Merc1
Premium
I felt like a war correspondent at the LA Show yesterday. There was no need to dig out the story; it was unfolding all around me with startling ferocity, and on a scale and scope few could have imagined a few months ago. There were still the bright lights and the glitzy stands filled with shiny new cars. But the mood on the show floor was uneasy, full of forced smiles, dark humor and 1000-yard stares. The world had changed, but no-one was quite sure exactly what that meant. All they did know was that the future would be painful, and that there would be casualties.
Reports from Washington, D.C., where Rick Wagoner, Alan Mulally, and Bob Nardelli were pleading the case for vital bridging loans before yet another panel of politicians, trickled through like dispatches from the front line. The word from Washington was not good; Motown wasn't getting a lot of sympathy. "It's turned into political theater," grumbled one Detroit insider, who acidly noted that one politician loudly decrying the use of public money to support the auto industry should perhaps explain why his state offered extremely generous tax breaks to tempt a foreign automaker to build a factory there.
Full Story: Motor Trend - 2008 LA Show: From the Trenches
Interesting read.
M
