In a long
line of platitudes and record-breaking sales and profits for Big Three cars and trucks over the past several years,
sports cars from Ford, General Motors and Fiat Chrysler make up
half the field for Road & Track’s 2016 Performance Car of the Year contest,
and three of the top four.
Auto
analyst Mark Phelan of the Detroit Free Press broke the news today that the
Detroit-based cars performed extraordinarily well in Road & Track’s
extensive road tests.
But it’s
also important to note that none of these world-class, top-rated cars – the Chevrolet
Corvette, the Ford Shelby Mustang and the Dodge Viper – would exist if
Republicans in Congress, and especially the Southern senators from Red States,
would have succeeded in killing the bridge loans that kept the Big Three alive
during the organized-bankruptcy process of 2009.

Without
those federal rescue loans to General Motors and Chrysler, which were paid back well
in advance, those two auto giants would likely have been liquidated. Ford Motor
Co. steered clear of the “bailout” process but the company still received
considerable government support and the automaker may very well have collapsed
from collateral damage as thousands of small firms that supply the Big Three would have gone belly up.So, let’s
compare the supposed wise words of Congress during the onslaught of the Great
Recession with the current views of the Big Three stars in the 2015 auto press.
Southern congressmen, trying to give the government-subsidized foreign
car factories in their states a big leg up, declared in 2008-09 that no one wants to buy
Big Three vehicles anymore due to a gaping quality gap.

Now, here’s
what Road & Track editor Larry Webster says:

“The craft of building a really fine performance
automobile has returned to the Motor City,” Webster told the Freep’s Phelan. “It’s
like the engineers are sitting in meetings asking, ‘What’s the coolest thing we
can do?’

“The domestic manufacturers are giving their
engineers more freedom … than any other companies in the world and we’re the
beneficiaries.”

Those of us who have been “car guys” since we were kids –
eagerly anticipating the prospect of owning one of the domestic automakers’
premier driving machines – also know that the Big Three has stood head and shoulders
above the foreign competition for decades in producing the best performance cars
on a dollar-for-dollar basis.
A prime example: One of the four top performers in Road
& Track’s testing was the Ferrari 488 GTB – just a stunning example of an
ultimate automobile. But the new 488 carries a base price of nearly $243,000.
At that cost, the sports car aficionado could probably buy one each of the competition
– the Vette Z06, the Mustang GT350R and the Viper ACR – with quite a bit of
money left over.
Imagine what Detroit’s top engineers and designers could
devise if they were given the green light to produce a car that sells for a
minimum of a quarter-million dollars.

“There’s been a comeback by performance and sports
cars, especially cars from the Detroit 3, since the Great Recession,”
Autotrader senior analyst Michelle Krebs told Phelan. “They’re among the
most researched vehicles online and the strongest sellers.”According to the Free Press, Webster, the Road &
Track editor, offers this description of each of the top four contenders for
Performance Car of the year:

* Chevrolet Corvette ZO6 — An exotic killer. It
embarrasses every other sports car on the plan

* Ford Shelby GT350R Mustang — The car that finally
delivers on the 50-year promise of the Mustang.
* Dodge Viper ACR — A race car. It’s built for the
crazies, and we love it for that.
* Ferrari 488 GTB — In my personal opinion, the finest
sports car ever built.

    And, as a
    reminder, here is the encapsulation of the domestic auto industry offered in
    2009 by a Southern GOP congressman: Providing emergency loans to U.S. automakers would be  “like putting a tourniquet on a dead man.”

    When will
    the apologies arrive from Capitol Hill?

     

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