Detroit, Mich. — No auto story seems complete these days without gross MSM malpractice, and the media’s summation of GM ex-CEO Rick Wagoner’s career in the wake of his removal by The Chosen One is a case in point.
Wagoner’s caricature neatly fit the Media/Washington/Big Green narrative that Detroit is a victim of its resistance to going green.
“Wagoner became CEO of the company in 2000,” went a typical dispatch from Politico. “He is considered responsible for increasing GM’s focus on trucks and SUVs — at the expense of the hybrids and fuel efficient cars that have become more popular in the last couple of years.”
The Wall Street Journal, in its news section, freely editorialized in the same manner. “Among (Wagoner’s) key decisions that hurt the company: a huge bet on trucks and SUVs that piled up on dealers’ lots unsold as high gas prices drove Americans to look for more fuel economy offered by rival companies.”
In fact, given the labor cost disadvantage that GM suffered, Wagoner might be credited with skillfully playing a bad hand. As my Detroit-based colleague with the Reason Foundation, Shikha Dalmia, wrote last week for Forbes, “out of GM’s top 20 ‘profit-contributors’ last year, only nine were cars — the rest were all politically incorrect SUVs and trucks.”
Indeed, Wagoner understood that UAW wage and benefits — coupled with restrictive federal CAFE laws that force domestics to make small cars in U.S. plants — made it unprofitable for the company to make small cars.
But it is also a flat-out falsehood to say that he built those vehicles “at the expense of the hybrids and fuel efficient cars that have become more popular in the last couple of years.” GM offers more hybrid models (30) than any other manufacturer. But — the popular Toyota Prius aside — most hybrids have been market failures whether produced by Detroit or the Japanese.
“GM sold less than 15,000 hybrids last year,” writes Dalmia, “and this year is going to be worse because industry-wide hybrid sales have dropped by two-thirds from their peak last year.”
Furthermore, Wagoner might be credited with learning the lessons of his predecessor Jack Smith who was at the cutting edge of electric car development with the 1996 EV-1, only to lose millions on the project when it found few buyers.
What Wagoner can legitimately be faulted for is not taking being more aggressive with the UAW (which would have resulted in crippling strikes), or axing more brands. His company’s ruin, however, is not for a lack of green foresight, but uncompetitive labor costs and a too-big corporate structure.
Sadly, that truth is a victim of MSM bias.