November 16, 2009

Today it was announced that GM will start paying back to the government some of the bailout money they received. This is smoking mirrors on a gigantic scale.

GM received money to pay their obligations and they received money for improvements. They used the money to pay their obligations and will be repaying the government from the money earmarked for improvements.

What happened now to the improvements? GM is refusing to give up. They still want to be the largest automaker in the world. They still don't care what the consumers want, they want to push their cars on everybody. Why do they refuse to sell Opel which is a great and popular brand in Europe? Do they have to own everything that has four wheels?

Here is a little story that capsulizes what's wrong with the American auto industry.

We leased a 2006 Jeep Grand Cherokee, (unfortunately) eight cylinders, a gas guzzler like you wouldn't believe. When we leased it in late 2005 times were good, gas was not expensive. By the time our lease expired in October 2008, the thing hit the bottom fan. Gasoline was about $4.00 a gallon and large cars were like the boogie man.

Regardless of its problem we still liked the car. We made an offer to Chrysler to buy it as it was. The contract price was about $19,000. We made an offer to Chrysler for $15,000. They were very rigid about the whole deal, eventually agreeing to $17,000. We said no deal, here is your gas guzzler live with it happily ever after.

As happy as we were with Chrysler, since this was our fourth Jeep, we decided never again. Also by that time Chrysler went out of the leasing business.

Across the street from this dealer there was a Hyundai dealership. We went in and checked out their cars. We inquired and they said leasing was not a problem. Four days later we were the proud parents of a brand new 2008 Hyundai Santa Fe.

Now, why a Korean car dealership can give us better service than an American dealership? That's not accidental that you can see so many foreign cars on the roads. Sometimes it seems they are outnumbering the American cars.

We used to have a 1985 Ford Tempo. At the time we bought it it was advertised as the best car in its category. Well, this car in its first two years had more trouble than other ten cars combined.

At one time when I took it back to the dealership with its latest trouble, even the service manager remarked what else can go wrong with this car. In his opinion everything that could go wrong already did. The car was so bad that at the end the Ford factory representative agreed to reimburse us for the cost of the repairs that were not covered by the warranty.

Up to that time we only had American cars. Mercury Comet, Mercury Cougar, American Motors, Pontiac Le Mans, Ford Mustang. So it was natural that we buy American.

After two years we decided to get rid of the Tempo. Somebody bought it who was aware of all the problems we had, but he still liked the car. Ironically, we heard that person never had any problem with the Tempo.

We decided we'll take a chance on a Japanese car and, we bought a 1987 Maxima. The car was superb. We had that car for over ten years and gave us no problems at all.

When we bought the Maxima I worked in a construction field office. My all-American colleagues made me feel bad that I dared to buy a foreign car. That was a real Chevy crowd. But once they sat in the car they started to change their tunes and began to like it.

That car was made a lot better than any of its American counterpart at the time. It had more luxuries included than in any of our past cars. Now, why was that?

Ok, we had four American cars after that but now that we have a foreign (Korean) car we can see the difference. This car is well made, it is comfortable and, (knock on wood) it runs well.

I am not trying to be unpatriotic but until the American car companies learn to build cars the American public wants they will not get out of their financial predicament.

Don't try to be the biggest, the largest. Try to be the best. That should be enough. Look at Volkswagen. It's not GM or Ford and they still make good, no superb cars.