Hightower Lowdown

Chevrolet's latest multi-million- dollar blitz of TV ads tells us that the newest Chevys are nothing less than "An American Revolution." Well, you can stick a feather in my cap and call it macaroni, but wrapping your corporation in the red, white, and blue doesn't make it a true-blue Yankee Doodle Dandy. Chevy's "Equinox," for example, is a new SUV featured in the company's starspangled ad campaign.

Chevrolet doesn't want you to know it, but there's not much that's American in the Equinox. It's assembled in Canada, its transmission is made in Japan, and—well, here's something revolutionary —its engine is made in China!

While General Motors has been shutting down its auto plants in Michigan, Maryland, and Ohio, it has been quietly investing more than a billion dollars in joint ventures with China's ruling elite to make cars and car parts there for export back here to the USA. The Equinox engine, made in China through GM's 50-50 joint venture with the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, is produced by the lowest-paid autoworkers in the world. To fatten its profits, GM has entered into this diabolical partnership with a brutal regime that dictatorially represses workers' wages, outlaws independent labor unions, and routinely imprisons those who complain, protest, or try to organize.

GM seems shy about this Chinese connection, however, for the automaker doesn't bother to mention Equinox's Chinese engine in any of its extensive promotional material. Also, if you check under the hood, you won't find a made-in-China sticker on the engine itself. Indeed, it's been reported that at some auto shows, GM has even been removing the countryof- origin labels from the windows of its vehicles, in apparent violation of the American Automotive Labeling Act.