Remember the Last "Quick Fix for Gas Addicts"?
May 06, 2008
Ah, how quickly some of us forget.
It was almost two years ago to the day that General Motors announced a fuel price protection program, much like the one Chrysler launches on Wednesday. GM offered buyers of certain vehicle models, mostly large SUVs, in Florida and California a guarantee of gasoline capped at $1.99 a gallon for a year.
The promotion didn’t move the needle on sales, and it opened the floodgate of criticism of GM, especially in a now-famous column by The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman.
We're betting GM won’t be following Chrysler’s lead -- and we're wondering if Friedman is dusting off his old column to blast Chrysler.
Friedman opened his May 2006 column, entitled "Quick Fix for Gas Addicts,” with this: “Is there a company more dangerous to America's future than General Motors? Surely, the sooner this company gets taken over by Toyota, the better off our country will be.”
Friedman compared GM, guaranteeing $1.99 a gallon gas to customers, that it was behaving “like a crack dealer looking to keep his addicts on a tight leash” at a time when our troops are fighting in the Middle East. “Here's a rule of thumb: The more Hummers we have on the road in America, the more military Humvees we will need in the Middle East,” he wrote.
“Our military is in a war on terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan with an enemy who is fueled by our gasoline purchases. So we are financing both sides in the war on terror. And what are we doing about that?” wrote Friedman, who advocates a gasoline tax to force Americans to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles and “to compel Detroit to make them.”
Wonder if Friedman has resurrected his column from two years ago yet. Is he substituting Chrysler for GM? Wonder if he’s replacing Hummer with Jeep Commander. Wonder if the folks over at Chrysler, before they announced the $2.99-per-gallon gas guarantee for the next three years, remember the brouhaha.
Posted by at 7:54 AM under Chrysler , Commentary , GM | Comments (4) | digg this | Seed Newsvine
Amazing...Thanks for refreshing my very short memory! Here's the Friedman NYT article.
"A Quick Fix for the Gas Addicts" http://select.nytimes.com/2006/05/31/opinion/31friedman.html?scp=233&sq=Thomas+Friedman&st=nyt
Chrysler Pres. stated on CNBC this morning they're not doing it to sell more cars but to "give consumers piece of mind." (gag)
Posted by: xcargrl | May 06, 2008 at 1:28 PM
Since when does a philistine like Thomas Friedman get to dictate people's automotive choices? If he really wants to do something about dependence on foreign oil, he should be shouting from the housetops in favour of oil drilling in Alaska's National Wildlife Reserve, and in other untapped American oil deposits. What we have instead is such drilling being held hostage by environmentalists and their surrogates in Congress, who stubbornly oppose drilling because of a theoretical risk to caribou, or polar bears, or any other suitably cuddly-looking wild animal that environmentalists can use as their excuse. You can't blame GM or Chrysler for wanting to make a profit, least of all these days, when they're bleeding red ink in large measure because of the current artificially induced fuel crisis. Let the automakers do what works, I say. America will be better for it.
Posted by: Christopher | May 06, 2008 at 4:12 PM
We need more refining capacity here in the USA. I agree we need to open up more lands for drilling, but first we need to expand our capacity to refine crude oil. In 2005, we the people consumed 20.8 million bbl/day of all types of petroleum. Yet we are currently able to refine only about 16.2 million bbl/day.* The rest is imported finished distillate. Bringing up more crude before we can refine it would probably mean more Alaskan crude being exported to Japan.
*U.S. Energy Information Administration http://www.eia.doe.gov/
Posted by: fulcrumb | May 06, 2008 at 6:41 PM
$4.08-$4.38/ gal. diesel#2 2800-3200mi./week at 5.5-6.2mi/ gal.- I hope Kenworth picks up on the plan! You can make a small fortune in the trucking industry-just start with a large one.
Posted by: fulcrumb | May 06, 2008 at 6:54 PM