Two Blind Mice

Why would anyone want to give the Big Three automakers a bailout? After years of delaying listening to the market, building marginal cars and fighting every safety and environmental advance with huge lobbying dollars, do they really deserve our hard-earned money? I don't think so, no matter what the pols say. The only argument I can think of for offering them government loans is that we are throwing around so much anyway, to places like Citibank, what's another $34B? But that's hardly a good justification for big bucks we're unlikely to see again.

Besides, have you driven a GM car lately? I just rented Chevy's much ballyhooed Malibu on a business trip. Quite pleasant, but nothing to write home about. Not much of an engine for accelerating on the highway, but then rental cars don't often come fully loaded. But the big issue is that there at least a dozen cars in that category and price point, and the Malibu doesn't stand out at all. A me-too product is no way to save a company.

If Congress doesn't provide the buckets of money to bail them out, GM will go through bankruptcy and actually be able to redo their union and dealer contracts. This may be enough to save them going forward, if the Board and management, previously oblivious, have the brains and guts to do it. Chrysler wants to disappear anyway since it appears that Cerebrus, the PE fund that owns it, is just looking for an exit strategy. They clearly want to hang around just long enough to find a buyer and get out. They should also wonder why they hired Bob Nardelli, he of the big bucks disaster at Home Depot, to ru(i)n a car company.

But, Ford, may well come out of this alive and well without government largess. Bill Ford, who was no great shakes at running the company, had the brains and self-awareness to know it. So he brought in a topflight exec in Alan Mulally to run the company. Good for him. Because he didn't have Ford blue in his blood, Mulally was able to make the changes--big cuts; new models; large, new lines of credit--that will keep Ford going till at least 2010. By then, people will either be buying cars again or the US will start to look like Bangladesh and it won't matter. Granted, Mulally is still tonedeaf enough to fly home to Seattle on the corporate jet every weekend while chopping jobs like crazy, but you can't really blame a rational person for not wanting to live in Detroit. (Even the Lions don't want to be there.)

Bill Ford should get the credit for saving his family's company with a good hire. A talented exec can make a big difference, especially a smart outsider breaking up a fossilized culture. And that leaves Rick Wagoner, a GM lifer, and Nardelli, as cold-blooded a character as you'll ever meet, as two blind mice running around the maze and hoping to beg for more cheese.