The Brooklyn Paper has rightly taken local state Supreme Court judges to task for commandeering the northern part of a Columbus Park public parking lot for their own private use. The paper also did the public a service by revealing that the judges’ contention that they needed the space for “security” was a crock. Turns out that roughly 15 of the 30 drivers using the private lot are secretaries, law clerks, court aides and other non-judges. But the next part of the newspaper’s campaign raises uncomfortable (if not for Phil Ressler) questions about the political climate vis a vis a Detroit Bailout. To wit: “It’s un-American!” the Paper proclaims. “On Tuesday and Wednesday, 15 out of 16 cars parked in the judges’ temporary lot were made by non-American companies. The sole American car on the Cadman Plaza side of 360 Adams St. courthouse was a Ford Mustang convertible. And speaking of Ken Elias’ Death Watch prediction that ChryCo and GM will merge, check out off-hand remark regarding Chrysler’s fate. “Looking out over the lot on Wednesday afternoon, a court officer laughed when he realized that more than 93 percent of the cars were not from the Detroit Big Three (soon to be Big Two). ‘I guess that’s the state of America now — we buy foreign,’ said the guard, who would not give his name.” [thanks to thenewspaper.com for the link]
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
They’re foreigners
The list of cars in the judges’ temporary parking lot at the Adams Street courthouse on Wednesday speaks volumes about our civil servants’ buying habits:
American cars
Ford Mustang
Foreign cars
Toyota Camry, Honda Civic coupe, Honda CR-V, Volvo V70*, Toyota Celica, Lexus GS, Lexus LS, BMW 5 Series, Mercedes M-Class, Mercedes C-Class (3), Nissan Quest, Acura TL, Hyundai Sonata (3)
It’s American to have freedom of choice. It’s also American to fail to think holistically about the choices one makes. Buying a non-domestic car isn’t “un-American” any more than it would be un-French in France or un-Japanese in Japan (or maybe it is — they seem to get it). Or to put it another way, buying American (read domestic) wouldn’t be specifically American. The issue is portable. You get the economy you deserve, just as you get the government you deserve. This is true for Wal-Martization and for breadlines in Michigan. If as a consumer you let relative trivialities like prior troubled ownership experience inhibit you from considering and buying a fully credible new domestic product, you shouldn’t be surprised when the bill comes due in the form of bailouts paid via taxes, inflation or interest rates, nor in the form of social decay from unemployment, nor the opportunity costs of an idle workforce not progressing personally nor paying taxes.
It wouldn’t be specifically American to buy a competitive domestic car as part of a holistic accounting of the impact of your buying decision. That would be helpful as a citizen behavior in any country. The key is for socially-inclusive buying considerations to emphatically *not* be a product of regulation, protectionism nor any other incentive. Free market principles include buyers being able to choose the scope of what influences decisions to buy.
Does anyone really believe the US wouldn’t be economically stronger if Americans shifted, say, 3 or 4 million units of our domestic automotive market to competitive models made and sold by the D3? In 2008, is any Camry or Accord worth the real, cumulative costs of not buying a Malibu or Taurus? Is any Lexus or Audi really worth the cost of not buying an equivalent Cadillac? Is any Toyota or Nissan truck of any type worth the real cost of not buying a competitive GM, Ford or Dodge alternative? This is the question that people thinking holistically about their purchasing power ask themselves, and in the asking enough difference might be made. Everyone won’t come to the same conclusion. The problem is, most Americans are not even asking themselves the question in the context of their automotive purchases, and then we’re taken aback by the destruction we’ve helped wrought.
Free marketers prefer to see all the responsibility residing on the side of the manufacturers. The consumer is there to be earned, nothing more. If nothing Detroit made were competitive, they’d have a point. That’s not the case today. A majority of the market would be rationally and subjectively served by the portion of Detroit’s portfolio that is competitive. We want a product mix, so this isn’t a suggestion to close our market. Certainly not. It’s a call for individuals to consider their options more holistically, with a measure of communitarian considerations.
The meaningful differences between cars of same category are dwindling. Homogenization of form, content, safety and reliability is the trend. Companies are naturally predatory. The consumer side of the social equation is that our buying decisions shape the world we get while channeling predatory energy. We can either focus narrow-mindedly on product and past hurt and suffer the consequences, or we can broaden our criteria for selection, realize that taking a chance costs no more than paying for the destruction of the D3 in other ways, and actively shape our world.
In the past 25 years I’ve had no trouble whatsoever finding anvil-reliable, interesting, durable, D3 cars and trucks, which is not the same as saying I haven’t been intensely attracted to some imports. I’ve just chosen not to be a factor in the socio-economic erosion associated with American manufacturing decline. Everyone here has the same choice available to them, and the free will whether or not to make it. But no one has the option of escaping the consequences.
Phil
Does anyone really believe the US wouldn’t be economically stronger if Americans shifted, say, 3 or 4 million units of our domestic automotive market to competitive models made and sold by the D3?
No. Michigan would be economically stronger, the south would not. Relatively few “imports” are actually imported. Have you ever wondered how much economic damage old GM cars do to people? How many poor people end up bankrupt or with their wage garnished because of a loan they had to take out to fix some unnecessary problem on their 98 Bu, or lose a job because the engine on their Impala crapped itself @ 80,000? Lemons are no joke, especially to people who live paycheck to paycheck. If you’re going to drape yourself in the flag, I feel like its your duty to build cars, especially the cheap ones, that are as well built as they can be, and not make it unofficial policy to shaft people on their warranties as much as you can. I understand that you have had good experiences with D3 products; congratulations. I have not. Consumer Reports would indicate that you have been very lucky, or perhaps your idea of anvil reliable is only having to replace the engine once. I dunno. People (very rationally, imo) are very leery of getting sucked into the GM trap again. We’ve heard the “we’re just as good now” siren song before; 10 years later even GM apologists will admit that those cars were total crap, but THIS time we’re serious when we say its all good now. Puh-leaze.
In 2008, is any Camry or Accord worth the real, cumulative costs of not buying a Malibu or Taurus?
Yes.
Is any Toyota or Nissan truck of any type worth the real cost of not buying a competitive GM, Ford or Dodge alternative?
No, because Ford/GM are making top of the line products in this genre. If I were in the truck market, I’d get an F-150. I’m not reflexively anti-domestic, but I’m also going to cut them any slack.
The problem I have with this “holistic” buying is that if everyone did it, GM would still be pumping out the same old shite. It took ’em 30 years to get the message they needed to step up to the plate while their market share eroded. You think if they were still fat and happy they’d have bothered to improve? It took them forever (and really its debatable that they have caught up; I want to see the reliability of the new vaunted Malibus when they are hitting 100,000 miles) with their feet in the fire. If everyone sat around worrying about keeping those UAW workers on the gravy train, they’d never change.
I really hate the way people drape the flag over the nakedness of the domestics. They are not America; America is not GM. If anything, we should be pissed at THEM for their un-holistic unpatriotic habit of trying to feed the American people a shit sandwich with red-white-and-blue napkins and then acting shocked when some people declined. They are companies like any other, and its too bad that they managed to dig such a massive hole for themselves, but they have no one, no one at all, to blame but themselves. And supporting American mediocrity is much worse for the country in the long run than the death of some large corporations.
There is no reason at all domestic car companies have to be bad. They have every reason to succeed, in fact. The reason that the domestic auto industry is in trouble is because the D3 in particular are badly run, badly managed, overly unionized companies who burned Americas goodwill to avoid the hard choices they had to make to get healthy. There’s a reason why Toyota builds new factories here, and the domestics build them in Mexico, and it rhymes with CAW.
I’m hoping for a rebirth of the domestic auto industry from this whole debacle. A clean, fresh domestic auto industry that isn’t weighed down by 50 years of mistakes, factional politics, and just plain old stupidity.
That will be a thing to see and I’m sure we could give Toyota a great run for their money if that happens.
Toxicroach-
I didn’t mention the flag. Nor patriotism. None of that. My argument is one of self-interest and it applies, in this case, to consumers in any auto-producing country.
I’m not lucky. I simply chose my American cars from among the subset of them that were competitive in the class I was buying. I never had to replace an engine, nor a transmission. I’ve never had a significant system or subsystem failure on a D3 vehicle, nor do I find this surprising. It’s what I expected and got well into six figures of mileage each one, but I chose carefully.
The economic leverage of the D3 automaking jobs concentrated in the industrial mid-west exceeds the ripple effect of the transplants in the south. If 3 – 4 million units were transferred by the market back to the D3, the damage to southern transplants would be more than offset by the expansion of employment by the D3, including in the south. In any case, the national economy doesn’t distinguish between South Carolina and Michigan or Missouri. The D3 could pick up plants and workers left after transplants shrink.
It’s true that the D3 have given us plenty of reason to feel hostility toward them. They have mismanaged their businesses, across the board. They’ve missed market trends others anticipated. They cost-managed many products into mediocrity or worse. They allowed once-great marketing expertise to atrophy to the point of caricature. They’ve destroyed vast volumes of shareholder value. Guilty, guilty, guilty.
Which is not to say these same mismanaged companies haven’t produced some competitive products. At the end of the day, every person who got burned can hold a grudge and pay for that emotional satisfaction in higher crime, reduced services, elevated social disorder, higher interest rates, higher taxes and polarizing distribution of wealth, or you can put that aside and contribute to underpinning the middle class in our economy by buying something that’s both domestic *and* competitive. Yes, you’ll have to take that chance that the Malibu will perform at 100,000 miles. If it doesn’t, there may be a cost. Well, point is you’re going to pay the other way too. At no point have I advocated “supporting American mediocrity.” I haven’t done that nor am I asking you to either.
We agree there is no reason domestic automotive manufacturers have to be incompetent. But there are reasons they will be hobbled by some cost disparities that have to be mitigated. The right talent pool can revive this sector for the US.
Phil
Fair enough Phil, sorry about putting words in your mouth.
I still think pinning social disorder on the transplants is a reach. Crime has been trending downward pretty hard during the D3’s fall, which makes your case fairly hard to make on that point. I don’t think they bear any relation to each other really, but on the face of it that allegation is pretty hard to make stuck. Sure, the rust belt is kinda shitty and bound to get worse. On the other hand, I doubt Alabama, with one of the lowest median incomes in the country, hasn’t benefited enormously from the Toyota facility there.
And since the national economy doesn’t distinguish between regions, why can’t I reverse your argument and say that the transplants will pick up factories and workers from the D3 when they shrink? If this is really about the middle class, why are you rooting for all the transplant workers, who make good wages and benefits by any standard, to see their factories get shut down? I’m really not seeing a legitimate reason to favor domestic workers over transplant workers, unless you’re simply rooting for the industrial midwest out of a sense of regionalism.
Finally, we’ve each had our own experiences with various brands. But each of our stories is just an anecdote; the market share and reliability reports indicate that you’re story is rarer than mine. Once burned, twice shy. You’re not going to hook people into buying a 20,000 product they aren’t comfortable with because the same guys who are guilty of all charges finally makes a car that isn’t obviously crap. The domestics seem to be the only companies on earth that can behave as badly as they have for as long as they have and still have apologists who think everyone should flock back to their products as soon as they release a few decent cars.
“…not make it unofficial policy to shaft people on their warranties as much as you can.”
Hear Hear!!!!!
Huzzah and Hosannah!!!!!
“Is any Lexus or Audi really worth the cost of not buying an equivalent Cadillac?”
Yep. Sorry, but they are. Cadillac makes ONE reasonably world competitive product, the new CTS. Lincoln makes zero, and those are our only domestic choices. I don’t like the CTS. I will not buy a car I don’t like to support one line worker over another, or to fictionally make Detroit crime rates go down.
I work hard to earn my money. Nobody is going to step in and subsidize me so that some foreigner doesn’t take my job from me. If an American company makes a product that is better than anything else in the world, I’m more than happy to buy it. If not, I’ll buy it from the country that does it best. This is a global market, and every car company has just as much of a right to compete for my dollars. Car buying isn’t some sort of “protect America” charity.