Limbaugh’s solution to auto crisis: Build crappier cars

One of the familiar refrains we’ve heard from auto industry critics is that they just don’t build good enough cars to get people to buy them. Now we hear from Rush Limbaugh that the problem is the opposite, that they build cars that are just too darn good and that’s why people don’t have to keep buying new cars.

After a customer tells him that he’s buying a new Chevy pickup, this conversation ensued on Limbaugh’s radio show on Thursday:

RUSH: I’m very proud of you for doing this. Way to go, you’re buying what you want, and that’s cool. But you, you just illustrated the greatest single downfall of the domestic automobile industry, and nobody is talking about it.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: You know what it is?

CALLER: I didn’t catch it.

RUSH: Back in the days when I bought my first car and then my second car and my third car, and they were all General — they were Pontiacs, and a Buick. They all broke down in three years, had to get a new one. Then all of a sudden they got quality minded, started making cars that get 250,000 miles, you didn’t need to trade it in after three years, and so they didn’t have to be as innovative because people were keeping cars longer. If they would have kept making cars that fell apart after three years, none of this would have happened.

CALLER: True.

American auto workers: Too good for their own good.