Will they promise to use the funds to make better cars? My first car was a Chevy van, circa 1973, from GM. 3 speed manual transmission would pop out of gear; undersized tires all developed eggs where inner wall protruded through outer wall (blow-out with 7 kids on camping trip is a memory); opening back door window sucked in exhaust fumes. Been driving Volvos since.

David Halberstam expressed it best in his 1986 book, The Reckoning. His contention is that the car industry began to fail its markets when the bean counters (designed to cost) took over from the car guys (post WW2 lovers of styling and power. Think fins, rockets and Road Runners). Future, failed Secretaries of Defense, Robert McNamara and Les Aspin began their careers as bean-counting Whiz Kids at Ford.

I spent 7 years selling factory automation to the auto industry, 1986 to 93. Mazda plants seemed as clean as hospitals and the Cadillac plants appeared to function like huge, chaotic garages. Final irony is that the Japanese resisted even getting into auto business in late 1940s believing that the US car industry was just too good to take on! Here’s a review DH’s book from Amazon:

From Publishers Weekly
Powerfully developing his thesis that the complacency and shortsightedness of American workers and their bosses, especially the automakers of Detroit, have led to a decline of industrial know-how so critical that Asian carmakers, particularly the Japanese, have virtually taken over the market, Halberstam tells in panoramic detail a story that is alarming in its implications. Immediately ahead lies a harsh scenario that will see America’s standards of living fall appreciablyonly sacrifices will restore our “greatness.” This lengthy book with its skilled, dramatic interweaving of two little-known storiesthe inside struggles of the Ford organization (including the firing of Lee Iacocca) in the 1970s and the growth of the Japanese automotive industry, notably Nissan, since the 1950scompletes the trilogy Halberstam began with The Best and the Brightest and The Powers That Be. Here is fresh and crucially meaningful material researched with notable thoroughness, replete with graphic portraits of top American and Japanese industrialists competing blindly on the one hand and with brilliant cunning on the other. The book is among the most absorbing of recent years, every page contributing to the breathtaking picture of an America that is going to learn to retool or else. 200,000 first printing.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.