Sad headline in today's Dayton Daily News. Dayton is a GM town no more. Tuesday is the last day for the truck assembly plant in Moraine (suburb of Dayton). At one time Dayton was the third largest GM town. In the 19-teens, GM bought the Wright Brothers Aeroplane Co. and then Dayton Engineering Laboratories (Charles "Boss Kett" Kettering's company that invented the electric self starter among much more) that became Delco. There were huge plants all over town. Several were good customers of mine when I worked for a company that designed and built automated assembly machines.
Delco got ossified, too dependent upon GM. Then with GM's problems, it was spun off as Delphi, only to fall into bankruptcy and mostly die. The few plants left in Dayton are not GM, and the few Delphi ones will be gone before long.
GM is mostly an assembly company, now. But it is dying on the vine. It will probably buy Chrysler, but I don't expect a lot of innovation or energy from the company. I'm beginning to think that this may be an ideal time for an innovative upstart company. Could Tesla be that? Thoughts?
8:28:30 PM 
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