Oh my god a drive article that compliments Ford

[stang65]

Can we blame Kevin Rudd? TONY DAVIS
July 2, 2010

Comments 17
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Wheeler dealer ... the former PM had his finger in a lot of pies.

During the past week or so, Kevin Rudd has been accused of more things than the average defendant in a Stalinist show trial.

What surprises me, though, is that no one has yet made the obvious links between his tenure in the top job and what has happened in the car industry.

Why has no one pointed out, for example, that within six months of the Kevin07 show rolling into town, GM announced an $18.8 billion loss?

In his first 12 months, the company's sales had dropped 45 per cent in the US. So much for our supposed special relationship with that country.

Holden sales tanked here, too. Indeed, the more you look, the more you see previously hidden treachery and cast-iron proof that It Was All His Doing and Nobody Else's.

For example, Rudd did nothing for Ford, failing to stop it selling England's Jaguar to Indian interests, or Sweden's Volvo to the Chinese. How un-Australian was that?

Honda, BMW and Toyota all pulled out of formula one within a year of his election and Kevin Rudd did three-fifths of not very much about that, too.

He was probably too busy poisoning the wells, stashing away our silver and feeding our most precious secrets to our most malign enemies.

As his reign continued, plant shutdowns occurred across Europe and, eventually, in Australia. Holden released a new economy-model Commodore that used more fuel than the Falcon under real-world conditions. Not that politicians visit the real world.
Under the entire span of Rudd's prime ministership, Chrysler didn't make a single car worth buying. Surely he can't evade responsibility on that one.

Like GM, the third member of the US Big Three was forced into bankruptcy while one K. Rudd sat in the big chair.

Insiders have revealed he'd been undermining them since way back in his days in Foreign Affairs, secretly convincing them that the Dodge Caliber and Nitro models were very, very good designs and should sell exceedingly well.

Even this year, Kevin10 has busily continued on his Trotskyist-revisionist-bourgeois-antirevolutionary-antimotoring escapades.

He killed off the Holden-based Pontiac G8, axed the Falcon wagon, reduced Saab's Australian sales to one (yes, one!), sneakily modified various Toyotas to ensure they drove off of their own accord and sent enough fuel spewing into the Gulf of Mexico to power several of the four-wheel-drives parked outside every preschool.

He has also presided over a collapse in used car values, the release of an even uglier and no less pointless Porsche Cayenne and a disturbing rash of utilities with covers over the back to ensure the tray is never dirtied.

In his final days of perfidy, Rudd put a sword to the Mercury brand, forced a Lexus recall over a fuel problem and engineered a crash between

Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber that cost every Australian another hard-earned victory.

And all of it without a single other person involved.

Webber's triple back-somersault with pike and smash (at last week's Valencia GP) was obviously planned in advance and couldn't be rushed through before the coup. Still, it could have been so much more serious if such a definitive move against this enemy of the car people hadn't been taken.

Thank goodness, too, that we can now all make a completely fresh start and watch the US's Big Three bounce back, Toyota's brakes work, the revival of Pontiac's Australian-built models, Webber regaining the lead in the world championship and the creation of an all-new Falcon range including a sedan, coupe, five-door liftback, shooting brake and long-wheelbase limousine.

And while that's happening, we comrades can also engage in the important job of building cynicism for the next generation

http://theage.drive.com.au/motor-new...0701-zpog.html