I don’t currently work in the automotive industry, but I feel at least somewhat qualified to voice my opinion on this matter because a.) It’s my blog and I’ll write whatever I want, b.) I grew up in the Detroit area and had plenty of friends and family of friends who worked directly for the automotive companies, c.) our injection molding company was an automotive parts supplier for many years, and d.) to reiterate: it’s my blog.

The Problem
The companies Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors all say that they can’t survive the current downturn in the market without an infusion of cash. The fact that no private sector investor, or investment group has stepped up to the plate should be a big warning sign that the future doesn’t look good for U.S. automotive companies.

In November, the CEO’s from all three American companies appealed directly to congress for government assistance. Not even thinking twice about it, all three flew from Detroit to Washington D.C. on their corporate jets. While I agree that private jets have their usefulness (mainly saving time by having the ability to reach small airports in remote areas), reaching Washington isn’t one of them. The fact that neither the CEO’s themselves nor their yes-men (and yes-women) thought this was a bad idea is very telling of their mindset.

Public outrage ensued, so what was their response? To fly coach on their next visit? No, all of them decided to drive to Washington in their most “green” vehicles. In the early morning on the eve of their next visit to congress, I watched an interview with GM CEO, Rick Wagoner, as he left for Washington in his “Chevy Malibu Hybrid with OnStar technology.” He was a rolling commercial! In the passenger seat was his driver who would take over the driving duties once they were out of sight of the news cameras so Mr. Wagoner could “work on his upcoming testimony and make calls on [his] OnStar system.”

My major problem with the current proposal is that, as a conservative, I don’t favor government involvement with private companies. This violates a whole tenant of conservatism. While I do realize that currently there is plenty of government involvement with business in the form of taxation and regulation (to differing extents in different industries), this proposal (which smacks of a nationalized auto industry) is a grand step in the wrong direction. I do realize that almost 30 years ago, Chrysler received assistance in the form of public loan guarantees, but this is a completely different situation.

Additionally, the idea of the government investing in or loaning money to the auto industry opens up a whole new host of problems. Obviously if someone is passing out money, there should be some oversight (unless it’s to the financial sector, but that’s another post). This need for oversight further illuminates the problem. Congress is currently proposing the creation of a position (the “Car Czar”) to oversee the business operations of the auto companies should they receive government funds. The government hasn’t proven itself capable of managing anything, let alone a vast manufacturing operation. In the now immortal words of Ronald Reagan, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Outside of my general principles about the separation of government and business, here are my main “beefs” with the American automotive industry in no particular order:

1. The U.S. auto unions absolutely had a place at some point in time, but in the past 50 years they’ve gotten entirely out of hand. They’ve taken the notion of entitlement to a whole new level. They’ve continually fought automation and other improvements in manufacturing technology in favor of keeping the same amount of people “on the line.” All the time this was happening, most of their rivals were pouring billions of dollars into technology and automation and have maintained their lead on the Detroit automakers in quality. As proof that unionized labor is a problem and not American labor in general, I can point to other manufacturers in the U.S. who make quality products with American labor: BMW (South Carolina), Mercedes-Benz (Alabama), Toyota (Kentucky), and Honda (Ohio). Just a small side-note here: If you even want to hear the most hilarious “stupid things we did while at work” stories, talk to a current or former automotive assembly line worker.
2. A division of our family business supplied plastic injection molded parts to the “Big 3″ for many years (and parts for the Nissan Qwest for a few of those). Mainly, we supplied different types of under-hood shrouds and shields, interior parts, and were the major supplier of HVAC blower wheels (known in the industry as “squirrel cages”). When I worked there in the 90’s I saw first-hand how they treated their suppliers.
   They’re arrogant. They displayed an attitude that said we “should be happy to have any work at all” (most of our work had an 8% gross margin. After subtracting costs for inspection, scrap, tool maintenance, financial carrying cost, and overhead, our net margin fell somewhere between 0%-2%). Representatives of those companies regularly threatened to “pull the work” or “look somewhere else” if we wouldn’t “meet them” (read: capitulate) on price decreases. Their way of dealing with out-of-control health care costs, labor costs, and spending was to squeeze their suppliers for things like a 5% price reduction per year for the next 3 years (alas, now that well has run dry). As normal course of business, they would also pay their invoices far past their due dates. It was not at all abnormal for GM to pay their bills 180 days after receiving them. Ford and Chrysler were better in this respect, but not by much.
3. Executives of the “Big 3″ love perks and living the good life and I don’t believe that government backed loans or government investment would change that attitude. If finances are really that dire then they need to operate their companies and conduct themselves in the same manner that a small bootstrap company would: save and scrimp. This “good life” attitude is so ingrained in the culture, I have almost zero confidence that it can change.

I just read today that now Tesla, hardly credible as a high-volume auto manufacturer adversely impacted by high gas prices, is looking for a $650 million slice of the government “bailout” pie. They’ve stated that the money will be used to finance development of their new Model S for which they were unable to get private-sector funding. Where does it stop?

The Solution
Get smaller. No government funding. Some people believe that without government intervention, the U.S. auto industry will just die a quick death. This isn’t the case at all. They’ll just need to file bankruptcy and reorganize into a more efficient and sustainable organization. Whether that means a merger of one or more companies, I don’t know. Personally, I think that some of the freedoms that filing Chapter 11 could give the auto companies is attractive. Painful, but attractive in the long run. Will it be pretty? No. Necessary? Yes.

Last week, I ordered a kit car for the boys and I to assemble. I figured it’ll be a great way to spend quality time together and we’ll end up with something to always remind us of those times. I’ve known about Factory Five Racing for a long time now; I even ordered information from them a couple of years ago.

Previously, there were two things that prevented me from ordering a kit. For one, the kits didn’t come with all the parts you needed; a donor car was required for the engine, suspension, electrical, etc. Two, some of the sheet metal work seemed a little too daunting for me.

Factory Five Racing is the world’s largest kit car manufacturer, and they were founded by car enthusiasts, like me. They were founded in 1995, but even in that time have developed a heritage of continuous improvement. The proof is in their numerous satisfied customers. There are many blogs and forums devoted to detailing the build process of kit cars. Factory Five Racing is regarded as making the best kits.

They recently introduced a kit for a ‘33 Ford-ish hot rod which doesn’t require a donor car and comes with everything (and I mean everything) you need except for: Engine, transmission, rear axle, wheels, tires, battery, and fuel pump. Everything else comes with the kit, including all the fasteners. I have decent mechanical skills, but limited sheet metal experience, but the sheet metal work looks manageable.

The time estimate on their website for assembly is 300 hours. I figured that’s for an experienced kit car builder, but after speaking to a company representative directly, they said that timeframe is for someone who has never built a car before. That’s me!

The car is essentially a modern spaceframe tube chassis with modern suspension, brakes, and steering with a retro-style body put over it. The only thing that’s old about it is its looks.

We’ll build everything mechanical, but I’m going to buy a race engine and transmission locally from Levy Racing and have the body work and paint done by a professional, also. The car weighs approximately 2100 lbs. and I’m looking for an engine with about 500 horsepower. This will provide a power-to-weight ratio of 4.2 lb. / Horsepower. For comparison purposes, a super-expensive Ferrari Enzo’s is 4.5 lb. / Horsepower (lower is better). I’d rather have the Ferrari, but I’m just trying to give you and idea of how fast the car should be.

The kit will be delivered at the end of January or early February of 2009. That’ll give us time to have the garage floor epoxied, buy and install a lift, and have the garage air-conditioned (it’s a necessity as we do live in Arizona). I’ll post information as there are updates.

Each summer, Jamey takes the kids to Michigan to see her sister. Before she’d even left this year I was planning to surprise her with something special upon her returned. I knew that surprising her may be difficult since we’re in frequent contact via text message and twitter. Not wanting to outright lie to my wife I decided to use the tactic of vagueness in some of my communication. Also, our Asterisk phone system sends voicemail to both of us via email so I disabled that feature for the week.

Monday
As soon as I dropped off everyone at the airport, I arrived at my office and began searching for a black 2008 GMC Yukon Denali XL. Originally, I was looking for a lightly used one, but I soon realized that I could buy one brand new for almost the same price.

The local Scottsdale dealership, CardinaleWay GMC, apparently didn’t need any additional business since they replied to my request for their “Special Internet Pricing” with MSRP and didn’t respond to any more inquires for their “Special Internet Pricing”.

I easily found another local dealership, Glendale GMC. They’re located in a not-so-good area of town; often a good sign that they may like to make a deal. Using their website, I found a Denali in inventory. It was Black with a “Cocoa/Light Cashmere” interior. I contacted them via email and arranged to go look at it on Tuesday.

Tuesday
I arrived at Glendale GMC in the early afternoon (text message to Jamey: “at the store”). While driving there, I made a mental note of what I thought the trade-in value was for Jamey’s current car. I’d reviewed all the completed auctions on ebaymotors in order to see how much they’d been selling for at retail. I’d also checked the average trade-in value from Kelly Blue Book. Armed with what I thought was a reasonable number, I was ready to hold fast. If they offered me less than my predetermined amount, the plan was to fix the little things which were broken and sell it myself. I was also keenly aware that this car was previously in an accident and these days, with CarFax, that fact would hurt its value.

After looking at the vehicle that I’d asked to see, I discovered that I hated the Cocoa/light Cashmere (read: brown/tan) interior and asked if they had any others in stock. I settled on another which had an Ebony (charcoal) interior. The only difference was that it didn’t have the power-deployed running boards of the other.

My salesman, Ryan Green, offered to sell it to me for the invoice price. When a dealer sells a car, they receive an additional amount from the manufacturer called the “holdback”. Since car dealers need to make money too, I decided not try to negotiate into their holdback. Amazingly, the dealership also offered me $3,000 more for my trade-in than the minimum I was willing to accept. It was more than I thought I could’ve sold it for outright. Sold! My buying experience with Ryan couldn’t have been a more pleasant experience. The dealership is owned by Brown & Brown; the same company with which we previously had a great experience. A photo of the car is below:

Wednesday
To begin making the car special and unique (along with what every woman likes, making it more Darth Vaderish), I removed the rear badges from the tailgate (text message to Jamey: “working in the garage”). My plan was to remove all the badges, but as the garage was starting to warm up as the morning wore on, I quit after removing only the tailgate badges. Later in the day, I went to Discount Tire to pick out some new wheels and tires and make an appointment for Friday (text message to Jamey: “at Discount Tire making an appointment to get new tires.” My car needed new tires so she assumed that they were for my car).

Thursday
I swung by Airpark Tint and made an appointment to have all the windows tinted darker on Saturday. Later in the evening I went over to John and Josh’s house for pizza (which was delicious), to play Rock Band, and watch some episodes of Top Gear.

Friday
I dropped off the car at Discount Tire (text message to Jamey: “dropping off the car at Discount Tire for new tires”), and after they gave me a hard time about the suspicious-looking printing on our checks, they agreed to take my money. The wheels I picked out are made by a company named Akuza and are shown below:

After the wheels and tires were mounted, I drove home to put the stock wheels in the garage. While maneuvering in our driveway I noticed a strange noise. Upon closer inspection, the new tires were rubbing on the inside of the wheel wells and running boards during sharp turns and were pulling out a plastic fastener. I returned to Discount Tire where they disavowed any knowledge of this ever previously happening on a Tahoe/Yukon/Escalade. They attempted to sell me some ugly Falken tires that were in-stock instead of the cool Nittos that I’d picked out. I declined the Falkens and had them order me the slightly narrower Nittos (295 mm vs. 305 mm).

Saturday
I took the car to Airpark Tint (John also dropped his car off for tinting) and John, Josh, and I hung out at the office and ate lunch at a nearby hot dog joint (text message to Jamey: “waiting with John until his windows are done being tinted”).

Sunday
After watching the Hungarian Grand Prix on TV in the morning, I drove the car over to my parent’s house since their garage is climate-controlled (text message to Jamey: “checking on my parent’s house”. My parents were also out of town and I was checking on their house, too). I removed the remaining badges and painted the stock red GMC logo (which really isn’t removable) black.

The first thing to do when removing badges is to “saw” the badge off using dental floss.

After sawing off the badges, you’re left with the foam adhesive.

The best and safest way to remove this is through lots of tedious scraping with your finger nails. After that, the rest can be removed with an adhesive remover (I like to use Goo Gone). You can use a heat gun, but unless you’re very experienced in its use, you stand the chance of wrecking the paint.

After removing the badges, I spent the next hour prepping the grille badge to be painted. I wet-sanded the red part of the badge with 320 grit sandpaper and taped off the badge. Then I used an X-Acto knife to accurately expose the letters. After covering the surrounding area with a tarp to guard against overspray, I began priming (text message to Jamey: “watching TV at my parents house”. I was waiting for the primer to dry).

Several coats of primer later, I wet-sanded the badge again and began applying the paint.

Since I don’t do this kind of thing very often, I was nervous about the possibility of having poorly prepped the front. I figured that in a worse-case-scenario I’d just have the badge on the grille replaced with a new one.

Also, I added a black license plate frame with a smoked lens that I’d bought earlier from Autozone.

Finally, Sunday night
The was probably the most suspicious to Jamey because she tried to call me on my way over to take these photos of the car. Luckily, my mom had asked me to pick up their mail so I had to do that, too. (Verbally said to Jamey: “My mom left a message saying that she’d forgotten to have their mail held and wanted me to pick-it-up.”)

The finished vehicle:

Day 4 – Saturday
After straightening out our plans with the KOA in Wendover and making new reservations with the KOA in Las Vegas, we ate breakfast and departed for the 300 mile drive. Only having driven a few miles, I noticed that overnight it had snowed in the mountains that we had to drive through.

Even though I have plenty of limited-traction driving experience, I was nervous about driving through the now-snowy mountains in a 5-ton rear wheel drive RV. I needn’t have worried though; the roads were surprisingly clear and mostly dry. We stopped high in the pass so the boys could get some exercise and play in the snow; something they don’t get to do often since we live in the desert.

We arrived in Las Vegas that evening and took a cab to the MGM Grand where I treated the boys to a great buffet dinner. Will had his fill of crab legs and John stuffed himself with roast beef. I explained to the boys that when you go to a $40 per person buffet, you don’t eat salad. We bought passes for the new monorail on the east side of Las Vegas Blvd. and rode it to the Venetian. From there, we took a cab back to the RV park.

Day 5 – Sunday
We spent a lazy morning in and around the RV before going to Bobby Flay’s restaurant, Mesa Grill, in Caesar’s Palace. The boys had never been there before and we enjoyed a fantastic meal. I try to get something different each time I go there. After eating, we piled back into the RV and made good time (for an RV) on our drive back to Scottsdale; 6 hours.

Even though we didn’t get to see any land speed racing on the trip, the boys and I had a great time just being with each other.

Day 3 – Friday
We awoke pretty early the next morning and like Donkey from Shrek, I made waffles for breakfast. It was blowing something fierce, so we were in no hurry to get over to the salt flats anytime soon. After we ate breakfast, I braved the wind and spitting rain and disconnected the RV and retracted the slide-out. While traveling down the entrance road to the salt flats, we noticed a curiously high number of race vehicles loaded on trailers headed in the direction opposite to ours.

When we reached the end of the entrance road (at which point it became obvious to me why this area is referred to as “the boat ramp”) there was a young man from the event standing there assisting people. I stopped and asked if he thought there was going to be any racing today and he replied that he wasn’t sure and that we should go see. He was friendly and helpful and gave each of my boys a Bonneville pin (like flair).

Just before slowly driving down “the boat ramp” to enter the salt, a man pulling a streamliner on a trailer stopped and jumped out of his pickup and signaled for me to stop also. He wanted to ask me some details about our RV because he’d been thinking of buying one just like it. After chit-chatting with me and the boys about the RV, he suddenly said “hold on, I have something for your kids” and dashed off to retrieve something from his pickup. He came back and handed the boys each a small poster of his and his brother’s race cars. He thanked me for the information, and I thanked him for the posters, we shook hands and parted ways. I quickly tried to take a picture of the car he was towing.

After some research, it turns out that the man who stopped us was Rick Vesco and his family has been racing at the salt flats for 50 years! I learned that his brother, Don Vesco, who’s also depicted in the poster, unfortunately died of cancer in 2002 at the age of 63. Don’s streamliner The Turbinator was powered by a 3,750 hp Lycoming gas turbine helicopter engine and once hit 458.440 mph. Just the other day, I saw on TV that it’s now on display at a museum. The car that was being towed by Rick is named “The Little Giant” and in 1958 was featured on the cover of Popular Mechanics magazine.

Entering the salt was a special experience. For a car nut like me, this is hallowed ground. It was a couple miles before reaching the official pit area (which is just the spot on the salt where all the people are) only to see that everyone seemed to be packing up. CB radio is used as the public address system at Bonneville, so being prepared, I pulled out our portable CB and powered it on. After we’d been there about 30 minutes, the organizers announced over the radio that they were officially canceling the rest of the event due to the inclement weather.

We stayed on the flats for the next hour and met racers Shug and Irene Hanchard. Shug is the owner of So-What Speed Shop (get it?) and interestingly enough is originally from Scotland. Like everyone else we’d met there, Shug and Irene were very friendly and while loading their car onto the trailer, answered all our questions.

After the boys finished making their salt “snowballs,” we drove back to Wendover where the boys played outside in the crazy-strong wind while I read and watched TV for the rest of the day. That evening the boys helped me make pasta for dinner and we decided that we’d go back to Las Vegas on Saturday; a day earlier than we’d originally planned.

The boys did some of their homework they’d been assigned and we went to sleep.