The Local Taboo

There’s something rather surrealist when you know that a big part of public opinion, either in Canada or in the United States, gets panic-stricken just thinking of the financial difficulties of the “big three” American firms in the car industry.

We have to admit that they do generate thousands of direct and indirect jobs thanks to their companies, set up on both sides of the Canadian boundary.

This is, however, also true for companies such as BMW, Toyota or Honda for example. Although these “foreign” manufacturers also suffer loss in these hard times, nobody ever heard them talk about going bankruptcy. When these manufacturers make their vehicles on the North-American ground, these vehicles are in this world as “local” as Chevrolet, Ford or Chrysler. They are no longer imported vehicles.

The truck manufacturing industry could set an example to anything relating to the necessary restructuring of the “big three”. Here is a list of the truck brands that are sold in North America, you might be familiar with some of them: International, Peterbilt, Kenworth, Volvo, Mack, Freightliner, Western Star and Sterling –but this latter is now closed for non-profitability. Now, out of these legendary brands, none of them still can lay claim on an “All-American” characteristic.

“All-American” trucks are actually, to a certain extent, European, if not Japanese as far as smaller trucks are concerned (the small GMC delivery trucks are for the most part Isuzu ones, “hidden” behind an assumed name, it’s the same for the proud diesel engine Duramax, the one equipped in your brother-in-law’s big GMC truck!).

Nevertheless, all the truck brands mentioned above are assembled in Northern America, in Québec, even for middle-sized trucks such as Kenworth and Peterbilt, including their hybrid versions. The regular users of these brands, whenever they purchase a truck, are convinced that they buy an American truck since these brands often have been on the market for a hundred years and for some of them have reached an emblematic status.

An Exportable Automobile-Linked Procedure

Why could the same procedure not be applicable to the car industry? That already happened. Let me tell you that the author of this article already has been the lucky owner of a Dodge Avenger, which was in fact a Mitsubishi!!

Ford gave up the truck manufacture ten years ago, selling this department of its activities to Daimler, and thus making the decision to focus on its main field of activity: automobile.

Nature (and economics) hate what’s “empty”. Why would GM and Chrysler not consider selling some of their brands to some so-called “foreign” companies? The Indian company Tata Motors is well in possession of the noble English brand Jaguar.

I personally wouldn’t mind driving a Chevrolet that would be built by Toyota or yet a Chrysler that would be assembled by Honda; two companies that, let’s remember it, own assembly factories in Canada and in the United States.

North Americans keep being attached to some local car brands and will stay true to them. There will always be a market for new cars in Northern America. Consumers won’t stop buying automobiles, even though one or several car manufacturers in Detroit were filing their petitions for bankruptcy. The market simply would be taken over by somebody else, that’s all.

What if, eventually, all this agitation about “our” American manufacturers was nothing but the denial of an obvious failure? The stupid manifestation of a chauvinistic pride?

Do make yourself easy, car manufacturers haven’t been American, European or Japanese for ages. Although a headquarters may be located in Stuttgart or Detroit, those manufacturers are not indebted to the German or American peoples, but they are indebted to their shareholders as they expect for a profit on their investments. These shareholders might as well come from all over the world.

The author has been a journalist for 20 years and has been a specialist in truck transportation for the past 10 years.