Confession: The Regal's a Pretty Great Car
Love the bailout or hate it, GM has a success in its Europe-derived Buick sedan; an automotive Zelig
By DAN NEIL
WSJ
It gives me no joy to write this. I know it will upset a lot of readers, and that's never pleasant. So I might as well come right out and say it: The new Buick Regal is a really nice car.
If you regard the federal government's taking a majority stake in General Motors in 2009 as an unforgivable overreach by the Socialist in Chief Obama, a political payoff to the United Auto Workers, a fleecing of the taxpayer, etc., nothing would conform to that narrative better than a ugly, spastic Buick Regal. After all, the government can't do anything right, can it?
Unfortunately for you—and fortunately for the rest of us, who want the company to succeed and in so succeeding make taxpayers whole on their investment—the post-bankruptcy, fed-owned GM is gaining altitude. The company posted a healthy Q1 profit; global sales are rebounding; GM is a fraction of its former, overgrown self; the board and most of the executive management has been replaced; the UAW has been given a pretty good haircut; the electric Chevy Volt is on track to be released on time, as promised. Hundreds of thousands of auto-industry jobs were preserved in the past year. If GM had gone into liquidation—remember, there was no financing available for a conventional Chapter 11 bankruptcy—GM's collapse would have acted like a black hole, further destabilizing the economy and obliterating the value of car companies and suppliers around it.
I'm not saying it was pretty. So little of summer '09 was. And I'm not predicting that taxpayers will absolutely break even. I am saying the alternative would have been far worse.
(Continued here.)
By DAN NEIL
WSJ
It gives me no joy to write this. I know it will upset a lot of readers, and that's never pleasant. So I might as well come right out and say it: The new Buick Regal is a really nice car.
If you regard the federal government's taking a majority stake in General Motors in 2009 as an unforgivable overreach by the Socialist in Chief Obama, a political payoff to the United Auto Workers, a fleecing of the taxpayer, etc., nothing would conform to that narrative better than a ugly, spastic Buick Regal. After all, the government can't do anything right, can it?
Unfortunately for you—and fortunately for the rest of us, who want the company to succeed and in so succeeding make taxpayers whole on their investment—the post-bankruptcy, fed-owned GM is gaining altitude. The company posted a healthy Q1 profit; global sales are rebounding; GM is a fraction of its former, overgrown self; the board and most of the executive management has been replaced; the UAW has been given a pretty good haircut; the electric Chevy Volt is on track to be released on time, as promised. Hundreds of thousands of auto-industry jobs were preserved in the past year. If GM had gone into liquidation—remember, there was no financing available for a conventional Chapter 11 bankruptcy—GM's collapse would have acted like a black hole, further destabilizing the economy and obliterating the value of car companies and suppliers around it.
I'm not saying it was pretty. So little of summer '09 was. And I'm not predicting that taxpayers will absolutely break even. I am saying the alternative would have been far worse.
(Continued here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home