Connor Coyne

Flint Journal: Pontiac not for sale, GM says, despite local dealership’s offer to buy.

I would be interested, next time I wanted to buy a car.

“Here’s the part I find odd. Now, the government didn’t ask any of those Wall Street C.E.O.s to quit. Isn’t that kind of a double standard? I mean, if you build Cadillacs, you’re screwed. But if your chauffeur drives a Cadillac, you’re O.K. Whew!”
- Jay Leno

Two or three days ago, I forget what it was, the news was packed dense with details on the travails of Chrysler and GM, and most of this focused on the ouster of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner. The Danziger cartoon above encapsulates some of the ironies of the current situation; a career-long affiliation and decade plus executive tenor coupled with an inability to move product. In fact, this is a constant theme in the books I’ve been reading on the American auto industry: the inability of the executive financial class to reconcile public demand with a speculative market. For a half-century their strategy has favored the latter, and so their decline in actual market share was foreseen and, once started, ongoing.

What I’ve noticed in the Free Press and among many Michigan politicians (and, surprisingly, late night talk show hosts who usually like to castigate Detroit and the Big Three) is the increasing tendency to contrast the disparity between the treatment of Detroit and that of the New York financial firms. After all, who has been ousted there? There’s no question that, at least where the corporate class is concerned, bankers have retained more autonomy and have received less scrutiny than manufacturers, despite the fact that the mistakes made in the financial sector have been by far the worse.

But the ideas and contradictions embodied in the Leno quote are where things really start to get interesting. It prefers conflation by industry over separation by class, which runs somewhat counter to reality. It’s actually a pretty funny joke, but not quite correct when we get down to things. Those who “build Cadillacs,” that is, the autoworkers and management, are likely to be subject to forced contract renegotiations in the upcoming weeks and months — in bankruptsy court if not out of it — and this is where the force of contrast is a source of dark humor. But then Leno also assumed this slight applies to Wagoner personally: “Now, the government didn’t ask any of those Wall Street C.E.O.s to quit.” The former GM CEO isn’t hurting these days. He received something of a $20 million severance package, so in the words of our president he’s “doing fine,” he’ll “still be affluent.” To put it a little differently, in the Danziger cartoon, our sympathies ought to be with the bedraggled dealer who has worked hard to push his unwanted vehicles, not with a hapless and besuited Wagoner.

I don’t share the sympathy of the press for GM’s former CEO; he had a decade worth of chances, and while he tried harder than some of his predecessors, he didn’t try hard enough. The disparity in the government’s response is telling, and has more to do with politics than with our economic health. This week is important as the G20 summit will determine whether we will continue to push our economies through aggressive spending (per the US) or whether we will instead pursue aggressive international financial regulation (per the EU). The fact that this is only posed as an either/or proposition shows how unequal governing forces have been to the economic crisis so far. The fact is, we need both.

In the U.S. where we are enacting broad spending programs and will need to enact more, there is no injustice or impropriety in the government’s demands on Chrysler and GM. However, we need to see more oversight of the financial sector, and when it comes, it should be in terms as strong as and stronger than the chastisement the auto industry has received this week.

New York Times: A Painful Departure for G.M. Brands.

My parents bought one of the first Saturns off the line in ’91, and it was a great little car. Not super comfortable, perhaps, and it rattled at high speeds, but great mileage and it felt versatile. This was the car I learned to drive in, and it served me through high school and much of college.

In ’96 the Saturn set aside its cool, saavy, expressive face in favor of a bulkier, more rounded look. It also set aside about 10 mpg. I remember noticing this at the time, with dismay. I wasn’t paying for the car, but I was helping to pay for gas. I remember thinking, “I couldn’t even afford gas one of these newer Saturns.”

Saturn, which Roger Smith unveiled as a “process car” that would both revitalize management-labor-consumer relations and effetively fight compact imports was a massive expenditure, already several billion in the red by the time the first car ran off the line. By the time it had the momentum to perhaps start turning a profit, its best vehicles, and debatably its best years, were already behind it.

I’m really couldn’t care much less about Hummer and Saab. I agree, Pontiac is an icon, and it will be sad to see it go. But so much was invested in the Saturn experiment that to see it go down so precipitately… it’s a disappointment.

The Flint Journal: President Bush saves the auto industry, and Michigan lives to see another day.

Four words I’m not accustomed to saying.

New York Times: Bush Approves $17.4 Billion Auto Bailout.