Chrysler Workers Smoke Pot, Drink Beer At Lunch And Don't Give A Freckle About Quality

Some say, TTAC has an anti-Detroit, pro-import slant. We won’t comment on that, you mommy-fraternizing liars. All we can say is: If you harbor these notions, don’t move to Oklahoma. Oklahoma’s largest newspaper, the Oklahoman, dishes out more anti-Detroit snark in a single serving than even a Farago could have cooked-up in his TTAC lifetime. How about calling the former owners of Chrysler unqualified “idiots?” And not the former owners you think of now. Wait, there is worse.

The Oklahoman runs a Dear Abby style investment column, where readers can come to a Malcolm Berko for advice. An F.M., hailing from Troy, Mich, did so. (Why someone from Troy would turn to Oklahoma City’s hometown paper for investment advice is beyond me, but I digress.) F.M. didn’t agree with Berko’s prior opinion that buying GM stock amounts to throwing money away. He (or she) wanted to know whether Chrysler would be a good investment, should it ever go public.

Boy, did F.M. receive an earful of investment advice!

“Dear F.M.: No matter how much perfume you splash on a pig, a pig will always be a pig. The Chrysler culture could never function under Daimler’s superb management, could never emulate Daimler’s skilled work force and could never produce a Daimler-quality product. That’s not how the American automobile industry comports itself.”

“And 10 years later in predictable disgust, Daimler sold 80 percent of Chrysler to Cerberus Capital Management in 2007. And the Cerberus idiots hired Robert “Nasty” Nardelli, who couldn’t make it at GE or Home Depot, to run the company.”

What, no requisite jab at the “merger of equals?” No accusation that vestal & virtuous Chrysler had been raped by Teutonic terrorists who then pillaged her dowry and made off with the cash? Nope. No double quotes around “superb management” either. Now what about an investment into a possible Chrysler share? Over to you, Malcolm:

“One must be mad as a hatter to consider owning a single share of this issue (same for the General Motors issue when it comes public again) because good old new Chrysler won’t have changed enough from good old, old Chrysler.”

“Good old new Chrysler will have the same good old, old workers who still smoke pot and drink beer at lunch and don’t give a freckle about quality. Good old new Chrysler will still be held hostage to the United Auto Workers’ self-serving workplace rules and financial shenanigans. And good old new Chrysler will still be managed by the same corrupt culture of fools who drove the good, old, old Chrysler into bankruptcy.”

“The only profits in this IPO will be made by the Wall Street lawyers, CPAs, advisers and brokerage firms who take this public. And considering our high unemployment numbers and lower consumer incomes, I doubt that Chrysler can sell enough vehicles to produce a profit.”

The deathwatch series continues. In Oklahoma.

P.S.: Turns out this is not an Oklahoman phenomenon. Berko is syndicated all over the place. We need to get more aggressive. Or else the supposedly staid MSM will win the snark war.