To:          The Dallas Morning News 
Date:      November 17, 2008
Subject:  The Big Three auto makers
Result:    not printed

Dear Editor,

It's starting to look to me like the Big Three auto makers in America need to consolidate and become the Big One. We just can't sustain three big money losing companies.

People say the reason American auto makers are having problems is because they failed to start making small, fuel-efficient years ago, when a lot of foreign companies did. But I think their problems started a long time before that, when they decided decades ago that it was okay to make crap just because they could sell it. I recall, either in college in the early 70's, or maybe even in high school, having heard the term "planned obsolescence". The idea there was to intentionally build products that would fizzle out quickly, so that people would then be forced to replace them with new products. Auto makers, which were almost entirely American at the time, were cited as the primary practitioners of this strategy.

As that applied to my own life, I had two Fords – a 1963 Galaxy, and later a 1974 Pinto; my brother had a 1974 Mustang – and they were all junk by 60,000 miles. My Fords were leaving me on the side of the road every time I turned around, and required frequent expensive repairs. I saw plenty of bad General Motors cars too. The key word for me with all of them was "loose".

My next car after the Pinto was a 1981 Honda Civic, which I drove 90,000 miles with no big problems – just a lot of little, irritating ones. My 1990 Jetta was marginal, but a lot better than the Fords.

Then I bought my current car, a 1998 Toyota Camry, which now has 180,000 miles. It's never broken down while I was driving. The repair bills have been minimal, with the main things being timing belt and brake replacements, which is to be expected on old cars. True, I wouldn't mind getting a new car at this point, on principle, but my car feels like it could still go on for quite a while longer if I need it.

And now, after all that negligence and sloppiness and bad business practices, we're going to bail out the auto companies. It's like all the other recipients of our largess, they figured they were too big to be allowed to fail, so they blundered and plundered merrily along – until, here we are.

Thank you, John Vehon