There She Goes . . .

By
eric
-
80
4196
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Two big announcements this week and one of them has nothing to do with the pending indictment and frog-marching of the Orange Man.

Here’s the other:

GM has just officially announced the end of the line for Camaro – again.

This has of, course, happened before. Most recently in 2002, after which there was no Camaro for the next eight years – until a reboot in 2010. And prior to that, in 1975, when there was almost no Camaro because there was no Z28 for the next two years, until 1977 – when the Z28 returned.

But this time, the end is likely to be forever.

At least insofar as what the Camaro is – and has been. The name will apparently be rebooted and affixed to – God help us – an electric crossover SUV, a la the Ford Mach e “Mustang.” But unlike Ford, which just launched an all-new Mustang that is defiantly not battery powered, GM intends to launch nothing except battery-powered appliances going forward.

This is what comes of getting “bailed out” by the government. It means getting bought out by the government.

It means getting owned.

That’s what GM has been since the bankruptcy-bailouts of 2009. Yes, the loans were paid back. But there was interest, so to speak. It came in the form of changing the company’s priorities as well as its management. In a free-market schema these would be salutary palliatives, much like someone obese confronted by the early symptoms of diabetes taking the decision to stop eating too much of the wrong foods.

Actually going bankrupt would have been the healthiest thing that could have happened to GM – as well as the people who worked for GM.

A liquidation would have resulted in some short-term pain, of course. The parts of the business that weren’t viable would have been closed down and the remains sold off. The people who worked in those parts would indeed have lost their jobs. But the viable parts of GM would have been bought – as opposed to bailed out – because they were worth something, to people willing to pay for it.

These would have been rebooted and likely been successful on the merits. And there would have been new jobs there, including more of them as the reconfigured company grew.

One can only imagine what might have been.

As opposed to what it’s become.

Instead of letting nature take its course, the whole mess was bailed out – like intubating a flat-lined patient for the sake of keeping the body alive – using money extracted by force from those unwilling to pay. This money represented the antithesis of market forces. Rather than steer the foundering company toward a more – what’s the word? – sustainable business model, it was used to steer it toward a new business model.

One that took as little notice of the market as a Soviet-era state-run supermarket.

This is evident in the current management’s lack of interest in the market’s interest in vehicles such as the electric Hummer – a reboot of what had been a very successful model for GM back when management took notice of the market. Hundreds of thousands of engined Hummers were sold. GM sold about 854 battery-powered Hummers during all of 2022, representing about 0.2 percent of GMC’s total sales (GM is selling the electric Hummer through its GMC brand this go around rather than as a stand-alone brand). Sales of the Cadillac Lyriq – which looks a lot like the pending “Camaro” EV – are equally dismal. All of 33 of them in the third quarter of 2022. But it has managed to assemble a few thousand of them over the course of the past three or four months.

Never mind that – full steam (well, volts) ahead!

GM is preparing to launch an “electrified” version of the otherwise salable Silverado 1500 half-ton, which will be (like the electrified version of Ford’s half-ton truck, the F-150 Lightning) a three-ton truck, courtesy of the 2,000 pounds of batteries it will carry. This will greatly limit how far it can carry (or pull) anything. Which probably explains why Ford hasn’t sold very many of its electric three-ton half-ton (about 17,000 so far, which is a drop in the proverbial bucket relative to sales of the non-electric F-150, which exceed half a million annually). The Lightning  goes maybe 100 miles on a charge when fully charged with a small trailer affixed to it.

GM management is very well-paid to be uninterested in such grubby concerns as selling cars to people who want them, at a price they are willing to pay – because GM’s management no longer concerns itself with such things. Which it doesn’t concern itself with because it is owned in every way that matters by its chief “customer,” the government.

Management knows the symbiotic relationship will continue indefinitely, or at least as long as the government has the power to buy what it wants, using money taken by force from those who want no part of it.

So, farewell to Camaro.

Its departure is fitting, in a way, as it was a remnant of the GM that used to make cars people were interested in buying. But that was back when GM was a car company rather than a virtue-selling company. One whose virtues have been bought by interests that have zero interest in cars like Camaro – or the people who loved them.

. . .

If you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos. 

We depend on you to keep the wheels turning! 

Our donate button is here.

 If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is:

EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079

PS: Get an EPautos magnet or sticker or coaster in return for a $20 or more one-time donation or a $10 or more monthly recurring donation. (Please be sure to tell us you want a magnet or sticker or coaster – and also, provide an address, so we know where to mail the thing!)

My eBook about car buying (new and used) is also available for your favorite price – free! Click here.  If that fails, email me at [email protected] and I will send you a copy directly!

Related posts:
  1. “Late to the Party”
  2. Ford Stops Selling Cars… Others Will Follow
  3. An Early Sunset For Camaro?
  4. Great Deals on Leftover Electric Turduckens
  5. $48,000 . . .

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

80 COMMENTS

  1. I’ve worked in the “deep dark” areas of gm engineering testing since 88. I said it at the time that the Gov bail out would make things worse and short term pain would birth a much better company without it. Boy I lost friends and PO-ed a few family members saying it out loud. Your article is spot on, it’s like you work out here too. Still it lands mostly on death ears. I’ve given up on trying to enlighten my co-workers to your writings. The company literally cares more about DEI and ESG than developing cars and trucks that people want to buy. Hope I get through the next round of cuts and will stick around just a few more years.

    • Thanks, RA –

      It’s tragic. GM put out some of the most beautiful, clever and just great vehicles in the history of the business. I have one in the garage! But the company is a very different one today, as you know. As I know. And the problem goes deeper and wider than GM, unfortunately. It may take a “great reset” to change things for the better. Or the worse. I hope the former.

      • Yep it’s not a case of MB not being a “car guy” It’s a slew of globalists on the board and every other major corporation in the US. I’m not sure how it can be turned around actually.

        • Roger that, RA –

          I don’t think it can be turned around. I think we’ll need to start over. This could happen by the cohort of the population that’s not interested in living in the world envisioned for us by them deciding we won’t – and forming our own “more perfect union” all over again. It is my view that the United States will got the way of the Soviet Union, probably within the next ten years and perhaps sooner. The question then is, what will become of what remains?

  2. Lots of EV fires don’t help sales….lol

    Lithium-ion batteries may suffer thermal runaway and cell rupture if overheated or overcharged, and in extreme cases this can lead to combustion. When handled improperly, or if manufactured defectively, some rechargeable batteries can experience thermal runaway resulting in overheating.

    Sealed cells will sometimes explode violently if safety vents are overwhelmed or nonfunctional.

    The difference with EV car fires is the use of high voltage lithium-ion batteries which can short and break down and spontaneously combust, and also that lithium-ion fires are difficult to extinguish and produce toxic smoke

    Reports of exploding cellphones have been published in newspapers. In 2006, batteries from Apple, HP, Toshiba, Lenovo, Dell and other notebook manufacturers were recalled because of fire and explosions.

    EV fires
    a fire broke out on the vehicle deck of the MS Pearl of Scandinavia on its way from Oslo to Copenhagen.
    It was determined that the cause of the fire was a short circuit in the plug of an extension cord used to charge a rebuilt Nissan Qashqai, converted into a battery electric vehicle

    A Zotye M300 EV operating as a taxicab caught fire in Hangzhou, China, in April 2011.
    Due to the incident, the city authorities decided to halt all electric taxis on safety concerns,
    The city’s official investigation team found the cause of the fire was the car’s defective battery pack due to lack of quality control during manufacturing.

    Bolt
    Electrek had compiled a list of 18 battery-related Chevrolet Bolt fires, and one possible-battery related fire.[31] The frequent fires resulted in a recall of about 110,000 Chevrolet Bolt and Bolt EUV EVs from the 2017 through 2022 model years.[32]
    the company has started buying back some Bolts. Moreover, GM recommended that Bolt owners park their cars outside and at least 50 feet away from other vehicles.

    Chevrolet Volt
    As a result of a crash-tested Chevrolet Volt that caught fire in June 2011 three weeks after the testing, two of the three tests resulted in thermal events, including fire.

    Fisker Karma
    Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid.
    In December 2011, Fisker Automotive recalled the first 239 Karmas delivered to the U.S. due to a risk of battery fire caused by coolant leak….
    a Fisker Karma was involved in a home fire that also burnt two other cars in Fort Bend County, Texas. The chief fire investigator said the Karma was the origin of the fire that spread to the house
    A second fire incident took place in August 2012 when a Karma caught fire while stopped at a parking lot

    BYD e6
    In May 2012, after a Nissan GTR crashed into a BYD e6 taxi in Shenzhen, China, the electric car caught fire after hitting a tree killing all three occupants

    a ByteDance’s automotive media in China, performed a crash test of BYD Han EV versus Arcfox Alpha-S.
    NOTE: Having been parked for 48 hours after the test, only the Han EV caught fire and burned to the ground.

    On June 15, 2022, a BYD Han EV caught fire on a road in Xaysetha district, Vientiane, Laos

    a BYD Tang DM-i (plug-in hybrid) caught fire on a flatbed tow truck, on a road in mainland China

    a BYD Qin Pro EV caught fire at a charging station in Shenzhen, China

    Dodge Ram 1500 Plug-in Hybrid demonstrator
    In September 2012 Chrysler temporarily suspended a demonstration program that was conducting with 109 Dodge Ram 1500 Plug-in Hybrids and 23 Chrysler Town & Country plug-in hybrids. All units deployed in the program were recalled due to damage sustained by three separate pickup trucks when their 12.9 kWh battery packs overheated.

    EV caught fire under water
    during the storm and flooding caused by Hurricane Sandy on the night of October 29, 2012, one Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid and 16 Fisker Karmas caught fire while being parked at Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal. The vehicles were partially submerged by flash floods caused by the hurricane…an EV under water can catch fire…..
    ice cars under water don’t catch fire …..lol

    The lithium-ion battery of an i-MiEV caught fire at the Mizushima battery pack assembly plant…….In May 2019 an Outlander caught fire after immersion in salt water

    There have been at least thirty deaths involving incidents of Tesla car fires
    A Tesla Model S caught fire after the vehicle hit debris on a highway……
    a fire broke out in an Irvine, California garage where a Tesla Model S was plugged in and charging….etc..etc..

    a Nissan Leaf caught fire and was destroyed on a road

    a VW ID.3 caught fire while travelling

    a VW e-Golf caught fire in Triangel, Germany.

    a Panamera E-Hybrid that was plugged into a household outlet for charging in Thailand burst into flames.

    a Porsche Taycan burned while parked in a residential garage in Florida

    a fully electric Hyundai Ioniq caught fire in Sehnde-Müllingen, Germany

    a Kona Electric was parked in a residential garage . The owner reported that the car was not plugged in at the time. An unprovoked fire began, and this triggered an explosion that projected the garage door across the street and caused damage to the attached structure.

    an Audi E-Tron Sportback caught fire near a car dealership in Munich, Germany,

    a BMW i3 caught fire in Vorendaal, Netherlands, while conntected to a charging station

    a Renault Zoe EV caught fire in Karmøy, Norway.

    a Fiat 500e crashed into a tree near Schmogrow-Fehrow, Germany, and caught fire.

    a Jaguar I-Pace crashed into a tree and caught fire in Oslo, Norway

    Electric ships
    The Norwegian ferry MF Ytterøyningen operated by Norled was delivered in 2006 and is equipped with a Corvus Orca Energy storage system (ESS) with 1989 kWh capacity. A small fire was reported on October 10, 2019 in the battery room

    a StreetScooter caught fire in a workshop in Trier, Germany,

    https://www.motorbiscuit.com/tesla-model-s-burned-down-house/?fbclid=IwAR1C8qY54KjsGMm05b-ariXmJ9zoSocosqEaViIbIWEDuG6u6G0UoQ_3HW8

    • EV ferries catching fire too….lol

      Electric ships

      The Norwegian ferry MF Ytterøyningen operated by Norled was delivered in 2006 and is equipped with a Corvus Orca Energy storage system (ESS) with 1989 kWh capacity. A small fire was reported on October 10, 2019 in the battery room

      • So what happens to the batteries after their life span has run out? Or when they catch fire and have to be extinguished. Somehow. Do they get buried, where they contaminate the water supply? These idiot fools who are all on board with the EEEEE VEEEE’s do not seem to consider this aspect.

  3. The performance of later Camaro(s) made a decent case for me to eschew my lifetime embargo on all things GM, except for that ridiculously high window sill. The few times I had them as rentals I found the lack of visibility terrifying.

      • Too bad Battery Baloney is still going strong, thanks to lavish subsidies from Energy ‘Secretary’ Jennifer Granholm, who touted in October 2022 that ’20 companies will receive a combined $2.8 billion to build and expand commercial-scale facilities in 12 states.’ Gloriously, Jenny’s free-money tidal wave rolls on:

        ‘In a news release, LG Energy officials called [its Queen Creek AZ] the “largest single investment for a stand-alone battery manufacturing facility in North America.” Initially, only about $1.4 billion was expected to be invested. Now, LG says another portion of the plant will create lithium iron phosphate (LFP) pouch-type batteries for energy storage systems (ESS). In total, it’s an investment worth about $5.5 billion.

        “With this historic investment from LGES, Arizona has become the battery manufacturing capital of the country,” chirped ‘Governor’ Katie Hobbs. Late last year, American Battery Factory announced a $1.2 billion lithium-ion plant in Tucson.’

        https://www.azfamily.com/2023/03/24/lg-doubles-down-commitment-queen-creek-battery-plant-set-invest-55-billion/

        This deluded-fruitcake lemming run is happening nationwide — on a scale that ensures catastrophic overcapacity. Battery Baloney is the 2020s equivalent of Beanie Babies, the world’s first internet sensation in 1995. But just as Beanie Babies millionaires are long gone, by 2025 Battery Baloney billionaires will be panic-selling their yachts and penthouses to stave off foreclosure.

  5. GM should have cleaned up their manufacturing act in 80s and 90s. But quarterly profits was the way to go. Now it is selling Buicks in China and run by soul brothers and sisters of woke Silicon Valley Bank in the USA. And will end the same way.

  6. Ford expected to announce HUGE losses in EV sales … other automakers are bound to follow suit

    ” an analyst at Deutsche Bank, estimates that Ford may be incurring gross losses of approximately $9,000 per electric vehicle sold.

    The analyst predicts that Ford will announce on Thursday operating losses of $6 billion for the Model e in 2022,”

    http://www.yourdestinationnow.com/2023/03/ford-expected-to-announce-huge-losses.html

    ——————

    Question: are EV’s a flash in the pan, a temporary craze?

  7. Sad, the year the Camaro is killed off is the same year my 67 goes back on the road. While not stock a 350, 4spd and 12 bolt posi is still a fun combo.

  8. Didn’t think that the Mustang would be the last one standing to be honest. It will likely only last until 2028 in it’s current form though. (the Mach-E isn’t a Mustang in my book) I figured Ford would be first to discontinue V8 engines, but at this point will be the last of the big three. That is if you buy trucks or the Mustang, good luck finding a V8 in anything else. Go figure….

    In some ways letting Camaro go is better than making it electric like the Challenger. Challenger (and Charger) will now die a slow death as few current owners of them will want them, and Chrysler won’t find enough replacement buyers.

    GM has never been committed to Camaro as much as Ford has been to Mustang. Yes, Ford has made some pretty bad mistakes with the Mustang (the Mustang II and the Mach-E as the big examples). We will see what happens in 2028, as putting a V8 under the hood, or any engine for that matter will likely be impossible. They will know what happens with the electric Challenger at that point (if the rumored ICE V6 model materializes etc too), knowing the real fans of the model will not want electric. Will Mustang buyers accept a four banger in order to even keep an engine under the hood? Or will “Mustangs” be lame electric crossover only?

    It seems certain that Camaro name will be pasted on an electric crossover too. Yuck…..

    If sanity somehow returns will the big three be able to pivot quickly enough back to ICE and real muscle cars? Maybe someday we will have cars like the Mustang, Camaro and Challenger again, but it seems unlikely the big three will be the ones making them. Sad to see these nameplates die like this.

    • > Will Mustang buyers accept a four banger in order to even keep an engine under the hood?

      My rental car when I visited my parents this past Christmas was a 4-cylinder Mustang. It had plenty of get-up-and-go thanks to the turbo, but it sounded oddly like an old-school VW Beetle when you put your foot in it. (Especially odd since it’s not a boxer.)

      • Hi Scott,

        The Mustang has always been a pony car – available with a variety of engines, ranging from mild sixes and fours (in the ’70s) to the V8s in the GTs. While it would tragic for the Mustang to not be available with a V8, I don’t think it would kill it.

  9. EeeVee fanboi Al Roooooot waxes delusional:

    ‘Ford will host a “teach-in” to go over its new financial reporting structure. Instead of reporting financial results by region, Ford will report results for its traditional car business (Blue), its business generated by its professional customers (Pro), and its rapidly growing electric-vehicle business (Model e).’

    https://tinyurl.com/3xftmm7y

    Teach-in, dude! Groovy!

    ‘Ford’s Model e EV business lost about $900 million in 2021 and $2.1 billion in 2022. Management expects the loss in 2023 will be about $3 billion.’

    Extrapolate linearly, and ‘Model e’ would lose $4 billion in 2024. Mix in a recession, though, and you can pencil in $6 billion of red ink for 2024.

    ‘Overall, Ford’s EV profitability feels about right. Down the road, Ford is targeting Model e operating profit margins of 8%.’

    Losing $3 billion ‘feels about right,’ on the way to a feeble single-digit margin way off in the rosy future?? Goes to show why you shouldn’t take investment advice from ink-stained, frayed-collar wretches like Al Roooooooooot.

    If teardrops were pennies and heartaches were gold
    I’d have all the riches my pockets would hold
    I’d be oh-so-wealthy with treasures untold
    If teardrops were pennies and heartaches were gold

    — Dolly Parton & Porter Wagoner, If Teardrops Were Pennies

  10. Ford just reported a 2022 loss of 2 billion for their EV division. Since they weren’t bailed out like GM, you have to wonder how they’re being forced to go all EV. I wonder if all the activity around EVs is just to get their stock price up. GM talks the EV talk, but since they lose big money on every one they sell, I don’t think they’re that motivated to sell them.

  12. ‘So, farewell to Camaro.’ — eric

    Back in 1966, GM spent a lot of time thinking up that name. They wanted something sporty, European or Italian-sounding … and preferably starting with a ‘C,’ to go with Corvair, Chevelle, Chevy II, and Corvette. [The Five Cs, as it were — an expression known to every Arizona school child, referring to a different list.]

    They found their ‘C’ word, but it had a fatal taint, as Wikipedia recalls: ‘The name Camaro was conceived by Chevrolet merchandising manager Bob Lund and General Motors vice president Ed Rollett, while they were reading Heath’s French and English Dictionary. Camaro was slang, meaning “friend, pal, or comrade.”

    ‘Camaro,’ comrades: now Mary Barra says Camaro is our new EeeVeeee companion for life — easy on the eyes; easy on the kilowatt-hours; easy on the cliiiiiiiiiiimate. Never mind that it’s a bit of a shotgun wedding.

    Sponsored struggle sessions will be offered for disoriented bitter clingers, obsessed with the past, often apprehended while shaking their fist at the sky crying, “A Camaro runs on gasoline! And it has a four-barrel carburetor!! I remember! I heard it sucking air! I am NOT making this up!!!”

    Snickering young adults will viddy with their phones as security personnel inject the ranting old codger with a tranquilizer, and cart his limp form off for psychiatric evaluation. Everybody knows gasoline is contraband. What got into the raving old loony?

    • Thanks Jim for the History lesson and the chuckle.

      BTW, the nurses in Psychiatric Ward are not too bad looking at all
      Signed, Old Codger

  13. RIP Camaro. You were a year or two late to the party. And many would say you should have left the party a year or five earlier, before you began to embarrass yourself.

  15. This is the template for how they roll with CBDCs. The TBTF auto makers have been cajoled into serving their pay masters, not their customers. Top down, bottom up, monetary authorities are nothing if not predictable. GovCo largesses chases honest money out of existence and at this point, honest money is on the ropes. 60 years of rewarding failure and shiftlessness is beginning to come home to roost. Universal CBDCs will be a breeze for them to pull off, as they showed in their beta test of fake flu kabuki.

    Even among people who “get it” I doubt 1 in 10 will resist beyond some token grumbling. How many, even here use their smart phones, credit cards, and other digital accoutrements for much of modern life? Yet I’m expected to believe that once the digital gulag is rolled out people will step up and resist en numbers high enough to make a difference. Its a carrot and a stick approach that TPTB have mastered to a Tee. The fact that most people still use credit cards for most purchases even though it punishes the retailer, and gives 2-3% vigg right off the top to the special people agitating for monetary slavery says it all.

    The time left to crush this coming brutal regime is quickly coming to an end. Once the banks start widespread use this summer, followed by GovCo its over. UBI, with a dash of free food, sports ball, and donuts, will ensure their success. My bet is by this time next year we will look back on these as the good ole days.

      • Hi Mister,

        I have encountered that as well. And when I do, I refuse to pay with a card. Cash is legal tender – and if they won’t accept it as payment, then as far as I am concerned, you have the right to just walk out with whatever they refused to accept payment for.

        • Eric,

          You’re gonna love this. Panera Bread is experimenting with a technology that would allow the palm of your hand to be scanned to pay for goods purchased there. If people accept this creepy idea, having the palm of your hand scanned could be the ONLY form of payment accepted there, and it’s also likely to spread to other retailers. And with this push for CBDCs, there could even come a day where you HAVE to have an implant in your hand to be able to pay for goods. This implant could theoretically also be used to determine whether you’ve had the latest mRNA “vaccine” from Pfizer, pledged loyalty to “Joe Biden”, exceeded your “carbon footprints”, etc….

          https://www.technocracy.news/toward-cashless-panera-bread-debuts-palm-reading-payment-system/

        • I might be wrong on this, but isn’t it illegal to not accept Federal Reserve Notes when they are presented for official payment? I’m fairly sure Ron Paul’s presidential campaign even suggested getting rid of that very law.

          • Hi Logan,

            I think so. Paper money is “legal tender” and “for all debts, public and private.” If a store refuses to accept payment for goods via cash then it seems to me they have decided to give you whatever it is for free.

      • Ironic, that they’d prefer the use of a card…for which they have to pay 3-4% for the privilege of accepting…..which given the margins in retail these days, is quite significant.

        • Handing cash is about the same expense if not a little more. Banks charge businesses fees for cash deposits, Brinks charges a percentage of cash handled. And register drawers need to be managed. Because the manager was probably running the register 3 months ago, no corporate overlords are going to trust him to mind the till either.

          Joke is the computers aren’t much more reliable either. And because everyone up the chain trusts computers they don’t bother to audit until it is too late. But far easier to point the finger at “hackers” or another large firm then your own incompetence.

          • Good points, RK. I guess too, the cards give them another opportunity to collect ‘data’. Naturally, I’d assume that the big national chains get a good discount on the ‘vig’ too- maybe Walton’s World Of Weirdos & Third World Bazaar pays somethig like 1%, where Joe’s Wallet Shop & Autoclaves pays 3%?

          • A long time ago there was software for POS point of sale terminals that would make say…20% of all sales disappear…cbdc will plug that hole…

      • I’ve yet to find anyone other than motel chains, airlines, or online retailers that demand a CC Mister. I admit to being lazy at times. Traveling back and forth across the fruited plan as of late, I need the card to hold a room, but most of the time I am able to pay with cash the next day when I check out. Cant remember the last time I even tried to pay for a plane ticket with cash. Would probably get an epic beat down for that today.

    • A Fed paper from 2019 talking about money as a means of social control:

      https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fed-proposes-4th-function-money-means-social-control

      From link:

      But there is a fourth function of money: as a means of social control. The centralized monopoly over the functions of money held by sovereign governments and central banks has generated great income and wealth imbalances. Concerns about a lack of central bank performance with respect to financial inclusion, income inequality, economic system stability and the tendency of central banks to intermediate on behalf of large financial institutions supported the creation of cryptocurrency”

      —-

      I agree with you that, on the micro level, we’re almost there with respect to smart phones, credit cards, etc. CBDCs, though would enable their evil macro plans to be implemented, probably not even by humans but autonomously via computers and AI bots. Open the pod bay doors, HAL…

    • CBDC will make the Great Pandemic look like a walk in the park, without a mask. I most often use a debit card, I don’t borrow money, but as long as I can switch to cash, I’m not enslaved to it. If you can’t, there is nothing they can’t make you do. Enslaved to it. I started using a debit card back when Obama gas was four bucks a gallon, and made my wallet way too fat to carry that much cash. Once stopped at a gas station/convenience store and got $29 worth of gas. Offered the clerk a 50. “Don’t you have anything smaller?”. Me “what do you want, a 30?” Lights coming on in his head, realizing what we were being driven to.

  16. There is an ongoing question as to whether the actions of the totalitarian U.S. Government are more like the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, indicating that the political questions of the 1930s remain unsolved.

    In reality the U.S. Government is a hybrid of the two — culturally, it is radically egalitarian and communist, and thus more similar to its wartime ally the USSR.

    But economically, it is corporatist, like Nazi Germany. Under corporatism, supposedly “private” corporations are effectively controlled by the government. Their main source of income is the state, they are heavily regulated by the state, and they push the official state ideology. That is exactly what we are seeing in every sector of the economy. Did your bank fuck up because they were too busy promoting “woke” shit instead of doing the actual bean-counting of banking? No worry, Uncle Sugar will backstop every single bank account, no matter how much it exceeds the statutory FDIC limit. if your politics are correct, you won’t be allowed to fail.

    At least it could be said that the auto industry of the Third Reich, despite being controlled by the ideology of the Nazi Party, actually built practical, well-engineered, affordable cars that the German volk was happy to buy.

    The same cannot be said of GM…

    • The main difference between communist USSR and socialist Germany is that Socialist Germany realized there was a LOT of money in corporatism. Communist USSR didn’t care about money, as long as the “more equal” maintained their privileges.

      • The idea was the monetization of productive physical labor. Germany did not have any appreciable amount of precious metals or reserve currency, and few natural resources other than water and abundant coal reserves.
        Physical labor is the primary source of all economic value, not what some Talmudic gnome sitting on his pile of gold and silver claims it to be. A true national economy must exist to serve the people, not the other way around. No truly sovereign nation would let its citizens starve or suffer degradation and debt slavery simply to appease the lurking market worshiping demons.
        The German people was under no imperative whatsoever to starve or turn back to those supposedly idyllic days when Berlin was the cheap sex capital of Europe and women were often forced to prostitute themselves for a cup of sugar or a piece of bread.
        Hitler’s great crime (other than having lost the war) was that the National Socialist economic policies worked so well. This no doubt horrified the usurious overlords of Wall St. and the City of London, and enraged FDR , whose so called “New Deal” had been totally ineffective at dealing with the depression in the US.

    • As I have said many times, the differences are academic and irrelevant. Communism is socialism is naziism is democracy. The only real measure is the misery, slavery, torture, and death they cause.

      The American people are and have been in revolt, trying by nonviolent means (voting) to fix the problems. Ron Paul didn’t have the resources to overcome the machines, Ross Perot was blackmailed, and Trump shocked them by winning leading to the blatant insurrection against his presidency, the coup of 2019, and the installation of the Biden junta.

      They will do to Trump what they did to czar Nicholas and his family. They are evil, and killing and lying are their stock in trade. But the American people are not asleep, they are just avoiding violence. The question is for how much longer can they afford to?

    • The government is fully controlled by the WEF/CCP….

      the democrats are full of and controlled 100% by the ccp/wef…blue states and most municipal governments are controlled 100% by the ccp/wef too…..thank the people that voted for democrats leftist/communists for this coup….

      The ccp and the wef are closely intertwined now, bringing in a one world marxist government, in a combined effort…… when china opened up people thought it would become like the west, instead the west is turning into communist china.

      all the G7 now have ccp/wef controlled marxist governments, later on they will fight because the ccp wants to run the planet, they are using the wef as another useless idiot to attain that outcome….all the G7 leaders are useful idiots controlled by the wef which is being used by the ccp to take over the planet…..

      Later on the leftist idealists, or “useful idiots,” are no longer needed, because they would be disillusioned, become obstacles, push back, turn against the new government. They are going to be eliminated, exiled, or imprisoned.

      The wef and all the G7 leaders controlled by it, are just useless idiots being used by the ccp to bring in a one world ccp government.

      The 15 min city/prison/death camp is a ccp invention…they will include millions of surveillance cameras, digital ID and CBDC coming to your city soon….

      “In 10 years, there’ll be prison camps with organs being harvested just as there are in western China,” Byrne went on to say.

      The Chinese regime has been killing Falun Gong practitioners for their organs for more than 20 years, according to a panel of experts who attended a virtual conference hosted by the advocacy group Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) on Nov. 19, and independent investigations.

      Numerous official sources around the world say the regime is holding more than a million Uyghurs in “re-education” camps. Former detainees who spoke with The Epoch Times revealed that they were being raped, tortured, brainwashed, and savagely abused.

      Anybody not chinese will have the same future as the Uyghurs.

      ATTENTION:Conservatives are already being treated like Uyghurs….

      the track record of communist governments is a horror story:
      They have littered the 20th century with 160 million corpses, not foreign people killed in a time of war, but their own people, killed by their own governments in times of peace.
      Over 66 million slaughtered under communism in the Soviet Union,
      over 69 million murdered in Red China.
      Over two Million killed under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
      The millions more killed under Mengistu in Ethiopia, under Samora Machel in Mozambique, and Agestino Neto in Angola and under Fidel Castro in Cuba.”

      @ 1:26:10 the French farmers ……the best protesters….. the government is scared of them

      @ 1:37:30 the CCP and the WEF are one united force right now…later they will fight…the ccp wants to take over completely later…run the planet….

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqHQN54XCL0

  17. The root cause (or perhaps enabling mechanism) of virtually all of this societal turmoil (including the auto market) is the elite’s control over money, which is 1/2 of virtually every transaction that occurs. With this control, they’re able to skirt market forces, which would otherwise act as a enormous check on their power.

    A perfect example of this is the “covid” lockdowns, which otherwise would have caused a nearly immediate economic crash. However, the Fed just printed billions of dollars to delay and attenuate the crash. Voila, the lockdowns (to one extent or another) were incentivized and could endure for years; oh and by the way, government, elite bankers and other destructive friends of the state (think BLM, planned parenthood, colleges, woke institutions, etc.) could siphon off a huge portion and cause further destruction and turmoil.

    As long as they control the money supply this shit will continue until they entirely destroy it Venezuela style. That seems to be the art of the Fed: to walk that fine line of inflating the money supply as much as possible, but not too much that it destroys the money in the short term (i.e. to steal without getting caught). I don’t know why most everybody believes it to be ok for the Fed to counterfeit.

    • I was at the bank a week ago to withdraw some cash money from the account I own there. One bill was a 1977 fifty. I thought later on that the 50 dollars in 1977 would have bought nearly 80 gallons of gas at 60 cents per gallon. In 2023, you buy about 16 gallons.

      1977 dollars bought five times more gas than 2023 dollars do today.

      A 1977 dollar is worth 20 cents today. Demand for oil never dies. The why there is supply. A laptop bought in 2000 for 600 dollars. It’s worthless today unless you want a collectible for the novelty. An old Amiga has some value.

      Oil sells at a rate of 100,000,000 barrels each doggone day.

      Price doesn’t matter, demand remains the same, more than ever.

      You buy gas at 19.9 in March of 1970 during a gas war, you buy gas in March of 2023 during a real war.

      Your fault you drive and waste a precious resource. Stop it!

      • 100,000,000 barrels a day?! But..but…remember ‘peak oil’? The experts agreed!!!! We were running out of erl….30 years ago…surely it’s all gone now! The experts! The ‘scince’!!!!

        First there was the A-rab erl embargo of the 70’s…and we had to use less erl.
        Then there was peak oil…and we had to use less erl…
        Now there’s ‘man-made catastrophic global climate change’…and we have to use less erl…..

        The experts always agree!! A new problem every decade or two….and the solution is always the same! The experts agree! No one remembers what the experts said yesterday, just as long as they keep inventing new problems to justify the solutions……

        Funny how that works out, eh?

        • Far from being “fossil fuel”, hydrocarbons are not only plentiful but are being created by yet-unknown processes deep within the earth.
          The term “fossil fuel” was coined in the 1950s when little was known about the processes by which oil is produced. Oil is “abiotic” in nature, as even depleted oil wells are “filling back up” from deep below the earth’s surface.
          Oil interests are drilling wells at 5,000 feet, 10,000 feet, and 15,000 feet and deeper, and coming up with oil deposits way below the layers and levels where “fossils” were known to exist.
          As Russia gained much expertise in deep-well drilling and coming up with oil deposits far deeper than that of the level of “fossils”, abiotic oil at extreme depths was actually a Russian “state secret” for a long time.
          Fossil material found in hydrocarbons are a result of these hydrocarbons migrating through fossil layers and are not a creation of fossils.
          At the rate oil is being pumped out of the ground, there is not enough fossil material to account for the amount of oil harvested.
          Not only that, but there are planetary bodies in which hydrocarbons are naturally occurring (without fossils).
          “Peak oil” and “fossil fuels” are discredited concepts that environmentalists and others are latching on to, in order to display their hatred of oil being a renewable resource as well as to push prices up.
          Follow the money.

          • You need a source, a deposit of something, kerogen is it.

            Kerogen

            1. n. [Geology, Geochemistry, Shale Gas]

            “The naturally occurring, solid, insoluble organic matter that occurs in source rocks and can yield oil upon heating. Kerogen is the portion of naturally occurring organic matter that is nonextractable using organic solvents. Typical organic constituents of kerogen are algae and woody plant material. Kerogens have a high molecular weight relative to bitumen, or soluble organic matter. Bitumen forms from kerogen during petroleum generation. Kerogens are described as Type I, consisting of mainly algal and amorphous (but presumably algal) kerogen and highly likely to generate oil; Type II, mixed terrestrial and marine source material that can generate waxy oil; and Type III, woody terrestrial source material that typically generates gas.”

            https://glossary.slb.com/en/Terms/k/kerogen.aspx

            What is really there are two elements, carbon and hydrogen. Oxygen is there too, water becomes heated to the point of separation.

            Some ends up as brine water.

            Heat and pressure will form oil.

            So all you really need is carbon and hydrogen to form oil into long hydrocarbon chains. One carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms, voila, methane.

            Natural gas leaks from the bottoms of the Gulf of Mexico constantly, nature at doing the job.

            Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, 95 percent of all matter is in the form of hydrogen.
            Think stars.

            It is correct that hydrocarbons can plausibly form anywhere in the universe.

  18. Eric, whats the latest on the electric mustang – heard somewhere they have been able to sell only around 50 or so in the last month. Here whenever I drive past a dealer I see a ton of them – but hardly on the road…. is it similar in the US ?

  19. I believe is was Motors Liquidation for the final solution, (MTLQ) was the ticker for GM to then reorganize, I think that was the ticker. Can’t remember everything.

    Happens to other corporations, Singer comes to mind. Singer was in receivership then lightning struck and they lived!

    Buy Bear Stearns! SVB is in good shape! Listen to Jim Cramer, clown nonpareil.

    Electric vehicles aren’t going to sell. The customer makes the decision and the customer is always right.

    Ain’t gonna be buying any of it, end of story.

    That’s what will happen.

    In 1910, the record high temp for March 22 was 80 degrees F. In 1913, the record low was set at minus 10 degrees F.

    In 1912, on April 15th, the Titanic sunk on her maiden voyage into 50 feet of Atlantic Ocean bottom mud.

    On June 6, 1912, Nova Erupta exploded and sent a volcanic cloud of dust a few miles high into the atmosphere. Must have caused some cooling over the earth.

    There you stood, everybody watched you play
    I just turned and walked away
    I had nothing left to say
    ‘Cause you’re still the same     – Bob Seger, Still the Same

    • Once production of EVs gets ramped up, they will (attempt) to force you to buy EV in many ways. And that force will be financial, cause they know the average joe will by an EV if an ICE costs them more. dam the torpedo’s.

  20. Boy the 68 camaros were just works of art. The current generation with the tiny windows and being bulked up and overweight really wont be missed much I think.

    • Yeah: I rented one, a convertible no less!, a few years ago and was aghast at how hard it was to see outta that thing! ESPECIALLY the sides! Even with the top down, the low slung seats and the high gunwales of the doors were stil very much a factor. Some of the powertrains are attractive: think corvette engine and 6spd manual. But I just cant get over how poorly the outside sight picture is. It is so bad for me, in that I would be actively worrying about it all the time, to the detriment of my driving enjoyment.

      But Mary Barra is hot

      • Hi Tom,

        I’ve owned a number of Camaros over the years but the only generation I have no love for is the current one. These cars are grotesque in their proportions and very awkward to drive as you have already noted. The interiors are also cheap and bizarre looking. The last time I got a new one to test drive, I took a picture of it parked beside my ’76 Pontiac Trans-Am (the Pontiac version of the same-year Camaro) that I still own. The new Camaro dwarfed it. Made it look like a Mustang II does when I park my Trans Am next to one.

        PS: Mary Barra is hot?

      • ‘But Mary Barra is hot’ — tom

        DSM-V points to a diagnosis of sexualized Stockholm syndrome.

        Deprogramming is possible, but it’s an arduous regimen, and many victims resist treatment for their paraphilia.

      • Are there old pictures of Barra? She looks like she *might* have been good looking 40 years ago. But I don’t know about hot

      • Well, hold on now. Is not the 2025 model year having the radio controlled kill switch, purportedly for law enforcement? (law enforcement only, yeah right). If so, hopefully the bank robbers are driving a getaway car made before model year 2025…

        • Tom,

          I’ve thought of that point, too. And if ALL cars are so equipped, an astute liberty-lover might simply deactivate any pursuing AGW-mobile, thus peacefully ending otherwise disagreeable circumstances.

      • Doubtful. I don’t see any EV Jack Boot delivery systems (AKA APCs) in the works. All still Detroit diesel powered for as far as the eye can see.

  22. Welll…GM has one more customer to please…the US Postal Service which will replace it’s fleet under Bite-me to all EV. After that, not sure where the customers will come from other than failed city/states of the Democrat/Marxist variety, as they replace their government vehicles with these dunsels.

    • Post Office cancelled that. Only 10% of 165,000 will be EV. Post Office reply to Congress.

      But in congressional testimony last year, DeJoy confirmed that only 10 percent of the new vehicles would be EVs, arguing that the USPS doesn’t “have the 3 or 4 extra billion [dollars] in our plan right now that it would take to do it.”

  23. The car companies’ EV suicide pact continues apace, nearing fruition. What’s next, the FedGov buys up all their EV inventory, and gives it away to worshipers at the “zero carbon” altar? Or does FedGov issue another edict strictly forbidding sales of ICV competition (except to the Psychopaths In Charge)? Neither will work, because people can’t live their lives per the constant “wait times” associated with EVs. Spending hours that could have been put to productive use watching the charge meter on their so called car, both while charging and while driving. While nothing new in essence, the current FedGov actively engaged in doing exactly what the people DON’T want is reaching astronomical proportions. The people have voted, with their wallets, but like “elections”, the results are ignored.
    I’m not going to even get started on the total uselessness of an EV truck, bus, or ferry.
    VW delivered the answer to their pretended dreams, with a diesel hybrid. Which US railroads have been using for several decades. It was too effective. The FedGov couldn’t abide such a simple solution. Not enough ever increasing control.
    I’ve already exceeded my usual “rant limit” for the day.

    • >total uselessness of an EV truck, bus, or ferry.

      Can’t picture a battery powered backhoe, either.
      Let’s see…
      Water line breaks, emergency callout with a partially charged backhoe trailered behind a partially charged 10 wheel dump truck. Backhoe runs out of battery before excavation is complete. Barely enough power left to get it back on the trailer. Will the truck make it back to the re-charge yard? How much water will be wasted, and what all gets flooded, before a fully charged unit shows up to finish the excavation and fix the water leak? Will it be the same unit, fully recharged, or the mandatory “backup emergency unit” now required by water departments (the “twofer” unit) so they can “better serve the public?”

      Inquiring minds want to know…

      • Or worse yet, power fails and the BH boom falls on two guys working in the hole and kills them both. Or the ditch caves in and the BH doesn’t have enough power to dig the man out that got buried, and he suffocates. Stuff like that happens occasionally, and rarely, with diesel powered BHs. Never fear, now we have EV BHs and it’s an everyday thing.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here