Ford you say? All that talk about Obama saving the domestic car companies? - Granite Grok

Ford you say? All that talk about Obama saving the domestic car companies?

This caught my eye over at Instapundit:

FORD HELPED MOST BY GM, CHRYSLER BAILOUTS? Bet you didn’t see this coming! A new Rasmussen survey of consumer sentiment finds that a clear majority of those interviewed are more favorably disposed to buying a Ford product because the famous automaker did NOT go hat-in-hand to Washington for a bailout in 2008, as did General Motors and Chrysler. Since it’s about my two favorite issues, cars and politics, I, of course, have an opinion on these developments!

The Rasmussen poll is here.  I tend to agree.  My second car (but my first car love) was my ’67 Camaro.  My mom thought it was a “nice little car”; she had never heard the phrase “muscle cars” (or never let on that she did).  The new incarnation of it looks really nice but I’d never consider buying it new just on the idea that Obama, with his sham GM bankruptcy, gave the UAW lots of  $$ already (stiffing the Sr. Bondholders in what has turned out to be just the first onset of his “Rule of Lawlessness”) so why should I give them more?

Well, living where we do, on the side of a mountain here in central NH where it snows and ices up often, we really needed to go back to having at least one 4wd vehicle in the family. So I, like those in the poll, went to a Ford dealer to start looking at new cars – even though I had loved our Suburban (and for other reasons, kicking myself for having sold it off a year ago and downsized to one car, our Saab 9-5) and started looking seriously at a Ford Edge.

Yes, we did look at a few other new cars – Toyota, Honda – but I’d rather have bought Ford (even as I knew that they had “taken” Billions from Obama for “R&D” as part of the bait to start fulfilling Obama’s message of “getting auto companies to start building cars that consumers want!” like the Chevy Volt).  Didn’t like the Escape or the Explorer.

In the end, I ended up buying a pre-bailout built Chevy Tahoe (2003) – very low miles at a reasonable price.  Have some fixing up to do, but I have no guilt over the UAW bailout, I get back the 4wd, lots of room (not as much as the old Suburban, but I can almost stuff the Saab into the back of it), but I have TMEW yipping (from time to time) about the color – she hates the color (white).

But the UAW profited nothing from it…I’m good with that.

Speaking of the Saab, I’m sad to see the brand go.  My first car after college was a ’79 Saab “pre-yuppie mobile” 99 hatchback.  Normally aspirated 4 cylinder and a manual transmission, it DID run extremely fast and handled well.  It also had the most comfortable seats I’ve ever sat in.  Also had a 900, and now the 9-5 (2005).  I’m betting that the Saab folks are truly wishing that they had never sold out to GM a few years ago – while the size of GM allowed some new tech to be injected into the line, it also took some of the quirkiness away from the cachet of Saab and when GM started to tank itself, threw into into the wilderness and tried to “half” sell it (wouldn’t sell off the newest 9-5 IP technology).  The sale to the Swedish supercar company failed and now it is being remade as an electric car company as a consortium of Japanese, Chinese, and Swedish principles under the banner of National Electric Vehicle Sweden AB.

Great….it’ll end up like a Chevy Volt….sigh…

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