Where’s ours? Chrysler bankruptcy shuts out St. Louis.
I gave the public not only quality,” he said, “but beauty, speed, comfort in riding, style, power, quick acceleration, easy steering, all at a low price.
– Walter Chrysler, 1924
Ol' Walt
Ah, Walter. You should see what they’ve done to your company. Shoved it into bankruptcy court. Sold a big chunk of it to the Italians. Put a bunch of government regulators on your board of directors. Closed eight of the 31 plants you had left, and of the 23 remaining in North America, five will be in Canada or Mexico.
If the bankruptcy court signs off on the deal, your creditors will wind up with 33 cents on the dollar, Walter. The United Auto Workers will wind up holding a lot of company’s stock. A lot of your dealerships will close, to say nothing of your suppliers. And the government, Walter — the government! — will back your warranties.
And the thing is, Walter, this is probably as good a deal as your company was going to get. The president of the United States says it will enable Chrysler “to thrive,” but that’s not a sure thing. Quality, beauty, speed, comfort, style, power, low price . . .they’re not enough anymore. It’s a different world.
Walter Chrysler died in 1940. Nearly 50 years later, thanks to a government bail-out in 1979, the company was still going strong. In 1988, the automobile industry was a cornerstone of the St. Louis economy, and Chrysler’s two plants at Fenton were a big part of it.
In 1988, St. Louis produced 771,692 cars and trucks, more than any city but Detroit. The industry employed 18,440 people here with a payroll of $694 million — $1.25 billion in today’s dollars.
In naming the 1971 Chrysler Imperial LeBaron two-door one of 50 Worst Cars Ever, TIME magazine wrote, "Here we are approaching the nadir of American car building — obese, under-engineered, horribly ugly."
Things have been more or less downhill ever since. Ford closed its Hazelwood plant in March, 2006. Chrysler idled its Fenton minivan plant last fall and cut production at the Fenton pickup truck line to one shift. With Thursday’s announcement that the Fenton truck plant is among eight plants to be closed as part of the bankruptcy, only GM’s Wentzville cargo van plant remains, and demand is down in that category, too.
More than 17,000 solid blue-collar middle class jobs have been lost, and thousands more among suppliers. Some of the area’s Chrysler dealerships will close, at the cost hundreds of more jobs. The Chrysler bankruptcy is a stark reminder of the challenges facing this region’s economic future.
Here is what bothers us most about the Chrysler bankruptcy: For all the whining among hedge funds that they’re not being treated fairly, for all the money that will flow to the UAW health fund for Chrysler workers and retirees, it’s the American worker who is taking it in the chops.
Chrysler, with the help of the American taxpayers, including 2.6 million people in the St. Louis region, will continue to build minivans and Ram pickups, but in Mexico and Canada, not in Fenton, Missouri, U.S.A.
We support free trade. We understand the automobile industry is global. We’re sympathetic to the plight of Michiganders and Ohioans, and we’re happy that their factories may some day produce new fuel-efficient Fiat/Chryslers (Fiascos?) but . . .where’s ours?
St. Louis’ business and political leaders must press this point: We used to build a lot of cars here. We don’t anymore. If the government is getting into the automobile industry, the people of St. Louis need to be a part of it.
The reason that other states will get the gubment gravy is that for decades, this state has elected Senators who could care less about anything other that carrying the party line and getting reelected. Look at who represented us in the Senate during the leaning up of the Auto Industry from 1992 to 2004. We had no help. Ford in Hazelwood closed while McDonnell Douglass got to build five more F-15’s right before they were taken over by Boeing. This was only after MAC lost the joint attack fighter contract. Who was in the senate at that time? Bond and Talent. They allowed the company that produced the best fighters in the world to lose the contract to Lockheed and Boeing. Then MAC was bought by Boeing.
These people could care less about Chrysler employees or their factories. It’s all about how much can it be sold for?
Jim Talent and Kit Bond allowed the auto industry in St. Louis to dissappear.
Which one’s Walt in the old photo?
Great column! Too bad it’s right. It was obvious that sooner or later, NAFTA was going to put the finishing touches on the gravestone of the American Auto industry. RIP Chrysler. You finally got the cheaper labor you wanted but you eliminated tens of thousands of your customers in the process. Another sad case of American business ruined by American business leaders better known as glorified bean-counters pretending they’re Pharaohs. If only slavery were legal…
Jellio, it’s common knowledge that the local union caused the demise of both Hazelwood and Fenton. Locals were more hard-assed about work rules than in Detroit, and the assembly workers could give a flying —- about suppliers and their employees. Now just wait until Obama cans all these dealers, making a ready-made network for Tata or Chery.
The Chrysler Building – in NYC - was sold off to a foreign group a couple of years ago, another blow.
There are simply too many loads on Chrysler, industry and commercial business in general in the USA. It was not always like this, we’ve become a fat, dumb, lazy, law-suit thriving bunch of looters. And we blame everybody else when our productivity is no longer competitive. We do have a leg up in this country: we are experts in generating bureaucratic forms and thousands of contradictory laws. Maybe the rest of the world is in need of some of this.
It’s fitting that Fiat is the name of the savior of an American auto company at the same time the treasury has turned to the printing as the savior of everything else screwed up in the economy.
The Chrysler building in New York City never was owned by Chrysler, and the company has not maintained corporate offices there since the 1950s.
First of all, the Canadian Government is also participating in the Chrysler restructuring and Canada has always been a big market for Chrysler. But the real truth here is that the workers by and large did this to themselves. When I got out of high school years ago, you had a couple of choices, go to work in the auto plant and make big bucks, or start out in the busines world for a few bucks. I chose the latter, but many of my schoolmates went into the factory. I was flabbergasted when they would brag about putting a bolt or a nut in a door panel so that the car would have a hard to detect rattle. Well the poor sap, as they called them soon migrated to Honda and Toyota. Who is the poor sap now? i don’t give a crap.
That’s typical of a lib Jellio. Find some republican out in left field and blame them. The reality is that St. Louis is/was a powerful union town and major companies just don’t want to deal with it. It’s easier to move to another state. Mac lost Joint stike fighter contract because their machinists were on strike. It doesn’t matter anyway because President Obama cancelled the project as soon as he took office. The article said it, St. Louis was the 2nd largest producer of automobiles in the country behind Detroit. I’ll bet if you look at which states have lost the most union jobs over the last 20 years Detroit and St. Louis will be #1 and #2 again. Besides, It was the Clinton Administration that enacted NAFTA, sending jobs to Canada and Mexico. That same administration is also the one that began trade talks with Communist China, where all our goods are now manufactured.
If only Missouri had enacted a Right to Work law years ago this state could have attracted foreign manufacturers that have otherwise chosen to locate in the various “right-to-work” states throughout the south. It may not be to late to act as the skilled workforce and idled plants could provide attractive reasons for locating in the area in the years to come. But it will never happen in a forced union state like Missouri.
Perrivilian, I forgot until I read your post. My next door neighbor (years ago) worked at Chrysler (years earlier than that) as a painter. The SOB bragged of contest they all had to put the thinnest coat of paint on the car. That was really an eye-opener to me at that time.
Eddie Roth – Good to know. Still, it’s a drag to see icons [to some extent] vaporize. Now that kind of reminds me of Independence Hall and the United Nations.