Driving on the Edge of Disaster

Long gone are the days of huffy, right-wing nationalists shaking their heads as American after American drives home a Japanese car.

For decades, my conservative father clucked his tongue when neighbors drove home their shiny yellow B210s and sporty Celica's, one of the sexiest cars ever built.

He didn't think so. He thought it was un-American to send money to the Japanese. Unfortunately, too many of his peers felt the same way for far too long. They'd buy cars from the Big Three, even though the Japanese models were undeniably better cars all the way around, launching a generation of loafing car companies.

They ruined themselves, and now, my father's generation is gone, or has quit buying cars at all. To be fair, American car companies are building better cars. In fact, I would say many models are even superior to foreign cars. Experts say so, too. But there's so much further to go.

While in Spain two years ago, I rented a Ford Focus wagon in Barcelona. I cringed when the rental agent handed me the keys. I'd driven a Ford Focus before in Denver. It was a shuddering, anemic excuse of a car. It seemed that no one on the design team at Ford had ever worked together on the design. I'm not sure the people who developed the engine even ever had lunch with the power-train folks.

This was not my father's Ford Focus, folks. It had five speeds, a peppy diesel engine and handled like a European car. I had to keep checking the logos to see that it really was a Ford. It turns out that the Europeans would never stand for the garbage we pay tens of thousands of dollars for here in the United States. Ford is not only welcome to build cars in Europe, they've been pretty successful at it. But they must build them to a much higher standard, and fuel efficiency, than what Americans demand of the Big Three over here.

Now, the majority of Americans feel like I do about American cars. Most likely, the either don't own one or wish they didn't have to. So when the three auto companies that pay themselves and their employees luxurious wages and benefits comes begging for tax-dollar handouts, it's hard to feel charitable. Most of us don't want their cars anyway. Who cares if they go away and let the experts run the auto industry?

You do. Or rather, you will.

While some Washington pundits are moaning over endless warning cries from the Big Three and their unions that one in 10 American jobs depends on GM, Ford and Chrysler, the truth is that may not be the truth. It could be that only a mere 1 in 15 jobs depends on the survival of the Big Three.

If you're not getting this by now, I hope you're not in charge of the Washington bailouts. With the U.S. economy deep in recession and teetering on a real, honest-to-gawd depression, losing even one in 20 American jobs right now would be a calamity like the United States has never seen. That is no exaggeration. Immediately, the steel states would collapse, drawing huge financial and military resources into the region. Even during America's best financial days, it's unlikely we could have managed such a disaster for any length of time. But with the precarious state of economics right this very minute, do not doubt that the United States could some how shrug this one off.

I'm not suggesting that we just heave a collective sigh and write a check. I'm saying that the Big Three bring and their unions bring acceptable financial plans to Congress, their new banker, and get a chance to make good on so much bad. The plan would include real changes in auto designs to accommodate the fuel efficiency and performance we, too, are learning to discriminate for.

But may no mistake. Having more than one of the Big Three collapse, and it appears that if one goes, the others will almost certainly follow, will make us long for the days when another $25 billion would turn back the clock to where we are now.