Running on Empty

Clint Eastwood's unforgettable quote in the movie, "Unforgiven", was, "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it." Well, deserve's got everything to do with the demise of the Detroit auto industry. They asked for it and they deserve it. I am amazed at how long they survived. Some of it was advertising to convince Americans to "Buy American". That's kind of like voting for a presidential candidate simply because he wears an American flag lapel pin. You get what you deserve when you buy crap like that. Cars and presidents. Good luck.

Not to mention Detroit's efforts to make you buy excessive amounts of fuel to run their products. It's a madness that I have never been able to fathom. It's as if the owners of these places who make our cars own oil wells or gas stations or something. It just doesn't make any sense. They also constantly lobby congress to avoid mandates to reduce gas mileage.

The only thing that will save Detroit is to make a car comparable to the Toyota or Nissan or Honda . Why would one want to buy a car with a poor maintenance record and inferior paint job? We are focused on gas prices when we should be thinking about replacement values and high maintenance cost. A car should be in good shape even after 100k miles. unfortunitly american cars peter out well before that. It's considered anti-american not to buy American. Isn't it just as anti-american to manufactor a car that is inferior?

Ouch! $123 to fill up and 12MPG? Sorry dude, I love Harley Davidson and all (ride mine pretty much every day now) BUT, that thing would HAVE to go. www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com

For eight years now, the administration has been selling world wide commerce to the American people while sending jobs overseas. There is no reason not to send our car manufacture overseas now, because the foreign makes are also much cheaper and is of much higher quality than ours. We quit buying Detroit junk years ago. That crap would literally fall apart on the highway and we finally caught on.

Leave them alone and let them go broke. They've been selling consumptive junk for decades while urging patriotism in buying American cars while the best cars in the world are made by Japan and Germany. Detroit asked to fail and the day has finally come. Good riddance.

In a word, "No." The Detroit auto makers haven't got the sense they were born with. I remember when gas prices went up in the late '70s, in the '80s. The writing was on the wall that energy-efficient cars were the way to go. What did Detroit do? They come up with the SUV gas guzzlers. It was just a matter of time before the Middle East socked it to us again. Honda saw the way the wind was blowing and now it's laughing all the way to the bank. I kinda admired Lee Iaccoca (?) when he got the govmt to bail out Chrysler. Wonder how many people who remember that want to bail the Detroit manufacturers out again. Maybe GM needs to just bite the dust and a NEW U.S. auto industry emerge. Unfortunately, the U.S. auto worker will go down with Detroit. I say the people of Detroit need to move to tight labor markets and/or retrain. There is life beyond Detroit. There are lots of places in this country where they are importing workers from abroad.

my 2002 VW diesel Jetta gets 47 miles per gallon. It is very swift!

Ford was bragging about a hybrid that gets 35.

I ask Toyota Prius owners and they get worse mileage than I do!

The fuel crunch is waking people up slowly!

Have the board of directors been living in caves for the last ten or so years? Have they not seen the trend to smaller, more gas efficient and eco friendly cars? Am I supposed to feel sorry for them and feel good about the government bailout that is inevitable? The really sad part is the workers are the ones who get screwed and the board gets fat pensions.

I wish everyone would find a copy of "WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR" this is a mind opening movie..
I truly believe the auto industry and oil industry and our government like just how things are and have no plan to get rid of the Combustion engine.They would be the loser then....
A GM AUTOWORKER

I wish everyone would find a copy of "WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR" this is a mind opening movie..
I truly believe the auto industry and oil industry and our government like just how things are and have no plan to get rid of the Combustion engine.They would be the loser then....
A GM AUTOWORKER

Oh, sorry. I forgot you read consumer reports. And I wasted all that time studying mechanical engineering and working in manifacturing plants.

Anyone who thinks the domestic automakers are not building quality cars doesn't know sh*t about engineering and manufacturing. More likely trying to make yourselves feel better about your own foreign cars and selling out American workers and the American economy. Just ignorant comments from Wall Street descendants of the Vichy French or "naturalized" Americans here to milk our economy and bad-mouth us. Or maybe you're just from California. Don't worry -- the global economy will trickle up to you too eventually.

Realize that most all of the "foreign" automakers such as Toyota, Honda, Nissan, VW, BMW, Mercedes, Hyundai, Kia, have "domestic" manufacturing with American workers. There is something wrong with a system that pays workers 90% of their pay for doing NOTHING.

Please forgive the spelling errors, it was my own version of Chrysler-think (being in too much of a hurry to produce a quality product). But at least I acknowledge, apologize and try to make amends. ; ).

Google "chrysler" and "sludge" and see just one of many reasons why Chrysler will not recover. Whether they're building cars or trucks, they refuse to stand by their product when a consumer has a problem and this is one of the seldom reported but MAJOR reasons why most consumers will shun ANYTHING from Chrysler. The bottom line is Chrysler disrespected and abused their customers, forget all the other theoretical analyses by the MBA whiz kids. WIthout fudamentals everythnig else is meaningless, the foundation will always be the relationship with the customer. Word gets around mighty fast these days, and when you piss off someone who just spent $25K they tend to tell a few people. This attitude tends to flow from the top down, and the outrageously overpaid Chrysler execs have no-one to blame but themselves. They screwed their consumers and their employees, somethng that's all to familiar these days.

We lived through this in the 70s--conservation became the buzzword; automakers made smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. Then in the 80s when gas got cheap again, America said to heck with conservation--so now we want big SUVs. The automakers were responding to their market, giving the customers what they wanted. Now we need to demand fuel efficiency again, and the automakers will, if they want to stay in businesss, give us what we want. Supply and demand, Econ 101.

Maybe they could try putting out a product that is not a grossly overpriced, gas-guzzling piece of junk for a change! That might work. Sadly, I seriously doubt that any of the big three are capable of such a feat though.

The unions killed Detroit. They have to learn that the era of someone with a grade five education making fifty bucks an hour to turn a bolt is OVER! Anyone who buys a domestic vehicle is a SUCKER and deserves what they get when they lose their warrany coverage after the big three go BANKRUPT.