GM chief to park jet, drive Chevy to Washington
Bowing to hassles from Congress over corporate jets for Detroit bigwigs, GM boss Rick Wagoner will drive a Chevy Malibu hybrid sedan from Detroit to Washington this week, a spokesman said today. From AP:
Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally also is driving from Detroit for a second appearance before two legislative committees to seek $25 billion in government loans. Chrysler LLC CEO Robert Nardelli will not travel by corporate jet. A spokeswoman says his travel plans will remain secret for security reasons.All three executives are returning to Congress for hearings on Thursday and Friday. They are seeking the bailout loans to help them through the recession and the worst sales downturn in 25 years.
According to Google Maps, it will take these guys 17 hours and 38 minutes to drive round trip from Motown to DC. Now that's efficient use for the time of a CEO whose company is on the brink of bankruptcy. If they get taxpayers to save them, though, I guess shareholders will decide that belly-crawling to Congress was worth it.
Comments
I am so sick of this silly, destracting, self righteous talk about their private jets. Could we please get back to a serious conversation of how to save one of our most important industries? Does anyone have any idea of how many jet trips our clueless hypocrital Senators and Congressman have taken gratus lobbyists? Pleaaasse. Let's return to the grownup world.
Posted by: Eva Ritchey | December 2, 2008 11:22 AM
Lets see, $25 Billion, 17 hours. Yeah that's worth the drive. The bigger waste of time is that he didn't think of how it would look to show up in a pvt jet in the first place. If they fail, people will still buy cars, and they may even buy american cars. We arent worse off because ATT & MCI arent around anymore. I dont lose sleep over Lehman bros. Someone will pick up the opportunity because we live in a country where we are free to do that stuff. Protecting the big 3, big banks, big industry solely because they are big is a slap in the face of the small business owners who are taxed to pay for support for big companies at the same time they are forced to compete for scraps in order to become bigger themselves! WE arent rescuing an entire industry, we are rescuing 3 companies in a global market. Employees get their pay cut and jobs outsourced because its a global market. Execs are facing the same threat, Tata motors of india would love to sell cars in the us - and they will.
Posted by: mike | December 2, 2008 7:59 PM
Why bail out the auto industry? Then who is going to be next. If I have my own business and get into financial trouble, I can't expect the government to bail me out personally.
This is the same thing on a much larger scale. The failing auto makers need to re-invent themselves so they can compete in a more global market.
Absolutely, get rid of those big salaries, bonuses, etc. It was all just to feed the CEO's pocket. They've known they have been in trouble for some time now.
Monica McNamara
Ocean City, Md.
www.Ocean-CitySales.com
Posted by: Monica McNamara | December 3, 2008 9:02 AM
There is no good route from Michigan to DC.
Probably going across PA turnpike (a sea of orange barrels for decades) and then down.
Symbolic and a waste of time. Surprised some journalist did not look at private jet trips of committee members.
Posted by: save_the_rustbelt | December 3, 2008 4:53 PM