Globe and Mail reports that Dalton McGuinty is popping into Turin for a chat with the Fiat big honchos, to discuss the possibility of the company "making at least one model of the Alfa Romeo sports car before 2012". This choice is unadvisable for several reasons:
1) Fiat is in troubled waters anyway, with closures throughout Italy
2) If Italians don't buy Fiats, there's a reason. They blow.
3) Demand for sports cars is restricted, more so in Canada where snow isn't exactly a rarity
4) The timescale of this investment is too long to save the auto industry in Ontario
Leaving aside these considerations, McGuinty is also (according to the report) in talks with China, India and "folks in Germany". VolksWagen, however, already narrowed down the choices of its North American plants to three US locations. That should sound a few alarm bells, there's something wrong in the way the Ontario auto industry and labor are regulated.
Furthermore, why talk to the same China that can build the cars at virtually no cost (with contributions from Laogai slave camps) and cram them into a ship? Who in their sane Chinese mind would open up shop with higher wages, labor union bother and a meddling provincial government? Talks with India can lead somewhere, but the same considerations about labor price, unions and regulations come into play.
This makes no sense.
1 comment:
McGuinty talking to Fiat ... how nice , perhaps that will be as successful as the Russian Lada initiative a few years ago.
He should be spending time removing some of the impediments to business rather than jet setting around trying to look good.
I wonder how his union pals will like the thought of trying to get another foreign car maker to come to Ontario.
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