Auto makers went on wrong journey

Kenneth James Brown Albemarle County
Published: November 16, 2008

Your Nov. 11 editorial (“The Big Three beg for more”) sounded a strong note of accountability rarely seen or heard within the blizzard of commentary surrounding the corporate bailout plan.

How perceptive of Michigan University’s Professor Perry to place blame for the collapse of America’s auto makers onto the production line workers at Ford, General Motors and Chrysler Ltd.

Did these workers not see the market changes so evident to everyone else 25 years ago when the demand for smaller, less expensive and more fuel-efficient vehicles swept across America?

Why did those same workers go right on building gas-guzzlers and thus allow Japan and Germany to capture nearly 30 percent of car sales in the United States?

Wait a minute … did I get that line-up wrong? Corporate people in management make those critical decisions regarding the vehicle models to be built.

For 75 years the industry has had phenomenal growth and success measured by stockholder return, executive compensation, stable job security and employee contract benefits. Evidence of political clout in the legislative halls of Washington can best be measured by industry representatives successfully preventing passage by Congress of any meaningful restrictions on the “miles per gallon” capacity of American built vehicles … sheer irony!

In more recent years the Big Three shifted their focus from being American multi-national manufacturers to that alluring world of global asset accumulation, foreign production and the prospect of giant returns on investment.

But on the way to nirvana something went horribly wrong!