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.  

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.