This is a long introduction to an article at the bottom:
Growing up having my grandfather, all my uncles and my dad working and retire from General Motors, I have developed a certain amount of loyalty toward General Motors and have been inclined to have an enormous amount of unwavering loyalty to American made vehicles period. I wanted to work at the same plant that they all retired from, even when I was sixteen I wished the plant would not shut down, I wanted to work there.
I am like a Christian on a crusade when I hear someone talking about buying a Camry or a VW Jetta or a Kia (why somebody would ever buy a car made in Korea is beyond me anyhow). I make myself sound crazy preaching to them that they should buy American, crazy or not I will continue to do that, because I think it is patriotic to buy American, and if I am buying a NEW car that is all I will ever buy, think that is taking it too far? Try this on, one of the first questions to the guy who wants my blessing to marry my daughter is going to be “would you ever buy a foreign vehicle?”
I absolutely hate continuing to monitor the dwindling situation of General Motors. It irritates me to see such an icon of American history (this goes for Ford as well) continue to flail its arms in the water to avoid drowning. I am convinced that the article below is accurate by saying that turning GM around is like winning the war on terrorism; it is going to take a lot of time and a lot of sacrifices and if people are unwilling to share in the sacrifices it will take that much longer.
What it comes down to, is I feel beaten (personally). Although I know that General Motors has turned into this enormous machine that is completely out of control with overhead, too many plants, a misconceived reputation of non-reliability, and a grim future of snowballing health care costs for its employees and retirees, I feel like we have been beaten on our own field at our own game.
To me it is like the 1984 hockey game during the cold war when we defeated the USSR as the underdogs, beat them at their own game. Today, Asia playing off of an old reputation (and as far as I am concerned untrue reputation) and using the advantage of selling cars in the United States and Asia, they are beating us at our own game.
I know and am sure that twenty years from now, GM will rise back to the top, and may not be a car giant but will be a streamlined, efficient, profit spewing, Toyota stomping machine that is so well greased that it runs like clockwork…Until then, GM will be in the Intensive Care Unit close to needing life support with doctors running around like crazy trying to figure out what it will take to get GM healthy again. If you are at the least interested in the behind the scenes problems with General Motors.....read on :-)
Read GMs Unfortunate Tragedy of General Motors
