Off to Bankruptcy Court We Go Hand in Hand with Chrysler

written by Jouran Crosby 

So it's no surprise that Chrysler is going to bankruptcy court to get issues resolved. The big question is, shouldn't we have done this months ago before giving them billions of taxpayer dollars? I am a President Obama supporter, however, the White House cabinet and Treasury are making some moves that I can not agree with at this time. I think some companies deserved bailouts and/or assistance to navigate these markets, however, I feel like certain banks and the auto manufacturers should have been allowed to go the route of Chapter 11. 

Let's talk about Chrysler and GM today; I am sure everyone is tired of hearing about them and honestly I am as well, but we do have to discuss the issues and ramifications of this filing. Now everyone keeps speaking about how these two organizations are going to develop more fuel efficient automobiles, but why throughout this whole process no one has discussed what those vehicles will be? Where is the GM volt? Where are the diesel engine vehicles that can use biodiesel right now (visit http://www.earthbiofuels.com/ for an explaination of hit it works) ? Why isn't anyone speaking about fire selling current inventory to replace with new smaller vehicles? Let's go to Chrysler's website and one will see that the smallest vehicle on the site is the PT Cruiser, but of the limited inventory they have listed all the vehicles are big, gas guzzlers with the lowest price being $18,000 (before incentives and only one vehicle). Now let's take a look at the Jeep site...again one will see that the lowest sticker is $18,000 (before incentives and only one vehicle), but every other vehicle is a gas guzzler. Let's look at the final site they own, Dodge... again one small vehicle offering priced around $18,000 (before incentives) and everything else are gas guzzlers.  The other norm between these three sites is the only hybrids are trucks/SUVs. 

Now to compare apples to apples let's look at Honda: If you one counts the many different offerings of the Civic, Honda has over 10 cars that would be classified as small and fuel efficient. Now if you say most are Civics, they you can say they have 4 small car offerings with 2 being hybids and all starting for lower than the $18,000 Chrysler vehicle price tags. The second thing is that each one of these vehicles are stylish and appealing to individuals, can't say the same about the Chrysler offerings. Now I do not want to sound Anti American, but a prepackaged bankruptcy is not the only thing these guys are going to need to do. If one looks at each one of the US manufacturers it will be easy to see that we as Americans have a long way to go to become Automotive competitive again. 

I believe two things need to happen immediately starting tomorrow which is day 1 of bankruptcy. All the car designers need to be brought into a room and they need have a heart wrenching conversation which is "...We need to get smaller, more fuel efficient, and stylish". For our large offerings we need to throw the bells and whistles in them, make they more fuel efficient and maintanence free like our German competition, and more affordable. The US auto makers are going to have to stop talking and actually make things happen. The talking is done, action needs to take place or how about everyone do us a favor and close up shop. This way as Americans we can begin to focus on other areas we can become dominant again. Harsh fantasy is now our reality and one last thing.... it's time to kick the UAW out. I don't care what anyone says, but manufacturing Unions have been the modern day demise for the US. 

Come on people let's wake up and smell the Starbucks. Change is now and is great but inorder for change to happen, action has to be initiated.