Why the auto industry bailout shouldn’t happen, but must.

Really I’m very much apposed to spending taxpayer money on mismanaged ventures, but to the extent that the government has caused some of Detroit’s problems, it is fair that that same government help out.

Rewind to the  70s and the first of the C.A.F.E. standards.  At the time the “Big Three” wanted a 1 or 2 mile per gallon break for Station Wagons.  The then popular family car had form drag problems, and got a little worse mileage than its sedan counterpart.  Well the Feds sort of said “No”, and the Station Wagon pretty much went away.  Of course people still needed to carry kids, dogs, and groceries around.  This led to two wonderful trends: The Mini Van, and the SUV.

The Mini Van not a totally bad idea, usually based on a front drive passenger car chassis, they did a fare job of filling in for the now rare Wagon. Problem was that people were used to being able to hook an Airstream trailer to the wagon, and heading for the hills, once in a while.  Here the Mini Van fell short.

Enter the SUV.  In the 50s these would have been: The Dodge Power Wagon, and the Chevrolet Carry All.  Both great vehicles at what they did.  But what they did was carry loggers to work.  I guess somebody was at their Dodge or Chevy dealer looking for something to carry his family, and tow the boat, looked in the back lot at the line of phone company trucks, and thus was born the SUV.  In those days anything with a gross weight of over 6,100 pounds had a different set of rules, so it was easy to built a family “car” on a Pickup truck  chassis.  Course now your talking 9 miles per gallon instead of the 18 the old Chrysler Town and Country got, but it will get the job done.

Fast forward to the present:  So here we sit, while gas prices are down, for the time being. A perfect storm of bad calls, frozen credit, and regulation has brought G.M. , Ford, and Chrysler to their knees.

Our wonderful government caused much of this, and they need to step up and help fix it.  The “Big Three” and their unions need to take a step back as well.  Paying some guy three times the national average to play cards, on the chance that a position might open on the line, is ridiculous.

Here I will speak about Chrysler, since I now their products better than those of the other two companies.

Dumb mistake #1. Dropping the Magnum Wagon, come on guys, you owned that market. A good driving, roomy car that was close to 30 MPG on the hi-way. Oh lets not forget that you made them for Europe with a Turbo-Diesel, and over there they get 44 MPG hi-way. Hopefully the sheet metal molds for the Magnum are sitting around somewhere, and with the right management we can see this great car again.

Dumb mistake #2. Never brought out the Sedan Delivery version of the PT Cruiser.  I saw the prototype once and it was a neat little car, and was much looked forward to.  Never happened.

Dumb mistake #3. OK the Feds helped on this one.  We build in this country Sebring Convertibles with a 2 liter Turbo-Diesel, and 6 speed manual transmission.  They get 51 MPG hi-way, but we cant have them here. Seems they don’t meet the California standards by 3% on a parts per million base.  Never mind that the little 2 liter motor puts out half the total exhaust of most cars.

Oh yes and as a note: In the U.K. you can buy a four door Jeep SUV that gets 34 MPG.  Don’t know a lot about this one but like the Magnum Wagon, and the Sebring convert, the Jeep is built here and shipped over there.

Also, while in England last time, I rented a Vauxhall Vectra Wagon.  About the size on a Volvo 145 Wagon from the 70s. The little wagon did a very good job for us, and we got about 40 MPG the two weeks we had it.  I could be wrong on this, but I think Vauxhall is G.M. in the U.K.  It would be nice if they could bring that neat little wagon over here.

So.  Well I guess the Feds need to step in and prevent the full meltdown of the economy that will happen if the Big Three close their doors.  But they also need to step back and let Chrysler, Ford, and G.M. bring some of the great European platforms here.

One can’t help but wonder: A 290 horse V-6 Turbo-Diesel in a base model Challenger.  With the Challenger being 5 to 6 hundred pounds lighter than the Magnum, and having better aerodynamics, we could see a Challenger Coupe getting hi-way mileage in the high 40s, and I for one would line up for that.