Motor General
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- December
- 14
Apropos nothing, but curious anyway, this idea popped into my head while reading an auto bailout column on Slate by ex-Governor Eliot Spitzer. I say curious, as it was a good column, but while reading it, I kept wondering what his take on Blagojevich was.
But I’m digressing. Spitzer thinks a bailout was a bad idea, and a Washington “Car Czar” – a dark blue-suited bureaucrat appointed to ensure the bailed out car companies start making vital changes in their business plans – an even worse idea. (I heard someone on NPR suggest the much cooler name in my title of “Motor General.”) It got me to thinking the marketplace already has a Car Czar, and she has spoken.
I should also point out that, while being guilty of not flooding the marketplace with cars people want, the car co.s are really only having problems due to the credit freeze. Which is odd, as I thought we gave gobloads of money to banks precisely to prevent this kind of thing. What’s needed is someone to lord over the financial sector. Where is the Bank Czar?
This entry was posted
on Sunday, December 14th, 2008 at 8:13 am by Matt Davies.
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The overwhelming problem is that bureaucrats think that they can throw money at a problem and make it go away. Fat chance.
What ails the American car manufacturer, as much as the crappy cars they make, is an institutional mentality that they can do what they want with impunity and without accountability in the market place,
I used to buy American made cars till I bought a lemon 15 years ago. Rather than Pontiac acknowledging that the car was built with a bad engine, I was forced to bring a lemon law claim, eventually winning it. Had Pontiac simply stepped up and done the right thing when their own mechanic said the engine had a cylinder ring that was defective, I might have actually continued to buy American. When it took me 8 months to get an arbitrator to rule in my favor, and Pontiac failed to buy the car back as ordered; that was it… no more American cars. The customer service just didn’t exist. Since I buy at least 2 new cars every 3 years, that’s at least 10 cars they lost the opportunity to sell me.
We don’t need a car czar; we need car companies that understand that the customer actually matters. The hubris of these morons is astounding.
As to the absence of loan money—blame the bureaucrats again (can you say Hank Paulsen?) who failed to require the bailed out socialist banks to lend the money rather than hoard it. Better idea would have been to give every American $20,000 to buy an American made car, and freeze the price of the cars. Gets money into circulation and eliminates the middle man bureaucrat.
You mean Spitzer actually dares to show his face in public ??