When It Comes To Chinese Buicks, I'm Not Ready To "Deal With It"

Long-time TTAC readers may be familiar with my old friend Rodney, the Billy Dee Williams lookalike with whom I sold cars, raced bicycles, rode motorcycles, and generally raised some sort of mild hell from 1995 until the present day. (If you’re not, here’s a field guide to his eccentric accomplishments.)

Over the course of the past week, Rodney’s had two life-changing things happen. The first was that he got his driver’s license back from the rural Ohio court which has held it hostage against a fairly large sum of fines and penalties since 2010. The story of how he lost his license involves everything from a Nissan Stanza jumping train tracks at 60 mph to the “black bull and white cuck” scene, and it’s a story I’ll tell once all the statutes of limitations expire.

The second is that Rodney’s mother, who is in her late sixties, was just conned into leasing a Buick Encore.

“And that is how,” Rodney seethed to me as he and my son split a breadstick at the Donatos down the street, “those bitch-ass marks at the Buick store pretty much bent my momma over the sales manager’s desk and raped her by working her for three stacks at the stroke ($3,000 down) and $299 plus-plus (plus tax and title) on this funky-ass thing that looks just like a retarded Chevy Trax! I cannot agree with this purchase decision! And, quiet is kept, you know they wouldn’t have had the courage to even mention that downstroke if I’d been there! Ain’t no way, cuz. Not now, not never.”

“You’re like an ancient Nubian warrior when it comes to negotiating a down payment,” was my response.

“On either side of the table. Customer or salesman. You better remember that. Because I held gross on a lot of marks. And sorry for saying ‘bitch-ass’ in front of your son. Don’t listen to your Uncle Rodney, John.”

“I’m not,” John responded.

“You just said it again, though,” I clarified.

“Said what?” Rodney asked.

“You know. ‘Bitch-ass’.” I replied.

“Well, you’re saying it now, too. I wonder, honestly, if he doesn’t get a little corrupted from listening to you say shit like that. Oh. Sorry for saying ‘shit’, John. Don’t listen to your Uncle Rodney.”

“I’m not,” John responded for a second time.

In dealership parlance, Rodney’s mother got “moved”. She “came in on a Regal” but “landed on an Encore”. Now, while I realize that in the world of TTAC everybody comes into the dealer already settled on everything from option packages to final transaction price, in the real world this type of thing happens e-v-e-r-y day. If you’ve ever walked out of a Lowe’s with a sales receipt for a different washer and dryer than you’d originally intended to purchase, you should have a good idea about how people like Rodney’s mother approach buying a car.

It’s also why the fawning article about Chinese Buicks in the Freep misses the point completely.

“The Envision doesn’t compete with other Buicks,” it sagely states. But that’s a lie. Once it’s on the showroom floor, it will be direct competition for other Buicks. My history as a dealership employee tells me that very few new cars have such superstar status that they drag traffic in all by themselves. Each new Mustang does it. The early Ford Explorers did it. The PT Cruiser did it. But most of the time, people who visit a dealership are really just looking at a brand based on their experience with, or preconceived notions regarding, some of its products.

The Freep says, regarding Chinese Buicks, that I need to “get used to it”. Jalopnik told me Monday morning that I needed to “deal with it”. Frankly, I’m surprised nobody has yet told me to “move on” regarding Chinese-built Buicks. Moving on, I have come to realize, is a form of privilege that is given to the chosen ones in our society. When Mr. Clinton (for whom I voted, by the way) got caught perjuring himself, George Soros paid a couple million dollars convincing us that we should “move on” instead of punishing him for it. That’s privilege in full effect, right there. Mrs. Clinton is currently suggesting the “move on” treatment regarding the classified emails on her private server, and no wonder; she was there when the tactic was perfected.

But this isn’t a Democrat or Republican thing. It’s a power thing. When you can tell people to move on or deal with it, you have power. If the CEO of the company where you work defrauds the company of millions of dollars, he’ll probably have the chance to move on, keep the money, and keep his career rolling. If you are caught on video loading your co-worker’s computer into the trunk of your car, you’re going to move on to jail. When a rich kid kills four people, he pleads “Affluenza” and goes to rehab. If you’re a black woman with an unpaid traffic ticket, you might wind up dead.

In other words, the power to “move on”, the power to tell your detractors to “deal with it”, is quite a bit of power indeed. Which makes me wonder how, exactly, General Motors got so powerful that they could take a taxpayer bailout, invest the money into Chinese production facilities, start importing cars from China to the United States because they supposedly don’t have enough factory space here to make building the Envision here worthwhile, and just expect that everybody will deal with it. Keep in mind, we’re not talking about “Old GM” here. I grew up in the shadow of Old GM, that majestic ziggurat that crushed the dreams of John Z. Delorean and frequently sold more than half of the cars on the road. The arrogance and blind narcissism of that enterprise have passed into legend, but at least they earned that arrogance by succeeding beyond Alfred Sloan’s wildest dreams.

No, this is “New GM”, the British Leyland of our era; the government-resurrected zombie that rose from the grave with very few obligations and plenty of working capital and carte blanche to do what it liked. Speaking truthfully, I will admit that I supported the “bailout” from the moment it became clear that something would need to be done. I didn’t care about the political aspect of it. I cared about the idea that hundreds of thousands of children might go hungry if their parents lost their jobs. I also pointed out at the time that nearly every major automaker in the world receives some special consideration from its home government. Why should GM be any different, even if the scope of that assistance was considerable?

So I cheered as GM got the help it needed. What did it do with that help? Well, it agreed to build the Cruze in Ohio. And it gave the UAW some concessions — while also, it must be said, receiving some. Then it turned its attention to China, announcing plans to build multiple factories in the country. True, GM has spent something like $11 billion on U.S. manufacturing since the bailout — but the investment in China is larger, and faster, and more wide-ranging. The Stateside money is to modernize facilities and catch up on maintenance, but the China money is building production capacity.

If you want to look at it in an inflammatory fashion, try this: GM was a major part of the “Arsenal Of Democracy” in World War II. But they’re building an “Arsenal of Market-Based Communo-Capitalism” for the Chinese now.

So what was the point of the bailout if, in the long run, it just hastens the day that China becomes the default manufacturer of automobiles the way they now are for everything from laptops to cheap dress shoes? Had GM been permitted to collapse, wouldn’t Honda, Toyota, Nissan, and other manufacturers have responded by drastically stepping-up their North American production plans? You can say whatever you like about the Ryder Report and about British Leyland, but they did keep the jobs in the UK until the whole enterprise was broken up for spare parts.

I know I should “get over it”. I should “get over” the fact that the first volume distribution of Chinese automobiles in this country will be by the hands of a corporate-welfare recipient reanimated with American tax dollars. (Or, if you want to be picky, Chinese money loaned to America in expectation of future tax receipts.) When the next Chinese car arrives, and the one after that, I’ll be told to “deal with it.” When the majority of cars sold in this country come from China, I’ll be told to “calm down” about it. When even Honda and Toyota close their American facilities because car manufacturing has become the classic race to the bottom, I’ll be told that the Chinese cars are “just as good” as their predecessors.

The jobs will disappear, a thousand at a time or a million at a time. The service jobs, too, will disappear, replaced by automation and intelligent systems. We will enter the era of the white favela on a national basis, using government handouts to pay for whatever shiny new Chinese or Indian item we can get cheaply enough, living hand-to-mouth. The average income in Fairfax County, Virginia will stay the same but everybody else will know the true meaning of suffering.

I have friends who say they are going to “go to the Amish” when it all happens. “They don’t need civilization,” is what they say.

“And they don’t need you, either,” is always my reply. As for me and my house — well, I think we’ll go to Rodney. To the $400/month apartment where women stay inside for their own safety and the children play in an upstairs bedroom. To the polyglot of foreign tongues, strange dress, and prayers from another book entirely. Or at least that’s what I “envision”, isn’t it?