I’ve been watching for “Domestics” here in Jersey for a bit. I see a lot of trucks/SUVs. A lot of minivans. Cars? Not as much. The lot at work is full of Acuras, Hondas, Toyotas, Nissans, BMWs…

I don’t think Jersey is alone. “Detroit” has lost generations of car buyers, and they need to take them back. Here’s an action plan:

1. It’s the Product, Stupid.

Pick a market, any market. If you’re going to compete in it, your offering has to better the best in the field (let’s just go with generic consumer opinion and call this company Honyota). If you feel your car is the best in the market niche, you’ll do stuff like pull Honyotas into your showroom and dare people to compare. That is the true sort of bold move it will take; not a marketing slogan, not a ‘tough’ image. Tell people “We benchmarked the Honyota Camcord, and after we matched it, we bettered it. Our car is the new benchmark.

2. Marketing your way out of the cellar

Show people, specifically, why your car is better. Not “a great value”. Not “$3,000 less than a Camcord”. Better. Period, End of message. You’ll have to mention promotions and such of course, but the unmistakable message has to be “our car is better”. Because it is (see number #1).

3. Fix the dealer body.

Now it gets tricky. Customers think they’ve been screwed by the dealer, the dealer thinks they’ve been screwed by Corporate, and everyone thinks Corporate doesn’t give a toss.
This is not a position of strength. Some progess was made with the ‘customer one’ program, but that’s probably all been flushed. I don’t know if anyone takes the Five Star system seriously. I hear many complaints about Five Star dealers, yet there’s a reason why my small town dealer has gotten our families’ business since 1980 - and the existence or lack of a ‘Five Star’ banner has nothing to do with it. They’re a small outfit, with a small lot and without the gleaming new corporate building. We have however gotten fair deals on the cars that have been bought there new and used (86 New Yorker, 87 Horizon, 89 Lebaron, 90 Imperial, 92 5th Ave, 04 PT, 05 PT) and when they need service they’re reliably fixed the first time. Maybe a good start would be to retool the Five Star program to reward the dealers with the happiest customers, and to actually help the dealers make and keep people happy. Again, “spy” on the industry leader, and better that experience.

None of the above is optional, and none of it is enough either. There are a lot of people singing “Won’t get fooled again” as they drive by Big Three dealers, so the most herculean task will be:

4. Convince people you really, really mean it this time. Really.

GM has several deep home runs out there now, and they’re having a bit of trouble with #4. The key here is you don’t want to beg, it shows weakness. From #1 to #3 the key has been acting from a position of well earned strength. Don’t muck it up now with test drive vouchers for HOnyota owners or such. Stay on message, bring back the “If you can find a better car, buy it” because, now, you do have the better product - no qualifiers needed. This is where Detroit needs to go for the Grand Slam, because it’s possibly the last pitched battle for Chrysler and Ford especially.

Oh, and you can’t screw up. No grenading transmissions, no popping head gaskets, no jerking around owners, no ignition fires…..again this is not optional. Sure, things slip through, but the A604 style disasters are simply a death knell at this point. Head gasket problem? Fix it fast, fix it right, kiss the….feet….of affected owners. But avoiding the problem is #1 on the list, and avoiding the PR nightmare is the new #1 if something slips through (and it will, even on Honyotas)

In a sentence, Detroit simply has to be better than the competition. I don’t think “competitive” is going to cut it.

I think they can do it. However, if they haven’t already instituted the above mindset, they may already be too late (barring some huge quality gaffes by the competition).

New articles on Allpar might be coming at a slower rate for the next few weeks. I’ve been very busy with kid stuff as the end of the year comes, and have a “other job” related project that has been demanding much of my time; preparations for the Carlisle meet are also taking up a considerable swath of time, and the news keeps coming and coming…

We do have a huge amount of new material just waiting to go in, and hope you’ll be as eagerly awaiting its appearance as I am.

Last week, I updated the forums to version 2.3 of Invisionboard. The new version supposedly takes up much less in the way of server resources, though I’ll be darned if I can see a difference. One reason for that might be my continued use of the old “skin” or appearance settings, which will change when the people who write Fusion Registry come up with a new Registry skin based on Invisionboard’s “resource friendly” skin. The new Invision skin is, in my opinion, friendlier and nicer than the older one. I might try to update some parts of it, but I will hold off on anything major until the Registry skin is done.

The registry itself is mainly functional again, though one user has reported problems that we can’t reproduce. If you haven’t been there lately, please go and register your vehicles. Now and then we get requests from newspapers or magazines, and it’s good to be able to find someone to have their cars featured.

Well, long time no write!

On Sunday I had the opportunity to snap a few pics at a local car show, so I did. There were a couple very interesting cars, but we’ll get to that later.

First off I’ll touch on Chrysler being freed from Daimler’s thumb. Huzzah!! For one brief moment I’d like to just revel in the possibilities, the chance of a newly (and truly) independent Chrysler Corporation, one that’s lean and able to quickly adjust to changing markets, one that has its corporate fingers on the pulse of the markets in which they enter.

Ah, nice.

Unfortunately that’s not yet reality. There’s a lot of harm to reverse, a lot of ground to be retaken. There’s the UAW negotiations, which will be key. There’s the marketing, which needs to be addressed. And of course, there’s the product; opinions of which vary but there’s no doubt much improvement can be had. In no way do I think Chrysler is near out of the woods, but at least now they have every chance to start moving in the right direction.

On to the metal:

Here’s a nice 1951 DeSoto. I don’t see these often at shows, and this one is in nice shape.

Moving up 10 years, and one of the stars of the show, a 1961 300G!

This is a beauty. That’s a 10 year old paint job, and it looks showroom.

IP shot, featuring the ’swivel seats’ that were a Chrysler exclusive.

The rear of the car. Hmm, something about those switches on the center console….

Power window switches! I never knew about that. Our PT’s have a link to this car, how cool!

One more car to show, one I’ve never seen in person before:

Viper GTS ACR!

Had to get a nice shot of the graphics.

Viper interior.

And wrapping it up with the mighty V10!

Hope you enjoyed….

When the takeover of Chrylser Group by Cerberus was announced, with the various promises by Cerberus regarding the future of the company, the return of the Pentastar, and such, there was a general mood of elation across America and Canada, as the people realized that a great American icon was to return, freed of its abusive masters.

There were exceptions.

With the Mopar crowd there had, since 1998, appeared a number of Fauxpar freaks. The Fauxpar folk loved the German influence, believed that anything born in Germany must be better than what mere foolish Americans could do, and thought Mercedes could do no wrong. So Mercedes quality was lower than Chrysler? That was because Mercedes was spending all its money and attention on Chrysler. Horrible! what Chrysler was doing to poor Mercedes, giving them $10 billion and taking on all sorts of debts while providing huge economies of scale and royalties and… well, never mind. Let’s also not mention the fact that Mercedes’ quality ratings were already below Chrysler’s, on average, in 1998; the difference was not as stark then because the S Class was still doing so well.

(I need to separate out the Fauxpars from the optimists. The Fauxpar lovers didn’t care about Chrysler until Mercedes bought it. The optimists hoped Mercedes would help Chrysler.)

The Fauxpar people were happy to give credit for the Hemi to Germany. Americans could never squeeze 340 horsepower out of 5.7 liters; Germans could do it easily (indeed, German automakers DO tend to push more power out of a cube than Americans do; but then, it costs far more.) Never mind that Toyota eventually got 380 horsepower out of the same size. Toyota’s run by Japanese people, who are almost as superior as Germans.

It was hard to argue with the Fauxpar crowd. The suspension in the LX series really was far better than that of the LH in terms of performance and, as tuned in the Charger, in terms of feel, too; and its basic rear suspension design was obviously taken from the E-Class. Stability control was also credited to Mercedes, though Hyundai, Toyota, GM, Ford, and just about everyone else also uses it. Any quality gains were of course due to Mercedes’ kind intervention, even though they couldn’t get their own cars up to snuff.

Meanwhile, Chrysler was being demolished. Suppliers were abused and cost-cut into bankruptcy; while before they were allowed to share in any proceeds from cost savings, so that if the supplier could save $20 on building the car they were allowed to keep, say, $2 extra profit for themselves, that was considered too generous and inefficient by Mercedes, so it was kicked out. The result was most likely greater overall costs; parts costs went down but quality of parts sometimes followed, and overall design efficiencies were lost. That particular program had saved $20 billion for Chrysler by its height. The bad feelings will take time to heal, if they ever do. Dealer relations were also severely damaged by a hack sent in by Mercedes, who as his penalty for practically destroying dealer relations and hurting marketing was given a Mercedes dealer franchise. Factories were closed, costs slashed, engineers kicked out, Brian Nesbitt given walking papers along with anyone who dared speak up against Mercedes. Many retired because they just couldn’t take the slow, methodical, arrogant people from that other company.

Thus, when Chrysler was released, it made the day of a lot of people, even those who supported the deal to begin with. When the deal was announced, the press - mostly, the people who were telling us how much Chrysler needed Mercedes to survive, right until the day Cerberus and Daimler reached an agreement - immediately started talking about how awful the Daimler occupation had been. It was hypocracy of the first order, but nearly everyone was rejoicing to some degree. Except for that small crowd of Fauxpars, the people who hated Chrysler but bought one because of the German engineering.

The Fauxpars love to talk about the K-cars, forgetting that they were great little cars when they were first brought out - highly profitable small American cars that rode well, accelerated well-for-the-time, got decent mileage, and were pretty durable for the most part. They love to talk about how awful those LH cars were. Whenever they compare, it’s to the present day - the Reliant 2.2 that can’t get out of its own way, with its 0-60 of 14 seconds. Y’know, that wasn’t bad when it was made… and though the K series was neglected for far too long in the end, even in the last year they were making Shadows, they were competitive.

The Fauxpars are sad now that Mercedes is leaving. If Chrysler does well, they might be able to claim it was because of Mercedes’ influence, but it seems unlikely anyone will believe them. There’s been a clear death spiral at Chrysler Group since 2001, and it might even now be too late; there has been too much taken out of the company and too little put back in. Even the popular PT Cruiser is being cancelled for lack of a factory to build it in (or because the execs still can’t bear to think it was a success after they said it was a flash in the pan?). But the Fauxpars have been claiming that Chrysler needs Mercedes, and if Chrysler succeeds, well…

I for one won’t miss the Fauxpars. Yes, it was nice of them to respond favorably to the “German Engineering” ad campaigns; I guess someone had to. But I’ve been painted Mopar blue for too many years to want a bunch of newcomers hanging around and dissing the cars I grew up with, drove, and loved. As the Mopar fold hopefully grows and thrives with new and returning owners, the Fauxpars will fade away and only be heard now and than, sarcastically talking about how all Mopars are rubbish and pointing to decade-old head gasket failures as proof.