I don’t set out to be an asshole every time I post here, but this might give some ongoing reasons to wonder. I think these eulogies for Rick Wagoner are the Himalayas of bullshit.

Let’s dissect what Nancy’s friend wrote. Wagoner got a raw deal because GM’s major problems were making shitty cars. What could Wagoner have had to do with that? After all, he was just the CEO for nine years and president of North American ops for three years before that. Just because the CEO has to sign off on every model before it’s approved for production doesn’t mean he had anything to do with the car side of the business in that time, right?

Not that it matters because the “shitty cars” indictment is the Everest of bullshit. To hear people like this commentator tell it, GM is as popular with buyers as Yugo or Daewoo. But the last I checked, the #1 automaker in the US market and a very close #2 in global production was General Motors. That’s a neat trick considering that GM supposedly only makes cars that buyers don’t want.

And GM is in trouble because of the UAW contracts? How is it that the labor costs are destroying GM and Chrysler, but Ford has the same contract, has seen their sales fall by the same amount – but is surviving well enough to not even ask for loan guarantees?

The same is true for health care costs. How are they killing GM but not Ford? But what really pisses me off about this piece of hack work is how supposedly intelligent commentators totally miss the story. US automakers do pay more in health care than transplants even for active employees – because three decades of layoffs and callbacks have left the US automakers with a much older workforce. I used to work for a Tier 1 supplier for domestics and transplants, and the difference in the age of a typical assembly worker was huge. The workforce at a Toyota or Honda transplant is close to reflecting the population as a whole. At a GM plant you have to look hard to find anyone on the line who is under the age of 40, and I’d guesstimate that the median age has to be close to 50. That means you’ve got a workforce that’s closer to the top of the pay scale and it costs a hell of a lot more to give them health insurance. This isn’t because of the UAW contract. If Marysville or Georgetown had been through the same cycle of layoff and recall as Ford’s Lorraine plant or the Jeep plants in Toledo, Honda and Toyota would have close to the same employee demographics and costs.

But explaining the difference in health care costs isn’t the missing story. It’s how the cost of buyer incentives used by all of the US automakers cost them far more than the difference in employee and pension costs. With the rarest of exceptions, every model produced by the domestics will have at least a thousand dollars in discounts hung on the nose of the car just to get the buyer on the lot, and it’s often multiples of that. It comes in rebates, holdbacks, financing incentives and sometimes all three. It’s self-destructive behavior for the automakers and the buyers (all of those incentives on new cars kneecap the resale value of the car you got a rebate on five years ago) but after 30 years of almost endless rebates the customers of Ford, GM and Chrysler have come to expect them. Forget the UAW, the addiction to incentives is the greatest threat to the long-term survival of the domestic auto industry.

Back to Wagoner…How in the name of God can you talk about GM under Wagoner’s tenure and not talk about the disastrous forays into finance? Making GMAC into a major subprime and Alt A mortgage lender was Wagoner’s call. So was buying Ditech at the peak of the bubble. And let’s not forget about the absolute goatscrew that is Delphi. Spinning off the supplier side of the company was actually a good idea, but Wagoner mismanaged it so badly that it ended up costing GM billions.

These three screwups – all Wagoner’s from start to finish – is what bled GM of its cash reserves and made it impossible to borrow. Every major automaker, even Saint Honda, are seeing sales fall by 40-50%. But only GM and Chrysler have been pushed to the brink of oblivion because of really dumb deals that had little or nothing to do with making cars.

GM is fucked because Rick Wagoner wanted to be Jack Welch when he grew up. He wanted to make GM into a multifaceted conglomerate that happened to make cars the way GE happens to make lightbulbs, and like GE he wanted the heart of the new company to be in finance. He FUBAR’ed it and probably destroyed the company in the process. If Wagoner is truly the rarest of birds – a CEO without an ego – it damn well better be because he has nothing to be proud of.

Dexter:

It’s my opinion that only American Automotive-haters buy Tacoma trucks, when Ford and Chevy make far superior models

My 2005 Toyota Tacoma was made by UAW workers in Fremont, California. I made sure it was built in Fremont before I bought it.

GM and Ford are far superior? Have you actually driven a Chevy Colorado? It was hands-down the worst vehicle I’ve ever driven. I actually like the Ford Ranger a lot, especially with the four-cylinder and five speed, but Ford’s heavy use of incentives over the years have destroyed the resale value of Rangers. If you pushed a Ranger out of a cargo plane and plotted its descent to earth it would probably be a little less steep than the depreciation curve.

My Tacoma gets 25 highway and 20 in town, cost me just over $14K new and has depreciated about $3000 in the last four years. Show me another American-made truck that can beat all of that and I’ll buy it.

Here at the Basset house, we drive a Subaru (built in Lafayette, Indiana) and a Toyota (made in Georgetown, Kentucky). Didn’t even consider an American-company car when we got the Toyota in 05; might have when we bought the Subaru last year but I wanted a small wagon and the only US version of that is the Ford Escort, after a really bad experience with a new F150 a few years ago I am through buying Fords.

In all fairness, though, the Subaru did replace a Dodge pickup which was still running fine when I sold it at 140K… unless you count the new torque converter (in other words, major transmission repair) under warranty when it was new.

One product the US car industry doesn’t have, one which I would buy tomorrow, is a small, plain, no-frills pickup with decent gas mileage. Much like, say, the diesel Tacoma you can get in Canada. No fancy interior, rollup windows, cheap to run, basically a rolling appliance… kinda like this:
http://jalopnik.com/355025/mahindra-appalachian-info-updated-now-with-smack-talk

although the price looks way high and they want to use an interior “designed for the American market.” Good comment at 1:59, too…

or maybe one of these, from the same company which makes that $2000 car:

http://www.motoring.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=754&fArticleId=2179305

if I entered everything into the currency converter correctly, the base 4×2 model lists at $10,799 US.

http://www.fortwayne.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/SE/20090402/NEWS/904020313

Seems they’d like us to re-fashion America after Boston in the 1770s, where government had no place except in the bedroom.

To keep my job (well, one of them), i have to spend the next two loooong days experiencing Domestic Violence training. I’d be more respectful of the topic and all, but i’ve had it twice in the last ten years, and have to do it again because they were in the wrong state or supervised by the wrong agency. No one doubts that the content will be the same, but i won’t be legal for common pleas court purposes without having the right two days of role plays in my mental tool kit.

But i promise to share any new, unique insights i may glean from this marathon of man’s inhumanity to women (with the obligatory proviso that women do, in fact, abuse men, but not so often that we have to swap the dialogue for the role plays).

Here’s a Fort Wayne digression, regarding the Omnibus Lecture Series at IPFW (a very great favorite of mine)

Depending how you count them (see http://www.supremecourtus.gov/about/members.pdf ), there has only been 115 people who have ever served as a Justice (Chief Justice or Associate Justice) on the Supreme Court of the United States…just 115 people from the beginning, in 1789, up to the current day.

And of that number, there is exactly one living retired Justice, and she will speak at IPFW’s Rhinehart Music Center Thursday, April 23, 2009….and the event is free and open to the public.

But be aware – this event requires a ticket; you have to stop out at Rhinehart (they’re open between 12:30 and 6:30 pm weekdays) – or call them at 481-6555 and they’ll hold tix for you.

http://www.omnibuslectures.org/

The title of her lecture is “Advancing the Rights of Humanity” – and, as for me, I’ve already snapped up 4 tickets for the event (Pam and Grant and Shelby and I – Chloe is on her own that night!*) – because, leaving aside the chance to see such an exceptionally rare bit of United States history in the flesh, I’ve seen Ms O’Connor speak on C-SPAN before, and she’s quite a lively speaker, very thought provoking and funny!

And did I mention that it’s FREE?!

*actually, Aunt Deb will probably take charge of Miss Chloe at the appointed hour…