It is debatable whether the Big Three still make crummy cars. In fact, while their reputation for making lousy vehicles hangs over them like the dark smoke of Los Angeles canyon fires, they do in fact make some pretty decent vehicles. Some. Not all. Far from it.
The Big three also make decent trucks. And when fuel efficiency was not an issue, they put out some SUV’s that were boxy and ugly, but had that popular appeal. And they did run some nice commercials. At least the ad agencies did. But with the exception of the trucks and the SUV’s car sales were declining precipitously.
What the Big Three could never do is make the necessary adjustments. They revelled in the once glorious past where America was king of cars. They reacted to the competition. First they didn’t react at all, and when they were clearly putting out inferior vehicles, they raced to play catch up. Come the SUV and Truck period they moved ahead for awhile, just enough to sit their fat rumps down and rest on their laurels.
But what the Big Three have never done is think with an eye toward the future They are not innovators. Their thinking is journeyman thinking. And now with the three auto manufacturers ready to fall into bankruptcy, they are asking for a bail out. Forget the early bailouts, where they took the money and did nothing. Forget the fact that their chief officers seem to care little for accountability. Stepping down for them seems out of the question. They haven’t yet seemed to recognize they are building cars nobody wants to buy.
Do they have a plan that would determine how best to retool and use the bailout funding? That would take too much effort. Do they have an innovative bit of engineering on the production drawing boards? Hardly. But they do need money. They want money? For what? To save the car industry or to merely postpone certain disaster.
What is particularly startling is not so much how the industry effects us as the industry alone. That is pretty evident. In terms of jobs on the assembly line and immediate suppliers, we can all pretty much determine that has a major impact. But according to an article in AD Age what we don’t think about is how the demise of the Big Three automamakers would so grievously affect Amerca’s overall economy.
The impact the demise of the Big Three would have on advertising alone is unsettling. Two and a half percent of the overall Cable Television revenue comes from automobile commercials. Nearly 7% of the ESPN revenue comes from car and truck commercials. Car advertising makes up almost 6% of the nationla television spending. The same kind of figures holds true for every media venue.
And then there are the ancillary suppliers. The parts manufacturers and their laborers. When you add it all up it is not just whether they put a car on the road, it’s whether their demise is a highway to national economic disaster.
The giants have become dwarves and they now are on the verge of extinction. Other companies, more innovative, leaner and meaner companies will probably rise up to take their places. We are America, after all, and nothing seems to motivate us better than a crisis. But, still, at the end of the day the Big Three automakers are more than themselves. They are larger than the sum of its parts. But they are past the day when all is romantic and appealing, when we can just put the top down and drive off into the Sunset.
They may cruise for awhile, but then their tires will flatten, the paint will rust, and the entire industry will find itself in the cosmic salvage yard. Whether they get bailed out or not, the way they do business and the cars they manufacture has got to change. The thing is, the big question, is how did they mess up so badly?
