April 1, 2009
By Larry Van Zandt
GM CEO resigns at Obama's behest
General Motors Chief Rick Wagoner Said to Step Down
Obama Now Controls Fate of GM, Chrysler
Wow.
So finally, Rick Wagoner is leaving General Motors. While this might be considered a sign of ‘progress’ within GM, there’s a far darker side to this whole deal, in which an unintended consequence might be GM pulling out of all forms of Motorsports, not just NASCAR. However, since NASCAR receives the obese lion’s share of GM’s motorsports budget, this back-door move of the U.S. Government, to seize power of General Motors is going to be bad….for all of us, and not just NASCAR fans.
Rick Wagoner is a schmuck, end of story. Countless voices of warning cried out about his policy of depending entirely on SUV’s to make money for the company he was CEO of. He completely ignored the small-car market….along with every other car and truck market….and product quality was a complete an utter joke.
As a former mechanic, I worked on all kinds of GM products over the last 20 or so years, and also owned several GM products, the first being a 1968 Chevy Impala custom coupe with a 427/4-speed (Of course, it’s gone), and the last two being a 1989 and 2003 Chevy DisAstro van, with me unloading the 2003 DisAstro AWD back in July 2008, just because it was a gas-hog pile of crap that was actually frightening to drive at anything over 50 mph.
It wasn’t worn out….it was a 1980’s design that carrying 2000 pounds too much weight for the chassis…and the gas mileage? With the all-wheel-drive front driveshaft in place….maybe 14 mpg….with a 4.3 liter V6 engine. My 1989 DisAstro Rally Sport (it’s actually kind of cool looking) in comparison, knocks down 21-22 mpg, handles a lot better, and absolutely hauls….uh….the mail….something that the bloated 2003 couldn’t do to save its life. I ended up giving away the van (only had 100K on it) for $3000….exactly what I paid for it in March, 2008.
I called it the ‘mini-motorhome’, simply because it drove like one. That was quite possibly the heaviest-feeling ‘mini-van’ I ever drove, and I’ve driven almost every mini-van built, from every auto maker.
All this pile of garbage is good for is to use it as a beater work vehicle. I know, because that’s what I use my 1989 DisAstro RS for. It’s uncomfortable to drive on a road trip, and it’s a major pain to get in and out of, seeing as how I have to do a two-step dance move just to get into it, and then thread myself backwards behind the steering wheel. It’s completely useless on rain or snow-covered roads….even with studded tires and chains. This van only has 118K miles on it….but most everything has quit working. I can no longer use the rear door, the stock radio still has a Raymond E. Feist ‘Return to Krondor’ book-on-tape cassette stuck in it from back in early 2008….and now I have to put a stupid headliner in the thing.
The paint is lifting off of the roof….thank you, Government, for mandating water-based paints….I can’t see the speedometer while driving during the day. At night it’s fine, but the 2003 DisAstro wasn’t all that visible during night-time drive, at least until I put a set of Auto Meter blue LED 194 replacement bulbs in it….before then, it was a wimpy, dull yellow that I had to do double takes with to see while driving at night….at full illumination.
There’s a reason why I’m mentioning all of this, by the way.
Rick Wagoner was responsible for the 1989 Chevy DisAstro that I own (Uncle gave it to me….I wouldn’t have bought it otherwise), but he was in charge when the 2003 DisAstro van was in the planning stages….resulting in a vehicle which has absolutely zero resale value, just because how big of a cow-patty it is. I replaced my DisAstro with a 2000 Honda Odyssey mini-van. Heck, I even managed to get an Odyssey the same color as the DisAstro it replaced.
Dear God, what a difference.
I’ve driven various Odysseys, from the 2000 model I own, to a brand-new 2008. Ever notice that these vans are the most expensive used minivans out there? I got lucky and nailed a low-mile EX up in Washington….and I had to watch the speedo constantly….it didn’t feel like I was going 70 or 80, when I was going that fast. In fact, this van handles better than some sports cars I have been behind the wheel in.
In comparison….the 2003 DisAstro was downright scary at 70-80 mph. In fact, I made it a point never to get it past 70….gas mileage dropped to around 9-10 when I did so. The Honda? 20-22 mpg, and that’s with the A/C blasting. In addition, the Honda runs circles around either Disastro in the Horsepower department.
The point here is that Rick Wagoner had a chance to make General Motors into something great and wonderful….and he blew it. He rode the short-term gain bus until it went off of the cliff, and gave way too many concessions to the UAW union, which puts us several steps backwards when trying to compete with furrin’ car companies who build vehicles right here in the USA. The ending of his tenure at GM is a great thing…he should have been gone two years ago….but his ouster is not what everyone thinks it is.
Enter the United States Government.
General Motors, for all intents and purposes, has been seized by the Obama administration. Rick Wagoner and his ilk should have been kicked out by the stockholders, not ordered to leave by the President of the United States. So now, General Motors is now in the business of selling cars….and dictating what GM is going to produce. The Obama administration wasn’t happy with the plans GM and Chrysler worked out (remember my prediction: Chrysler is dead by this summer), and those plans involved some kind of funding that would keep some money going to their motorsports programs.
And now? I want somebody, anybody, to tell me that the dollars for the motorsports programs, namely NASCAR and lesser entities, will keep flowing with the most business and motorsports-prohibitive administration in U.S. history. Do you think that NASCAR is going to escape the list of ‘global warming’ polluters, when the ol’ USA begins running General Motors? Obama just signed a law into effect that shuts down two million acres of Federal Lands to anything on two, three, or four wheels.
Why? Isn’t there enough for the ‘Nature first’ crowd out there?
Global warming is a scam. Thousands of scientists say so. However, the new owner of General Motors is convinced that it exists, never mind that almost every meeting that Congress has had concerning global warming in the last six months has been….snowed out. How long then do you think that GM’s support of motorsports in general is going to continue?
The biggest news here, however, is this: The U.S. government just ordered that the CEO of GM…leave immediately.
Do you understand this?
Obama just ordered Rick Wagoner to leave GM. The Obama administration will now determine who runs General Motors. The Obama administration will now determine what the CEO will be paid. The Obama administration will also now determine….what products will be sold.
Scared yet? I am.
We’ve just seen quite possibly the largest Automobile company in the world now come under the ownership of the United States Government.
You know, in retrospect, NASCAR may have been smarter than all the rest of us, in seeing the handwriting on the wall concerning slowly pushing the auto manufacturers out of NASCAR. I don’t think they foresaw it as much as it was a purely ego-driven initiative by the France cartel, but this decision might possibly be what saves NASCAR from the eventual implosion of Auto manufacturer support in this sport.
No, the problem from NASCAR’s side of the equation, in addition to some of the many parallels between the government and NASCAR, in the new COT, they are using just as big a pile of crap as General Motors was putting out in the latter part of the 1990’s, and 2000-2007 or so. Only in the last year or so has GM finally been creating some truly impressive cars….only to see them go the way of the dodo bird when their new owners begin putting the clamps on anything not seen as ‘green’. The Car of some hideous alternate tomorrow is the perfect example of how a governing body thinks it can design a better car than the companies who build the actual cars. Was NASCAR working hand-in-hand with the teams to try to produce a better, safer car, together?
Absolutely not!
The COT was produced, and unleashed onto the teams. If you don’t want to race it, then leave. If you talk badly about it, we can replace you with someone else who doesn’t mind selling their soul to drive it. The COT is quite possibly the world’s largest slap in the face in all of professional motorsports, and the fans, who actually pay the bills of NASCAR, both directly and indirectly, are walking away from NASCAR as a result.
Yes, Martinsville wasn’t that bad of a race, but problems due to the car’s inability to be tuned properly for changing track conditions, in addition to the wheel being too small for the brake systems wreaking havoc on a few teams, including Kyle Busch, causing tire bead failure due to the beads melting off of the rims….again….this took away from what might be the best race so far this season….if you could call it that.
However, one of the frightening parallels here, is that both NASCAR and government are convinced they know how to do it better than the people who are actually out there, doing it. Both entities have political agendas in mind in the design of the cars they have mandated; NASCAR’s COT….and the USA-legal car you drive today, for the most part, they are designed first to comply with unfunded mandates, and if they can work through that, why only then is the actual car designed.
A new passenger car or truck now has hundreds of pounds of smog-reducing equipment, in addition to various forms of accident protection.
Yes, I want my car to be safe….but all of this ‘safety creep’ is burdening these cars to the point of sheer vehicular obesity. It’s also getting to the point where a lot of these systems are too complex to be repaired easily; couple that with increased complexity breeding increased system instability….at what point is this going to stop? Instead of making drivers…oh, I don’t know…maybe smarter….we’re simply going to continue throwing technology at cars in order to make idiot drivers as safe as possible, never mind that it’s kind of getting out of hand.
NASCAR has somewhat similar issues. The car might be safer….but the focus went entirely to safety first, with the chassis and suspension being afterthoughts in COT design. Why else can a 1/2 pound of air pressure in the wrong direction have so detrimental of an effect on the handling of these cars?
Had NASCAR actually been concerned about ‘driver safety’, how about bringing some team engineers on board, and actually listen to whatever ideas they might have, instead of simply dragging the basic suspension setup from the earlier car, and hoping it works? No, I begin to wonder if NASCAR’s design had political motivations of its own, namely that the car still crash a lot during a race and bring in ratings, while the drivers’ survivability improves.
The long and short of it is thus: With the ol’ US of A now calling the shots at General Motors….NASCAR is headed for some changes, sooner than later, methinks. GM pulling out of NASCAR will pull the other three along with them, or at least reduce them to a ‘commercial partner’ basis. You know, instead of Ford spending millions of dollars making sure Ford teams get suitable ‘Ford’ equipment to race with….Ford will instead become the ‘Official Ford of NASCAR’….
See you next week….I hope.
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