That is the best reason for a bailout I have heard yet...

Sorry, I was operating from memory there on the AMC merger, I could have sworn that Studebaker was involved.

-Jay

JoeBob,

i'm impressed! that was a conservative thought. are you feeling bipartisan since your victory? :D

LOL!

What angers me is the lack of preparation the big 3 underwent...
This isn't the first time, thou I'll grant them the last time was 25-30 years ago.

But...
Absolutely NO plan b, no contingency or emergency evacuation routines, nothing.

The American public was prepared to spend money on more cars, even with the
economy in dire straights just this past summer they still did want to spend it.
But, they wanted fuel efficient automobiles.

Detroit's answer?
Typical of large corporations:
We can't, it would take months to re-organize the assembly lines, etc, etc...
Sure...

The consumer's come back: Why, don't you guys prepare for these things?

Their answer:
This one's the absolute best load of CRAP I have heard since the US President who claimed he didn't realize how large the national debt was, get this:
"We didn't see it coming."

WT*&%^$!!!

With gas prices soaring for the past EIGHT years the signs of this recession
were obvious to at least some folks as early as June 2007 and some were
wondering before that if something should not change.
But certainly no later than March of 2008 when the first set of companies started
to fail even the blindest of fools started to awaken, thou I do admit
some are still not seeing it but then where is the majority!?

That the assembly line workers didn't see it (which I doubt), but that they did or
could do nothing about it, that I tolerate, it's not their job.
But the CEO's, the veep's, all of the upper echelon, none of them saw it?
These are college graduates, we pay them serious money!
For what?

These automakers would have me believe that despite all the bad news plastered over
every news source available for months on end, that despite folks everywhere struggling to make ends meet, despite the big BAD obvious GLARING signs of a depression...
They didn't see it coming.

Here's my attitude, my response:
This kind of upper-class lameness doesn't deserve to be bailed out.

I'm not so sure the public was ready to go out and buy loads of brand new economy cars. The general opinion I see on other automotive forums is "It's crazy to commit to an econobox just because gas prices are high, they'll eventually come down and you'll be stuck with it after having bought it higher than MSRP and having sold your truck/SUV at a loss". Even more importantly, it's not like the fuel efficient cars weren't out there; they were all there, rotting on the dealers lots, and people weren't buying them.

Also, GM came out with a bunch of XFE and hybrid models around March 2008 but failed to tell anyone about them. It wasn't that they didn't make them, it's that they didn't sell them.

When people were hurting for money, they couldn't just buy a brand new car on a whim. They bought used cars, hence why that market went way up. The ones who had multiple vehicles drove the more efficient car more, and some FE cars were taken out of retirement.