SUVprime vehicles

General Motors has closed SUV assembly lines in Ohio and Wisconsin, leaving just one in Texas. Chrysler has just one, in Detroit, after closing one in Delaware. Ford also has just one, in Kentucky. One newspaper headline said, "End of the line nears for SUV." The headline writer doesn't get it. SUVs will survive, just not the big, heavy, gas guzzling ones that the Big Three made. SUV, going forward, will have to stand for Small Unthirsty Vehicles. Like the ones Japanese automakers already make. This isn't news to anyone except Big Three labor and management. And it shouldn't be news to them. Their market share has been shrinking for years. The problem was that they deluded themselves with an endless supply of excuses, allowing them to live in denial. You can argue that this was actually a good thing, up to a point. A strong union got really high wages for its members, wages that were utterly unjustified by the economics of the industry. And they got away with it for years. More power to them. But now the gravy train is over. Now the same union and its members will have to decide whether they want to try to prolong the gravy train for a fraction of the work force, or downshift to reasonable wages that might actually save the Big Three. It's really up to the rank-and-file, because the management of a union cannot stay in power if it works for goals not supported by the regular workers.