For those too young to remember the Soviet Union and its government run industries the one thing the USSR proved is how bureaucracies can destroy an industry. It takes bureaucracy so long to make changes (every decision is by committee and analyzed to death) that it doesn’t take long for the ‘government run industry’ to fall hopelessly behind the commercial competition. In fact, the car industry behind the old Iron Curtain produced some dazzling innovations in automative engineering.

Take the Trabant as one example of German engineering under government oversight:

Compare that to West German engineering of the same year and my point is stunningly clear:

Keep this in mind when Congress talks about ‘over sight’ of the US auto industry, which is in trouble because it is falling behind its foreign competition again as it is. The current bailout plans call for a death sentence to the US auto industry. A death that will be caused by a thousand cuts from the federal bureaucracy:

“We don’t want government to run companies,” Obama told Tom Brokaw on “Meet the Press.” “Generally, government historically hasn’t done that very well.”

But what Obama went on to describe was a long-term government bailout that would be conditioned on government oversight. It could mean that the government would mandate, or at least heavily influence, what kind of cars companies make, what mileage and environmental standards they must meet and what large investments they are permitted to make — to recreate an industry that Obama said “actually works, that actually functions.”

It all sounds perilously close to a word that no one in Obama’s camp wants to be caught uttering: nationalization.

No more Corvettes or Vipers (too fuel inefficient, can’t have that).  We will see endless rows of low powered trucks and SUVs (must be fuel inefficient!). All the cars will look like Audi’s and Volvos (the yuppie liberal’s view of a fine machine). The prices will sky rocket on the top end cars while the low end ones will be Trabant-like for the masses.

And through all of this the European and Japanese automakers will be making huge advancements and leaving the US auto industry in their dust.

To think these yokels in DC want to use OUR hard earned money to fund this idiocy! Change we can believe in all right.

Tags: Auto Industry Bail Out, Corvette, Mercedes, Trabant, Viper