Would merger be ‘good for the country’?

DETROIT — It’s been said that what’s good for General Motors is good for the country. But with a proposal now on the table to link the world’s largest automaker with Japan’s Nissan and France’s Renault, the question arises: which country?

Billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, who owns 9.9 percent of GM’s shares, is proposing that Renault SA and Nissan Motor Co. each buy stakes in General Motors Corp. and add the American industrial icon to their existing alliance. On Friday, GM’s board of directors voted to pursue “exploratory discussions” with Renault and Nissan.

The idea of foreign companies exerting control over GM doesn’t sit well with some U.S. politicians, union leaders and admirers of the company. Their discomfort is compounded by the fact that the French state holds 15 percent of Renault.

“I’m in favor of Michigan winning. I’m in favor of jobs coming here and the concern is, that if it’s controlled by businesses on another continent or other continents, that we may end up on the losing end,” Gov. Jennifer Granholm told reporters Wednesday in Lansing. “I don’t know that to be the fact. Maybe it will make us stronger. But that’s certainly my concern.”

GM was founded in 1908 by Flint businessman William Durant, who built the company through a series of acquisitions, beginning with the Buick Motor Co. and Olds Motor Works. Later, legendary chairman Alfred P. Sloan pioneered many fundamental ideas of modern corporate management and marketing.

During World War II, GM converted all of its production to the war effort, turning out planes, trucks, tanks, guns, shells and other military equipment.

In 1953, President Eisenhower named GM head Charles E. Wilson secretary of defense. At his Senate confirmation hearing, Wilson was asked about whether his loyalty to the automaker could create a possible conflict of interest. “I cannot conceive of one because for years I thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa,” he answered. A simplified version of the quote became ingrained in the nation’s collective memory.

Early on, GM had a global presence, establishing an export division in 1911 and a plant in Argentina in 1925.

David L. Lewis, a former GM speechwriter and a professor of business history at the University of Michigan, recalled the pride he felt working for the company from 1959 to 1965.

“General Motors was at one time not only No. 1, but in such a big way. It was Gulliver among the Lilliputians,” Lewis said. “People used to say all the time that something else would be ‘the General Motors of.’ It was a yardstick.”

Lewis said he was saddened by the prospect of a tie-up, though he acknowledged it might not be bad for the company and its shareholders.

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said the idea would be bad news for workers. “We’re seeing a further erosion of good jobs in the country should this come about,” he told WJR-AM on Friday.

But Jim Graham, president of UAW Local 1112 in Lordstown, Ohio, said he was trying to take a pragmatic view.

“In the global market that we’ve been thrust into I guess the more alliances you have the better off you are,” he said.