Jim Davidson Motors

There are several routes I take when I go jogging, and most of them lead through Jim Davidson Motors. Jim Davidson is at the corner of my street and has been a fixture here since 1949. My family is a relative newcomer by that standard, since we arrived only in 1980.

During just about any time of year, except for winter – I’m not crazy – you’ll find me running along our street in the late afternoon shortly before the dinner hour. After limbering up in the driveway, I either head north and hit the old Dodge-Chrysler dealership in about a minute and a half, and then do anything up to a 45-minute run, or go south towards the lake and visit Jim Davidson on the way back.

How many times I’ve run by the service department, and cut through the hordes of cars and vans, I have no idea. Over the years I’ve probably done a marathon just running through Jim Davidson. Today, however, there are no more new vehicles on the lot. Why? Jim Davidson has gone belly up. All that’s left is something called Canada Motor Car Co., which sells used cars. This company once shared the used-car lot with Jim Davidson, but now they’re going it alone.

It’s a sign of the times.

My Dad was a salesman who put 50,000 miles a year on his car. That’s right. Miles. He always drove a GM product, usually a Pontiac, but sometimes a Buick. Not in a million years would he have considered a foreign car, and he bought a new car every three years or so.

In the ‘60s the Japanese arrived big-time and ‘Made in Japan’ was synonymous for junk, especially in terms of automobiles. But their cars improved, and in the ‘70s and ‘80s, they kept taking bigger and bigger bites out of the domestic auto market. Even then, my father would never have considered buying a foreign car. The mere notion of it left a bad taste in his mouth.

It’s funny how times have changed. At our house, you’ll find a late-model Honda Accord, which is for my wife and me. I bought it used, privately, last summer which is how I buy all my cars now. Two or three years old, low mileage, still on warranty. Nothing to do with dealers. Lots of people say I’m crazy but my last car, a 1994 Mazda MX6, I drove for 11 years. The one before that, a 1984 Honda Prelude, I drove for ten. Without question, that Prelude was the best car I ever had. Ten years and not a single thing ever went wrong with it. Our daughter, who is a teacher, is at home and drives a 2006 Honda Civic, which she bought new.

We don’t have any problems with these cars.

Which brings us to the current global financial crisis, which according to the CEO’s of GM, Chrysler and Ford, is responsible for the Big Three requiring an emergency bailout of $25 billion from US taxpayers and who knows how much from Canadian taxpayers for their Canadian subsidiaries. The government can’t let them die, we are told, because so many jobs and spinoff industries would die with them.

I find something very un-American and anti-free enterprise about this whole concept. If you run a business and nobody wants to buy your product, then the government will bail you out. Is that how this continent developed an economy that became the envy of the world?

I have no doubt that America, and Canada along with it, will bounce back from the current economic doldrums. It might be painful and it might take longer than we’d like, but it will happen. But it won’t happen if we adopt the kind of attitude that the CEO’s of GM, Ford and Chrysler are taking.

Let’s face the facts. General Motors – at one time the proudest, biggest, and most arrogant company in the world – has become a loser, and that’s putting it mildly. They, with Ford and Chrysler, have repeatedly fought against better, greener, more fuel-efficient cars, choosing instead to make inefficient gas guzzlers that come with higher profit margins. Even when the writing was on the wall, they continued to adopt this dinosaur mentality. Today, GM, the former no. 1, isn’t so proud and isn’t so big. Yet, it remains as arrogant as ever.

Witness the Big Three CEO’s flying off to Washington in their corporate jets – they didn’t even jet-pool to share the load! – and asking for their handouts. And appearing before the Senate banking committee and blaming their current dilemma on the “global financial crisis.” Truly, such arrogance knows no bounds.

Fact. The former biggest automaker in the world wrote the book on planned obsolescence, and sunk its tentacles into consumers like my own father for decades. Once upon a time, there wasn’t really a choice. Fact. Today there is, and as wanna-be President John McCain recently observed, the people have spoken.

I’m going to miss running through Jim Davidson Motors. When the site is occupied by Toyota or Honda or maybe some European or even a Chinese manufacturer, it won’t be the same. The cars will definitely be smaller. But rest assured that the consumer will be considerably more discerning about what they buy and don’t buy.

Ford tough? I don’t think so.