Your email address is safe with us. View our Privacy policy.
Cutting the Auto Giant Down to Size
By Jules Witcover, Tribune Media Services
WASHINGTON -- When I was a kid growing up in the pre-Pearl Harbor
days, the word that often described the average American family car
was "transportation." It meant that the automobile was primarily a way
of getting from point A to point B, with few bells and whistles.
After World War II that all changed, as the auto industry cultivated a huge public romance with the look, size and speed of the means of making that same basic journey. The kind of family car you drove became a prime status symbol, with enhanced appearance and design as well as performance.
Big-and-flashy crowded out simple-and-dependable as the all-powerful American car business installed itself as the chief generator of the nation's economy. When GM CEO "Engine Charlie" Wilson as President Dwight Eisenhower's nominee for secretary of defense famously proclaimed that what was "good for the country" was "good for
But with the invasion of innovative foreign competitors and the American concept of big-is-better eroding the home industry's commanding position, Engine Charlie's axiom eventually withered away. Exploitative foreign oil prices hastened the erosion as Detroit gas-guzzlers like the SUV continued to roll off the assembly lines, seemingly oblivious to the dire consequences ahead.
The once-unthinkable outcome of
Well, maybe it's time to go back to those pre-Pearl Harbor days when American cars were looked upon primarily as "transportation." A sign of dim recognition of this need has been seen in the forced decision of GM rival Chrysler Motors to hook up with Fiat of Italy, presumably to turn out more small and energy-efficient cars.
Both GM and
If the home market for domestic-built cars is to bounce back, it may take more than higher fuel efficiency and smooth road handling to get Americans to start buying GM and
It's a dilemma for the "new" managers of the essentially nationalized domestic auto industry, many of whom apparently come from the management corps that was steering the business down a road to nowhere all these years.
No matter what a stumbling industry is, sometimes it takes a radically fresh mind to get the creaking Tin Lizzie out of the ditch. After World War II, to give just one example, a little-known entrepreneur named George Romney in Michigan took the skeleton of a failing Nash brand and turned it into American Motors as an upstart against the Big Three.
He introduced the concept of the compact car with the downsized Rambler that quickly caught on with low- and middle-income buyers. It was derided by competitors as just "transportation," but it met the existing market hunger.
Romney personally capitalized on the compact-car success by running for governor of Michigan in 1962, was reelected in 1966 and became the frontrunner for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination, until his own candidacy ran out of gas and he lost out to Richard Nixon. The Rambler, like Romney's political fortunes, also was eventually run off the road by the American car owner's romance with size and glitz, provided by the Big Three.
Maybe the U.S. car market needs another Rambler, and another George Romney -- the auto innovator, not the politician.
========
Jules Witcover's latest book, on the Nixon-Agnew relationship, "Very Strange Bedfellows," has just been published by Public Affairs Press. You can respond to this column at juleswitcover@earthlink.net.
(c) 2008 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
This news arrived on: 06/07/2009
Printer Friendly Version | Send this page to a friend | Post Comment
Rate This Story:
Great - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - Bad
Thank you for your input.
Posted Comments:
06-07-2009 00:30
JCE wrote:
The huge corporation, once it becomes international, is no longer American, and then it becomes anti American, and like the big churches, cares only for money. It can then buy the laws it needs to protect itself. It doesn't have to follow natural law. Cutting them down to size makes them follow natural law. Do or die as opposed to do or get bailouts. Commercial propaganda tells people that they must have something, the big, gas guzzling status symbol. Those are the true rulers of the country, the ones who tell us what we need to live. The advertisers control peoples lives. They get people young, and keep them stupid, and they buy what they tell them to buy, think what they tell them to think, and vote like they want them to. A nation of mindless consumers.
Comment archive | Comment FAQ's
 |
 |
|
View Politics ezine stories by date or visit the complete archive |
The ArcaMax Politics channel is one of 70 content categories offered by ArcaMax Publishing on this ... |
VideoSquares.com
