GM, Ford and Chrysler Just Don’t Get It!

GM, Ford and Chrysler Just Don’t Get It!
Today the U.S. House of Representatives passed a $14 billion dollar bailout package to help GM and Chrysler get through the early part of the coming new year. It may not pass the Senate without more Republican support and several GOP senators, such as Alabama’s Richard Shelby have vowed to block its passage.
It is hard to have sympathy for these car makers because of the arrogant and hide bound attitudes of some of their chief executives and the policies and sales strategies these former pinnacles of industry.
Illustrative of the prevalent attitudes at the top of GM are recent statements for the patrician Bob Lutz, Vice Chairman of Global Product Development at General Motors Corporation.
Lutz is on record as a global warming skeptic, on one occasion calling global warming "a total crock of shit."
He also defended the emphasis on building the big pickups and SUV's the companies have pushed so hard to popularize. "The American Public Wants Sport Utilities And Large Pickup Trucks," he said recently after gasoline went down to around $1.50 per gallon. Now that's some forward looking thinking!
Dodge and Ford have been running some of the most obnoxious TV ads lately that have ever run.
Ford launched a $100 million ad campaign in 2002 promoting the F150 and have continued to spend big bucks pushing the truck because it has been one of the most successful selling models in their inventory. They have been shelling out the ad money for the truck model ever since. Some of their ads are absolutely atrocious.
As bad as the Ford ads have been nothing compares to the current TV blitz for the Dodge Ram pickup.
The ad shows redneck looking guys blasting through mud, countryside and some kind of monster obstacle course while voice overs exclaim "We're out here racing...luxury trucks...Get it!..Yeah man...Let's do it again...and other very juvenile expressions of teenage male pleasure! These ads make light of driving dangerously and encourage blasting through the countryside and to hell with the surroundings, not to mention advocating an extremely unsafe manner of driving these big, heavy, top heavy vehicles. This demonstrates a complete lack of any civic responsibility for the dangers these trucks may pose.
The kind of money these companies have spent promoting these fuel inefficient and dangerous vehicles make it clear that if they get a bailout from taxpayers there has to be much restructuring of these companies and the top management has to go!