GM's Rick Wagoner is sent packing as President Obama opens a Pandora's Box of Not Good.

I knew no one could say it any better than the AutoExtremist, himself....

SPECIAL AUTOEXTREMIST UPDATE (Sunday, March 29, 9:30PM EDT)

March 29, 2009

GM's Rick Wagoner is sent packing as President Obama opens a Pandora's Box of Not Good.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

http://www.autoextremist.com/

"Detroit. Tomorrow morning President Obama is expected to announce that GM (and Chrysler) will get additional emergency funding, while giving each company more time to achieve additional cuts with, in GM's case, its bondholders and the UAW. The President will also seize the moment to chastise the American automobile industry yet again, as if that will somehow make up for the missed opportunity that blew right by him when he failed to take swift enough action on the AIG mess. (By Monday morning, Obama's plans were emerging. GM would get 60 days to get its situation in order, Chrysler would get just 30 days, but only if it makes a deal with Fiat. It's clear that the Obama administration is pushing for a "quick-rinse" bankruptcy with government protection for consumers who buy vehicles from these manufacturers as part of the package.)

And as part of his "shared sacrifice" mantra that he's so good at relentlessly pounding into the American public while framing the domestic automobile industry as some sort of national scourge, Obama demanded and received a body - in this case the body of GM chairman and and CEO Rick Wagoner - so he could hold it up to the American public on one of his administration's custom-built chrome-plated pitchforks and say, "See, I'm doing what I promised! I am slaying the evil dragons of American corporate greed! I will reshape America into a kindler, gentler nation of group hugs while creating a more realistic and caring set of common corporate goals!"

And not only was an ugly precedent set, but America's future has just been turned dark by the realization that our government will not hesitate to reach into every available orifice - corporate or otherwise - and put their stamp on it if it doesn't quite conform to the Obama Administration's Shiny Happy Vision of what this country is supposed to be.

Contrary to the horde of instant pundit-experts out there who don't have the first clue as to what this industry is all about - or what it's like to actually work in this industry - Rick Wagoner was by no means the evil architect of GM's current predicament. Yes, Wagoner made some mistakes, and I have documented them long before the "Rick Wagoner Must Go" train left the pundit station. The Fiat adventure was disastrous, and Wagoner's initial reluctance to wrestle with GM's bloated structure proved costly. But Mr. Wagoner's most glaring failing really wasn't his at all, but rather it was that he was a product of GM's long corroded and obsolete cultural ideal that the people who run the company should only come from the financial office. This is nothing new it should be pointed out, because it has been part of the GM raison d'etre since the Alfred Sloan era. But it was Rick Wagoner's - and GM's - reality.

But there was another side to Rick Wagoner's tenure that the instant pundits out there either refuse to acknowledge - out of their out and out hatred for anything to do with GM and Detroit - or that they simply couldn't fathom because of their abject lack of experience or what is probably closer to the truth, their complete lack of understanding of how this business actually operates. And that is that if Rick Wagoner hadn't taken the aggressively decisive actions that he did take, GM would have been out of business years ago.

Wagoner's move into the Chinese market (a continuation of the doctrine laid out by his predecessor, Jack Smith) proved to be pivotal in providing a road map for the company's future. And Wagoner's insistence on utilizing and exploiting the global capabilities of GM's far reaching corporate empire, with forays into Korea, Brazil, Mexico and Eastern Europe, laid the groundwork for a completely modernized and globally competitive endeavor.

But Wagoner's most impressive move during his tenure was to recognize his own limitations as a financially-oriented leader, while at the same time setting his own ego aside in order to bring Bob Lutz into the company. Wagoner handed Lutz the keys to GM's woefully moribund product development system and said "Fix it," while giving Lutz carte blanche to do it. And the results were magnificent. During Wagoner's tenure - while benefiting from the vision, passion and sheer will to succeed that Lutz brought to the table - GM saw its greatest design, engineering and product era since its glory days of the 60s.

Down the road, long after the lynch mob hysteria subsides - and this administration's pitchforks have been hopefully melted down into brand spanking new American-made automobiles - Rick Wagoner's tenure will be judged more fairly and with the proper perspective. But until that time it must be said that the economic catastrophe that overwhelmed this country conspired to bring an entire foundation American industry to its knees, and there was no leader - socially "approved" or otherwise - who could have prevented GM and the rest of the domestic automobile business from collapsing.

Rick Wagoner and I had our run-ins (he didn't take too kindly to my early writings in Autoextremist.com, to put it mildly), and we've never had more than a passing conversational relationship at the countless car events over the years, but he's far from the ogre that his critics make him out to be. On the contrary, he is an exceedingly bright, gifted and personable executive who has ended up taking a bullet for the company that he has been a part of since 1977. And he did it in order to appease the overlords in the Obama administration so that the company he loved would live to fight another day. That says a lot about the measure of the man, in my book.

A pity I can't say the same for Mr. Obama and his posse. When I say that an ugly precedent has been set by the administration's blatant and meddlesome actions into corporate America - resulting in an executive actually losing his job - that is the understatement of this or any other year.

President Obama and the overlords in his administration have opened a Pandora's Box of Not Good by this action.

And by far the ugliest part about it?

No one has even the remotest of clues as to where or when it will stop.

Thanks for listening.

-Peter M. De Lorenzo"

Visit the AutoExtremist site any time you want the straight facts about what's really going on in the auto industry. The man has always been spot on and ahead of the news.