Let’s Pay Detroit To Bring Their Gas Sipping Cars Home To The U.S.A.
Who hasn’t been enraged to read about how Ford and G.M. can make perfectly good little gas sippers in Europe, but just can’t bring themselves to make a fuel efficient car for us back home?
Well, now that they need some funding from us, here’s an idea. Let’s fund Detroit just to set up their efficient European car factories — back here, where they are really needed. Let’s get some better gas mileage out of their money troubles.
Apparently, it only costs $75 million to completely retool a plant, to produce an efficient little car instead of the gas-guzzling behemoth they were fobbing off on us fools all these years.
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Detroit needs money, and we need efficient vehicles. Let’s make a deal: We taxpayers will provide the funding to retool their factories to build just the specific models that are in the Common Good. We’ll fund retooling to build any models that help solve the climate crisis by getting better than 50 mpg, right now. It’s a win-win.
To make it super quick and easy, let’s forgo NHTSA crash tests on their current European models that already we would die for. After all, that EU is such a nanny state, right, and these gas sippers already passed fussy ECE rules to meet European requirements. Surely those sissy foreign crash-tests are good enough for us back here in the wild wild west: let’s accept their foreign rules. Some hardy soul here has demonstrated that small light fuel efficient cars are actually safe enough.
Our NHTSA crash-testing requirements have kept fuel efficient imports out for decades. And not just fuel efficient foreign cars. Even our own “foreign” cars.
It’s time to just tear down that wall. This would be a quick and easy way to reduce our heavy carbon footprint. Allowing ECE rules could be achieved with a quick stroke of the legislative pen once our first real working majority finally moves in next January. Then all we’d have to do, fellow-funders, is decide which models to fund first to finish fossil fuels fast.
Me? I’d go for any old Ka that gets 56 mpg.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
So, Detroit re-tools plants for 75 mil and builds these little midget racers in the USA.
The salaries/bennies of the union workers in these new plants will still average $70-some-odd bucks an hour, resistance to robotics will still cause strikes and over-employment; the benefits to the retired/laid-off/executives will still have to be paid. How does building tiny cars for $2000 or $3000 more in the US than they can in Europe or Asia solve any of that?
The American public will snort with derision at this new offering, because they’ll have to pay too much money for these teeny cars for Detroit to make a profit AND pay for the union labor and ridiculous distribution setup now in place.
And Detroit will be faced with yet another failed product line. What if…gas prices continue to fall? Or even stabilize? Do you think Americans are going to go “green” and stop buying Escalades? Ask Al Gore. He’s an American.
It doesnt matter who operates the plants or what they make, the workers and low level managers will be paid about the same. The bailout is for the investor that own the companies. Its for the big fat cats at the top. They get to stay rich. Its croniesm. Letting the investors lose their money for operating this way is the best way to fix the auto industry. Giving the auto industry money at the expense of the taxpayer who was going to use it for their own purpose is not fair…its just the taxpayer or company y have no senators for friends.
It is fair to say that regulation had something to do with this. Why can’t I buy a car that has an enigne that hasn’t been through xyz crash test or is certified by a foriegn country or gets xyz gas mileage? I can make that decision fine myself. Why wouldn’t making the cars so expensive with debateable and not optional safety and pollution controls have some effect?
The biggest regulation was the accounting rule change that caused non-liquid assests to suddenly have to me acocunted for on the spot market. The mark to market rule. This was the major cause of the crash of the credit markets and the resulting dip in car sales. The dip comes from the fact cars are bought on credit which is expensive or gone right now. Car companies can’t borrow money to deal with cash flow like they used to. Then as the credit squeeze started killing companies off we get a recession. The death blow to the car companies. So you can say for sure the government is entierly to blame for their state and should pay.
But guess what? Every company is suffering equally. Individuals are suffering too. Everyone needs a bailout. If the car companies get bailed…is it just cronyism?
Is it a security threat? Could a forieng company take over our businesses because we have artificially devalued them?
So now everyone is an arm chair car company exec. Or arm chair bank exec. Everyone is now expert at what should be done to keep xyz company in shape. The fact of the matter is. No one is more expert than the people running them. If they can’t do it, then the company they are running is probably a dinosaur that would be best served by letting it die off as fast as possible. I don’t care how smart you are. Actually chaning a company to make it run more efficient is an extremely difficult thing to do. Everyone who thinks so should invest their own money starting a company. The worst possible thing is to let everyone run companies with everyone elses money, which is what we are talking about here. There is no possible way it can be better than letting the people who invested their own time and money alone.
On top of all of this, we are talking about letting the worlds worst money handlers be in charge. I am talking about a group who have consistently spent more money than they have forever…our friends the congressmen and senators of the united states of america. I can’t imagine a group of people less inclined to make a good business decision and more inclined to line their friends pockets with money than them.
Anyone who is for any sort of government bailout other than simply eliminating the mark to market rule and lowering capital gains taxes is nuts.
You’re concentrating on the technical details, but this bailout will be an act of politics. Obama and the democrats are not going to bail out the auto companies, they’re going to bail out the UAW, one of their big contributors of cash and campaign volunteers. UAW contracts give members election day off work so they can go help Democrats get out the vote. Secondarily, Obama and the Democrats are going to bail out the state of Michigan, presently under Democratic management with two D Senators. This, unfortunately, is what it’s all about for politicians, not CAFE standards or NHTSA standards or any other such irrelevancies.
I wouldn’t read too much into the safety standards here vis a vis Europe based on deaths per million miles. Our standards for a driver’s license are quite lax. The safety of the roads themselves is also a large part of the equation.
There’s probably more to it; but I think you’ll find that EU and US laws regarding Auto Safety are quite different… And the big three cannot legally sell the gas-sippers here because they don’t meet “our” requirements…
I have owned and driven 3 very small cars over my 27 years of driving: a Ford Fiesta, a 1st gen Honda Civic hatchback, and a Honda CRX (plus 2 VW Beetles).
All worked perfectly well in urban (Chicago area) traffic and were adequate on the highways (the Fiesta took me and 3 friends from central IL to Florida and back for spring break in 1987 with no problem).
Micro cars like the Ka and Smart aren’t really designed for a country as large as the US. Read the Inside Line folks comments about their long-term Smart. None of them are comfortable driving it on the LA freeways.
I support the idea of issuing waivers so that Ford and GM can import some of their excellent medium small cars. But those cars aren’t cheap. In the UK a Focus (which is not the same as a US Focus) costs more than a Fusion in the US. One of the other reasons GM and Ford build better small cars in Europe is because Europeans will pay a reasonable price for them. How many in the US would pay $26-$27k for a Focus? Nobody I’m willing to bet, but that’s what a mid level diesel goes for there.
As another commenter pointed out, the way to encourage people to buy fuel efficient cars, which in turn will result in the big three making more of such cars, is to raise the price of gas. Why are there millions of SUV’s and pickups on dealer lots? because gas went to $4+. CAFE was never the way to get the Big 3 to build more fuel efficient cars. They built what people wanted. Only when prices sky rocketed did people decide they wanted efficient cars. The Chevy Malibu is a runaway success because it mixes good economy with size, comfort, and quality for a fair price (gee, sounds like the way the Accord became one of the best selling cars doesn’t it).
Tax gas so that it’s price is higher than diesel (in Chicago diesel is still over $3 while gas can be found under $2, what’s that about). This is what they do in Europe, which is part of why diesels became so popular there.
I’m not too worried about the safety standard between here and Europe. I lived for several years in Europe and had several different cars both German and American.
In the early 1980’s I rolled my car. I wasn’t wearing a seat belt and was ejected through the windshield and over two traffic lanes to land in a flowerbed that had just been turned the day before.
I was driving a Mercedes-Benz and the windshield was made of tempered, not safety, glass. If it had been an American car with the safety glass I would have hit the windshield and probably taken some trauma and cuts. As it was I woke up in the hospital the next day with a stiff neck and some minor cuts and bruises.
I am still convinced that having tempered glass instead of safety glass contributed a lot to my lack of significant injuries.
Even so, I have not forgotten to wear my seat belt since. Better no trip through a windshield at all than taking one with either type of glass.
Heh. I wish I had learned as you have - I too took a trip through a windshield in college….but I still have to be reminded to put on my seatbelt…
I think a lot of your prejudices about European cars are well out of date. A 5 Star Euro NCAP rated car is one of the safest vehicles on the planet. You also don’t need a tiny euro box as there are many larger cars that have fantastic economy and incredible performance. Take for example the BMW 530 diesel (top speed limited to 155 mph!) which is actually quicker than the 530 petrol, does 50 mpg is incredibly clean with a new generation engine and special filters.
I own a 1.9L Diesel Renault Scenic it has a 5 star crash rating, does 60 mpg, 0-60 mph in 9 secs and cruises happily at 125 mph on a German autobahn, easily seats 5 adults and two children, has all the electric gadgets you would ever want and is supremely reliable only needing servicing every 18,000 miles.
I simply don’t understand the performance issue in the US where you can barely go over 65mph. I’ve also driven many modern American hire cars on trips to the US and I’ve always been suprised at how crude the engineering is - lots of noise but not much acceleration, dreadful handling (unsafe in my opinion, especially at speed), stone age suspension and terrible mpg.
What’s the point?
Time for the US to wake up and realise that you are no longer the best at everything you do. The Europeans (shock horror!) overtook you in car design years ago - check out where all Formula 1 cars (the most scientifically advanced cars in the world - FACT) are made and designed….
(I’ll give you a clue - some of the top teams are Renault, BMW and Mercedes)
If we want the automakers to produce “gas sipping” cars here all we have to do is demand them with our pocket books. While not entirely defending the so called “free market” it is like virtually anything else in the US. You can control the behavior of corporations by your spending. In other words don’t look to Washington. Look in the mirror.