“I am strongly against it,” said Larry Rich, who has a Nissan dealership here. “I know it sounds biased, being an import dealer, but I had 10 years as a GM employee and there are inherent managerial and contractual problems GM has got to overcome, and they either don’t have the will or the mechanism to do it internally.
“Until those drastic changes of streamlining both personnel and the product lineup, and union expenses are corrected, my tax dollars shouldn’t go to bail them out.”
He called bankruptcy “the only legitimate answer,” adding, “It doesn’t mean they go away. It just means they are going to have to … organize themselves properly, cut some dealers, renegotiate the union contract and cut some employees.”
Gene Silcox, president of All-Pro Auto Group, which sells all the GM brands and Hyundai, said the bailout should go forward for the sake of the country.
He said GM vehicles have an 82 percent domestic content, compared to 41 percent for Toyota, 40 percent for Honda and 3 percent for Lexus.
“Most all of our vehicles’ components and parts are American, built by American workers,” he said.
While the automakers’ contracts with unions were “very wrong,” he said, “I just believe somehow, whether it’s loans or whatever, we need to save the domestic manufacturers for the sake of the American manufacturing base.”
He said Detroit’s Big Three can’t ship cars to Korea and Japan because of high tariffs, yet those countries’ automakers can come here and pay relatively small tariffs.
“I hate to see the auto business, which affects so many lives, go the way of the electronics industry,” Silcox said.
He said the president of Hyundai Motor America, Jong Eun Kim, told him the Kia Motors plant in West Point will make a Hyundai Santa Fe, but Kia human resources director Randy Jackson said nothing has been decided or announced beyond the Sorento.
Even though it wouldn’t benefit Toyota, Michael Stogner, owner of LaGrange Toyota, said he supports the bailout.
“The auto business has been hit hard, much like the banks and insurance companies,” he said. “We’ve been hit just as hard.”
He said he read where one in 10 Americans is involved in the auto business in one way or another, so “anything to help the auto industry would be good for the whole country.”
“If it’s good for the banks and the insurance industry, it should be good for the auto business as well,” Stogner said, and if Big Three suppliers go out of business, “it slows down the supply chain for our cars too.”
Scott Livingston, owner of Livingston Bumper to Bumper auto parts on Lukken Industrial Drive, said he’s been talking with customers about the issue, which he thinks is more important than the mortgage crisis because of the job ramifications. He said the auto industry should have been first to get a bailout.
“The number of jobs that the Big Three impact is huge,” he said. “The workers are the ones we need to be bailing out because we need to keep the workforce going.”
Joel Martin can be reached at jmartin@ lagrangenews. com or (706) 884-7311, Ext. 235.
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