Atlas Shrugged in Real Life – Feds to GM: Drop Pontiac or No Bailout Money

October 27th, 2013

The former GM Vice Chairman relays a harrowing tale of what happens when a corporation relies on federal welfare. In short, GM was negotiating with the Feds over what brands they can keep. In the end, the Feds tell GM that they can either drop Pontiac, or take no money. This is a scene right out of Atlas Shrugged. I can picture Wesley Mouch, who has no idea what he is talking about, telling James Taggart, who also has no idea what he is talking about, which railroad lines he can operate. I have little sympathy for GM. They got themselves into this predicament by sucking at the teat of the federal government. They got their comeuppance.

Read the transcript, courtesy of Jalopnik:

The Feds basically wanted to get GM down to Cadillac and Chevrolet.They said, “you don’t need all these brands. You need one prestige brand, and one mass-market brand.” And we said “well we can’t get rid of Buick because Buick is important in China, and if Buick becomes an orphan in the United States then the Chinese are no longer gonna be interested in it.” And the Feds said “Fair enough, but everything else goes.” We said well we’d also like to keep GMC. They said “well, GMC is basically just like Chevrolet,” and we said “that may be true, there may be a lot of shared components, but GMC has an entirely different image, a different customer base, and people are willing to pay different prices for a GMC, and here’s the profitability,” and the Feds said “whoops, okay, keep GMC.”

So now we had Buick, GMC, Cadillac, and Chevrolet, and then, I wanted, badly wanted, to keep Pontiac, because Pontiac was on its way back, and it had been mismanaged for a number of years, you know, with ‘rebuild excitement,’ and the excitement was only in the plastic body cladding, mechanically there was nothing about Pontiac in the 90s that would make your heart beat faster. And with the solstice and solstice coupe, and with the Pontiac G8, which was a great car. We were embarked on a strategy of making pontiac different from the rest of GM in that Pontiac wouldn’t get any front wheel drive cars, they would all be rear-wheel drive, and the next G6, was going to use the architecture of the cadillac ATS, it was going to be a 3-series sized rear-wheel Pontiac, with basically the Cadillac ATS ‘de-premiumized,’ obviously, a lot of the cost taken out, but still fundamentally that architecture.

That was going to be the next G6, and I think we could’ve moved pontiac away from every other American volume brand and really started positioning it as attractive US alternative to some of the, and obviously at much lower prices than the european rear-wheel drive cars, but the Feds said “yeah, let’s just, how much money have you made on pontiac in the last 10 years?” and the answer was “nothing.” So, it goes. And, when the guy who is handing you the check for 53 billion dollars says I don’t want pontiac, drop pontiac or you don’t get the money, it doesn’t take you very long to make up your mind.

This is why John Allison at BB&T fought to resist taking any TARP money.