I found this on Boing Boing yesterday. The car on this poster is our very own Ford Freestar. We’re very happy with our Freestar, actually. 35,000 miles in 4.5 years, so we’re not working it too hard. No mechanical problems at all. Fuel mileage of 16mpg is less than optimal, but it was $10,000 less than the competing Japanese minivans. That buys a lot of gas (95k miles worth at present prices).
I’ve had a partial change of heart on the auto bailout, in part from reading Paul Krugman’s blog post from Sweden, where he is picking up his Nobel Prize in Economics. Even the Swedish car industry is having problems similar to the Americans. It’s clear that these are unusual times, and that we don’t want millions of people suddenly on the street. It’s clear that much of their work is meaningless, but (from a financial point of view) so is the military, and the military is much larger.
Nonetheless, neither GM nor Chrysler deserves much more than nationalization so that they can be shutdown at a more appropriate time. Ford, on the other hand, should receive government support into bankruptcy (bankrupcty so they can break their union contracts and start over with a much chastened union).
March Field, CA
