Stop using "Big Three" to refer to the automakers

TheStreet.com media critic Marek Fuchs writes that the business media needs to stop using the “Big Three” moniker to refer to Chrysler, Ford and General Motors.

Ford, he notes, is not in as bad shape as the other two.

Fuchs writes, “The Business Press Maven has tried to separate out Ford in the recent past, to note that whatever its fate (and it is still undetermined), it must be seen in a more promising and favorable light than GM and Chrysler. Its management is better. Its cars are better. It did not take the government’s money, so it will not have to deal with the government’s cumbersome interference.

“Yet we see the same reference to the Big Three we have seen since before Sputnik. As if they were a collective. Let it never be said that the business media does not fall in love with a phrase, beyond all reason and reality. Problem is, phraseology has subliminal effects on the thinking of savvy investors. If everywhere you look you read ‘Big Three,’ you inevitably think of these three auto companies as inexorably tied to each other, their fates all tilting in the same direction.”

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