March 17th, 2010 • by David Zatz
Cars for Clunkers brought up an old debate: whether it’s greener to swap into a new, cleaner-burning car or to keep what you have for another decade. The question has no absolute right answer; it depends largely on what you have and what you’re moving into, and how you drive. For a New York City taxi driver, giving up a Crown Victoria for a Prius is probably indeed the green choice. For the rest of us, it’s fuzzier.
Take the great IT trainer Bob O’Neill. He has been driving a 1986 Dodge Daytona for many years and 296,000 miles (though it wasn’t his primary daily driver the whole time). That car still gets 32 mpg on the highway, which is more than many new cars get. With its single fuel injector it doesn’t burn as cleanly as many new cars, but it still gets better mileage than a typical replacement car would, so the overall level of pollution is probably lower. But one has to go further than just looking at gas mileage.
I was trained in a systems approach which considers everything from before you start to after you finish. It’s the difference between the Daimler-Benz cost cutting approach used at Chrysler from 2000-2008 (order the suppliers to cut prices) and the Chrysler approach used from 1994-1999 (ask the suppliers how they can save Chrysler money by changing designs or processes, then share the proceeds.)
The systems approach, which seeks all inputs and outputs, also shows that junking a Dodge Daytona to buy a Prius is not as “green” for most people as keeping that Daytona on the road. (Note my weasel disclaimer, “for most people.” That excludes special cases — like New York City taxi drivers, whose high use and particular conditions probably make the Prius the cheapest and lowest-impact car; and junking their Crown Vics was probably quite “green” indeed, and most likely the fuel savings easily paid any expenses including extra repair costs.)
Every car and truck takes a huge amount of energy to build, as well as tons of raw materials. Simply running the factory consumes huge amounts of energy with heating and air conditioning, welders, robots, lighting, the energy used in refining metals and creating plastic, and the oil diverted to creating the plastic. That’s not counting energy used in dealing with junked cars.
I understand, though I do not support, “cash for clunkers” programs where they crush vehicles with poor mileage and replace them with somewhat better ones. It might “pay,” energy-and-pollution-wise, over the lifetime of the car, though perhaps not for the expected remaining life of the old one.
But for cars that already have acceptable mileage, keeping them on the road is well worth any marginal levels of extra pollution they may emit, and chances are they would be replaced by cars that use more gas, not less (Cash for Clunkers, incidentally, excluded cars with decent mileage). That has been the trend in the United States — gas mileage rose dramatically in the 1980s and early 1990s and then fell. So keeping some of the old cars on the road cannot help but be a net gain.
Regardless of pollution and global warming arguments, here in the United States, we use far too much oil for our economy and national security. We have massive trade deficits from this and other wasteful practices which slowly suck the life out of our economy, and put us in debt to some very bad people.
When the Saudi Arabian terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon our leaders did not even mention Saudi Arabia, blaming it on Iraq. Quite aside from the flood of Saudi money pumped into both parties’ political campaigns, we do not dare offend the Saudis when they have such a hold on our economy. (Just as we cannot dare offend China, which responds to a gentle poke with a hard push.)
So let’s cheer on those people in the Allpar 200,000 mile club, even the ones with 440-powered Dodge D200 trucks. They’re not just preserving our history; they might even be saving energy and helping the nation.
March 5th, 2010 • by David Zatz
On March 1, a news-like story appeared on Allpar’s weblog, accompanied by a photo labelled “February 1939.”
The story was written on a whim, based the photo:
- To be vaguely believable, I had to think up some good points of the old dealerships – like being cozy.
- Because the dealership had a Dodge/ Plymouth sign, the story had to explain the re-appearance of Plymouth and lack of Chrysler. That was easy. I’ve written before about the tainted Chrysler name.
- Since it was black and white, I had to mention that cars were to be sold only in shades of gray (“One color is good enough for Steve Jobs and Sergio Marchionne.”) Henry Ford, of course, did quite well with black (and with Dodge Brothers components).
- Ram had to be written out, because it wasn’t invented until 2010, and was based on a nameplate that didn’t appear until decades after all dealerships were in color.
I called the new dealerhip plan Project Deuteronomy, but I should have used Leviticus. Nobody would ever really associate car dealers with Leviticus. (“Before you can operate your dealership, you have to follow thousands of arcane rules that require you to go to a place that no longer exists and sacrifice one tenth of your dealer stock. Oh, and these are the times when your vehicles are unclean and must be washed according to ritual BN-040542 with Special Tool PN32123455.”)
The article was quickly distributed across numerous forums outside of allpar (and at allpar). The allpar forum thread resulted in some changes, including the list of new car colors (“Extremely Dark White” was my idea, the others were more subtle) and the disclaimer at the bottom.
Most postings seemed very sincere. People really wanted to know if it was true, and most of them wanted it to be true. (I’d like parts to be true, too.) Few of those who posted it thought it could be a joke, and around half or more just thought Allpar’d gotten its wires crossed. Some bitter, nasty people who responded apparently felt that way, sneering “you can’t trust Allpar,” which in this case was valid but unfair. (Our track record is better than most, and our errors are often the result of Chrysler’s own press releases being inaccurate).
Most of the comments, though, focused on the content of the story. Usually it just took a few replies to get to the truth of the matter, but discussions still focused mainly on the return of Plymouth, mostly with favor. Some critiqued or praised the new dealership plan and marketing. None seemed to approve of the choice of colors. Also, nobody pointed out the photo caption.
I don’t know what this says about Chrysler’s image. Given the boycotts against the company and the level of ignorance of many car buyers, renaming Chrysler to Plymouth would probably increase sales, but it’s pretty unlikely, even if Plymouth does have more commonly, positively remembered nameplates. Personally I’d love it, and not just for convenience – people would always know when I was writing about the company vs the brand.
The dark brick dealerships … I’m not so sure. I like the retro look but the cars in the picture were pushing it. Though if they were available today in nice colors…
I learned a few things.
- Next time, I’ll wait until April 1. To me it was five minutes of fun, but I’m afraid I got a lot of hopes up.
- Chrysler guys, if you’re listening, now might be a good time to think about Plymouth again — and to try harder to get the message across — you’re alive and planning to stay that way, you’re not majority-owned by the government or by Fiat, and you’re not run by the UAW (though I don’t know why that makes people angry). Oh, and you’re going to pay back the loans. People need to know that.
- I should be more careful with the microphone, like Johnny Fever telling Cincinatti residents to dump their trash on the City Hall lawn. Oops.
- This was a reflection on today’s world — a weblog here can be posted to lots of forums elsewhere for comment. (I have to make our own forums more popular, don’t I?) But why didn’t anyone just ask me if it was true? I would have answered, really!
Mainly, I saw a lot of love for Plymouth, some hatred, true, but mainly love and hope and people still trying to hang onto what’s left. Oh, and a lot of people who had fun with it… once they realized what it was.
Egads, now what am I going to do on April 1?
