GM to close 4 factories, may drop Hummer - Autos- msnbc.com

WILMINGTON, Del. - General Motors is closing four truck and SUV plants in the U.S., Canada and Mexico as surging fuel prices hasten a dramatic shift to smaller vehicles.

CEO Rick Wagoner said Tuesday before the automaker's annual meeting in Delaware the plants to be closed are in Oshawa, Ontario; Moraine, Ohio; Janesville, Wis.; and Toluca, Mexico. He also said the iconic Hummer brand may be discontinued.

[From GM to close 4 factories, may drop Hummer - Autos- msnbc.com]

Natural selection at its worst.

Are we repeating the late 70's? After that fiasco we should have learned that size doesn't matter, but the running costs do. When the big SuV shift started a decade ago, we had plenty of time to push for efficient engines powerful enough to push the damn things. Instead we said screw it, the market can bear it.

The problem is somebody forgot to look ahead more than a few years. You can't expect to pour millions into a bunch of factories, retool them for SuVs and trucks and not worry about how long it will take to recover their cost. Did anyone bother to study the market the way the Japanese and the Germans do?

After getting their asses kicked by small vehicle makers, the least they could do was pay attention to how they work. Take a look at the Japanese car makers, how many carry full-size SuVs? What is the proportion of SuVs to smaller vehicles? What's the average fuel consumption of theirs versus ours?

Notice that the argument here is not the usability of the SuV. We need the damn things, same as we need full-size trucks. The problem is that the US car industry as a whole was reckless on its long term view of the market.

The end result is that now it is going to be harder for the people that really need these SuVs to get what they need at a proper price. It also means loss of jobs in two american factories (screw Canada and Mexico).

Of course, there are good news too. I am sure that if you go on the market for a used SuV you can make a killing. I always wanted a big sonofabitch, like a Suburban or a Tahoe, but they are too expensive, and they are gas guzzlers. In another few months I should be able to walk into a used car dealership and have them beg me to take a nearly new Suburban for a killing. Of course, I'll have to be careful with the gas, and the hippies will probably key it and spit on it.

Photo Credit: Photo by edenpictures, used under the terms of a Creative Commons license.