It must be tough always being right, especially when you’re so wrong. Or, in the specific case of the automotive bailouts that so rankled many back in 2009, demagoguery can be a heavy burden. Indeed, if current events are the judge, the battle over these bailouts is still being fought.
In his recent State of the Union address, U.S. President Barack Obama touted the resurgence of American automakers as one of the successes of his administration. Of course, skeptics can grouse (with some authority, I might add) that, with so few triumphs in the first two-and-a-half years of his administration, Obama had little choice but to trumpet Detroit’s (OK, Detroit’s and Turin’s) rather astonishingly quick return to health.One also has to admit that the earthquake and resultant tsunami that crippled Japan’s motor industry benefitted the U.S.’s Big Two-and-a-Half. Nor did having former No. 1 automaker Toyota suffer a much overblown unintended acceleration crisis hurt the cause either. One could, were one truly unkind, even note that, having hit rock bottom, there was no other direction — other than a Saab-like complete failure — for the U.S. manufacturers to go.
Nonetheless, I can’t help but think that what must gall Republicans in the United States (and more than a few of our own diehard Conservatives, including some at this very newspaper) is that, by any measure, American automakers have been resurgent since their 2009 bankruptcies and taxpayer-fuelled restructurings. By virtually every measure, they have capitalized on their good fortune and returned to profitability.
Never mind that the bank loans so derided just a few years ago are being paid off faster than imagined. Or that Fiat so loves Chrysler it is buying up its outstanding shares faster than predicted. Ford and Chrysler have both grown market share since 2009 and, for the first time in many a year, Detroit’s combined portion of the U.S. market has actually increased. And, even if General Motors’ share of the Canadian pie has diminished a tick here, it’s because GM of Canada CEO Kevin Williams is adamant in weaning the (once again) world’s largest automaker off incentive deals and fleet sales.
But the true measure of their success is that the domestic brands are (mostly) building better cars and, more importantly, the public is buying them. Chevrolet’s Cruze may not yet be the No. 1 compact sedan in North America, but, considering that just a few short years ago critics decried as impossible the profitable manufacture of a domestically built small car, the one million Cruzes sold worldwide must stand as a monumental success. Plus, has any brand been so comprehensively and thoroughly revised as Buick? Consumer awareness of the once somnolent brand’s new products may still lag behind the excellent vehicles in its showrooms, but I predict a notable resurgence in Buick sales over the next few years.
Chrysler, initially decried a burden on parent Fiat, is now filling the company’s coffers with profits as European sales tank. The new Dodge Dart may not be as pretty as the Alfa Romeo Giulietta on which it is based, but I suspect it, too, will enjoy a modicum of success. And sales of Ram pickups remain stellar, Mopar’s pickups now challenging the finest from both Ford and GM.
Even boring old Ford is cranking out some fine cars, the new Fusion that wowed this year’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit being a perfect example. And, where Toyota once had sole proprietorship of the green market, Ford is challenging the Japanese giant with a full range of alternative products — from more fuel-efficient EcoBoost powertrains to fully electrified Focuses. It’s not a good time to be a Detroit skeptic.
Most distressing is GM’s latest CEO (it’s had three since the 2009 bankruptcy) Dan Akerson’s contention that the Chevrolet Volt has become a “political punching bag” for critics of the original bailouts.
According to Automotive News, in his testimony to the House Oversight subcommittee looking into whether the investigation of two fires in crash testing was deliberately delayed, Akerson wrote, “The Volt seems, perhaps unfairly, to have become a surrogate for some to offer broader commentary on General Motors’ business prospects and administration policy.”
It’s worth noting that the chairman of the subcommittee is a Republican vociferously against the bailouts and that the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has since said that the Volt does not present any more of a fire hazard than does a gasoline-fuelled automobile.
Nonetheless, as Akerson points out, Volt sales have suffered since news of possible fire hazards were leaked.
Ideology has no place in the pragmatic world of automobile manufacturing. Automobile manufacturing creates too many jobs and, yes, is too important to the national psyche — American and Canadian — to be left to the whims of political demagoguery. That so much of the discussion about whether the automakers should or should not have been bailed out is biased partisan canon and not hard-nosed business insight is just proof of how far the political discourse of our time has gone off the rails.
Indeed, while it’s easy to denigrate the American Right for having been proven so wrong in this particular case, I suspect the Democrats were only right because large-scale government intervention just happened to fit their doctrine.
9:00 am 
