Reading the papers, online news, and hearing nightly reports about if the big three are going to be bailed out has gotten me to think about how they got themselves into a position that required them to need to be bailed out. There are many factors, but the prevailing two were a simple lack of insight and becoming too big to manage.

  Like the old saying goes, when something big falls, it falls hard. This very clearly describes what will happen when or if one of the big three fall, especially GM or Ford. If they fall it’s not only  going to be the company that falls, its the suppliers who provide parts to the company, the communities that the suppliers employ from, even the sandwich guy who shows up at noontime to supply food to the hungry workers. Everyone suffers if this happens. 

  So how do we get out of this mess? I don’t believe it will be easy, especially in this economic climate. Lets use Ford as an example. The Ford conglomerate has the Ford, Mercury, Lincoln, Jaguar, Austin Martin, and most recently Land Rover, as well as possibly others. In that corporate mindset lies the problem, too many automobile makes under one companies management. Not only does this lead to a larger economic issue when the parent company falters, it also causes the build quality to suffer.

  My own solution to this issue is to offer a bailout to restructure the companies. Basically, Take all but the Ford Brand away from Ford, creating several different competing companies that are all financially independent. Use any bailout money as startup capital to hire new management and acquire infrastructure. Finally pass legislation restricting multiple brand ownership and corporate size.

  This idea would allow for competing companies to then build better, more reliable cars for less money as they would be competing with each other. It would allow small business suppliers to expand production, therefore making more money and helping their communities. Finally if a company did get into financial trouble and went under, the financial impact would be limited to just that company and resident community, not the entire nation.