Government Motors: Can a Reinvention Save GM?

ENLARGE PHOTO+

Autoworkers at GM's Fairfax plant in Kansas City, Kans., are part of a new lower-cost labor deal.

David Bowman for Time

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A Death in the Family
So the bottom line: the government's auto rescue is perhaps misshapen, certainly improvised, highly controversial and hugely expensive — up to $70 billion and counting for GM alone. In Chrysler's case, success is a long shot. As for GM, the restructured company will find itself struggling to balance the many demands our society places on the auto industry.

Surely a lovely outcome was never in the cards. "We're dealing with something unprecedented — these huge companies, a historic recession. There was no rule book," a government official argues. To some questions there are no perfect answers. (See the 50 worst cars of all time.)

That said, the story of the car companies is characteristic of the government's policies throughout the economic crisis. Treasury elbowed aggressively into the boardrooms and executive suites, much as it has done with the banks. When possible, Uncle Sam's thumb has pressed the scale in favor of the people the government sees as underdogs — the autoworkers, homeowners facing foreclosure. The ordinary folks in between — the dealers, some partsmakers — are on their own.

In an office crammed with photos documenting his family's history, Steve Weinberg, 66, reread the letter from Chrysler for the umpteenth time. "It's just so cold," he said when he looked up. "I mean, it's brutal." At a time when people aren't buying cars, he had $1.5 million of new inventory on his lot — inventory the company bosses had begged and cajoled him to purchase as they struggled to stay afloat. "I thought I was being loyal. I can't move that in three weeks!"

You figure car dealers must be a resilient breed, but this has flattened Weinberg like a Ram squashing a soda can. "I don't sleep," he said. "It's like — well, it's like a death, a death in the family." A family with 32 employees.

I told this story to a government official with intimate knowledge of the Obama auto task force, who spoke, as they always seem to do, on background. "The mom-and-pop days are kind of over," the official replied — with a little shrug that somehow epitomized the uneven impact of this slow-moving tragedy.

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