For those of you who are not car geeks, the Trabant was a small East German car. It was the product of GDR government's auto industry from the late 1950s until 1991. At the end of WWII, the communists took control over existing automobile factories in eastern Germany. To supply automobiles for their masses, and provide jobs for their laborers, they developed the Trabant in the late 50s. It had room for four (barely) and plastic body panels integrating soviet industrial byproducts, such as cotton fibers, wool or even paper fibers. The Trabi's two-cylinder engine gave it all the power of a medium-sized garden tractor.
It was small, cramped, noisy and weak, but, it was all the people had. That's what their government decided they would get. Even then, people had to wait years, sometimes, to get a Trabi they'd ordered. Used western cars fetched a better price than a new Trabi. When introduced, it was already technologically 10 years behind its times. Engineers proposed improvements and upgrades now and then, but the government controllers turned them down. Keep costs down. Even in the 1980s, the Trabant factories were turning out a car that was little changed from its debut in 1957. Production remained a largely labor-intense affair. Modernizing would hurt jobs.
This, I fear, is what we'll get if the Big Three bailout amounts to government control over Detroit. Not that I think Detroit's 3 have done such a good job on their own. They've basically bungled their way into a deep hole. But would government control be better, or just a different sort of bungling?
I can see the socialist agenda of the new administration thinking that control over Detroit would mean they could dictate what kind of cars should be built for American masses. No more SUVs (not that I like SUVs). Hybrids for Everyone! Maybe they'll dictate a hybrid be produced by their new National Motors factories. But, much like the Trabant was a feeble compromise of conflicting government agenda, a new "green" People's Hybrid will be a similarly feeble, labor intense, set of compromises. When has a government agency been able to produce something simple and efficient?
Maybe the Democrats will make sure we all get our People's Hybrids so we can reduce greenhouse gasses and keep the autoworker's unions happy. What we'll ultimately get, though, is a new Trabant. All the charm of a bread box and all the power of a lawn tractor. And if it follows the Trabant's pattern, our People's Hybrids won't change much for many years. Innovation is not something government committees are good at.
We'd best not complain, though. To want anything else will be deemed unpatriotic.
