U.S. auto industry mismanaged

This Big Three bailout is a sham for U.S. taxpayers.

How can Japan’s automakers invest their profits into research and design to develop hybrid, alternative-fuel, aerodynamic vehicles that get 50-plus mpg, while the U.S. Big Three automakers continue to build wind-pushing boxes on wheels, some of which barely get 16 mpg?

The top executives raked in the mega-million profits and lost sight that the end of the road was approaching fast.

My heart goes out to the people working the assembly line, because they truly are the victims of the greed. Now their jobs are on the line. The Big Three will get bailed out, and it will be business as usual for their executives.

A quick fix would be to put a highly efficient, hybrid engine in those boxes on wheels and make sure it gets 50 to 70 mpg. Then we would buy them as soon as they roll off the line.

Don’t worry about the MP3 player, satellite radio, GPS, two sunroofs, LED lights or leather seats. Your customers want to keep some “green” in their pockets.

Big Three, it’s time to kick Big Oil out of your bed and get busy designing aerodynamic, alternative-fuel vehicles fast.

Tom Edmondson
Kansas City

I grew up in Detroit and was there recently. The city reflects the auto industry. The commercial streets in my old neighborhood present a recurring cycle of liquor and lotto stores, payday loan and pawn shops, strip clubs and storefront churches, fast food and boarded-up spaces.

The industry now wants public monies. I say not without conditions:

Not one public dollar for the perpetuation of gasoline-powered vehicles.

100 percent of public funding restricted to the development and production of vehicles powered by alternative fuel — small, safe and efficient.

Remove all boards and top management and replace them with a bankruptcy-style receiver.

Legislatively empower the “auto czar” to reset all employment contracts, pension and benefit plans to a national average.

The industry whose mismanagement has done what it has to its own home base cannot expect unconditional reprieve at the public trough. It does not deserve to be saved for itself so much as to be unalterably redirected under the most stringent oversight and conditions for the benefit of the national economy as a whole.

Lawrence D. MacLachlan
Prairie Village

Advice for U.S. Automakers and President-elect Obama: Hire Lee Iacocca. At this stage of the game you couldn’t pay him what he’s worth, but he would probably provide his services free of charge.

U.S. auto producers are in dire need of some common-sense management and credibility. The track record of our federal government in totality is a disaster in terms of management and credibility.

Mr. Iacocca could easily rid the federal bureaucracy of all the incompetents and re-establish our country’s priorities. That would give the people some hope and, above all, needed trust.

If there’s a better person to rally around and trust, I’d like to know who it might be.

Joe F. Dragosh
Independence

Comments

[Pub 17]

Then buy a Lexus RX.

[NoMoreMrNiceGuy]

Maybe some of do not want small vehicles? Hybrids do not fit every need, thoe of us that are required to travel thousands of miles per month in our industry would not benefit from a hybrid and certainly not an electric. Maybe the uber left would be willing to cut back on their consumption of perto-based products and tell their Hollyweird hypocrites to stop jet setting around the world.