What's Next For Government Motors

So, GM came out of bankruptcy this week, ridden of debt, a few brands, hundreds of dealers, and solidly in ownership of the taxpayers of the United States and Canada.

Well, who-ray.

None of this solves the true problems of General Motors.

The suits have kept telling us it is because they were burdened with the so-called "legacy costs" of union retirees -- pension and health care. They said they couldn't compete with Toyota, Honda, et al because it cost them too much money to build cars.

Bullshit.

People will pay more if you give them more, and GM continued to offer us less for the same money. Why would anyone buy a car from a company that creates ugly, unreliable machines, even if (wave the flag!) they're made in America.

So here's my fix for GM:

Fire everyone in the design departments of Chevrolet and Buick, with the exception of Corvette. Not a single vehicle coming out of those brands has had an iota of great design.

Go hire a bunch of recent design school grads, all of whom probably have never driven a GM vehicle. Give them a fleet of European and Asian cars to drive for the next year and tell them they are their benchmarks.

Make every Suit in GM go undercover and try and negotiate a car purchase with their dealers. Then have them go to a Honda store and do the same thing. Same goes for the service department. Tell them they have 90 days to fix their dealers, or find themselves unemployed.

Make an honest effort to change public opinion about the new GM, once these changes are made. Cut up a Toyota and a new GM car on TV, little by little, every night, and compare side by side how GM's welds are better than their welds; how your widgets are better than their widgets. If they're not better, fix them.

No magic, no razzle-dazzle, just facts. Over and over and over and over and over. Put a fleet of cars and trucks on the road 24/7, with web cams attached, and let the public see just how many miles these cars can go before something serious goes wrong. Let's see if you can get a Chevy Cobalt to go an average 35 miles an hour, every hour, for a year... that's 306,600 miles, by the way. Let the public wager on how many miles it'll go; winner gets a new GM car or truck of their choice.

End the rebate madness, too. It's not good for GM, it's not good for the consumer, who still ends up paying taxes on the rebate.