and putting Chevrolet badges on Suzukis and Isuzus, a further admission of the Cavalier's shortcomings.  By the end of the decade, the next generations of these Japan-based Chevrolets were rebranded Geo, the Chevrolet sub-brand that was an admission from GM that not only could it build a small car comparable to a Toyota, it couldn't sell one as a Chevrolet even if it could, the storied American nameplate meaning nothing to American car buyers by the late 1980s.  

Oh yeah, the import share of the U.S. auto market rose from 25 percent in 1980 to 38 percent in 1990.  By 2007, import brands accounted for a majority of new cars sold in America.  You have to ask yourself how things would have turned out if GM had gotten the J-car right from the start.  

Although the Chevrolet name was rehabilitated, rendering the Geo nameplate unnecessary, successive small cars in the division's lineup, the Cobalt and its own successor, the Cruze, never completely lived up to expectations, and, in its home market at least, Chevrolet has leaned more toward sport utility vehicles as a result.  (And Saturn turned out to be yet another failed experiment.)  True, it makes the electric Bolt hatchback, but that's a niche vehicle.  The fact that Chevrolet is pushing vehicles based on light-duty truck platforms with no plans to compete in the compact-sedan market - and apart from the Malibu, it doesn't have a sedan of any size - shows that GM, which went through bankruptcy in 2009, learned the right lesson from the Cavalier experience but drew the wrong conclusion.  Rather than take lessons from its knowledge that it couldn't make a superior small car, GM only went back to making big vehicles and showed indifference to competing with the Japanese.  

GM challenged the Japanese . . . and lost.

And when GM gave up on regular cars and started persuading Americans to buy SUVs, Ford and Chrysler did the same, which meant that all of Detroit gave up.

Keep On Truckin'?

I recently finished reading Bill Vlasic's 2011 book "Once Upon a Car," about the the bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler and the painful restructuring of Ford in the late two thousand zeroes, and while this blog entry is not a review of that book, I feel compelled to recount some tidbits from it that, though this all happened only a decade or so ago, seem like a much more distant past.

There are accounts of President Obama talking with Ford scion William Clay Ford, Jr. about a future of motoring that envisioned all sorts of electric cars, Robert Lutz of General Motors waxing rhapsodic about the then-all-new Chevrolet Volt, then the most advanced hybrid vehicle in the world, and Fiat's Sergio Marchionne being eager to help Chrysler, which his firm had just absorbed, by designing fuel-efficient Dodges and Chryslers based on Fiat platforms.  All of this looked oh, so promising as the Big Three recovered from near-extinction.

Well, what a difference a decade makes.  Today, the Big Three are back to pushing sport utility vehicles - a strategy that got them into such much trouble in 2009 in the first place.  The Chevrolet Volt is gone, GM and Chrysler have pared their sedans and hatchbacks in North America to one or two, and Ford has pared its sedans and hatchbacks in North America to zero.  Even Sergio Marchionne, who died in 2018, decided to emphasize Fiat Chrysler Automobiles' Jeep brand (earning Donald Trump's admiration) over everything else, while the Fiat brand, which promised an array of small cars with Italian flair, has given us ugly crossovers based on its only car model in the U.S., the Fiat 500 - and, like the crossovers, has proven to be as reliable as the original Fiat 500.  Gasoline, once four dollars a gallon, has gone back down.  And even as Volkswagen plans to start making electric vehicles in Tennessee (not the Golf-sized I.D. 3, alas) while Tesla continues to charge along, Donald Trump, now President, has killed fuel economy standards and is aiming to get rid of electric-car tax credits that promote sales of cars like the Chevrolet Bolt (not to be confused with the Volt, of course) and the Tesla Model 3 (below) to discourage anyone from buying them.  ("Mr. President, Chuck and Dave Koch on line two, still no word on sister Vera!") 

And it's not just Fiat Chrysler, GM, and Ford that have turned their backs on a future of more sensible and practical trucks in favor of mothertruckin' SUVs, crossovers and pickups.  Foreign automakers are riding the SUV gravy train without apology.  I can watch two hours of television at a time and see numerous commercials for SUVs from Chevrolet or Ford and foreign brands like Volvo, Infiniti and Honda and, apart from a BMW commercial, not see one commercial for one of the few sedans remaining tin the U.S. market going into the 2020 model year.  Hatchbacks?  Well, you can still get a Volkswagen Golf, though probably not for much longer.  Also, the Honda Fit is still available, but you'd never know that from Honda's advertising because it keeps pushing its Passport SUV by showing it in a commercial depicting a family going out to the great wilderness to the tune of Wolfmother's "Vagabond."  About the only good thing I can say about this ad is that Wolfmother, an Australian rock band, is getting exposure on the air in America that they otherwise might not get.  Too bad "Vagabond" is from 2005.  

What's going on here? What happened to the new golden age of automobiles we were promised when GM and Chrysler got restructured and when Ford started giving us the exact same sort of cars that Europeans had been buying from Ford and enjoying for decades?  Apart from bringing Alfa Romeo back to the States, what good has the Fiat Group done for us?  Why are we buying more and more crossovers and putting up with their cumbersome handling?  And why do Americans keep falling in love with gas-guzzling SUVs for off-road capabilities they'll never need?  And why do I even bother asking?

 And why are Europeans picking up our disgusting habits?

At least in European countries, though, you still can buy a small car or a sensible sedan if you want to.  Or nothing at all; after all, there are plenty of mass-transit options.  In America, thanks to our pathetic mass-transit network, everyone is expected to own and drive a car whether they like it or not, and your only choice of car style is increasingly either an big ugly wagon or a big brutish truck.  And for someone like me, that's all far more than merely annoying.

Driverless cars?  Please, don't get me started . . ..      

(Update on the Golf: I wrote Volkswagen of America CEO Scott Keogh to beg him to please keep the base Golf model in the U.S.  Soon after that, a VW representative contacted me to acknowledge Keogh's receipt of my letter and to say that no decision has been made about it yet.  More about that later.)  

An Angry Post About Cars and Climate Change

I should have known that something like this would happen.

After Trump promised workers at auto plants that their jobs were secure under his "America First" economic policy, General Motors announced it would be closing plants in Ohio, Michigan, and Maryland (and another in the Canadian province of Ontario), which mostly make sedans.  The ostensible reason for the plant closures was the set of tariffs that Trump imposed on raw materials from other countries, such as steel and aluminum.  Apparently, GM needed cheap imported steel and aluminum to make basic sedans to keep them profitable in an era - still, alas, very much in progress - when everyone in North America seems to want to buy sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks.  So GM is discontinuing no fewer than six sedan models, including the revolutionary Chevrolet Volt (below), the groundbreaking hybrid sedan that debuted for the 2011 model year and lasted two generations.  It's sort of become the Corvair of our time.  Underappreciated while in production, it may be a prized collectible fifty years from now.

And while the sedans GM is ditching are mostly larger cars, the small, economical Chevrolet Cruze is getting ditched too. 

GM CEO Mary Barra says that the company will now move toward developing electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles.  Buffalo bagels.  The company is now joining Ford and Fiat Chrysler in pushing more and more SUVs and pickup trucks to satisfy the unquenchable thirst for bigger, cruder, more obnoxious gas guzzlers.  Unless the foreign brands keep traditional cars in their U.S. and Canadian lineups, anyone in the New World who simply wants a regular, sensible car is going to be out of luck.

But not as much out of luck as the workers in those car factories who will soon be losing their jobs.  I almost feel sorry for Barra, the first woman to lead a car company in the United States.  She made this decision to make GM more competitive, yet Trump is now blaming her for laying off so many people - as many as 14,000 - even though it was his policies that caused it.  Not just the tariffs, but the rollback of fuel economy standards that would have required the automakers doing business in the U.S. to make more fuel-efficient, more sensible cars that you don't need a stepladder to get into.  And Trump also boasts about keeping gas prices low, which he in fact has nothing to do with - even though low gas prices have depressed sales of said sensible cars that most of these now laid-off workers were making in the first place.  And even though GM should be serious about developing electric cars, Trump may actually take away its electric-vehicle tax credits in reaction to GM's cutbacks.  Not that he cares about electric cars anyway.

Is this a total disaster?  Not entirely - as soon as Barra (below) made her announcement, GM stock prices soared.  And that's why I almost feel sorry for Barra . . . but don't.  She still has a job.  And she'll make out fine.

Needless to say, I'm ticked off at how SUVs, which I call BUWs - for "big ugly wagons" - are taking over the American auto market.  I hope to keep my humble little VW Golf for as long as I can, but with demand for small cars dropping like a rock, I may end up having to suffer the indignity of getting a Toyota C-HR, which may yet become the closest thing to a small car from any automaker.  With even Volkswagen emphasizing SUVs in America these days (its most recent ads highlight the Tiguan and the Atlas, with the Jetta thrown in as an afterthought  - but not one mention of the Golf!), even VW isn't asking Americans to think small anymore.   

Which ties in to the equally unpleasant subject of climate change.

The required quadrennial government report on climate change, the most recent edition of which came out a week or so ago, shows that it's getting worse than originally thought, with hurricanes and winter storms - there will still be winters as the planet warms - becoming more frequent and more extreme, diseases becoming more widespread, and economic losses of $160 billion in today's money by 2090.  And while more Americans and even more Republicans believe that climate change is happening, Trump does not.  So even if Congress tries to do something about it, don't expect any climate-change-fighting plan to get any traction with Trump in the White House.

One big reason climate change is happening, of course, is because Americans love their big ugly wagons and keep buying the hell out of them.  Autos accounted for nearly 29 percent of America's too-high carbon emissions in 2016.  More fuel efficiency and smaller cars, though, would mean that our cars would have less of an impact on the environment. Gas prices would have to go up to about six dollars a gallon to make people think small again, but asking Americans to give up their cheap gas is like asking the French to give up sex - and, incidentally, the French aren't exactly ready to pay a higher tax  on their petrol, either, as demonstrations in Paris proved.       

But at least already high fuel prices in France mean that the French get to have nice little cars like this Peugeot 208.  

Conclusion: The planet is doomed.  Even Europeans are buying SUVs (or BUWs) now.  Avoiding them is like avoiding the plague that's going to emerge as a result of global warming. >:-( 

Our only hope is to get Trump out of office in 2020 and replace him with a Democratic President who puts the automakers on notice by reinstating the higher fuel economy standards that Trump scuttled.  And the message will be this - start making more fuel-efficient cars and make more electric vehicles.  

Oh yeah, that will be easier said than done.  Although the job layoffs at General Motors are Trump's fault, he's likely going to blame GM and possibly foreign countries for mucking things up in the auto industry, and his supporters will believe him.  Many of them still believe him when he says that climate change isn't a problem. 

I'm sorry.  I can't take it anymore.  When Mikie Sherrill, my incoming congresswoman, holds her first constituents' meeting, I'm going to go and plead to her to bring up climate change and reforming our transportation policy - with an emphasis on mass transit as well as small cars - on the floor of the House of Representatives.  I'm ticked off now.  

Trump Autotopia

Donald Trump swaggered into Michigan yesterday to talk about the American auto industry - one of many subjects in which he is no way familiar.

He announced that he was going to review and likely roll back corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards that sets a benchmark of 54.5 miles a gallon by 2025.  This means less incentive for automakers to develop hybrid vehicles, and electric and fuel-cell models, as well as cars like the Chevrolet Volt (ironically, one of the many cars Trump looked at while in Michigan), and, oh yes, less of an incentive to produce small cars.

My next car may have to be a gas guzzler, because that's all I'll be able to buy.

The domestic automakers are, of course, pleased that the CAFE standards are likely to be reversed, because that means they'll be able to avoid responsibility for making environmentally friendly products and be able to continue making cheap, crude SUVs and pickups and underdeveloped sedans rather than come up with more innovative cars that can compete in the market more effectively.

"There is no more beautiful sight than an American-made car," said Trump, who's obviously never seen a Porsche.  He promised that Detroit would "once again shine with industrial might" and decried the "massive shipments" of foreign cars dumped on American consumers.  Oh yeah, while in Michigan, he'd had a round-table discussion with car company executives that, in addition to General  Motors CEO Mary Barra and Ford CEO Mark Fields, also included Sergio Marchionne, the CEO of the Italian company that owns Chrysler (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles), as well as Nissan North America Chairman Jose Munoz (Nissan - a Japanese company owned by Renault of France) and Jerry Flannery of Hyundai (a South Korean company).  Trump said of the foreign automakers with plants in the United States, "We love them too."  Not too many of them have American facilities in Michigan, though. 

Trump was essentially promising to bring the auto industry in the U.S. back to 1950s levels, even though back then there had been little industrial competition from overseas and looser regulations that discouraged continuous improvement and encouraged flashy, superficial model changes - thus, Detroit ended up using rudimentary technology that persisted will into the 1980s.  He also said that the assault on the American auto industry is over, leading me to wonder what he was talking about.  Because as I recall, it was Barack Obama who saved GM and Chrysler by investing taxpayers' money in them (which got paid back to the government) and helping them through bankruptcy, preserving thousands of auto jobs and many other jobs connected to the auto industry. 

Trump also promised that, under his Presidency, Detroit would become "the car capital of the world again."  Umm, didn't he realize that, again, Chrysler is a subsidiary of an Italian company and that, umm, GM just sold all of its European assets to a car company based in France?  Is that how Detroit becomes the car capital of the world - with Ford being the only U.S.-based car company having something resembling a truly global presence?

One thing is for certain - given Trump's history in business, we should be glad that he never ran a car company.  And I'm sorry Tesla founder Elon Musk - a South African immigrant - can't run for President.  Because he's a CEO I'd vote for! 

The Opel Sale

If anyone ever asked me what my favorite General Motors car brand was, I'd never hesitate in saying, "Opel." 

This is the current Opel Corsa hatchback.  Can you think of any car as cool as this at your Chevrolet dealership?

But Opel, and its British cousin, Vauxhall (the Vauxhall brand, a separate entity within GM until the mid-1970s, is now basically Opel with a different name and with right-hand drive cars),  will be a part of the GM family no longer.  GM is selling its European operations to Peugeot for $1.4 billion.  The reason is simple - Opel isn't making any money for General Motors and hasn't been doing so for a long time.  Opel/Vauxhall sales for 2016 accounted for 5.7 percent of all new-car sales in the European market, and its biggest income came from Great Britain, which is leaving the European Union and has seen the pound sinking as a result.  Bearing all that in mind, GM CEO Mary Barra felt it was time to give up the ghost of Adam Opel himself (the company's founder began the business in 1862 making sewing machines, and later, bicycles before the car end of the business came along in 1899, after Adam Opel's death) and sell GM's European assets to Peugeot, a company that was at death's door after the 2008 financial crisis but has since bounced back handsomely.

This is ironic, because back in 2009, when GM was at that same mortal door, its then-CEO, Fritz Henderson, gave GM brass plans to sell Opel to a Russo-Canadian consortium in order to raise some badly needed cash.  The board of directors responded by giving Henderson the boot; surrendering its European operations was a bridge too far for them.  I could sympathize with that feeling.  After all, Opel has made some incredible cars in the 88 years that GM has owned it.  But it's made many lackluster cars as well, as any American who bought a Cadillac Catera (a rebadged Opel Omega) or a Saturn L-Series (a watered-down, American-made Opel Vectra) in the nineties would attest.  I, of course, still liked them, at least in comparison to other GM cars of the time.  But European consumers have found too many Opels of this century devoid of any meaningful pizzazz, and that lack of magic caught up with the brand. 

Will GM stop being a player in Europe completely?  Barra said that the company will still sell Chevrolets and Cadillacs in the Old Country. So, in other words, the answer is, yes, it will.  Chevrolets and Cadillacs have never been popular over there, and GM's sale of Opel and Vauxhall will diminish the already paltry presence of its American brands in Europe.

Call it "GMExit."  Anyway, GM will be concentrating on the Americas and China from here on, deciding that it doesn't need to keep a presence in Europe just for the prestige.

And what of Opel buyer Peugeot - whose volume car, the 308 (below) will likely be the basis for Opels to come?  What does Peugeot chairman Carlos Tavares get out of this?

Plenty.  He gets more capacity, a brand with a distinct identity thanks to its German heritage and its engineering history, a new crossover model, the Opel Crossland X, below (ironically, Opel's latest attempt to drum up sales in what is becoming Europe's most popular market segment) and the infrastructure that would be necessary for Peugeot to re-enter the United States, if it so chose.

Tavares does not so choose yet, but if he can get Opel and Vauxhall (assuming he even keeps the Vauxhall brand) to make a profit without closing any factories or laying off workers, as he says he can do - who knows?

It's going to be an exciting time for the global auto market coming up, and if Peugeot can pull this off,  it's going to be one of the most monumental feats in automotive history.

And Opel is still my favorite GM brand. :-)

Have a look back at nearly nine decades of GM's ownership of Opel here.

Generally Speaking

NOTE: This entry, originally posted on Thursday, May 12, was deleted in a Blogger blackout but I found it restored as a draft. So here it is again, five days later.

General Motors just announced a major expansion only two years after declaring bankruptcy. The company has announced a $2 billion investment to create or preserve four thousand jobs at seventeen different American plants.

What could have sparked such a turnaround? It's all about the product. The firm is betting on the success of their more energy-efficient models, such as the Chevrolet Cruze and the Chevrolet Volt electric car, which should do quite well with a populace having to deal with rising gas prices. GM's sales are already phenomenally up thanks in great part to their new products. Plus, the cars GM manufactures today are more engaging vehicles than the dull-as-dishwater cars GM was forcing on us in previous decades. They then should have been called Generic Motors.

So are right-wingers ready to give President Obama credit for saving the company and thousands of jobs? Not on your life. Peter Flaherty of the conservative National Legal and Policy Center sneers at recent slumps in GM's stock price, arguing that the initial public offering of $33 a share, more recently selling below $30, would have to hit $53 per stock to recoup taxpayer funds - but the sluggish stock price is predictable in a volatile market. Writing for the same right-wing group, Matt Modica bitches about the excessive spending GM undertook to retool and re-orient itself. "GM went bankrupt, took over $50 billion of taxpayer money, and then went on a spending spree before taxpayers were paid back," Modica wrote. "This hardly seems like cause to rejoice."

Uh, Matt, have you actually read any road test reviews? Maybe if you did, you'd see the result of all that spending.

GM stock has admittedly been underperforming of late, and the Web site MoneyShow.com had recommended to investors to buy stock in parts suppliers rather than in General Motors. When GM stock declined 6 percent after its IPO, the advice seemed vindicated. But MoneyShow.com's George Putnam has announced that his site is ready to recommend GM stock. Why? I'll let Putnam explain it:

"GM’s new management team has brought a level of discipline to the company that it hasn't had in decades. Operations are now leaner, and finances are better managed than they have been in at least a couple of generations.

"The company’s product line appears to be experiencing good success both domestically and abroad. Its new models in the U.S. have been well received, and it has others in the pipeline."

So - there!

I saw the GM displays at the 2011 New York auto show, and, while I obviously couldn't test-drive any of the cars, I came away impressed with the fit and finish and the quality of the interior materials. Getting into a Chevrolet Cruze was like getting into an Opel Astra.

This wonderful turnaround comes, ironically, upon the news of the passing of former GM chairman Robert Stempel. Stempel, who had the misfortune of taking over General Motors from Roger Smith in 1990 and was left holding the bag when GM went into a free fall soon thereafter (he was tossed out after only two years), was a real "car guy." The New Jersey-born Stempel was a gifted engineer who helped develop the Oldsmobile Toronado, GM's first front-wheel-drive vehicle, and he was instrumental in designing the catalytic converter. He was at Pontiac when work began on the Fiero, and he oversaw the design of the sixth-generation Kadett at Opel. He was also a strong supporter of electric vehicles, and he approved the General Motors EV1 project that was later canceled in a cavalier (no pun intended) fashion by a since-humbled company. Had Stempel been allowed to stay longer, GM's fortunes in the sixteen years between his ouster and the 2008 financial crisis might have been very different.

The General Is Motorin'

General Motors reached a milestone of sorts today when it paid back all $6.7 billion it borrowed from the United States government - not to mention $1.4 billion owed to the Canadian government - five years ahead of schedule, putting it on a sounder footing for the immediate future. As it struggles to regain a respectable share of the North American auto market, the taxpayers' remaining interest in GM - $45.3 billion in stock -will eventually be offered for sale. If GM's new products are strong sellers in the showrooms, that could be sooner rather than later.

Thanks to CEO Ed Whitacre, the General is a leaner and more efficient car company, having terminated several brands (RIP, Pontiac and Saturn) and sold Saab. Chevrolet remains the entry-level division, Buick is the medium-priced brand, and Cadillac remains the luxury brand, with GMC Truck the choice of people who wouldn't be caught dead in a Chevy SUV. In Europe, GM still has Opel, whose German engineering is already having a positive effect on Buick's products as the technology gets spread around.

I saw several GM cars at the auto show in New York earlier this month, and while I remained a die-hard Volkswagen enthusiast, I left the GM displays rather impressed. (Actually, I left Cadillac disappointed, realizing that the XLR two-seater had been discontinued, but that's another story.) They have some very formidable product, especially with the electrically powered Volt, which is miles ahead of the Toyota Prius, and I hope Buick builds the GS version of its new Regal. These cars are among the most modern and advanced vehicles GM has offered in a long time, and a happy coincidence of events - a new health care law that benefits its workers, debts wiped out in bankruptcy, corporate restructuring - have made the company more competitive.

Never has they saying that what's good for General Motors is good for the country been more true. Although folks like Senator Bob Corker, Republican of foreign-transplant-car-factory-rich Tennessee (VW is building a plant there too: full disclosure!), opposed this bailout, there were 77,000 good reasons to support it. That's the number of jobs saved by the government's action.

Having saved automobile manufacturing in this country, the government now ought to turn to developing more regional public transit.

Auto Company Overhauls

General Motors reached a deal to sell Saab to the Netherlands-based Spyker Cars NV, a speciality car firm. Many Saab fans are obviously happy about this, meaning that the storied brand will live on. It's likely it will compete with GM's Opel brand in Europe. For Saab, this is indeed a Dutch treat. :-)

With this sale finally out of the way, GM is investing in the future - sort of. The company insists n building more light trucks, but it hope to increase the corporate average fuel economy of its cars by making electric motors for its upcoming rear-wheel-drive hybrids, spending $246 million on a new plant to produce them. Ford, meanwhile, is moving production of the latest generation of its Explorer SUV to a newly redone plant in Chicago, while a factory that previously made the Explorer will build smaller cars. The good news is that the Chicago factory is hiring. The bad news is that new hires will only make fourteen dollars an hour. That's a good wage these days, but far less than autoworkers used to make.

It's a whole new ball game.

Modesty In Motown

The North American International Auto Show in Detroit kicked off with much less glitz and glitter in a much more subdued fashion. Good ol' American showmanship remained in high gear (no pun intended) on the auto show circuit during the last great recession of 1981 and 1982, when General Motors was so full of itself it boasted it could build a small car just as good as anything from the Japanese . . . and demonstrated their inability to do so with the Chevrolet Cavalier. Even the start of Persian Gulf War in 1991 didn't dampen the enthusiasm at that year's Detroit show. Now GM and Chrysler, humbled by the bad decisions and inferior product, don't talk so loud, especially after they needed government bailouts to stay in business. GM's Pontiac and Saturn brands are down to one car or two each in their last year, and they're not represented at the show. (Even Oldsmobile had a display on the auto show circuit in 2004, its last year.) GMC Truck offers an SUV concept that's about the size of a traditional station wagon. And Chrysler's most exciting products are the Fiat-based Chryslers and Dodges that aren't on sale yet.

Ford is much better off, winning the 2010 Motor Trend Car of the Year award for its Fusion sedan and getting good press for two smaller vehicles due in showrooms soon, the next-generation Focus and the new Fiesta, the latter car set to return to America following a thirty-year hiatus.

The Japanese continue to demonstrate their affinity for hybrids, Toyota displaying a FT-Ch concept hybrid compact and Honda showing a new CR-Z gas/electric sport coupe. Meanwhile, Volkswagen, to quote an old VW tagline, does it again. The German automaker, Europe's largest, unveiled a new concept car - a compact two-door coupe obviously based on the new, upcoming sixth-generation Jetta sedan. This will likely be a two-door Jetta, the first since 1991. This coupe is quite stylish, offering impressive fuel economy and a seven-speed DSG transmission mated to Volkswagen's TSI gasoline engine with a supplementary electric motor. And the company is on track to continue expanding in the United States, as Consumer Reports recommends eight VW models and the new Tennessee factory is on schedule. Learn more - a whole lot more - by watching the video here.

I'm a little embarrassed by the dancers at the end of the presentation. Volkswagen is notoriously famous for avoiding the showbiz razzmatazz at auto shows favored by GM or Chrysler. But they have less reason for such showmanship, which is why they have none this year (no pickups dropping from the ceiling), and VW is bucking the trends of the recession, so I'll give VW a pass.

Story Updates

A few updates on stories I've commented on of late:

Dylan Ratigan may have lost his morning show on MSNBC, but he has a new show that begins at 4 PM Eastern today. Still no word on what's going to become of Dr. Nancy Snyderman, but David Shuster and Tamron Hall will still be on between 3 PM and 4 PM Eastern.

A new MSNBC show, "The Daily Rundown," began today at 9 AM Eastern. It's hosted by Savannah Guthrie and Chuck Todd. I can understand why they would have Savannah Guthrie, who's as cute as a button, host a show, but aren't people tried of seeing Chuck Todd and his goatee?

Saab may not be dead after all. General Motors is still interested in sell the Swedish car company to potential bidders, which include the Dutch firm Spyker, but the clock is ticking and they are already going ahead with phasing out Saab if there is no deal son. AlixPartners, a consulting firm, has already been hired by GM to oversee the dissolution. There's still a chance, Saabphiles, that your favorite brand will survive, but it doesn't look good.

I now return you to my regularly scheduled musings.

Saab Story

General Motors just announced it is discontinuing the Saab brand. And by that, I mean GM is shutting down the Swedish carmaker that it bought out a decade ago. There will be no more Saabs in any way, shape, or form (ironic, given Saab's history of unorthodox shapes in forms in its styling).

GM had hoped to find a buyer for the brand, turning first to consortium led by the Swedish sports car maker Koenigsegg Group AB. When those talks broke down last month, GM tried its luck with Spyker Cars, a firm from the Netherlands. When those talks broke down, it became obvious that two strikes were out in this case and GM decided that Saab need "a quick resolution." And so Saab will join other European niche carmakers such as NSU and Simca atop the dustbin of history.

Saab, originally an automotive division of an airplane company (Svenska Aeroplan AB, from which the name was derived), was ripe for a takeover when GM purchased half of its stock in 1989. Its sales were weak, and GM saw opportunities for expansion. The Detroit automaker modernized the brand's lineup and acquired the whole company by the year 2000, but its sales have suffered again of late and GM could not afford to keep it going. In the end, GM's European operations - at one point almost reduced to minority stockholder status in its other brands, Opel and Vauxhall - had no choice.

This is a sorry chapter in automotive history. GM learned the hard way that expansion isn't always good. Also at fault is the Swedish government, which could have bailed out Saab and saved people's jobs in Sweden but chose not to. Also, as smaller firms get bought out and liquidated by the giant car companies of the world, automotive innovation - historically spurred by smaller companies - will be less evident. As for Saab, it - and its Swedish rival Volvo, now owned by Ford - have long been celebrated for their safety innovations. Saab, in particular, made seat belts standard on its GT 750 model in 1958, and they developed the first headlight wipers, the first passenger compartment air filter, and cholro-fluorocarbon-free air conditioning. These are the kind of innovations that bureaucracy at large companies doesn't allow. Indeed, bureaucratic gigantism almost destroyed GM. Now GM is retiring Saab. What a sad irony.

Transport News

A few big stories in transportation today. . . 

Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor from Omaha, is buying the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad for $44 billion. Buffett - who obviously isn't satisfied with just model railroading - wants his Berkshire Hathaway company to invest in a build up freight railroads to provide a sound transportation infrastructure for the U.S. economy. Buffett is bullish on the economy;'s future, and he certainly demonstrated so with this move. A skillful investor by nature, Buffett's purchase of Burlington Northern Santa Fe gives us hope for a strong economic recovery - Buffett only bets on a sure thing. I just hope he gives Amtrak a break on whatever BNSF lines the passenger rail service rents for its routes.

BNSF trains may soon be carrying more cars from the domestic automakers to market. On the heels of Ford's unexpected profits, General Motors announced a 4.1 percent increase in October sales, its first year-over-year gain since January 2008. GM has wiped out its debt in bankruptcy court and now seeks to build on its four remaining brands - Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC Truck. Don't count out the General out - the current Chevrolet Malibu is a solid product, and Cadillac's renaissance continues with its excellent updates of cars like the CTS.

GM is doing well enough, it's decided not to sell a majority interest in Opel and Vauxhall in Europe to a Russo-Canadian consortium after all. By getting financial support at home and getting rid of debt in bankruptcy court, GM has decided not to do what it never wanted to do in the first place - sell any part of its most prestigious overseas assets. While this decision was welcomed in Britain, where Vauxhalls are produced, by the local autoworkers union, the German government is displeased that GM would withdraw from the sale of the Russelsheim-based Opel because the sale was handled by a trust that also included representatives from the government and an independent panelist. GM is now instead seeking aid from Berlin and other European capitals.

This story isn't over yet . . ..

Saturn Falls

A venture that started as one of the boldest and most ambitious experiments in the American automobile industry came to a crashing end this week as Saturn burned out. Roger Penske, who had hoped to buy the brand and its dealer network from General Motors, abandoned his effort after failing to find another manufacturer to supply cars to replace the GM-built models upon their discontinuation.

Penske had been in negotiations with a foreign automaker - possibly Renault or its Nissan subsidiary - to sell cars currently unavailable in North America and also build them in North American plants, which Nissan has. He thought he had a deal with this unidentified company, but it all unraveled just before his acquisition of Saturn seemed to be in the bag.

Of course, Saturn had long since lost its edge in its brief history. The project had been started by GM chairman Roger Smith as an effort to build a solid small car that could compete with imported cars in the U.S. market, using innovative ideas and fresh thinking that would break with the conventional Detroit way of doing things. To preserve the bold, fresh mindset Smith wanted, the project would not produce cars for existing brands but be a new subsidiary company altogether. Smith named it not after the sixth planet from the sun but after a NASA rocket project in the sixties.

After numerous delays, the Saturn Corporation was finally launched in 1990 with a single model line, built in Spring Hill, Tennessee, by workers with a special contract with General Motors. Although many observers thought that the project was too overambitious, trying to start too much from scratch, Saturn's S-Series proved to be a popular car, and the company's approach to marketing and service was refreshing. The no-haggle pricing appealed to customers, and dealership events that treated customers like family - memorably satirized in an episode of Ellen DeGeneres's mid-nineties sitcom - became commonplace. Saturn's dent-resistant polymer body panels, easily accessible fluid reservoirs, and distinctive styling gave the brand an edge over the competition, and it featured the most sophisticated overhead-camshaft engine a GM brand had ever produced. By the end of the decade, a larger midsize model - the L-Series - had been added, and a three-door coupe, with a small rear side door, was available.

Several weaknesses had already become obvious by then, though, as Saturn tended to take sales from other GM brands more than from the imports they were supposed to compete with. Quality was better than other GM cars but still not as good as the Japanese competition. Then, in its second decade, Saturn managed to water down its advantages with a succession of bland models and a muddled identity as it became more integrated with its parent company, ruining everything that made it a breath of fresh air in the first place.

Saturn's biggest mistake was the Ion, which replaced the S-Series. Its design and ergonomics were so bland and uninspiring that it turned off potential customers while disappointing the brand's early admirers. Later models like the midsize Aura and the Sky sport coupe were obvious variations of product available from other GM brands. The final insult came when the Ion was replaced by the Opel-built Astra. Saturn had been founded to prove that Americans could build a good small car. Now its small volume car would be outsourced from a plant in . . . Belgium. The car was an unqualified failure, being overpriced due to currency rates and underappointed for American tastes.

Oh, and what happened to the Spring Hill plant? The special contract was terminated in 2004, and the factory was retooled to make other GM vehicles . . . only to scheduled to be closed later this year.

This is the ultimate humiliation for a once proud industry, not to mention an embarrassment for a country that once made the best consumer products in the world. To give you a perspective of how short a time Saturn will have lasted - twenty years - Hyundai, which competes in the small and midsize car market with Saturn, began selling cars in the U.S. in 1986 and continues to expand.

It's getting to the point where we can't even make any consumer products, never mind making the best. It seems ironic that Saturn should have been named for a a project from the glory days of the space program. If NASA in the 1960s were anything like GM is now, the Soviets would have reached the moon first.

A different kind of company became the same old song and dance from a dying, disrespected auto industry.

What caused the Penske deal with another car company to fall through? Who knows? Maybe someone who could have swung the deal in Penske's favor, at a critical moment, had JujyFruits stuffed in his mouth. ("Seinfeld" fans will get that joke.)

The Penske File

Roger Penske's auto parts company looks to a be a big winner in the shakeup affecting the American automotive industry. Penske's namesake transportation services company, which already sells Daimler's Smart car in the United States, has acquired GM's Saturn brand.

Why is this good? Well, it will keep Saturn dealers in business and save jobs. And, despite the brand's loss of direction in this past decade, it continues to have a good reputation for quality service and no-haggling deals. Penske will continue to sell GM-made cars for a couple of years - sorry, no Astras - and after 2011, the firm will sell cars from other manufacturers.

The sad irony is that Saturn started out as an effort by GM to win buyers back from imports, and it succeeded at first. But as subsequent product became more generic and efforts at carving out a new image for the division failed, the General has had to give up on the venture and concentrate on its more mainstream brands. Penske will have to find another source for Saturn vehicles, and there's no other domestic manufacturing base he can turn to, unless he wants to sell Fiskers or Texas-made DeLoreans. What's left? You got it.

Saturns for the 2012 model year might come from Renault or possibly even from a Chinese company.

Meanwhile. . . . After years of a huge German and Japanese presence in the U.S. automobile market, the pending sale of Chrysler's assets to Fiat of Italy seemed to complete the domination of the American highway by the old members of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis. Not so fast. Chrysler's stiffed bondholders, whose intransigence put the automaker in bankruptcy in the first place, petitioned the Supreme Court to block the sale approved by a New York bankruptcy judge, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg - who must have had a bad experience with a Dodge - temporarily delayed the sale pending a review by her and her colleagues. If the delay goes on long enough, the Fiat-Chrysler deal could be scuttled and the company liquidated. Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne, Il Duce, would not be pleased.

And if that happens, how would Marchionne get Fiat back into the U.S. market?

Hmm, maybe he should call Roger Penske . . .

Fumes

It's done. General Motors, once the greatest industrial colossus on the planet, is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy tomorrow. When the smoke clears, Pontiac will have been shuttered, several plants will be closed, and Opel - the Old World jewel in GM's crown - will be sold to a Russo-Canadian consortium (??????????) involving the Russian automaker GAZ and the Canadian auto parts manufacturer Magna.

Although it's sad to see a company that has made such wonderful cars end up like this, I can't help but feel a little glee in GM's predicament. The company has behaved like a bully for so long, using its influence to bend laws and federal policy to its own advantage, from buying streetcar lines and tearing them up to make people buy their products to opposing various safety and emissions regulations. The General could only rig the game for so long, but when they unexpectedly got competition from German and then Japanese automakers who knew how to reset the rules of the market on their terms, GM first failed to respond, then fought back with product that turned out to be inferior, and proved to be ineffective in reforming its business practices.

I obviously feel sorry for the workers who will be affected, but I don't really pity the top brass that allowed this to happen.

GM On the Brink

General Motors is going to declare bankruptcy. There's no way around it. They're in such dire straits, they may even lose Opel in Europe. Pontiac is as good as gone here. And the Chevrolet Volt is too damn expensive to produce.

Oh yeah, and bond holders won't forgive General Motors's $27 billion debt.

Many mass transit and environmental advocates have long lamented that, after GM tore up the streetcar lines, backed the construction of expressways, and fought various pollution standards, no one was ever able to find a way to rein the company in.

I believe someone has done that.

Breakdown

The latest news from Detroit, the city of lack of opportunity and of impossibility and the place where anything can go wrong (and does), is the elimination of several GM and Chrysler dealerships in the U.S. to get Chrysler out of bankruptcy and to save GM from it. Roughly forty percent of dealers representing each company are to go out of business as soon as possible.

Most of the dealerships being eliminated are small, local ones that stick to one GM or Chrysler brand, and each company hopes to cut costs on maintaining their franchises by relying on the larger dealerships. Wayne Dodge - a small dealership that handles the immediate area in Wayne, New Jersey, based in the township's Mountain View section - is one of the many small local dealers known for friendly, one-on-one service that is closing down. By cutting out local dealers - some of whom have been in business since the Wilson administration (including Chrysler-affiliated dealers who predate the company itself and probably started out selling Maxwells) - and staying with the big, impersonal dealers known more for their obnoxious radio commercials than for quality service or a strong commitment to their customers, GM and Chrysler are only proving themselves to be more out of touch with the consumer.

Either way, there'll be a whole lot fewer dealers, and thus fewer opportunities for reasonable, sound deals. A lot of customers are going to get screwed.

Meanwhile, GM is looking to sell Opel and Vauxhall to Fiat. Since these brands (Vauxhalls, sold in Britain, are just rebadged Opels with right-hand drive) are the crown jewel of GM's foreign operations, it only goes to show how far the General has fallen. To leave Europe and to sever itself from Opel's stellar engineering and design (not to mention the GM employees responsible for it) shows how diminished the once-mighty company has become.

Chrysler Hanging On, Pontiac Gone

Being able to by a Fiat in America for the first time since 1984 is one step closer to reality as Chrysler has reached a tentative agreement with the Canadian Auto Workers Union, with only the UAW in America to negotiate with. Once both unions finalize these deals, Chrysler's big bondholders - mostly banks whose loans are secured by Chrysler's assets - need to take care of any remaining business. Hopefully, the dirty work will be done by the Thursday deadline, and we'll soon know whether Chrysler will survive with a little help from Turin. As for the Dodge and Chrysler vehicles we can expect, well, let's not get any half-baked collaborations. (The Chrysler-Maserati TC was bad enough, thank you.)

Meanwhile, events are moving quickly at General Motors. In a bid for more cutbacks to save the company, GM is expected to announce that Pontiac will be discontinued. It's a sad end to a once proud brand. As GM's performance division, Pontiac put out sporty cars usually far more interesting than the similar product from Chevrolet's lineup. The Firebird Trans Am was distinguished by an optional 301-cubic inch turbo V8 in the seventies, and the styling of later Firebirds was far more daring than their Camaro cousins. They also had those magnificent 305 V8s with port injection. The original GTO - a mild-mannered family sedan turned into a powerful performance vehicle - was the first "muscle car." More recent sports sedans include the Bonneville SE and the 6000 STE. And who can forget the Fiero, the first mid-engined two-seat sports car from a major U.S. manufacturer? Sadly, most people have. Lasting only five years in the eighties, it's mostly thought of as a Reagan-era relic, the automotive equivalent of a Members Only jacket, a running joke on "How I Met Your Mother."

Sadly, more recent Pontiac product hasn't caught on. The reborn GTO was a flop, as was the rakish G6. The Solstice - a roadster that marked Pontiac's return to the two-seat sports car market segment - has generated more interest than sales. Many of Pontiac's product of late hasn't even been developed at home. The aforementioned GTO was a Holden from Australia, as is the G8 sedan. Pontiac isn't even an autonomous division anymore; it's just a brand name now, sharing floor space at dealerships with Buick and GMC.

I should have realized that the brand's days were numbered back in 2004 when Oprah Winfrey gave away a G6 to everyone in her studio as a promotional stunt for both the brand and for herself. If even Oprah couldn't get people into Pontiac-Buick-GMC showrooms, no one could.

Rest in peace, Pontiac. :-(

Government Motors

President Obama pretty much had the government take charge of what's left of the American automobile industry, dismissing GM and Chrysler's survival strategies as insufficient and having them go back to the drawing board . . . and giving Chrysler only a month to finalize a partnership deal with Fiat that has only a slight chance of being completed in that time. The government will now back warranties for GM and Chrysler products, and GM chairman Rick Wagoner has been forced out of a job, with a severance package of $23 million. That's pretty good for someone leading an industry whose remaining employees are asked to make the kind of sacrifices the bankers don't have to worry about.

It seems weird to many that the automakers are being punished so severely for their bad business practices while the banks get even more money on top of the bailout funds they've already received for their bad business practices. But Obama has gotten caught in the devil's bargain. The banks are too big to fail, and money has to be pumped into the system to get credit flowing again. This is what most consumers need to buy a car.

Some of the government's policies in helping out Detroit make sense. GM and Chrysler are overrepresented by too many dealerships meant to cater to a market share that was once much larger than it is now, so dealerships have to be sacrificed. Also, many of GM's brands, which once dominated American highways,have become irrelevant and redundant. Pontiac, after trying to produce a distinctive high performance image for their cars, are once again becoming nothing more than Chevrolets with split radiator grilles; its "newest" model, the G3, is actually a rebadged Chevrolet Aveo. I used to insist that Dodges were Plymouths and Plymouths were Dodges and Chryslers were Dodges and Plymouths with upright grilles, plushly upholstered seats, and more chrome, but even with the Plymouth brand name long gone, Dodges and Chryslers are still rather redundant, and even the distinction of Jeep trucks and SUVs (made by Chrysler since 1987) is getting blurred as some Dodge trucks (like the Nitro SUV) derive much of their styling and engineering from the Jeep lineup.

GM should survive; even though new chairman Fritz Henderson (do you really want a guy whose nickname is slang for something that's broken?) has indicated that bankruptcy is "probable," its new product should help. Many of GM's latest models are more competitive with their Asian counterparts; my own cursory, unscientific census suggests that the all-new Chevrolet Malibu is selling well among the few Americans still buying cars. Chrysler is a question mark; even though some question the logic of its deal with Fiat, due to the fact that Chrysler's 1998 merger with Daimler-Benz was a fiasco, it's worth noting that Fiat makes more cars for the average buyer; its legendary 500 was and the retrograde 500 is the Italian equivalent of the Volkswagen Beetle. This deal will allow Chrysler to make and sell European-engineered cars prices for more of a mass market.

Ironically, despite Obama's call for Detroit to make greener cars, his administration has declared that the coming Chevrolet Volt hybrid is too expensive to turn things around for GM. Its sophisticated components are too costly to produce. And here's another dirty little secret; hybrids are only a small part of the car market. Most people in this country buy cars that use gasoline, and, as long as gas is cheap, prefer bigger cars that use more of it. Unless gas prices go up again and stay up - or unless gasoline subsidies in this country are eliminated and more punitive federal taxes for gas guzzlers are imposed - you won't see many more Aveos or G3s on the road, much less Volts. Which works out fine, since the Aveo/G3 twins are made in Korea anyway.

Obama hopes to save the American auto industry, and I hope he does a better job than the guys who actually ran the industry. But that industry could just as easily disappear, or be reduced to total irrelevance even in the best of circumstances. I'm somewhat skeptical myself. In fact, I saw something really eerie today. On the road, driving home from work, I saw a Model T going the other way. Okay, it was a collector's car, being driven by its eccentric owner. But even though Ford is doing relatively better than GM or Chrysler, the sight of a Model T Ford was still rather symbolic. The Model T is a ghostly symbol of Detroit's glory days, and the sight of one was like a premonition of the industry's death.

After all, Model Ts are black.

(Whew! I certainly didn't go out like a lamb tonight! It's March 31, 2009, and that's the end of the first quarter!:-D)