Question Of The Day: Can The American Car Industry Go Back To Zero?

Jonny Lieberman
by Jonny Lieberman

You’ve all heard that the Domestics might go belly up, right? I think Autoblog might have mentioned it at some point. Anyhow, over on Autofiends we’ve been working on a new little featurette called “ Domestic Bliss.” What is it you ask? Well, it’s a look back at when the domestics were totally killer cool. When a Caddy was a mofo’n Caddy. And, to quote Ice-T’s old band Body Count, “Shit Ain’t Like That!!!!” But just maybe… You seen Fight Club? You know, the Brad Pitt, Ed Norton post-punk, post-slacker flick about the sexiest case of delusional schizophrenia ever? Well, one of my favorite parts is the very end when Mr. Durden and Marla Singer are standing hand in hand as the TRW building and all the other credit bureaus are blown up, sending everybody “back to zero” as the Pixies’ “Where is My Mind” blares over it all. Quite nice. I’m bringing this up because it would take the equivalent of a terrorist attack for GM to build anything like the Corvair in 2009. What a lateral move. My question? If Chapter 11 and the Great Depression 2.0 smashes Detroit, could America once again build the best cars in the world?

Jonny Lieberman
Jonny Lieberman

Cleanup driver for Team Black Metal V8olvo.

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  • Red60r Red60r on Jan 06, 2009

    @ kovachian: "...and Japanese cars weren’t even available until I believe 1969." I got my wife a '68 Toyota Corona hardtop coupe, and that was at least the second year of availability. Cute car, 2-speed slush. Reasonable reliability; mediocre mileage for 1900cc.

  • Windswords Windswords on Jan 06, 2009

    zerofoo: "@ Ronnie Schreiber The new “Arsenal of Democracy” is composed of the following members: Boeing, United Technologies, Lockheed Martin, GE, General Dynamics, and a host of smaller arms manufacturers. Detroit is not really a part of the modern military machine. Detroit would have a very hard time tooling up to build the massively complicated war machines we now produce in the event of a large conflict. -ted" You are making the mistake in your analysis that the only thing the US needs to manufacture in the case of a large scale war is $50,000,000 F-22 Raptor air superiority fighters or $15,000,000 M1A1 Abram main battle tanks. Wars need other things produced that are not nearly so high tech. Like bullets. Or tank treads. Or aircraft tires. Or amunition clips. Here's one that is not thought about much - MRE's (Meals Ready to Eat) - you can't field an Army/Navy/Air Force if you can't feed them. And all of these things will be needed AND WILL NOT be met by current defense suppliers if we find ourselves in a really big fur-ball. Complete anti-air or anti-shipping missle too complicated for a Detroit automaker or other industrial firm like Catepiller to make? Maybe - but not the missile casing. If you can build a CTS, Flex, 300, or a front-end loader you could do that. Or artillery shells. Or, I don't know, tank transmissions? This is like the auto supply chain that everyone forgets about. You just focus on the auto factory. Same thing here. You're just focussing on the fanciest complete weapons system.

  • Davey49 Davey49 on Jan 07, 2009

    windswords- I'm sure people had just the same thoughts and claims before WWII that zerofoo wrote. Seemed to work out OK then.

  • Joeaverage Joeaverage on Jan 12, 2009

    I wonder if Detroit ever sends their people to read this website... Probably not b/c if the minion assigned this duty reads more than a few articles they'll begin mentally questioning the whole Detroit house of cards.... VBG!

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