Look to Cuba for lesson on Big 3 woes

The present difficulties of the Big Three automakers were written in stone at the end of World War II. Rapidly shifting from producing tanks and planes, the Big Three quickly pulled out their old blueprints and tooling to start where they left off in their aging auto plants. It would take a number of years for the Japanese and Europeans to start producing autos as their plants had to be rebuilt from rubble. When they were rebuilt, they had the state-of-the-art technology to be cost-effective and decided to build cars with zero defects to make inroads in the American marketplace. The American buying public soon switched their brand loyalty to these foreign makes to the detriment of the American automakers. But soon, American automobiles could match quality with the foreign brands and in time both would experience the same number of recalls. But were American cars ever that bad in the first place? Pre-Castro Cubans had a love affair with American cars and had thousands of them in traffic. When Castro came into power, it rapidly ended the importation of American cars and today these 1950s cars are still on Cuban roads with thousands upon thousands of miles on them. Without available replacement parts, ingenious Cubans have found ways to duplicate parts to keep them going; olive oil is often used in place of unavailable brake fluid. The small foreign cars Castro imported to replace American cars have long gone onto the junk pile while these 1950s American relics drive on into another change of Cuban government.

Walter Santi

Bloomingdale