Fiat, Shcmiat. Does anybody actually believe that 'liquidation' suggests that all of this plant and equipment will go idle? To keep this short, new money (yes, probably off-shore money) will immediately put this machine back to work producing cars (yes, probably foreign cars). The people putting these cars together will be re-hired based upon a resume' demonstrating value, rather than upon a current union card, and this reborn industrial force will move forward.

What a hoax. I need to go walk the dog.

 

Both GM and Chrysler have idled dozens of plants and laid off tens of thousands of workers. To the best of my knowledge, foreign manufacturers have not rushed in to buy those plants and rehire those workers. Why you think a Chrysler liquidation would turn out differently is unclear. If what you say were true, wouldn't we already be seeing it?

 

What I am suggesting might be beyond the logic of our confused, crippled and dependent American Society.

Within the Rust and Motor Belts of America exists perhaps the largest assemblage of plant and equipment on the planet, all tooled and ready to produce the modern automobile. It is currently championed by a management that has lost the concept of profitability in favor of self-enrichment, and an organized labor party void of a day's-work-for-a-day's-pay ethic.

I say let it be liquidated. Sell it. Sell this huge machine to another People that remembers how to make a buck using the skills of a workforce willing to put in an honest day's labor.

But what a silly, far-fetched notion. Who could ever envision such a thing?

 

Maybe I'm "confused, crippled and dependent" but I don't understand why we need to liquidate GM and Chrysler before an automotive entrepreneur could start production. There are plenty of idle plants in the Rust and Motor belts just waiting for someone with a good idea and some money. We have millions of skilled people out of work who would love a job. All of the pieces are already in place. If there really were someone ready to step in and take over from "management that has lost the concept of profitability in favor of self-enrichment, and an organized labor party void of a day's-work-for-a-day's-pay ethic," they would be doing so already. I don't believe that liquidating GM and Chrysler would result in the emergence of such a "reformed" manufacturer. It would just put more people out of work.

 

I wasn't aware that we have car factories up for sale, radmanly. Where are they and what might they be?

It is a certainty, ramanly, that you will see this farce of a Congress-led restructuring slowly unravel over the next eighteen months. Both GM and Chrysler have shed nearly all models currently on the market, and it will take forever for a management-by-consensus to put a new product into production, let alone a car in the showroom. Keep in mind that the fixed costs for both GM and Chrysler are said to be about $100,000,000 a day. What are all of these managers and highly skilled workmen you mention to do in the meantime - while Congress helps develop the next super-car of a green America? Where is the American confidence to buy anything from GM or Chrysler? What are they trying to sell?

And Fiat is to save the day? I see Audi's, Volvo's, Beemers, Beetles and Porshes everywhere on the American streets and highways. I could throw a cat in the air and it will probably land on a Benz. But where are all of theses Fiat's that are supposed to incline the American car-buyer to see the vision of Obama's restructuring? I can't say that I've ever seen one of these wonderful Fiat's anywhere. And Fiat now owns 35% of GM without investing one dollar - they are ponying up instead their superior small-car technology and automotive secrets? Give me a break.

When Congress and Obama, GM and Chrysler, Fiat and our new Car Czar, finally concede to failure, a new truly Capitalist People as I have described above, one that remembers how to work and not to bargain, cloaked as the Chinese, a Korean or the Japs, will be there to pick up the pieces. After all this time, pissing away $100,000,000 tax-dollars a day, just to finally admit that it ain't going to work. How can it possibly work, radmanly? Tell me. And be specific.

In the meantime, Ford Motors will have been cranking out those plain white Crown Vic's with the steel painted rims.

 

According to this, GM's Wilmington, DE assembly plant closes next month. I'll bet if you make an offer, GM will happily sell it to you.

While I agree that GM and Chrysler have monumental tasks ahead of them, I disagree that Congress will be designing products. Obama has made it very clear that the government will not tell the carmakers what products to introduce. I'd rather see "managers and highly skilled workmen" on the job--even if they're not doing much--than on the unemployment line. We have enough unemployed people already.

As Fiat hasn't been in the US market in decades, it's not surprising that you haven't seen one. If you go to Mexico, they're everywhere. However, there are some of Fiat's subsidiaries already selling in the US market like Ferrari and Maserati. That's not bad company for Chrysler.

Here's my hope for Chrysler: I want to see them use Fiat's expertise with small, fuel-efficient cars to produce some compelling AMERICAN vehicles that get better gas mileage than the current lineup. The mileage from Chrysler's current engine offerings is pitiful. Honda gets the same mileage out of their V6 that Chrysler gets from its I4. So, the mechanicals could use some help.

However, I want the designs to remain American. One of the things I really love about the Crossfire is its American design. Sure, it's Mercedes under the hood but the shape of the car is American. I just wish it had been assembled in America. The MB SLK does nothing for me but put an American-designed body on it and I'll buy two. I think most Alfas are rather fugly so I'm not looking for an Alfa 159 with the Chrysler wings on it, either.

I want Chrysler to be a high-end brand like Cadillac, Audi, BMW, and Mercedes. It should concentrate on premium RWD sedans, convertibles, and coupes. Anything designed to haul children or groceries and use FWD should go to Dodge. Chrysler should super- and turbo-charge all of its cars to get more performance from smaller engines. I'd love to see a Chrysler 300 with a truly premium (think Audi) interior and a supercharged V6. Chrysler needs to reclaim its reputation for good design and it won't do that by just rebadging Fiats. Of course, nobody at Chrysler cares what I think.

This sounds like an ideological rant rather than a business plan. It sounds like you want to punish Chrysler and GM for taking government money and employing union labor. The costs to the larger economy or to Chrysler customers take a backseat to teaching ideological lessons.

Ultimately, it comes down to product. If Fiat and Chrysler can produce cars that people actually want, it will work. Chrysler's been bailed out by the government before and was able to pay it back and survive. It could happen again.

I don't think so. I thought Ford was discontinuing the Crown Vic. I believe it's currently only available for fleet sales.

 

I had asked about which car factories are for sale, radmanly, not idle. I doubt if the current owners will let me take title to them quite yet; but I'll ask.

This huge plant and equipment will remain idle, for who knows how long (two or three years?), with all encumbered fixed costs (carrying costs,interest, property taxes, utilities, union legacy costs, maintenance) until they can be retooled (at huge expense) to produce a viable product. Again, we have learned that both Chrysler and GM both incur about $100,000,000 a day in fixed people and plant costs. These are not production costs. Giving you the benefit of the doubt that someday these car factories will indeed one day again produce a viable product under Chrysler/Fiat, imagine how many of your tax dollars it will take to support the fixed costs of this machine in the meantime. Even under an accelerated R&D program, from concept to show room, sacrificing all quality, we're talking at least eighteen months.

In the back of your mind, start humming one of those annoying little jingles you can't get rid of - a $100,000,000 a day - to the tune of Jimmy Buffet, Stevie Wonder or somebody else. You know the kind. The billions and billions of tax-payer bailout dollars you gave Chrysler to fund prior losses and exposures are already gone. $100,000,000 a day. Have you got it going to music yet? $100,000,000 a day sha-na-na, sha na na. $100,000,000 a day. We should more correctly be humming it to a funeral drudge.

I had asked how these restructurings could possibly work, specifically, and your specific hope is that Chrysler can someday produce a marketable product. Thanks for being so specific. Personally, I couldn't imagine what Fiat can possibly have to offer that the American car-buyer would be interested in buying. Re-invent or simply re-tag, I just can't see it. I doubt if that I am alone. In any event, from a blank sheet of paper, from building a new car and then selling enough of the cute little bastiards to make the first nickle in profit, means actually selling how many millions of units? You'll have to ask the new Car Csar, but I'm sure it's quite a few of the cute little bastiards. Remember that the existing product line is loosing huge sums of money every day.

So, if it takes eighteen months to bring a new-and-improved product on line, and if it takes God knows how long (a couple years?) to sell enough of the cute little bastiards to recoup the billions all ready spent, and the additional billions and billions to be spent over an era of unprofitable times to come ... $100,000,000 a day, sha na na, sha na na.

Dang. I just can't stop humming that tune ... sha na na. And these are tax-payer dollars yet to be doled out in life support to the failing new Chrysler/Fiat company. Do you believe that these billions and billions of additional tax dollars will need to be approved by Congress, like the first billions last Winter? Will Congress approve such spending, or will the new Car Csar just call up Timothy and have him write another rubber check. Who's kidding whom, radamnaly. $100,000,000 dollars a day. For three and a half years. Sha na na, sha na,na na. Do the math.

Gosh, I almost forgot. General Motors is busily doing the same thing. So, let's see ... that's $200,000,000 a day, for, say three years? ... sounds like a pretty scary multiplication to me. Sha na na. And keep it mind, radmanly, along with the song, that this is all un-funded taxpayer money. Even over an impossibly optimistic period of two years before either company can show profit, we are talking about over 1.5 trillion dollars. Plus the billions and billions the tax payer has already thrown away on this ridiculous venture. And what about the costs to retool for Fiat's wonderful small-car technology? Do you honestly believe that Congress or the American People are going to go along with this? It would bankrupt an already bankrupt America! Is it rational to believe in the hope and whim that Obama's green vision that GM and Chrysler can somehow produce an exciting new automobile? How will the Treasury funnel such incredible sums of imaginary money into these newly restructured organizations? Two hundred million dollars a day ... for two years sha na na.

So I go back to my original suggestion. It will not be the American People - a people of greed, sloth and dependency - that will be utilizing this great industrial machine to produce the next generation of the American automobile. It will be another People.

Oh BTW: Ford will never cease production of the plain white Crown Vic with steel painted rims. General Motors really screwed up when they stopped making the full-sized rear-wheel-drive four-door sedan (was it the Impala?), the staple ride of every municipality and law enforcement agency on the continent. But this was back during another 'green' fad - the notion of front-wheel drive innovation. Alas.

So if you've got better ideas, radmanly, tell me specifically. I am not interested in another point-counter-point circular argument from you regarding opposing ideologies. Give me dollars and sense ... or better yet ... give me from your key board some common sense. And stop humming that ridiculous tune.

 

yeah, GM pretty much handed the fleet sales to Ford, but they killed the Caprice/Impala to free up capacity for more profitable trucks and SUV's, not FWD cars.

 

The Wilmington, DE plant doesn't close until next month. Given that GM is in bankruptcy and laying off tens of thousands of workers, I would be very surprised if they turned down any reasonable offer.

Or the plant could be sold. I don't know that GM or Chrysler intend to hang on to all of their idled plants.

Have we learned that? Where does this number come from?

Ultimately, that's what it comes down to. If GM and Chrysler can't produce cars people want to buy, no amount of bailout money or restructuring can help.

You may be right. I hope not.

I agree that the existing product line isn't compelling for a lot of buyers. I hope Fiat can change that.

What's the alternative? Let Chrysler and GM go bankrupt and lose over a million jobs as they take their suppliers down with them? You think that's going to be "free" for American taxpayers? The government will still have to pay unemployment benefits and probably a whole lot of food stamps and housing assistance. Plus, there's all of the lost income tax revenue.

If GM and Chrysler went belly-up, I believe the shock would put us in a depression. While that may make the free-market fundamentalists happy, it would suck for the rest of us. I'm not interesting in destroying the American economy in the interests of right-wing ideological purity.

Not until you tell me where this $100,000,000/day number comes from.

You're jumping to some pretty big conclusions. The government has only pledged to provide $8 billion in financing to Chrysler and $15 billion to GM. These are loans, not gifts. Combined, that $23 billion is not chump change but it's certainly no $1.5 trillion.

Sounds like you really hate a lot of your fellow Americans.

The Crown Vic is only available for fleet sales. Unless you're a taxi company or police department, it's been effectively discontinued. Why anybody would want it is beyond me.

Tell you what, specifically? If you're asking me to predict the future, I'm not a fortune-teller.

No one's forcing you to participate.

 

The fixed cost number of $100,000,000 per day comes from the mouths of GM and Chrysler. The impossibility of the math is self-evident. A culture of corporate greed and a legacy of organized labor has driven us softly to where we are.

There is no going back; but I still love everyone.

BTW: this number of one hundred million surfaced some time ago during a one-day news cycle in the WSJ. Never heard about it again. Just like the $1.2 trillion in additional mortgage-default-swap exposure by AIG (once mentioned on CSPAN by Tim Giegthner during Congress' grilling last February) and never mentioned again, anywhere. That exposure exists today. Yikes. And the obscene bonuses paid to Freddie and Fannie execs (mentioned once during a Senate hearing on CSPAN-2 in late April) that would make the AIG bonuses look chincy; never heard about it in the main-stream news. Funny how this kind of thing just sort of 'goes away' in the ObamaMedia. Yet the same GE news outlets can rail on and on about torture, the swine flu and the octomam.

Woe is us.

Your response is not required or desired. Have a nice day.

 

A word from my hero about Chrysler/Fiat
Iacocca Tells Detroit to Kick Government Out ASAP - Auto - FOXNews.com


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