Driving trends - is it just us?

Lately, I’ve noticed a sea change in local driving - more and more people seem to believe they’re actually in England. It seems that every day I come across some nutter careening along on the wrong side of the road, not swerving over to the right until the last possible moment. It doesn’t seem to be confined to any particular type of vehicle, and not all of them are on the phone (as far as I can tell - hands-free conversations aren’t easy to detect.)

Is this happening everywhere or just in the county where I live?

Normally nutty things like this are confined to a single type of driver, like the Civics and Volkswagens swinging across three or four lanes of highway every two to five seconds without actually gaining any distance over drivers who choose their lanes carefully; or the “why look before I leap?” lane changes of oversized, truck-based SUVs; or the “I drive faster in snow” behavior of inexperienced, overconfident 4×4 and AWD vehicles; or the “I don’t care how fast I go, as long as I don’t get passed” behavior of people driving in New Jersey with New York plates (for some reason not a big problem in their home state); or any of a number of other interesting trends of people with vehicles of a particular type. The wrong-side-of-the-road routine is inexplicable to me, and widespread as well.

Your thoughts?

Fun is in the car, not the stats

Too often, auto forums are filled with criticisms based on armchair racing. If a car is .1 second slower, it’s “far too slow.” Something that actually does zero to sixty in more than eight seconds is unbearably slow. All transmissions need five - no, six - no, seven speeds. What, the minivan doesn’t even have over 200 horsepower?

Let’s stop for a moment.

First, there’s the reason for having all that horsepower - the subjective feel of speed. It’s what makes an SRT-8 so much more exciting than the Lexus that can keep up on the straights. Let’s take a little quote for a moment:

Under the hood is a 4.6 liter V8 that pushes out 381 horsepower accompanied by gobs of torque, which can maintain a dead-silent, smooth idle at 600 rpm. The engine provides good power right off idle, and revs like a demon, but most of the time it isn’t worked particularly hard, because it’s pretty hard to use 380 horsepower for more than a few seconds without hitting an obstacle or going well beyond the speed limit. Sixty miles per hour comes up in little over five seconds, territory not long ago reserved for sports cars. Yet, the drivetrain is rarely anything more than completely refined.

That’s from the acarplace Lexus LS 460 car review. Yes, the Lexus LS460 does 0-60 in 5.4 seconds, and it does it quite easily. To quote more from the same review:

Taking off the rough edges enhances luxury, but it does eliminate much of the “driving enjoyment” that comes of feeling the engine and the road, and revelling in the feel of acceleration. Indeed, the more luxurious the car, the less acceleration is felt, as transitions are smoothed out; so that we’ve known some people with powerful sport sedans to go out in their stick-shift Neons for a quick fun drive, with their vibration, harshness, and slower 0-60 times. A car like the Dodge Charger R/T is considerably slower than the LS, but feels faster as the transmission firmly changes gears and the engine speed picks up in its peak torque range; the LS transmission is rarely felt even under hard acceleration, and the dual variable valve timing, quad cams, and dual fuel injection system keep the engine working hard throughout its range.

Really, a first-generation stick-shift Neon feels just about as fast as a blistering hot LS460. It’s a lot more fun, too, though on a long highway drive or in nasty traffic, the Lexus is far nicer. The fact is, as far as I can tell, refinement is the enemy of speed-sensation. If you want to feel like you’re going fast, don’t get a fast car; get one that isn’t “refined.”

That’s one reason why the Caliber SRT-4 being a little slower than some competitors doesn’t bother me (yet), and that’s one reason why the GTI’s being considerably slower than some competitors (WRX comes to mind) didn’t hurt it in comparison tests. The question isn’t so much “what time does it make” as “how much fun is it?” But, then again, I don’t race. If I did, it would be another story. Racers should indeed try for the fastest speed they can get.

That brings us to another thing - horsepower ratings. Horsepower ratings are but one part of a full story. When Toyota put the Celica engine into the Corolla, they ended up with a car that made great paper numbers and did 0-60 sprints well, but was a dog to drive. All the power was at the top end; fine for racing, I guess, but not very useful day-to-day, when you want massive torque to push you forward the second you ask for it. That’s one reason why the Neon was better to drive than the Caliber, though the Caliber has much more horsepower. The Caliber revs high and gives power way up top. One of the nicest all-round engines I’ve driven was the 2.5 liter turbo - nice torque down low and the turbo kicked in afterwards. It was far more pleasant, if far slower, than the sledgehammer approach of the Spirit R/T, which made over 70 additional horses but had very little right off the line (unless you were prepared and revved up front). Again, great for racing but less than ideal for the street - except perhaps street-racing. There are times when instant takeoff is quite nice.

We can’t really trust the glossy magazines to tell us when a car is well balanced, because most equate “well balanced” with “German.” It’s like asking Consumer Reports to fairly evaluate the Sebring against the Camry. Most glossies are just in love with six-figure cars from Europe, and consider American cars to be something lower than dirt. The exception is, of course, the stereotype cars (big rear-drive V8s) and, sometimes, trucks. And even when they do tell us about peaky engines and such, many people ignore that and go right to the columns of figures.

It IS important to know about sprint times, but let’s be reasonable. Nobody really needs to get from zero to sixty in faster than ten seconds. The extra speed is nice at times, but we can do without it; we did without it for decades. The fabled 300 letter cars often couldn’t beat a 1995 Neon (stick-shift of course), but that doesn’t make them slow. Hey, when I drive my unmodified 1974 Valiant - slant six equipped, with an automatic to make sure it doesn’t get too fast - I’m nearly always the quickest one off the traffic light. It’s pretty rare that I need more than that 100 horsepower (at best), dragging 3,000 pounds of car behind an automatic transmission, fed by a primitive single-barrel carburetor. I do enjoy the much faster pickup of my turbocharged PT, but I don’t NEED it.

Horsepower ratings are also a bit of a misnomer - the PT and SRT-4 made the same horsepower, or at least almost the same horsepower. Yet the SRT-4 was a capable of brutal acceleration and the PT … at least can beat my wife’s 300M if I shift well. We play with horsepower ratings the way people used to play with numbers of cylinders. I still remember having my fanny handed to me in my V8 Camaro, when I was neatly beaten by my girlfriend’s Honda CRX - which got over 30 mpg. Weight matters. Torque matters (well, maybe not in that CRX). Horsepower curves matter. Feel matters.

So don’t be so critical if a minivan does 0-60 in 12 seconds. It really doesn’t need to beat a Honda Odyssey in a race - especially since nearly every buyer is looking for how comfortable, usable, reliable, and economical it is.

Not that I wouldn’t love to see a Caravan R/T with that upcoming turbocharged Phoenix engine and automated manual transmission blowing away the Odysseys by 2 seconds in the quarter mile…

Robert Nardelli takes over Chrysler: should we be scared?

From out of nowhere came the bombshell that Robert Nardelli, who was recently CEO of Home Depot, had been appointed CEO of Chrysler. Tom LaSorda will take over Bob Lutz’s old role as president and vice-chair of the board.

One may ask “why Nardelli?” There are two explanations. First, he’s an ex-GE guy, which strikes a cord among the other ex-GE guys at Cerberus. Second, and this idea was also put forward by a staunchly Republican friend, he’s a strong fundraiser for George W. Bush. The Republican Party connection is also the main thrust of other Cerberus hirings, such as John Snow, Donald Rumsfield, and Dan Quayle. None of these men were known as great, or even particularly good, leaders.

It’s easy to discount Home Depot’s success under Nardelli, since the basic formula for expansion was set up well before Nardelli took over (indeed, expansion slowed under Nardelli, though given the rate when he took over, that’s not necessarily a mark against him).

The record profits at Home Depot came partly from the expansion set in place before he arrived, and by short-term moves which made Lowe’s very happy. During Nardelli’s run at Home Depot, product quality fell off a cliff, and customer satisfaction spiralled down, as experienced full timers were replaced by part-timers and costs were slashed apparently without regard to long-term consequences; and what long-term consequences were there for Nardelli? To quote Pete DeLorenzo: “paying his ridiculously exorbitant severance package of $210 million was more palatable than having him hang around for one more day.” In short, the worse you are, the more the company will pay to get rid of you - not just at Home Depot, but at most American corporations. I wonder if that has something to do with the Asian manufacturing boom?

Personal note: I ran into Home Depot’s “we take returns when we want to” policy, coupled with their “we abuse customers until they threaten us with disputing their MasterCard charges” policy, as a result of their “we sell special pumps that last only three hours” policy - the last of which was well known to the plumbing supply house (which sold me a durable pump at about the same price).

The positive aspect of Nardelli’s past is his work at GE, of which little is currently known other than that the departments he headed - the first one for a very brief time, to be fair - are still around and are profitable. Unfortunately, some have implied that Nardelli’s work at GE was similar to his work at Home Depot - sacrificing long-term quality and customer loyalty for short term profits. And, again to quote DeLorenzo, “Nardelli’s blunderbuss reputation for being a ball-busting cost-cutter lost in a GE-tinged Six Sigma fog and blessed with the people skills of a drill sergeant caught up with him at Home Depot, and it will catch-up with him at Chrysler too.” (You gotta love DeLorenzo, unless, of course, he’s talking about you).

On the bright side, Nardelli owns, among other vehicles, a Jeep, a PT Cruiser, and a Prowler. His first car on graduating high school in 1966 was a Dodge Dart GT. But we do have to wonder if the state of American leadership is so poor that this is the best CEO they could find.

Is Chrysler headed by another Chainsaw Al Dunlop, the kind of tough-talking, easy-firing guy who moves from company to company, leaving bankruptcy in his wake but claiming success because the roof doesn’t fall until after he leaves? Is it headed by someone who unsuccessfully tried to find a position at many other concerns before being rescued by “friends” who use their influence within the ruling party to gain highly profitable and sleazy government contracts? Or is it headed by a very competent leader who is capable of increasing sales and profits and tapping into the optimism and energy of what was, not that long ago, one of the world’s most profitable automakers?

Only time will tell.