The Big Three and the Failure of Auto-eroticism

The plight of the American car manufacturers or the Big Three as they would like to be called, is that they never understood the business they were in. Instead of selling transportation they thought they could get by with just selling image. American cars are symbols of wealth and power. The rich and powerful aren’t concerned with fuel efficiency and you don't care about the environment. Why should you? American cars are designed to reflect a man’s virility or compensate for the lack there of. They are chrome-plated penis enhancers sold by sultry models to compensate for our shortcomings.

This model worked well in the 50s and 60s; the economy was strong and. everyone wanted a big American car. We made cars with 450-horsepower engines and enough room to seat a baseball team. Even if you weren't rich and powerful, you could feel like you were. Who cared that it got 4 miles to the gallon? A gallon only cost a quarter; so did a pack of cigarettes. And Madison Avenue knew how to sell the sizzle! Dinah Shore wanted you to see the world in a Chevrolet. A Ford Mustang made you a stallion and Daisy Duke just loved being in a Dodge Charger. Never mind that these behemoths could barely hold together until the last payment. Just trade it in on the next model and start the romance all over again.

But then came the 70s and the 80s. We found out that the Saudi's were not our friends. They were our dealers, and the cost of a fix was going up. Did the Big Three get the message? No! They invented the Minivan and then the SUV and then the RV because now it was not just sex-crazed men who were making the car buying decisions; women were buying cars as well. Of course they were getting their own cars because it took two incomes to support an average family of four, but that just meant more opportunity for the Big 3 to sell more hype. It was now sexy to be a liberated woman who could do it all. Safety on the road was equated to size, not quality, and the Big Three got bigger. - They were living the multi-million dollar good life. Meanwhile, American Jones for gasoline was getting worse and the Saudis had us by the nozzle. It was only a matter of time before the wheels came off and here came the Japanese with a bumper jack.

Japan was a nation totally decimated as a result of WWII. No natural resources to speak of and the harsh realization that there would never be an automobile fancy enough to make their penises look bigger. Their course was clear. Make a car that was low cost, fuel efficient and reliable; a direct kick to the groin of America. The Japanese could not believe their good fortune. Americans were buying more and more Japanese cars and fewer of their own. It was even becoming cheaper for the Japanese to build the cars on US soil because the American worker was getting paid less than the average Japanese. It was time to make their move and they made it. Right into the luxury car market: Toyota made the Lexus, Nissan made the Infinity. And how did the Big Three react? They made the Cadillac Escalade and the Hummer. Brilliant! Just what the world needed: a four-wheel drive pimp mobile and militarized minivan.

But what really drove a stake through the heart of this three-headed monster was the Hybrid. Oil prices may rise over night but it takes time to develop a Hybrid vehicle and for the Big Three, time had run out. At $4.00 a gallon, there was nothing sexy about a car with an empty gas tank. Women figured out real quick that a man couldn’t spend his paycheck on them if it was already in his tank. Men figured out real quick that the SUV’s siren song on the showroom floor became a leather upholstered ball and chain.

So now the party’s over. The Big Three have nothing to offer anyone, much less anything sexy. The 650,000 active members of the UAW are highly trained to do only one thing, go on strike, and they want us to bail them out. The only problem is, you cannot bail out a boat that doesn't have a bottom and the bottom fell out of this market a long time ago. The 34 billion dollars that the Big Three have asked for would be better used retraining the UAW to do meaningful work. I have no idea what that work would be but surely there is another industry where you go to work each day and watch a robot do your job.

So I say let them fail. They dug this hole they're in; let’s push in the dirt and be done with them. If they would have been smart they would have gone to Merrill Lynch and got a sub prime loan years ago and had it insured by AIG.

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