Burn rate

Today's most shocking headline: Big 3 automakers admit that mistakes were made. Wow! And General Motors claims that it needs $4 billion in order to stay open for the next 20 days. Now that sounds like a great investment, does it not?

If there's one leason to be learned from the fall of Enron it is that a company's burn rate - basically the speed with which it sets fire to money in a futile effort to stay alive - increases as it approaches dissolution. Do we really want to give GM more money to burn?

Honestly, this is like beating a dead horse...

As you can see from these photos, the Big 3 auto executives are not exactly having a great time in D.C. And Ford and Chrysler say, hey, we're willing to talk merger again. You betcha!

It will be fun, fun, fun 'til daddy takes the T-Bird away. Oh, wait, they already took the T-bird away.... Sigh.

I wonder if it would have helped...

If instead of using strange names like the Buick Regal or the Ford Taurus or the Dodge Magnum, the domestic auto makers had used names that Americans could more easily relate to. Think about these naming possibilities for cars made in the good old U.S.A.: Atlanta Peach, Philadelphia Freedom, Dodger Blue, Seattle Rain, Yankee Clipper, Golden Gate, Chicago Bear. OK, so some could have sport team tie-ins. In fact, a model might be sold as the Chicago Cub in one area and as the Oakland Athletic in another. The possibilities are nearly endless.

Is it ever likely to happen? Nope, because the Big 3 are still caught up in thinking that we're living in the days when we knew the difference between a Chevy Bel Air and a Biscayne. As the Boss would say, those days are gone, son, and they're not coming back.