Bailout

- I want the American car industry to survive.
- I drive a Honda Fit (which, unlike many Honda models is made in Japan and imported)

There seems to be cognitive dissonance there. My position about cars has always been kind of free market. I buy the car I want or need, from whomever makes it. My last "car" was actually a Dodge Truck with a Cummins, which I had because I needed a truck at the time for a construction project.

In each case, the vehicle was the one I considered the "best" in its category. I voted with my money, and hoped that the manufacturers were taking note and building cars based on what was best for the market. If I bought a Honda, and so did a bunch of other folks, then the US Auto makers would see that, get it, and start building Honda-like cars. I live in fantasy land. Far easier to just start a round of name calling and saying that because people are not buying their cruft then somehow *we* are being unpatriotic rather than they are not building what we need or want. Market forces and supply side economics is all well and good till it takes your company out back and spanks it.

Reminds me for some reason of an old Ford commercial where people supposedly could not tell a Ford Granada apart from a Mercedes Benz. They did not mention how many free drinks they had at happy hour first. Since the automakers in the US could not actually build anything like a Merc back then, they tried to convince people via advertising that they were. It was so patently absurd, yet some bought into it... till they bought one. I talked to one guy who had done so, and he was disgusted. Mad at himself and mad at Ford. Bet he never bought another Ford. He said he wasn't going to in any case.

The closest thing to my Honda Fit available from GM is a car imported from Korea, or one built by Toyota and re-badged as a Pontiac. Ford and Chrysler don't even have that much. The SuperMini class is nonexistent with the latter two. If Ford did have something, it would probably be a relabeled Mazda 3. Aside: In the current situation I wonder if Ford will be able to hang on to Mazda. They need to.

Rather than building cars we need, the point of the car companies has been to build cars they want to build, and then try and build demand for those cars via advertising and branding. Uhmmm Hummer. Tasty. The point of the Hummer brand was not that people need such things to drive back and forth to work, or even to haul the kids to Fut Ball (Soccer) practice or bring home milk and eggs from the store. The point of the brand was to drive a modified Chevy Tahoe that cost less than half its selling price to build, no matter how inefficiently or badly built and no matter how unlike a real military Hummer it is. Not that we really need to be driving real MilSpec Hummers for any of those things either. You'd even have thought from the Hummer ads that they were cars for being green, since they often featured people out in nature, and the camera point of view zoomed back at the end to show the planet Earth. Yeah. Right.

Even worse is that there were some real opportunities there. The Chevy Tahoe chassis of the fake Hummer has plenty of room to add things like a Diesel hybrid power train, which at first would probably be big and bulky, gain experience with it, and then downsize the drivetrain over time for use in Honda Fit or even Smart size cars.

I do get *wanting* to drive a big car/truck. I loved driving my Dodge Truck. The Cummins was a sweet motor, and it got pretty good fuel economy for such a behemoth, and best of all, it would run on anything. BioD, DinoD, soy bean oil, peanut oil, used motor oil, even small amounts of ethanol were good as they "dried" the fuel (absorbed water so it could be burnt). I accidentally put in six gallons of Gasoline once in an otherwise full fuel tank, and being on a long trip, burned it without being able to tell it was there. Not recommended: probably took some years off the injection pump, but odd how I got 2 MPG better that tank full.

The Dodge was big, drove nice, felt safe, was comfortable on long trips other than the engine noise (later models are quieter), and had a nice high driving position. There were some problems with the body, letting me know I was driving an American designed car though. I had to keep fixing one of the back doors when the door handle would disconnect from the cable so that the door would not open. Finally had to fabricate a part to keep it from happening. Crappy design. Easy fix.

I took some friends from India to the store in my truck. They looked it over very carefully, and I could not tell if they thought it was crazy to drive such a thing to work or just simply amazing... in a bad way.

Funny thing is it was not a badly built truck: It is clear Americans can build good vehicles. See Honda's Marysville Ohio plant for details. Or Mercedes plant in Alabama. Or the Toyota plant in California. If the design is good, there is nothing wrong with the labor. It is just that the designers cut stupid corners and the results speak for themselves.

Take the GM alternator. Please.

I had a Chevy 454 engine in a class A motorhome. A Holiday Rambler. Another time I had a different year model Chevy Suburban with a 454 rigged out for towing an Airstream. I just about decided to keep a spare alternator on the coach/in the truck because they died at 30,000 miles like clockwork, New. Rebuilt. Did not seem to matter. Talking to other RV'ers I found that story repeated over and over. Did not seem to matter even what year. It was a bad design, and it went unfixed , on and on. There was no fiscal reason to change it apparently. Heck, there was probably a nice revenue stream in it for someone. Yet other design alternators are built here in the states.. like the ones that go into the Honda's at Marysville, and they last just fine. I also had a Ford E350 based Class C RV, and it went over 100k miles and I never touched the alternator. The E350 had other design problems though: Ford's I beam front suspension was a terrible idea, and yet they kept that for years and years and years. The tire folks must have loved that, since the Twin I beam would not stay aligned for love nor money, and even finding someone who *could* align one right was not easy.

As a former mechanic, I could go on and on about the stupidities of American car design. To use the word "Conservative" in its most pejorative possible way is the best I can come up with. Never change. Never learn. Never grow. Fight progress at every turn. After the oil embargo of he 1970's showed us how vulnerable we were, instead of adapting and even spending some money educating the American consumer about the virtues of spending more for quality and more for higher tech, better fuel efficiency vehicles, they spent money on lobbyists fight things like CAFE. One of the scare-points that these people made about CAFE: That it would be bad for jobs. Now look at where we are. I am pretty sure I know who is really bad for jobs.

When the oil crisis was past, they dumped even the fledging attempts at making a decent or at least a fuel efficient vehicle and went back to making stuff like Hummers, Suburbans, Escalades, Tahoes, Excursions, and on and on. When they were making a 10-20K profit per vehicle, they were telling the unions that they needed concessions, then gave themselves millions in bonuses because of how well the company was doing.

That does not even count the fact that they fought against, or at least did not leverage *current* technology. How long have there been diesel locomotives? Ever since they retired the steam engine. The tech in not new. It is not expensive. It is not hard. Cummins and others have made small, high quality diesels forever. Take a small diesel engine, hook it to a generator, run it at a constant, optimized for fuel economy RPM, drop it in a small car, fuel it with BioD made from oil made from Algae grown in salt water, and you have *everything* you need to solve the auto industries problems. 100 MPG. Last 500,000+ miles. End of story.

Well, sort of. The auto industry will also have to make sure that they are sized correctly for cars that last longer. And that is part of the problem. Gas engines don't last as long, so cars built with them have to be replaced more often, so there is more profit there. The gasoline engine is the ultimate in planned obsolescence. Doing the right thing, and doing the long technically possible thing is stuck up against doing the more profitable thing.

The car industry... all industry really, needs to figure out that if we do *not* solve problems like that in favor of doing the right thing, then we are all going to choke to death on the poisons we have created. See Yeast making Beer for details. Hopefully we are smarter than yeast. Most of us. Doesn't count if you use your smarts for evil.

Humm: If you take all the people trying to do the right thing with their smarts, and balance them against all the people trying to do the wrong thing, does that net out to being as smart as yeast? 1 + -1 = 0.

There is profit in doing the right thing. Maybe not quite as insanely a huge profit, but that huge profit is short term. In fact, it is over. Profit has turned into needing a bailout. Hey! Can we (the shareholders) have those bonuses back? Turns out we some better things to spend it on.

I called this one "Bailout" because I have deeply mixed feeling about the proposed automotive Industry bailout. As I said at the beginning, I have always tried to use market forces via what I spend money on to try and influence the makers and sellers of things. In truth, I do not think "No regulations on anyone for anything" capitalism is working as well as the Conservatives have assured us it will. Their solution is frankly insane. Let the car companies die (but not Wall Street: Give them tons of money with no strings). Put out on the street over 3 million good people who mostly never did anything wrong (other than perhaps believe in the myth of "Trickle Down"), and in fact did almost everything right. The Conservatives of course are blaming their usual bogeyman, the unions. All smoke and mirrors so that no one looks at the real reason they got where they are, and dragged us with them.

If insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome, then the right wing economic plan is demonstratively crazy. Yet the Newt-pack would have you believe that it all came tumbling down because we did not believe hard enough. We did not deregulate enough. We failed the god of deregulation with our false and weak faith. We need to believe harder. We'll just keep paying this terrible price till we believe more and oh, give more too. The god of deregulation requires *serious* tithing.

The price of freedom unfortunately is eternal vigilance, and these folks have been stealing us blind and then blaming the hired help. To some degree this is our fault. We were not vigilant. We watched Fox News. We drank the Koolaid. Hannity and O'Reilly and Limbaugh and Colter et al were treated as if the bilge water they were pumping made sense. It sounded too good to be true (the entire right wing economic, trickle down story) and it was. Money for nothing and your chicks for free is in fact a recipe for dire straights. Apologies to MK and the rest of DS.

It was all there to see for anyone that looked with clear eyes. George H. W. Bush called it was what it was: "Voodoo Economics". Although this was a statement of fact (as much as any statements about economics are facts in any case), it was successfully treated by the smear machine like the term "liberal" and made into a dirty word / phrase. Even the guy that devised "Trickle Down" (David Stockman) for Ronald Reagan recanted it. We went with it anyway. We forgot everything Excel taught us about math (=sum() decreases, not increases, the total when the numbers it is summing are decreased) and said "Yeah: OK. Less taxes equals more money for the government, so we can all stop paying taxes and still have more lovely roads, bridges, and national parks to enjoy" Turns out Heinlein was right again (being right all the time can be annoying). TNSTAAFL: Not only is the moon a harsh mistress, but so is reality.

I am really really really really really happy that, despite how spineless the Democrats generally are, they did not let Social Security become invested in the stock market. Thank goodness for small favors, since they pretty much laid down for the rest of the program, including things like FISA. But I digress.

So... I think we have to do this bail out. 3 million or more jobs just can not be lost. Worse, some of the few manufacturing jobs we have left to, thanks to previous right wing leadership of things like our mills. WWII was won by being able to manufacturer the other side. But I digress... I think we also need to make sure that we get what we need out of this. They got what they wanted, including private jets that are "Not Negotiable" when it comes time to tighten to corporate belts. AIG got their money and went right back to partying. Enough of that stupidity. They have clearly not been worth what they were paid. Not even close. For all the industry leadership they have shown, I am thinking it is time to give them cubicles, pay them minimum wage, and have them fly steerage.

We do not have a lot of wiggle room here. The resources we once have have been squandered by the right wingers and their tales of economic myth. Reminds me of the old George Carlin joke about "Saving the Earth". The Earth, he noted, will be fine. It is just us humans that are in trouble. To be sure the human race will survive this downturn. The question is how deep and how long will the pain be. At the end of it will be have a middle class anymore? Or are we back to fiefdoms.

OK: Bailout then. With conditions. We gave running government as a corrupt business a try for 16-20 of the last 28 years (I tend not to think harshly of the Bush 40's years, even if his domestic policy was a zero and the only reason Gulf War 1 happened was because oil-friends of his had their country invaded. I am not a fan of anyone invading anyone else, no matter what the reason was they got help. As bad as that all was it paled in comparison to either Reagan or Shrub) . Now time to try running business as a fair government. We know what their needs and wants are, but we are going to be part owners, and now we get to say what our needs are. All future bailouts regardless of industry should have these same conditions. No more giveaways. If they don't like it, let them go bankrupt, buy them our of bankruptcy for cheap, and fire the lot of the so called management. Our needs are more important than their wants now. We need cars built right. We needs cars that get good fuel economy. We need cars that take advantage of current tech (BioD fueled diesel hybrids) for now, and we need to do research for the cars of the future. We need to not trust that these folks will do this. They have proven that they will not. Worse, they lied about who they were and why they were making cars. They called themselves "Car Guys" in interviews in the automotive magazines, tuning in to our love of cars and the road and using it against us, acting like they were just one of us, and really excited about that next new thing they were getting ready to foist off on us. The only thing they were really excited about was the money they were making selling us garbage.

I am not talking about matters of taste here either, like whether a Cadillac Escalade is a thing of beauty or was beaten with an ugly stick and then had some stuff bolted on it they found laying around the shop. I mean a good car as in safe and fuel efficient, using reasonable fuels that are zero carbon impact, and built to last out of materials that can be recycled. Do that first, then go back to beating them with ugly sticks if need be. There is no accounting for taste, but quit letting taste trump doing the right thing. BMW let Chris Bangle make some really ugly real ends on their 7 series a while back, but that is a matter of my personal taste, and I can still appreciate that the car under the sheet metal has some nice engineering to it. Peel back the sheet metal on an H3 and you have a gasoline powered solid rear axle Chevy Tahoe. I wonder if the alternators last any better yet?

You would be correct to note that America car quality is not as bad as it used to be. We are safely past the Chevy Vega and Chevette. Ick. Some even assert that Ford has reached parity. I doubt it. Ford does not make a single car I want to drive. While I hear the assertion being made, and see the study from JD Power and all... I do not believe it. I have eyes. I have rented Fords. It is true that they are not as bad as they used to be. I see no parity. I drove a Ford Focus recently for example, and it made me long for my Honda.. or even the Hyundai Sonota, Chrysler PT Cruiser or Chevy SSR I had rented before.

We, for our part, need to get over the go faster, race for pink slips mentality of our collective youths, at least until we are racing with electric cars. We have to grow up now, and watch these people and demand that they do the right thing or get out and replace them with someone that will. We tried the self policing, let market forces rule, wolfs guarding our hen house thing. Give the auto execs ... more importantly, the people of the auto industry, the money they need to see it though, but on the other side have them building world class cars that we can be proud to buy. Vehicles that meet our real needs, not the pseudo-needs the auto-execs defined with advertising.

"Made in America" used to mean something. It still can mean something good. This bailout is our chance. We need to PWN these guys. Have them do it the real American way for a change... and make us proud.

Cars

This post is not about open source or Linux or anything like that. It is just a rant that I have had running around in the back of my mind for a while now. I decided to set it free so maybe it will go away.

This is about cars. And it is not all of the nature of a rant. First off, the good part. I write this while I am traveling (part of it anyway). I have rented a car that surprised me. After getting Pontiac G6 after Pontiac G6 from Avis, they handed me the keys to a 13,000 mile Hyundia Sonata. And... it does not suck. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

I had a 1985 or 1986 Hyundia Excel. the one designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro. I liked the color (Dark Blue), the design, and the radio. I hated the motor, the size of the gas tank, the way it was geared... pretty much everything else about the car.

The problems were rife: The gas mileage with a 5 speed was about 24 MPG on the highway. The car hesitated and groaned. I don't mind a slow car (more on that in a minute) but I mind one that does not run right. And if it is going to be slow, it better get way more than 24 MPG.

I tried to get a carburator repair kit at the Auto Parts store, but they did not carry Hyundai parts, even though it was an import place. I then went in to a Hyundai dealership to get the carburetor repair kit only to find out that I had to know which of about seven carburetors this car had. I was told by the parts guy that major engineering changes inside the same model year made for many different incompatible models inside the one model year.

I had the alleged car with me (it did look like a car from the outside), so I pulled off the air cleaner and got the tags off the carb, determined my unit was the 5th in the series of the 7 or so designs that year, and then found out the repair kit was the same price as a whole new carb! 650 USD! The parts guy admitted that the new carb was the only way to go... but that I had to stay inside the same EC level because the hookups to the various emission controls were different. There is a reason why all cars went to fuel injection here in the States.

I could not update to the latest version of the carb. The current unit was junk, and probably a new one would not work much better because with all those EC's, there was clearly a problem in the design in this part of the car. A repair kit was an utter non-starter. Fuel treatment had doing nothing either. I was stuck. I left there with a new gas tank instead. Hyundai had two gas tanks that fit that car, and I had the small one. At least with the new unit I could go an extra 50 or so miles. At that time I drove 120 miles a day, so it was not a big win.

Someone stole the radio and I traded it in. The only decent part of that car was gone. No point in keeping it.

I have driven 1965 VW Beetles with 1200cc 40 HP engines. I have owned all sorts of junkers, some of which I hand rebuilt the engine with parts laying about the garage over a weekend to get through another week of school. I have never hated a car as much as I hated that one.

So, I was surprised to see how much I like this Sonata. First of all, it is much bigger than the Excel, and it gets 32 MPG on the highway. Second, I thought it was a V6 till I opened the hood and saw a four cylinder looking back at me. It is comfortable, and.. the radio is as good as ever. It is no audiophile unit, but for a base unit it is pretty good.

Rant one then is this: Imagine the Joker, looking at the Batwing after it wrecked his plan to poison all the good people of Gotham. (The Batman movie with Keaton and Nicholson). Now you have the inflections for this:

"Why didn't they tell me (they) had one of these things!"

Yeah. OK. Fine. That one is on me. I let my early experience with Hyundai keep me from ever looking at one again, even though to survive they obviously had to change. I have no idea what the long term reliability is of the new Hyundai stuff. What Consumer Reports thinks of the electrical systems. Anything like that. I did read some end user reviews now, and most are positive. Does me a lot of good now though. I never once even considered looking.

There is probably a good lesson for marketing folks about the length of memory of the average consumer. I may not be average though....

My Fleet

To my point above about driving slowish cars, here is my and my wife's current fleet of cars:

• 2008 Honda Fit 5 speed, 106 HP (my daily driver)

• 2004 Honda CR-V 5 speed, 160 HP (my wifes daily driver)

• 1985 Mercedes 240D 4 speed, 60 HP

• 1984 Mercedes 300SD, 4 speed Auto, 120 HP.

You could add my entire fleet up and still have less HP than one modern Corvette. I drive the Fit now, but the 300SD was my daily before that. Neither will win any land speed records. About the only car the trembles in fear of my fleet is a Chevy Chevette.

The two Mercs are actually on loan to our kids till they can get established and get cars of their own. Meantime, they are safe in our tanks.

Here then is the other rant:

I went to buy the Fit after falling in love with the SuperMini class of car while I was in India. In India they have 800cc and similarly small engines. One of my friends had a brand new Suzuki four door with a monster 1.1 liter engine. It was a great car. Plenty fast, handled the highway just fine, and got great mileage. Even cooler to me, as a Merc owner, were the Tata's I saw and rode in. Two cylinder diesels. I imagine they got outstanding fuel economy. Maybe not as clean as a US specification diesel, but when you are using only a gallon to traverse 50 or 60 miles, there are some real advantages.

I had read about the Honda Fit. It is Honda's world platform, and is called the Jazz in Europe. I am going to rebadge mine to be the Jazz. That is a cooler name. The Chassis is stiff and strong, and there are five engines available for it.

<rant> Except in the bloody US!, where there is only one! The biggest, worst fuel economy engine! Argg!! </rant>

The Fit/Jazz here comes with the 1.5 liter VTEC. Same engine size as that much hated Excel, but with twice the horsepower, and gets 37-38 MPG Highway instead of the Excels 24. That is impressive really, except that I keep wondering if they could have kept the horsepower down, and given me fuel economy instead.

The Fit / Jazz engine with the same HP as the old Excel is the smaller 1.1 liter unit, and is good for something like 60 or 62 HP. Same HP as my 240D, and the 240D is a 2.5 liter four banger. I have no idea what the fuel economy of the 1.1 liter Honda mill in the Fit is because <rant> they do not import it!</rant>. Nor the 1.2, 1.3, or 1.4 liter units. Only the relatively gas guzzling 1.5 liter.

Sure, its quick, with something like a 9 second zero to 60. Of my fleet, only the CR-V is faster, and not by much. But I do not need the speed. I am used to driving the Mercs. I am not in that big a hurry to get to work or anywhere else. My 60HP 240D Merc will drive at highway speed all day long. Why not the Honda with a 1.1 liter unit? Why can I not order the smaller, slower, better fuel economy mill?

The Fit turns about 3200 RPM at 70 MPH, but the VTEC engine is torquey enough that it could easily run at 2800 RPM or even less at that speed. No overdrive gear. The cars five speed is close ratio. Why? At 3000 rpm or so the VTEC engine cuts in the second set of intake valves. The engine gets noisier, and there is a fun surge of power. But I do not need that. Let me cruise at highway speed on the more efficient RPM, knowing a downshift gets it on cam in a double quick hurry!

I have a feeling a reason is that Honda wants to make as much money as they can, and by not offering base units here in the states (where they have to certify each drive train as meeting emissions standards), they give preference to profit over the environment. Sure, the Civic HA did not set the world on fire as far as sales records goes. You know what? There is such a thing as being a good citizen of this planet too. Honda generally is, at least to the point that many of their cars are LEV and ULEV. But they can do better. Honda advertises a fuel cell car here in the states, and that is annoying since it can not be bought. My daughter was asking me the other day why we had not bought that one instead. I had to explain about the difference between an ad and reality from a whole new perspective: An advert for the possible but not yet realized. Honda may make one. Probably will. But the ads are preceding availability by a number of years.

Another reason is common wisdom. This common wisdom says that Americans won't buy slow small cars. It also says that we like Velveeta Cheese, and can't watch movies longer than 90-120 minutes. Sure, Lord of the Rings made a bazillion dollars, and we buy all kinds of other cheese here, but that is meaningless. Americans only want big, bad cars with electric everything.

The Honda dealer about had a Fit when I asked if they had any models with roll up windows.

Why not a Prius or other Hybrid?

It wasn't that I did not think of that. Here are my two main problems with Hybrids:

1. What happens to the batteries when they wear out, and how much does that every three or so year service interval cost the owner and the planet?

2. Assuming that the battery issue is not an issue, where are the Diesel hybrids? If gas can get 50, Diesel can get 70 MPG. Or more. Bio-D is far more renewable than Ethanol too.

The Perfect Car, in reach of Todays Tech

I am not crazy: I like all the body stiffness, crash-worthiness, and other cool things that come from a modern car body. The high strength steel, the quiet interior, the MP3 radios. Adjustable hight seat belts. In the specific case of the Fit / Jazz, the nifty interior seat / options. The tall SuperMini packaging. All that is goodness. I would keep all those things.

Since I current reside in a swamp, but my ancestors used to live near the North Pole, A/C is a must. I like a quiet car where I can hear just enough of the engine to know when to shift. Manual tranny to be sure, unless they come up with an Auto that is more efficient at shifting than I am. It could happen with computers these days. Slippery, wind tunnel derived shapes and quiet, tall, good feedback tires with low rolling resistance and great wet weather traction. All these things about modern cars are keeper features.

GPS and mapping systems are all nice, but I would not pay for it. Give me big analog controls that I can use without taking my eyes off the road. On-Star and similar would get jerked out of the car so fast the wires wouldn't have time to spark. Just too Big Brother for me.

Where I would really make the changes are the drive trains. I want 100 MPG or as near that as tech can get it. Assume that the batteries are 100% recyclable, and that there is a VW-like aluminum block, diesel engine option. Small. Maybe 40 HP. Designed to be clean without Urea injection because it is used only to recharge the batteries or to supplement the electric motors for acceleration. A diesel hybrid or a diesel like it is exists in a train, with no direct connection to the wheels. The hardest, lowest rolling resistance tire / wheel setup I can get, with a tuned, perhaps even live suspension to damp all that back out from the the driver.

The whole thing should be designed and rated for BioD. Grow algae in salt water tanks in the desert, and refine BioD from it.

Solar cells on the sun roof to power vent fans when the car is parked, and keep the batteries topped up. Roll up windows (I'm not lazy, and the motors are just something to break) but central locking so that the alarm system has something to work with.

One, two, and four passenger versions. Now that would be a car.

Thanks. I feel better now. Back to Open Source stuff.