I suspect that if creditors who are owed hundreds of millions and in some cases billions cannot be paid for the majority of their debt then service providers like my former company who are owed a smaller sum in the hundreds of thousands are probably screwed. http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/30/autos/chrysler_deadline/index.htm If I wasn't laid off in December I would be doing quite a bit of teeth gnashing now....
Looks like a done deal.... http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/30/news/companies/chrysler_bankruptcy/index.htm?postversion=2009043009
I remember Fiat cars from the early 80s as my best friend bought a Fiat Strada. Inexpensive, neat styling, but it seemed to be in the repair shop every month. He ended up dumping the car and switched to a Honda. I believe he has remained loyal to Honda to the present day. I bought two Chrysler/Damler products this decade and used to drive an Intrepid as a company car in the late 90s. I loved the styling of all the Chryslers I drove but all three had mechanical problems early on that I never experienced with any Honda or Suburu I bought. I have a hard time envisioning the new Fiat/Chrylser company rising from the ashes of bankrupcy and gaining the confidence of the American car buyer. Both company's reputation for reliability is piss poor and the bankrupcy filing and bailout will also drive away customers for a multitude of reasons. I hope I am wrong but I think the only American car company that has a good shot of surviving is Ford. GM may squeek through but Fiat will fail again in its attempt to attract American buyers. The only portion of the old Chrysler that might live on is Jeep.
Bobda my friend.....I think you know as well as I that the fantasy of Americans happily driving off the lot in tin can death traps is never going to happen. I think anyone qualified to answer to this assertion MUST have children who are of driving age....have been there....or are approaching. Otherwise if you don't qualify as I am saying with the "kid" factor you cannot really say with confidence that you would let your own kids drive those kinds of high mileage low safety economy jobs. Please note I am not directing this at you Bobda....just making a general statement about these small cars in general. Maybe there is a segment of the population that is fitted well to those cars and I know the Euros do it but it's a tough sell in this country.
Speaking of safety.... On a trip to California when I was married to Desiree, we once went thru 3 Dodge Intrepids in one weekend. 2 Alternators and a transmission.. 2 times the car died on the highway with my (then) wife and infant son in the car. The other time it broke down in the absolute ghetto of Long Beach. We actually had to take a 'smaller' sized car that was a Honda.. It lasted for the rest of the week without incident. Next trip to California... We were shocked to get an Intrepid when they rolled our car out. We voiced our concerns over this, but were assured that those were the previous year's model that had the problem.. 2 days later, the transmission went kerplunk on a highway. Once again, I had my now 2 year old son in the car on a highway in California. You wanna know terror... try gliding a piece of sh*t across 3 lanes of traffic with literally hundreds of cars whizzing by to get to the 'safety' of the side of the highway... all the while carrying the only thing in this world I ever truly cared about.. my son. Thank God for those countless hours of Frogger I played as a child. During that same time frame, we were living in Minnesota. The first year we lived there we owned a blue Dodge minivan. Some of you from the tailgates back then may remember it. That piece of garbage had starter and transmission problems that just never ended, but bled us dry of precious extra money at the time. We tossed it for a Ford Explorer (4 door, V6) which turned out to be my favorite car of all time. After an old blind woman decided to take an illegal turn into my Explorer and total it... I wound up buying a 3 year old Dodge Durango with 75k miles. I owned it for exactly 32 days (just a few days past Alabama's lemon law at the time), when going down the highway, the engine literally melted and exploded throwing metal and plastic all over the highway and worse... oil all over the windshield.. I literally made that merger to the side of the highway on blind faith and sheer luck. I couldn't see anything in front of, or along side of me.. When I took it to the mechanics (I took it to about 10 before settling on someone to do the work), they all said to a man that the dodge Durango was notorious for having a pan issue that kept the oil from properly circulating back through the engine... thus creating a massive overheat and engine explosion. After having to replace the entire engine block, I discovered that the car was shifting rough. The engine that I had put in the Durango was actually taken from a Dodge work van that was geared down. I could haul anything, but it wasn't much on the top end... but the shifting was brutal. The mechanic told me that Dodge's in general have made notoriously awful transmissions for the past 10 years and that the engine overheat was so severe that it may have caused some expansion and created flaws in the transmission. I took that car to 4 different mechanics and 2 dealers.. All of whom told me the same exact thing after looking at it. A new transmission later, I was finally rolling... but now the electrical system had developed a short of some sort and the car would randomly die (and not start) at the worst possible times... Dodge can go to hell. You can weep all you want for that 'poor guy on the line', but I assure you not one of them shed a tear for me while I was pouring out tens of thousands of dollars that I didn't really have over the past 10 years. If I own American, it will be SUV only....popular sentiment be damned.. Until I can afford to go that route again, I will go Japanese.. The safest car I've ridden in.. Don't even get me started on the Ford Focus that Bliss use to own.
Don't blame you....don't defend them....and never owned them except for the very first car my Dad bought for me at age 16....a 1965 Plymouth Valiant with a slant 6 engine that was actually a pretty damned good car as I recall.
Corey, my experiences have been similar....up until the age of 30, I had never purchased nor owned anything but a GM - all Chevy, and all but one Camaro's - the last one a scarlet and gray Z28 with T-tops. I was single, living in Va Beach at the time and spent an inordinate amount of time cruising the beach front strip. The car was an absolute p$$$y magnet and I loved it with every fiber of my being. l loved the look and feel, but not one was reliable transportation after 75,000 or so.....not one. After I got married, my wife was driving Hondas and Toyotas and ALL were reliable transportation well into the 100,000......I have not owned a domestic for 15 years and my current ride, a Toyota Avalon is still purring after 150,000 and will likely outlast me..... Occasionally, while travelling, I'll make it a point to rent a domestic that I might consider for purchase to get a sense of what I'm getting myself into.....the last time, on a road trip out west, I got a big Suburban. Almost immediately upon leavinig the rental pick-up, gathering the wife and kids at the baggage claim, I went to adjust the frontseat, and the adjustment handle came off in my hand......nuff said. When labor extracts an inordinate, disproportional and fixed share of cash flow, something has got to give.....and it did and this generation has a long memory.
Our family had a Dodge Lancer ( it was a 62 I think), with the floor mounted shift on a bench seat... 3rd gear was fun with your date cozied up next you! It had that same slant 6 engine, very reliable engine. Dad sold that and bought a Valiant in the mid 60's forget which year, but the shift was mounted on the steering wheel not as much fun!
Ran into some old clients yesterday and they had some pretty good updates on the industry I was in....which was the automotive exhibit and display business focusing on major auto shows. They knew a ton of people I knew and had been recently laid off so the info was pretty fresh. It sounded like only about 1 out of 5 people that we knew mutually was still employed and I would say we knew 40 people that fit that category so that was about 8 out of 40 still working. And not one of those individuals has ever had anything to do with the UAW.
The people I worked with in the auto show industry were not affiliated with the UAW. Most were carpenter foremen, account executives and project managers at the design houses and exhibit brand managers at the auto companies themselves. My point is these kinds of lay-offs are the exponential job losses associated with this automotive crisis and no one I know of in this decimated auto show industry is a member of the UAW.
If a deadly wind comes rolling through town and destroys everything in its path, the fact that one is not out in the storm does not mean he too will not perish....... I'm done with this one....carry on.
Be done with it then but understand that you cannot lump everyone connected with the auto industry that loses their job as getting their just rewards because of the foibles and missteps of the UAW. I don't see the justice in that....just very unfortunate circumstances.
I will not continue to argue your points, because I believe the counter to be clear, compelling and obvious to all.... That said, I'll not let you put words in my mouth.....I never, ever said that everyone connected with the domestic auto industry that lose their jobs were getting their just rewards and I never, ever said it was justice.....those are your words. But we all know that in life, all is not just.....but it is what it is and we deal with it and move on or not as the case may be...... we cannot change history in our search for justice.
I am certain that if given enough time, you can figure it out for yourself. If not, you'll have to rely on others to give you a helping hand.
Just note this.....all of us who are laid off here in Michigan who just happened to be tied in to the automotive industry.... which is sorta like being in Hollywood and working in the movie industry... really appreciate the compassion and understanding of people who share your outlook. This comment you made shows me I am expecting too much: I said: "not one of those individuals has ever had anything to do with the UAW" You said: "Surely you're not serious......if so, there is nothing for me to say." The rest of us do not set UAW policy....do not negotiate the contracts but we have to live with the consequences of those inept policies and equally we are a slave to the ineptness, greed and monumental mismanagement of those in the financial industry.