Ion Pacepa was "car czar" in Romania. His expert advice? Leave governing to the government - and the automobile industry to the private sector.
Automobile manufacturing and government do not mix in capitalist countries either. In the spring of 1978 Ceausescu appointed me chief of his Presidential House, a new position supposed to be similar to that of the White House chief of staff. To go with it he gave me a big Jaguar car. That Jaguar, which at the time had been produced in a government-run British factory, was so bad that it spent more time in the garage being repaired than it did on the road.
"Apart from some Russian factories in Gorky, Jaguars were the worst," Ford executive Bill Hayden stated when Ford bought the nationalized British car maker in 1988. How did the famous Jaguar, one of the most prestigious cars in the world, become a joke?
In 1945, the British voters, tired of four years of war, kicked out Winston Churchill and elected a leftist parliament led by Labour's Clement Attlee. Attlee nationalized the automobile, trucking and coal industries, as well as communication facilities, civil aviation, electricity and steel. Britain was already saddled by crushing war debts. Now it was sapped of economic vigor. The old empire quickly passed into history. It would take decades until Margaret Thatcher's privatization reforms restored Britain's place among the world's top-tier economies.
The United States is far more powerful than Great Britain was then, and no American Attlee should be capable of destroying its solid economic and political base. I hope that the U.S. administration, Congress and the American voters will take a closer look at history and prevent our automotive industry from following down the Dacia, Oltcit or Jaguar path.
The car czar is speaking. I hope that someone in Washington is listening.
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