PARITY, PARODY AND THE DETROIT AUTOMAKERS

[Get the latest "Truth With Speedzzter" here]

Ford Motor Company claims that their new deal with the United Autoworkers Union creates "parity" with the predatory Japanese invader automakers, and a claimed $500 million in annual savings.

Of course it remains to be seen if mere "parity" is enough. Or will larger market events swamp Ford?

At least Ford has achieved something (without government intervention) that Chrysler and GM desperately need to.

As for the parody . . . Autoextremist Peter M. DeLorenzo hits out of the park again on the absurd parody that is Obama's Automotive Task Force (better known here as the Car Czar Central Committee):

Now that we have been blessed with a visit from President Obama’s auto task force, we can just feel the rush of Shiny Happy adrenalin running through our veins. Not. Unfortunately, there’s no amount of fact-finding and due diligence that’s going to get these people up to speed in order to save the domestic auto industry, no matter how well intended they claim to be.

AMEN, Peter!

And lest we forget about Tricinda's Jerry York (who managed to help relieve Kirk Kerkorian of some excess capital through ill-timed investments in Ford and GM), Seeking Alpha's Tyler Durden rips on him.

However, one Jerry York quote that Durden highlights does make some sense:

[I]t would be deplorably bad to have a company the size of GM go through a normal bankruptcy process at this time. With the unemployment rate being so high, the carnage in the financial markets, it's going to make the markets substantially worse.

Yet if Obama's hapless band of automotive know-nothings, the oft greed-soaked and myopic U.A.W., and a few other stakeholders don't figure a way out the situation with amazing speed, bankruptcy is just what might happen.

Tyler Durden's gig on Jerry York triggered a bizarre outpouring of Anti-GM "hate speech" as well as paeans to other GM dissidents as diverse as Ross Perot and John Z. Delorean.
Truth With Speedzzter responded as follows:

With the global auto market depressed as it is and even the unreasonably venerated Japanese invader/predatory exporter auto companies slashing costs and begging their home government for bailout funds, it would seem that nearly every automaker is building "vehicles that no one wants to buy."

Certainly, GM's soulless, "appliance motorist" bean counters crushed most of what was left of GM during the past thirty years. But the lion's share of the blame rests squarely upon federal policies which bled the Detroit 3 to near-death from unfunded mandates and favoritism toward the predatory Japanese invasion of the U.S. light vehicle market.

Perot, York, and DeLorean were all clueless as to how to truly fix GM. Perot's massive ego gave us two terms of Clinton. York is a wantabee who has lost a truck-load of money for his employer. DeLorean couldn't even build a sports car or manage a simple drug deal, much less run a Fortune 5 corporation.

(Okay, so perhaps that was a little harsh on the late John Z. Delorean. After all, he and Jim Wangers did cook up the subversive (albeit underengineered) 1964 Pontiac G.T.O. Of course, much like Lee Iacocca, Delorean went on make a number of poor decisions which would call his automotive genius into question.)


Finally, Bangshift.com's Brian Lohnes takes a worthwhile shot at a more "takin'-it-to-the-streets" level of automotive parody: the infamous "That Guy" -- the ubiquitous, big-talking, no-experience, imaginary hot rodder. He concludes "I’d rather have a discussion with a guy that has a totally riced out Civic that he loves and has poured his time into than someone who is obviously fabricating their entire story on the spot."

Sadly, Mr. Lohnes would be hard pressed to find anyone on Obama's Car Czar Central Committee with enough real-world automotive experience to carry on a substantive conversation. It's a collection of politically-correct, appliance-motoring, subway-riding, tree-worshiping "that guys."

On the other hand, Obama himself may be a political version of "that guy."

A sycophantic Howard Fineman writes:

Obama may be mistaking motion for progress, calling signals for a game plan. A busy, industrious overachiever, he likes to check off boxes on a long to-do list. A genial, amenable guy, he likes to appeal to every constituency, or at least not write off any. A beau ideal of Harvard Law, he can't wait to tackle extra-credit answers on the exam.

But there is only one question on this great test of American fate: can he lead us away from plunging into another Depression?

If Obama's too-green Car Czar Central Committee of dissemblers fails to figure out some way to stabilize the Beg 2's eroding situation, we will be even closer than we already are to the precipice of another depression.

And there's certainly no parody in that.