The minivan sales drop is unaccountable

Chrysler will idle the American minivan plant at St. Louis - “indefinitely” - starting October 31, because of falling sales. The Town & Country has fallen by 13% and the Grand Caravan by 35% in US sales - never mind that the Caravan is reportedly beating last year’s long-wheelbase sales, since it’s actual volume that keeps plants open, not carefully chosen comparisons. (Last year’s short wheelbase vans are also compared with Dodge Journey sales.)

First, let me say that the new Chrysler leaders had nothing to do with the dropping of the four cylinder, short wheelbase minivans, which would probably be flying off the shelves right now if they were available; nor were they responsible for frittering away development funds on some ideas which looked really cool to me, until, and let’s be honest here, I actually tried them out and decided they were cool, but not something I’d pay for.

But even with your choice of an engine as long as it has six cylinders, the long wheelbase as standard, and the weight of a vehicle which needs to achieve five star safety ratings while keeping the interior as quiet as possible, the minivan remains a very efficient vehicle for its size. Yes, it’s rated at 17 city, 24 highway - but you know, that’s not too bad. Sure, it could be better, but that would mean giving up a little acceleration and some more money, or perhaps some of features and creature comforts.

Still, it would do a heart good to see a diesel minivan right about now, and a four cylinder short-wheelbase mini with no frills aside from Stow ‘n’ Go. Maybe even with the Plymouth nameplate.

You could say this is another DaimlerChrysler parting gift. They chose to make the Dodge absolutely spartan in interior appearance, without price breaks. They chose to make the Chrysler more upscale in appearance without making it exclusive - since at similar prices, how many would choose the plain-jane Dodge? And of course as the single largest maker of minivans, even now, why would they press their volume advantage to make more minivan versions, when they could give us fewer options? There’s no AWD to compete with the “no sliding door” minivans from Ford and Chevy; there’s no lightweight version for gas mileage; there’s no electric version (as we had in some years past); and there is no diesel as they sell in Europe. There’s also no hybrid, though that would be handy.

Chrysler without its minivans. The idea seems crazy - but then, there was a time when Chrysler dominated the taxi and police car businesses; when they were the premier boat builder; when their rockets powered NASA into space; and when they dominated vans, too.

The good news is that while Chrysler may be losing minivans, and autoworkers may be losing their jobs (many permanently), there does seem to be a future, with small cars finally being engineered (again — they had plans when acquired by Daimler, but Daimler wanted small cars to be handled by Mitsubishi and/or Hyundai and/or Smart), and the bread and butter “family car” segment being re-engineered from the ground up. It’s just hard, sometimes, to see that bright future when there are so many storm clouds today.

Just a quick link today…

I ran across this while checking incoming links, and I was impressed by the clarity of thought and the punchiness of the entry… coming from a person whose expertise is in branding. It’s just a little dated (from February) but I suspect you haven’t run across it yet:

http://brandlandusa.blogspot.com/2008/02/down-road-for-chrysler-plymouth-dealers.html

Americans to be rescued from high gas prices?

Saudi Arabia appears to be frightened of Americans’ desires to cut back on oil use and to start putting money into alternative forms of energy - so they plan to raise their output considerably next month.

It must be hard to balance one’s profits against one’s desire to keep customers hooked … I wonder if drug dealers feel that way?

It would be ironic if Ford retooled all those factories to build their more-efficient Eurocars only to find that gas was cheap again and Americans were back to big SUVs.

It would also be sad if Americans proved to think so short-term… I can almost understand forgetting the 1970s, but forgetting the Spring of 2008 by the Fall of 2008 would be pushing it.

When one thinks about it, the best thing OPEC can do is vary supply now and then, just often enough to get people to invest in fuel efficiency, then make it an unworthy investment. That would give fuel efficiency a bad name for businessmen, so that if the price did slowly, slowly climb up (like cooking a frog), few would be willing to put their capital into fuel efficiency.

I’m probably assigning more intent into this than is merited. However, as Americans, we are definitely hooked on cheap energy. No children’s party is complete with plastic bags filled with plastic rubbish designed to be thrown away after a day or two. Americans, unlike Europeans, still heavily favor the top-loading washers that use three times the water and quite a bit more energy; and precious few people dry off their towels on clotheslines. Again, not to be redundant, but lots of people and business don’t even use the sleep features of their computers (or the “shut down” feature). People leave their SUVs running while they drop off their kids at school, for ten or fifteen minutes… on nice days as well as days when one can pretend that they need to keep the car warm.

Nobody listens when I say that energy is still cheap — though a lot of people are seeing their net income run into deficits with the change in gas prices. Still, power is so cheap that many people leave their lights on 24/7, along with their computers and air conditioners. It’s so cheap companies leave the lights on in their buildings and air condition massive atriums to 65 degrees. It’s so cheap people are still buying track lighting with halogen bulbs. It’s so cheap people don’t think about power costs when they buy a TV, ignore the energy usage labels on their refrigerators and air conditioners, and leave the a/c on overnight instead of opening windows, even in rooms they’re not using.

Power is expensive enough to complain about (and to really hurt people whose incomes are finely balanced with their expenses), but not so expensive that the large majority of people will use less, even when it won’t cost them anything but a few seconds to shut a light or put on their energy saver or shut their computer or spend $20 on a slightly better a/c unit or $100 more on a refrigerator … though many will gladly spend more than that to get their precious stainless steel refrigerator skin.

In a real energy crisis, we would all find ways to economize, just as Californians during a drought slash their water usage (admittedly a small percentage cheat.) Industry would find ways to save energy, just as automakers are now increasing their wind tunnel time and making stylists live with minor changes for the sake of aerodynamics (or, at Toyota, major changes for the sake of aerodynamics). There’s lots of things we can all do and when the price is really high, we’ll do all those things.

Or, of course, we’ll find people to blame, get all angry, and make ExxonMobil and the leaders of a small number of oil-rich countries very happy and very amused. But I’m hoping the future holds the America of FDR, George Washington, and Thomas Paine, and not the America of Senator McCarthy, Henry Ford, and A. Mitchell Palmer.

Patriot vindicated

This is not a column about K.T. Keller, the great Chrysler patriot who may have lost the company while saving the country (or at least, saving the country a lot of cash).

This is about the Jeep Patriot.

The Patriot came out to much scoffing at various auto blogs. Critics were fairly merciless, and one which proclaims to be especially truthful simply ravaged the vehicle - and then brooked no criticism of its criticism. Without actually taking the Patriot offroad, many simply said it couldn’t possibly be any good off-road.

This is of course standard fare for Jeep followers. No new Jeep is ever worthy; the predecessors were always better (of course sometimes that’s true). But with the Patriot, people were already feeling as though Jeep was becoming less credible, thanks to the Compass.

You know the Compass. It was supposed to be a great rally car, something akin to the Subaru Impreza. Somewhere along the way it became an economy wagon. Typical DaimlerChrysler thinking seemed to prevail - corners that could be cut were cut. Corners that could not be cut were cut, too.

Following the Compass could have been good, if this was a different age and if the spirit of the Internet was a bit more reflective. Articles could have begun, “Unlike the Compass…”

They didn’t.

The Internet does not usually lend itself to careful thought and reflection; it’s more the ignorant leading the fanatical. Having an opinion, as one engineer who has many opinions put it, does not make one’s thoughts worthy.

There’s also a lot of groupthink, not just on the Internet, but in general. We all know that German cars are all superior, followed by Japanese, then Korean, and finally, at the bottom, ignoring the French and Italians, come the Americans. We all know that it doesn’t matter if we buy a car made entirely in Japan or Korea or Mexico; it won’t affect our jobs. And especially, we know that anything made by the New Chrysler is a piece of junk with a lousy interior, and anything made by Toyota is superior — ignoring any actual experiences within a Toyota and a Chrysler. That also had an impact. Chrysler’s on a downswing and people are happy to push them deeper into the grave. GM and Ford had their turns, too. Ford was reputedly on the verge of bankruptcy. So was GM. Indeed, I had a friend who insisted stockholders would sue if GM did not declare Chapter 11, because only then could they escape those horrid unions that insisted GM focus all their energies on big trucks.

Obviously, Ford and GM did not go under. Equally obviously, the unions had little if anything to do with GM’s product decisions - or for that matter Ford’s and Chrysler’s.

The point of all this is that the Jeep Patriot, when I drove it, wasn’t bad. It was, in fact, so much nicer than the Caliber that I was rather surprised by it. And when people actually took it off-road, they found that properly equipped Patriots were pretty respectable.

Imagine that.

Now, Patriot sales are rising, at a time when just about all other American cars larger than a Neon are falling. The Patriot is the bright light of the Belvidere factory.

Hopefully, some of those with opinions to spare will start to give the Patriot a second look - and maybe even try it out on the trail. It’s not a Wrangler Rubicon, but likewise, it’s not a Compass.