Wagoner is GM’s best salesman - and that's not saying much!

Mean Street: Why Everyone Hates GM: Pity the poor one million General Motors shareholders.

Excerpt:

the inconvenient facts of decades of declining Big Three market share and grotesque overcapacity. Only in the World of Wagoner could the industry be making “tremendous progress.”

If pressed for time, skip to the hearing’s third hour when Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez uncovers the “big lie” of a Detroit bailout. The $25 billion number is a fudge. It would only plug the hole for a few months. Mendendez was blunt. Detroit will soon be back hat in hand.

And Menendez is a sympathetic voice. Ouch. Next comes, Bob Corker, Republican from Tennessee and a no nonsense businessman. He is brutal. “GM is spiraling downward.” Chrysler has “barely a heartbeat.” “Which of the three should survive and which shouldn’t?”

Corker dares to point out what everybody knows but nobody will say. The entire American car industry is already bankrupt. One and maybe two companies will have to go. Industrial triage is inevitable. That’s the way business works.

Corker’s brilliant maneuver is to have the “impartial” Gettelfinger — whose UAW has fleeced all three — rank them by viability. Gettelfinger’s answer: Ford, then Chrysler, then last, GM.

Minutes later, Wagoner’s detached statesmanlike composure finally gives way. His face grows red. His voice rises. It’s clear just how desperate GM has become.

Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli and Ford boss Alan Mullaly at least know how to grovel properly. Of course, they don’t carry the emotional baggage of a longtime Motowner like Wagoner.

Nardelli has been at Chrysler for just over a year. He knows Chrysler’s days are numbered and looks like a man who just wants out. Every time he has the floor, he reminds lawmakers of Chrysler’s “fragile” position. Oddly, for someone who took home hundreds of millions in a disastrous stint as Home Depot’s CEO, Nardelli can still elicit sympathy. That’s good salesmanship. He should be on a Chrysler lot.

As for Mullally, he makes it clear numerous times that Ford doesn’t even have to be in Washington asking for money. It’s the troubled, ne’er -do-well Rick Wagoner at the end of the table that’s bringing him there. “I’m here because GM is here,” Mullaly intones with aw-shucks brotherly love.

That, of course, is disingenuous. Mulally concedes that by 2010, without an upturn in the U.S. economy, even Ford will run out of money. Nor does he mention that Ford’s share price closed the day at less than two bucks.

Luckily for the Big Three, the Detroit bailout will be resurrected early next year when a new Congress and Barack Obama are sworn in.

Mulally and Nardelli will have a few months to brush up on their performances.

Wagoner may not be as lucky. His board can put up with a failure to turn a profit, but it probably won’t stand for his failure to bring money back from Washington. If this is GM’s best salesman, no wonder the company can’t move cars.

Comment: Interesting: UAW's triage

... the “impartial” Gettelfinger — whose UAW has fleeced all three — rank[ed] them by viability. Gettelfinger’s answer: Ford, then Chrysler, then last, GM.

Also interesting that these guys didn't corporate jet pool together. Three corporate jets flew them there. Ford's CEO private jets back and forth to Seattle every weekend!

Big Three auto CEOs flew private jets to ask for taxpayer money

"There is a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hand, saying that they're going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses," Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-New York, told the chief executive officers of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee.

"It's almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo. It kind of makes you a little bit suspicious."

He added, "couldn't you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here? It would have at least sent a message that you do get it."