American Automakers Should Renew Commitment to Quality (Opinion)

Everyone knew the day would come when General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC would declare bankruptcy, despite the billions of dollars in bailout money they received to prevent just that.

And recently, GM, once the giant of the auto-making world, said it would reorganize under Chapter 11. When it re-emerges, the new GM, already being dubbed Government Motors, will be a much leaner company.

Will $19.4 billion in government loans before bankruptcy and another $30 billion promised while in bankruptcy save the company?

No one wants to see GM fail — or Chrysler either, for that matter. Ultimately, the American car buyer will decide their fates. The decisions of those car buyers will be based, in turn, on the choices the companies make as they struggle to reinvent themselves.

For the past two or three decades, many Americans have chosen to buy vehicles based on their value or their quality. Neither GM nor Chrysler offered much of either. Gradually, year by year, their share of the auto market declined.

GM and Chrysler are saying that now that they are free of many of the costly union health care benefits and debt-service obligations, their freed-up capital will allow them to invest more in new technology. The automakers and the Obama administration are telling us that they will make better cars and regain market share.

Call us skeptical. While we would like to see it happen, they’ve made such promises in the past and haven’t delivered.

Starting in the late 1960s, American automakers made a choice to stop building the best cars in the world. As they turned out more and more poor-quality vehicles, their reputations were damaged. Anyone who bought a Dodge Aspen back in the mid-1970s has probably never bought another Chrysler-made vehicle.

Consider Consumer Reports. Over the years very few — and, in some years, none — of the American-made cars received excellent ratings from the consumer guide.

As they restructure, GM and Chrysler — even Ford Motor Co., which has stayed afloat — need to renew their commitment to building quality cars. If Toyota, Honda and other foreign manufacturers can do it with American workers, so can what used to be the Big Three.