When I was a newly minted Marine running around Camp Pendleton in 1980 I noticed you couldn't march ten feet in a straight line without tripping over a Chrysler Dodge vehicle. GSA cars, M880 pick up trucks, Ram Chargers in grim OD paint jobs...
But there were also dozens, scores, hundreds of D50 pick up trucks, and later K cars and Rampages. The Feds bailed out Chrysler in '79. 60K automotive jobs went away, never to come back, but Chrysler did return to profitability in the mid eighties and ran that way until the Great Recession.
The news that Chrysler "paid back" their bailout seven years early was no shocka to anybody working for the feds.
Now I find that the public (cost to you and me, whether we ever sit in a Volt or not) cost for each Chevy Volt works out to about $250,000 each, what with subsidies and current Federal purchases.
That's pretty spendy for a coal fired golf cart that sometimes bursts into flames three days after a fender bender.
I keep hearing "What cannot go on forever, won't" but I'm really beginning to wonder what that bubble is going to sound like when it pops.
Merry Christmas.
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