Make them hitchhike.

I'm encouraging my Senator to require them to shut down their foreign factories and bring all manufacturing back into the US before any money is committed. If they can't afford to operate 17 or 30 plants - fine. Operate 5 big ones and let the workers, the unions, and the economy work out the costing - it is what it is.

Make Nardelli take a Sebring. $100 says he resigns his post before he makes it through Ohio.

And what happens to the planes? They'll use them to fly everywhere else. I'm one of the people that scoffed at them using the private jets to arrive to Washington, but seriously, it's not as if they're selling them off to make money. It's just the image that flying in a private jet to wherever you're about to beg for money that ticks people off.

Just fly coach. It's not that hard.

Why don't they have to push one of their cars there ? More closely relates to their customer experience. While they are at it, why not have a one sided fight with a "zone manager" or "regional rep" who will tell them that their blown head gasket is normal for a car just out of warranty. I personally dont give a damn what they drive or fly up there,I am so resentful of their arrogant mooching off the public that I will never even consider one of their cars again.Nardelli ,Wagoner,Mulally,have one of your flunkies read this next sentence to you while you are lounging in your hot tub :

Kiss my ass !

@Ben Popken: Or worse, take a Greyhound bus.

Wasn't this a skit on SNL two weeks ago?

Ahh, the Family Truckster. Which one of the big three is still making this model? I must have one for my Chevy Chase shrine.

@karmaghost: Or better, take the red pill.

@Finder: I don't care if they fly business class. Driving just seems like a dick move. "Oooh, look at me! Everyone got mad at me for flyng, so I'm going to drive. See what a concerned guy I am? [The public can kiss my ass!]"

Didn't this happen already, like yesterday? All this "going to" talk seems a bit late.

@undefined: it was a special edition ford ltd. ive only seen 1 in the wild, and it may have been a fake.

What matters far more to me is the gall they have for just refusing to change how they operate both on the company and union side.

It is not just the economy that is doing horribly. It is your business itself. The foreign automakers are not going out of business like you are.

WHY WHY WHY are they only hybridizing their SUV's? That's like making a "low-fat" cake and eating the whole thing when you're on a diet. IT DOES NO FRICKIN GOOD!

26 mpg SUCKS! No matter what the car that is atrocious!

@Snarkysnake: I'd love for one of them to have their alternator blow up and have to get a tow and leave their car at a strange dealership while they handle their stuff in DC. That was my Pontiac experience.

I don't get what the huge deal is. A CEO is much more important and time constrained than a blue or white collar worker. They are highly compensated to lead their respective companies. A one hour flight vs. an 8 hour drive seems to make better sense, considering the 20 grand it costs to fly is so absolutely miniscule in the big picture.

You know what they should do, is give the unions the bird and restructure the workforce. The unions have had a huge impact on their unprofitability.

@downwithmonstercable: And yet NONE of them have mentioned it.. Think they're in their pocket much?

I hope they make the environmentally friendly choice of carpooling.

The fact that these CEOs are thrilled about getting 26-29 mpg shows just how out of touch they really are. It just gives me another reason why these automobile companies need to go the way of the dodo. They are no longer competitive.

Heck, the Saturn I bought in 1999 got 32 mpg, and it definitely wasn't a hybrid.

Drive down in a car that's getting 40-50 mpg, then we'll take you just a little more seriously.

@Oranges w/ Cheese: I've been wondering the same thing. Why do they keep making their giant trucks into hybrids when the point is to save gas? Make smaller cars into hybrids so we can get 50MPG. Why have a hybrid Escape but not a hybrid Focus? Did Honda and Toyota start their hybrid lines with SUVs? No, they were smart. Can't the big 3 pull their heads out of their asses and make hybrids for the masses instead of the top 30%?

@karmaghost: You know its cheaper for a group of people to use a private jet than it is to fly commercial right? The jet is already paid for.
To those suggesting they sell the jets...
Who do you purpose buy them? A down economy isn't exactly the best time to sell a house, let alone a jet. Congress critizing them is nothing more than petty politicing.
Blame the CEO's all you want but even if they could build cars as desirable and to the same quality as Honda or Toyota, they would still cost $1000 more due to bullshit union contracts. They can't compete until they go bankrupt and the UAW is sent packing.

This seems like such a huge publicity stunt. Why not just pay for business class seats on a plane? It isn't like anyone is going to care. The problem was the cost of operating an entire jet just for a few people.

@Oranges w/ Cheese: If you assume people are going to keep buying SUVs, then the percentage gains from hybridizing an SUV are much greater than with a car.

I guess that attitude is basically "If we can't get people into cars, we can at least reduce the impact of the SUV."

Each car should be equipped with cameras inside and
out so that a reality show can be made with the footage
documenting each CEO's experience with his own product
on a serious road trip. It would even make some money
for the automakers, as we would love to see them spill
coffee on themselves, suffer lower back pain, deal with
radio controls that require too much attention to simply
change stations, and so on.

@Oranges w/ Cheese: Not sure if I am reading this right.. you think the CEOs are in bed with the unions?

@Snarkysnake: I'd rather have Rick Wagoner drive one of their most "popular" vehicles, like a subcompact or a Cavalier, something like that. If you're a CEO of a car manufacturer, you should be driving the vehicles that you sell explicitly, so you know what the customer is experiencing. Make them drive a different car every two weeks or every month, randomly selected from the assembly line.

@jfischer: I bet they'd probably take their highest end cars...Mulally will probably be in a Lincoln, the GM guy in a Yukon or something, not sure about the Chrysler guy though. All their cars suck.

I really don't see what the problem is when a national (let alone international) company has a private jet to get from place to place so long as it's used in a financially sound way (i.e. you use it to fly groups of people to important meetings so they only spend one day dealing with it instead of say half a day flying there, one day meeting and half a day flying back).

I just started working for a national builder and they have a private jet that I've already gotten to fly in because it was the most economical/timely way to transport 6 or 7 people to 3 important meetings in 3 different states in 2 days.

I'm not defending all their practices, but I suspect that if people did the math on all the folks traveling to those hearings (I doubt it was just the CEO, they probably had assistants, lawyers, etc... going along) it would make sense to fly them on the already owned private jet than to make them all fly commercially.

It's one thing to get upset over "bonuses" for executives of companies that are in the toilet, but private jets aren't just something used by rich celebrities to hop around to vacation spots, for a large enough business with interests in geographically diverse areas, a private plane/jet of some sort can be a sound financial decision. People getting upset about it just seems stupid and uninformed.

I felt that way when Palin kept bring up how she sold Alaska's jet too. Alaska is such a huge state that I think the state government should have a good jet to get staff and supplies from place to place without being at the mercy of commercial or charter flights. Hell just look at all the complaints about airlines in the article about the $15 checked bag fee (or any other article about commercial airlines really).

@dmuth: They have tons of cars that get over 30.

@Snarkysnake: You know domestics have come a long way in reliability and quality right?

@The Name's Ash78, Housewares: I'll second THAT. My Legacy GT Wagon is in the body shop (apparently some other customers of the local post office can't get in and out of a parking space without hitting stationary objects like my bloody car) and the best I could squeeze out of Enterprise was a Sebring. I keep telling myself it's better than the PT Cruiser they tried to stick me with, but I find that I need to chant that mantra fairly often.

@olderbudwizer: Uhhh. The idea is that we would like for them to be profitable so that they can repay the "loans" we are going to give them.

@dragonvpm: Dead on. Private jets...more economical? Yes. PR nightmare, especially when some asshole congressman care more about getting reelected than actually serving his constituents? Yes.

@downwithmonstercable: Literally. do you know how much their POS vehicles weigh?

@GearheadGeek: Wow, the elusive LGT Wagon? I'd guess you'd be disappointed with just about any other car, let alone a Sebring.

Your gut is probably right about the PT Cruiser.

I'm betting when you take into account the extra time spent being driven to and from Washington (figuring an average hourly rate based on their compensation) that the private jets are the same price (or cheaper) than being driven.

@Oranges w/ Cheese: Making a previously 16 mpg vehicle into a 26 mpg vehicle is an exceptional gain (almost 40%). How would a 40% reduction in our oil consumption sound? Pretty good, eh?

@dragonvpm:

I think the issue with alaska's jet is that it couldn't land at a majority of the airports in Alaska the governor needed to go to so it was pretty much useless.

@Mikestan: Considering they're sure to bring 8-10 staffers apiece for "support", then I'd say there will be quite a few cars involved, and hopefully some carpooling.

@dmuth: As I posted earlier in a response to someone else, 26-29 mpg IS really good when that car previously got much less.

@PinkBox: People were idiotic enough in the first place to claim they shouldn't have flown private jets...this is a "screw you" move aimed to please the least intelligent among us.

@jfischer: I'd definitely pay to watch that! Live webcam FTW!

I think it was a stupid move on their part. They (the CEO's) should have known that flying on a private jet to beg for money would have rubbed some people the wrong way. For important meetings, I can see why they may need a private jet but for this particular meeting, they should have gone commercial. Even if they had flown first class I don't think anyone would have raised an eyebrow.

As far as driving to DC goes, I agree with HFC, it's a dick move. It's like they are trying to be pricks.

I don't buy from them anyway so I couldn't care less if they go tits up. A honda is the best car I've ever owned. Everything (minus a Jeep) that I have ever owned that came from one of the big 3, has been junk.

@downwithmonstercable: Lead their respective companies? You mean like running them into the ground and begging the government for 18 billion dollars? Hell, even I can lead a company to that fate and I have no business experience or education whatsoever.

@Oranges w/ Cheese: They're not ONLY hybridizing their SUVs, in fact Ford is coming out with a hybrid Fusion for '09 that has a better EPA rating than the comparable Camry Hybrid. a) that's not yet in production, and b) it's actually assembled in Mexico and Mulally probably thought someone would whine about THAT if he drove one to DC.

The Escape Hybrid has been a pretty good niche for Ford. The previous-gen Fusion was already well into its product cycle before gas prices spiked, so it's probably better that they did it right and brought it out with the refreshed '09 model.

The Malibu Hybrid is a joke, though. It's hard enough to make a purely financial case for a hybrid unless you do lots of stop/go city driving, but the Malibu offers almost nothing for a several thousand dollar price premium. GM's "mild hybrid" system is pretty crappy, you'd be better off with a 4-cyl normal Malibu for less money.

@dragonvpm: I suspect that if people did the math on all the folks traveling to those hearings

Unfortunately you lost 95% of the American public right there. People take what they're fed - they don't think for themselves.

@dragonvpm: I think you hit the nail on the head when you said "6 or 7 people to 3 meetings." That's a lot different than taking 3 planes to fly 3 people to 1 meeting. They may have gotten still gotten some flak if they had plane-pooled in one private jet, but not nearly as much.

@smythe: The one saving grace for the automakers is their foreign sales. The moment they start shutting down the foreign factories (many of which are actually co-owned with local companies, especially in China) they may lose access to those markets.