We are Americans. With inspired leadership we can out design, out engineer, out work and out produce any foreign manufacturer on the face of the earth. But is the current crop of Big 4 industrial leaders (Chrysler, Ford, General Motors and the United Auto Workers -- UAW) equal to task? 

When I was younger, after the opera or theater, when someone said to the parking lot attendant, “Mine is the Silver Cadillac,” he knew exactly which car was meant and went straight to where it was parked and got it. What’s the message? Just matching the efficiency, production and wages of foreign auto manufactures isn’t good enough. The Big 4 has to beat the socks off of them in every area: design, productivity, manufacture, and assembly plus sales and service.

Many years ago through a collusion of UAW greed and corporate Detroit arrogance the Big 4 entered into a bargain with the devil which put at risk the future of America’s auto industry, the investment of stock holders, and the welfare of workers and their families. Since there was little foreign competition then, the captive American public had to pay whatever price the automakers demanded for their cars. Like Robin Hood and his merry men, the Big 4 gleefully divided the spoils.

During WWII the steel industries of Europe and Japan were bombed into oblivion. After 1945 they were rebuilt using the latest technology. America’s steel plants had been built in the early 1900s and were out dated as soon as the first foreign steel mill came on line. Without so much as a whimper Big Steel laid down its skimming ladles, banked its blast furnaces for the last time, and capitulated.

The shame of Big Steel’s collapse was that no leader in management, labor, or the U.S. Congress stood up and shook their fist in the face of America’s foreign competitors. No CEO led a rush to the barricades shouting, “Someone will always make and sell steel at a profit in this world and it may as well be the United States of America!”

Today the U.S. auto industry is teetering on the lip of that same abyss where Big Steel teetered in the 1960s. So how does the Big 4 plan to meet its awesome international challenges? They plan to decrease production to match decreased sales. As more sales are lost, which they undoubtedly will be, they plan to cut more production to keep up with the loss of more sales. When even more sales are lost and even more workers are laid off, they plan to close even more plants. Does seem to you like a winning formula for global success?

If the Big 4 goes under, the U.S. will lose nearly 10% of its industrial base. Can the national economy absorb such a vicious body blow and stay on its feet? Does the U.S. Congress and President-Elect really understand what will happen if overnight 4% of the nation’s GNP vanishes and takes with it auto dealerships, parts suppliers, transportation companies, financial institutions, and all the other auto industry and sub-related companies and jobs? Such a catastrophe must be avoided at all costs!

It’s past time for the Secretary of the Treasury to call the nation’s banking leadership into his office and say, “The Big 4 need a loan, not a bail out. The nation’s taxpayers gave you bankers almost a trillion dollars to make loans. The Big 4 needs a 14 billion dollar bridge loan. Either you loan it to them or we will take it away from you and loan it to them ourselves? Then we will demand that you return the money we have loaned you”

The Congress, the President-Elect, the Big 4 and the bankers have got to realize that this is round 15 of the world heavyweight championship. Nothing can be spared or held back. Everything has to be put on the chopping block and sorted out in the blood of the battlefield. Looking out for the future of Detroit’s corporations, its stock holders, its sub-industries, its workers and their families must become an all consuming fire. Should the effort fail, the Big 4 will be forced to go where elephants go to die – alone.

Finally, we are Americans. We shrink neither from hard work, competition, nor conflict. And when we fight – and when we compete – we win!