I have always had an affinity for the Ford Motor Company. Ford cars were all my father would own or race. In fact, I was three years old when he won a stock car race in a 1963 Ford Thunderbird at the Orange Show Speedway. He was so excited, when he returned to the pits, my father lifted me over the gates and put me in the car for a victory lap with his first-born child, only to find out he had won the race on fumes (a nearly empty tank of gas) and the car would not start. Needless to say, I did not take that victory lap with him, but it instilled in me a love for cars I would never outgrow.
My first automobile was a 1955 Ford pickup. It had the original wood bed and a column shift. Three on the tree was the magic phrase. As the years passed, I owned a 1980 Ford Thunderbird, a 1967 Ford F-250, a Mazda 626 (owned by Ford and stamped with Ford parts) and now I own a 1963 Ford Thunderbird, the same style of car my dad raced. And to begin this love affair with Ford, the day I was born, my father took my mother to the hospital in a 1967 Ford T-Bird. So as you can see, American cars are extremely romantic in my experience, and like watching a loved one who is sick, I want to help it. However, I'm also a realist. If my loved one was dying of liver failure because he was a life-long drunk, as much as it hurts, he did it to himself. Is this to say that I would simply watch him suffer without compassion or feel the need to help? No. However, it sets up a very complex conundrum, whereby I cannot simply say here's a new liver, keep on drinking.
Throughout the years I've done many things with cars. I was 14 when I tore apart my first engine in my Auto Shop class in high school, a 289 V-6 pulled out of a 1964 Ford Fairlane that my father donated to the class. As a result, I learned the most intimate details about combustible engines, their design flaws, how to seat valves, and even what to look for when honing cylinder walls. Years later, I would go on to become the shop manager of Fontana Valley Auto Body located in south Fontana, California. While there, I became I-Car Gold Class certified in many areas of auto collision repair, including completing a class in Aluminum body repair in Las Vegas. At the same time, I was enrolled at a local community college where I studied German. One day I came across an advertisement for a work abroad program through Foothill College in Northern California. I instantly enrolled in the program and insisted that I be placed at the BMW plant in Munich Germany. After several interviews, all conducted in the German language, I was awarded the position of Mitarbeiter at BMW in Germany making the brake, gas, and clutch lines for the BMW Z3, which was assembled in Spartenburg North Carolina. It was my first real experience of a global market.
Despite all of this experience with cars, I've been reluctant to talk about the bail out of American car manufacturers, not because I don't know much about it, but because it's an extremely uncomfortable subject for me. I love American cars and always have. Along with my T-Bird, I own a 2007 Saturn Vue, made in America by American hands, and one of the best cars I've ever owned, bar none. So it comes with sincere apologies to that industry, that I say I cannot support your need for a bailout.
First of all, for years American car manufacturers have rejected the need for efficiency, both in manufacturing costs and MPG rates, pushing $40k gas guzzling vehicles on the American people as an only option, while at the same time, ignoring the rise in small economical vehicles sold by the millions right here in America by their foreign competitors. Did they not realize oil is a non renewable source of energy and its cost would sky rocket as it became less and less abundant? Of course they did. However, furthering their denial of it, even when they created electric vehicles, GM's EV1 and Ford's Think car, they either sold the designs to foreign companies, or scrapped the cars altogether. I bet you they wished they hadn't done that now.
I should note however, that many foreign markets also have nationalized health care, so the benefits these companies are reliable for are much less than those for which U.S. manufacturers are responsible. On the other hand, if we say no to a bailout, is Bankruptcy necessarily a bad thing for GM or Ford and will it lead to loss of jobs or benefits? Perhaps not as George Will explains today in his article "Bankruptcy Isn't Always the Last Chapter." Will says that U.S. auto manufacturers need not be afraid of bankruptcy, stating that:
In America's saturated market, there is almost one car for every person of driving age; in China there are three for every 100 and fewer than that in India.
In essence, there will be cars to sell, lots of them. And don't buy the idea that Detroit isn't selling vehicles. Last year, over 8 million U.S. manufactured cars were sold right here in the U.S. and even more in foreign markets. The problem again is that for too long Ford, GM and Chrysler ignored signs that their SUV ride would come to an end, sometimes even stifling real progress toward alternative fuel sources.
Yet, there is something greater that bothers me about a bailout, something we've already seen with the bailout of our financial institutions. The government is simply incapable of enforcing any provisions associated with bailouts. Free market systems work in a way that they are not accountable to the government. The government can say it wants the car companies to increase fuel efficiency, but the companies have a right to sell and manufacture anything they want. So what good would it do to give them money only for them to continue the same failed practices?
So, as much as I love American car manufacturers, I'm afraid I simply cannot support a bailout.
