GM has claws?

Found this originally by instapundit, but read on GM's own blog, which is fascinating. Seems the NYT printed a particularly nasty article regarding GM and such and really watered down GM's reply, to the point of GM basically saying, it's so far from what we want, just forget it. I'd love to link the NYT article, but subscription required, so that's the best you'll get (sans subscription, of course). You can find GM's rebuttal here, their frustration at the lack of commitment to printing GM's rebuttal here, GM's original rebuttal here, their edited version, here, and the emails back and forth from the NYT and GM, here.

What I find interesting is his point that the sooner GM gets acquired by Toyota, the better. Now I'm fully aware that GM has been working very hard at going out of business, and they can't even do that properly, but I do believe that the demise of GM and/or Ford would be very bad at best and disastrous at worst for our economy. The fact that GM has so many employees, and has such a vast and massive structure is a good reason to be wary of a giant such as GM failing totally.

GM has had some very rough times, and rightly so, they have made some disastrous decisions, but to hope for the acquisition of a domestic company by a foreign one is not really something I'd hope for. GM has had quality issues for years, but one thing they have always been very cutting edge on is technology. I look at my 1974 Firebird for examples of that, including inertia lock seatbelts (man I love those things), ice cold air conditioning (not working at the moment, due to previous owner's compressor removal), tough, robust transmissions, strong engines, tilt steering, and many other things taken for granted today.

They were one of the first to come out with 5 and 6 speed transmissions, though they never installed them in their own vehicles, but sold them to the likes of Mercedes and BMW for their vehicles. They were also messing with 4 speed overdrives before WWII. GM does have immense ability, but like the Goliath of the Old Testament, has arrogance and moves slowly. I see this changing, and hopefully it will pull them out of the brink of takeover. Let's hope, not necessarily for GM's sake, but for the US economy's.