Motor media monoculture: 10 car crowd constants

Today, we have more sources of information than ever. Yet, in many areas, we end up with less information than we used to have back when we had just two or three newspapers and two TV networks (three if you count ABC and four if you count PBS).

As a quick national test, quick - tell me what was in the recent telecom/domestic spying bill, what the penalty is for ignoring a Congressional subpoena, and what laws Congress is voting on this week. No? Let’s move on to cars.

Here are the basic stories we have across all media outlets for automakers which are never questioned, and which are repeated over and over and over and over again, the only variance being the level of sarcasm (with TTAC and Autoblog on one extreme and the old school print publications on the other), and sometimes whether Japan or Germany is best (with some online publications and Consumers Reports taking the former tack, and print enthusiast publications taking the latter).

1. Chrysler moves faster under private equity than it ever has. (This is very debatable but who has a memory that goes back to the 1990s?)

2. Detroit is technologically backwards and has been since the 1960s. (Who invented electronic ignition, electronic feedback engines, and the catalytic converter? Not that there isn’t some truth in applications here - Toyota used four-speed automatics and five-speed manuals long before they were common in domestics, and was well ahead with VVT and other technologies too.)

3. Detroit automakers can’t compete because they have unions and the Japanese don’t. (This is obviously untrue - even if you refer to unions as meaning “the UAW and CAW,” it’s still not true!)

4. The best car is the one that sells best. (By this standard, the Ford Escort was one of the best cars ever made. So was the Ford Taurus, even in the days when it needed new transmissions with ever other oil change. Today it’s the F-series pickups. And how do you deal with sales split by model? GM pickups outsell Ford pickups but they’re split between Chevy and GMC. For that matter, most people don’t agree that the Spirit was better than the Stratus, but the Spirit outsold the Stratus by a huge margin.)

5. American automakers can’t design small cars. (The best proof this is not true, though, is the Neon, which in the public eye was the biggest piece of rubbish ever sold. Never mind that its problems were almost all due to insane cost cuts, not engineering, nor that they were all fixed by 1998. The Reliant also comes to mind - it was terrific when first introduced but Iaccoca let it become a joke by not upgrading it enough as time went on; a performance version might have helped, too. It would have been pretty easy to get good numbers on a car that light.)

6. You can’t build a small car in the U.S. and make a profit. (Don’t tell Toyota that. They’ve been making Corollas here for decades. Come to think of it… the Neon pops up again!)

7. The PT Cruiser is slow, while the Mini is quick (the base Mini used to have around the same acceleration as the base PT.)

8. Chrysler can’t design small cars. Chrysler was foolish to not put its money into cars rather than wasteful trucks. (This was actually Daimler’s strategy. In 1998 Chrysler was planning a subcompact and was putting a lot of time and effort into its regular carline. However, when Daimler took over, that all ended; all small car were to be Mitsubishi’s responsibility. Then they were to be Hyundais. Then Hyundai turned out to just be using Daimler to get a halfway decent engine, which was all they really needed to make a good enough car, and Mitsubishi discovered first hand what Daimler did to a company. Unlike Americans, the Japanese apparently stand up for their own and took over Daimler’s share in Mitsubishi Motors; and Daimler ended up with no partners. That’s when Nissan and Chery showed up on the list. Chery was just plain foolish, especially since Daimler could not buy them according to Chinese rules; Nissan sort of made sense, if you assumed that Chrysler could not make a good small car. What’s funny about that, really, is the amount of respect at BMW and Toyota for what Chrysler did with the Neon, which WhatCar! called the best American car ever imported into the U.K.)

9. American cars are for losers unless they come with rear wheel drive and a V8 engine. (That’s pretty much the Autoblog line, as I understand it. They might make an exception for GM’s 300-horse V6.)

10. Environmentalists are weenies who want everyone to go slow all the time. (I won’t dignify that but it’s pretty clearly the dominant thought of the enthusiast press if not the mainstream, non-car-dedicated publications.) Environmentalists are greenies. Greenies hate you and hate the Challenger and hate the Hemi. Greenies are all wimps with no muscles who are afraid of Hemi engines. Greenies want to kill you so you don’t emit toxic gases. Greenies made up global warming so Al Gore could make $200 billion from it and take away your Hemi, too. Greenies are in collusion with the oil companies to drive up gas prices so you won’t be able to drive because they hate you and your truck, and they’re anti-American, too. Greenies are the reason Japanese companies are selling more cars than American companies.

11. Car guys make better decisions at car companies than non-car guys. (Tell it to Mullaly, who started to move Ford over to small cars from their European operations before gas prices started rising. Tell that to railroad man Walter P. Chrysler, who turned around more car companies than anyone else. Tell that to the bicycle men who created Britain’s once vibrant car industry. Or to DuPont, who had to take over General Motors from a car guy to keep it running, and made it the dominant automaker of the world.)

12. _____ is going to declare Chapter 11 very soon because they’re out of money or because they want to break their union contracts. (This was applied to GM, Ford, and Chrysler in turn — and to Apple for more years than I’d like to remember.)

I’m sure you can think of many more, but it’s important to realize that most journalists are like sheep; they herd around and run off assumptions. There are some excellent journalists and auto writers, but they tend to get drowned out by the herd - by those who think throwaway sarcastic lines are loads of fun (and who don’t care about the people thrown out of work by the impressions they create), by those who loathe their country’s work, by those who are too far above the rest of us to have any regard for what we drive or build, and by those who simply follow the crowd without question — probably the most common problem.

Just think about that the next time you read something like “… if Chrysler had anything worth buying.”

I can’t say it any better than Pete DeLorenzo, but I can add a little.

I can’t say it any better. This is, in my opinion, mandatory reading.

http://www.autoextremist.com/current/2008/8/5/rants-457.html

Actually, I do have one thing to add.

So far, the auto industry has received little but contempt from the current White House. They had a choice of who to support in the past, and they could have chosen, through a concerted effort, to have health care taken off their expenses; but they chose not to. They have a choice now, of a candidate who has pledged at least $4 billion to aid the automakers when they are in dire need of support, versus one who promised a small prize to the first company to make a battery breakthrough - a prize which would be minor indeed compared with the guaranteed profits of such a breakthrough.

The auto industry is essential to our economy as a whole at this point. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. As a nation we pray to free trade and unrestrained capitalism, but our trading partners have other gods. China has severe restrictions on imports and domestic-industry ownership. Japan has more subtle ways of making it hard to import. We opened our borders to both of them and the jobs and skills flooded out. Find America’s telephone, computer (assembly), and radio industries, if you can; if they exist, it’s at niche levels. Your American computers are made almost exclusively in China, your televisions somewhere in Asia, your cellphones and pagers in Asia, your radios - unless you’re an audiophile - in Asia.

The leaders of the auto industry have already pledged their dollars and their votes. So has the UAW. No wonder they have no clout. It’s time for the auto executives to stand up and tell the world that they have a choice in November - and that maybe, this time, they’ll support the candidates who support them, instead of the ones who take them for granted. Perhaps they can get McCain and Obama to bid against each other for the support of the industry.

After all, we just handed a blank check to the financial industry - which will cost us, according to GAO estimates, upwards of $20 billion in actual money, not loans. The auto industry is, for the moment, only asking for loans. The way I figure it, the government shouldn’t be out there loaning billions of our dollars in the first place, but as long as we’re issuing “no-oversight, no-accountability” billions in Iraq and bailing out wealthy financiers for more billions, perhaps we should reserve a “little” money to get one of our cornerstone industries - an industry that helped this country to whip Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini by cranking out tanks, bombs, and aircraft practically at cost - past a particularly rough spot. A rough spot, I might add, partly caused by our peculiar idea that we have free trade with China and Japan, and by our citizens’ apparent and nearly unique loathing for anything made in their own country.

The real safety problem is the loose nut behind the wheel

You could ram every conceivable safety device (and a few currently inconceivable ones) into a car, and it won’t change the fact that someone out there will figure out how to get themselves killed in it. No matter how hard you work to idiot-proof something, the only thing you’ll really achieve is an improved idiot. I’m sure there’s someone out there who could figure out how to kill themselves in Knight Rider’s K.I.T.T. when the car was driving it for them.

As nice as all these wonderful safety items are, despite all they’ve achieved in terms of saving lives, they’ve also served to increase the road-going I.Q. (Idiot Quotient). Remember what Einstein said - “The only difference between genius and stupidity is that genium has limits.” Ron White added his own corollary to this - “You can’t fix stupid.”

Now, I’m not against adding safety features - I’ve been buckling my own seat belt since I was strong enough to overcome the spring in the retractors, and I never leave the driveway without it on. ABS, airbags, TMPS, stability control, they’re all very clever and nice to have, but does that mean I think every car should be forced to include an electronic nanny?

You know, it used to be that folks actually knew how to drive, and could actually get around in bad weather in a rear-wheel-drive vehicle with little to no weight on the back end (like the 1978 Farimont wagon my mom had years ago - it fishtailed going in a straight line down a dirt road in the middle of summer). We didn’t NEED four wheel drive, front wheel drive, fancy traction control systems, or any of that. As my father used to say, just because you can GO in the snow, doesn’t mean you can STOP. Sadly, too many people are too stupid or oblivious to realize/remember this.

The two main problems these days are:

1. Driver education in the U.S. is a joke (I’d be willing to bet that anyone who actually took the time to read the owner’s manual for their car and pay attention to the signs when riding in the car with their parents could pass the licensing test in most states without taking any of the courses). Also, graduated licenses for teenagers don’t seem to be doing much except generating repeat business for the DMVs every time the kids change to a different license level. Why can’t the behind-the-wheel training and test be like the Bridgestone Ice Driving School and the Skip Barber Racing School? At least people would know how to handle their cars in bad weather.

I spent an entire quarter year in driver’s ed, and I could have just read the driver’s manual, cut class, and still passed the test. I also fervently disagree with the idea that a kid with a learner’s permit should be prevented from driving at night - rather, I think they be REQUIRED to take some of their behind-the-wheel training after dark. The first place I ever drove myself after getting my license was to an evening Jazz Band rehearsal in High School (rural area where it actually gets DARK at night), and let me tell you, it’s a whole different ballgame when you’re depending on those two bulbs on the front end of the car to see by instead of the big one in the sky.

2. The other big problem is people not staying off the roads when the weather is too bad to drive in, and that’s because their employers refuse to close. Where I work, they never close for engineering folks (like me). There have even been times when the state has been hit with a snowstorm severe enough to declare a state of emergency and a travel ban (meaning if they catch you on the roads, it’s an arrestable offense). The last time that happened, 50 people drove to work at my company. When coroporate policy is that “we don’t close. If you are not comfortable on the roads, you can stay home but it comes out of your vacation time”, people feel pressured to go in anyway, and then you get roads clogged not only with the weather, but people who can’t handle the conditions but are out there anyway, and the result is chaos.

Electric vehicles might avoid an electricity shortage

You read that headline correctly.

Utilities are in a tough spot, financially, when it comes to new power station. Generating stations are expensive and risky. Choose the wrong technology and you could get into trouble for it. Build a power station and if the demand doesn’t materialize, shareholders will call for blood. Especially if it’s a nuclear plant - those most expensive of powerhouses.

The problem is that power demand is not consistent. Commercial users tend to demand energy during the day, which is also the peak time for air conditioning during the summer as people fight the heat. During the winter, demand plummets. The result is that power companies have tremendously expensive assets sitting around idle, or nearly idle.

One solution is conservation, giving customers incentives to cut their power usage or to move it to the night time (which is why daytime power for industry is far more expensive than night-time power in many areas). That both avoids the need for new power plants and evens out usage a bit. Some utilities sign agreements with customers that cut their power levels slightly during peak times, a voluntary brownout which leaves most appliances working but still saves some energy.

But the ideal, as far as utilities are concerned, is probably simply having more capacity, but using it all the time. That’s where electric vehicles come in, and is no doubt the reason why 30 utilities are working with GM on plug-in cars. Having thousands of those things charging overnight would be a great boon to power companies that want to keep their expensive power plants operating at capacity both day and night, rather than running at capacity for nine hours and then dropping dramatically - or, worse, running peaking plants (generators that only run at peak times - sometimes the oldest, least efficient, and dirtiest ones) during selected days and having them sit idle for the rest of the year.

Some automotive writers have gotten nearly hysterical over how electric cars will destroy the electrical industry and cause widespread blackouts. In fact, as with many things hysterical auto writers claim, the opposite may be true. We may find that power companies are encouraging their customers to buy electric cars, on the condition that they charge them at night. Then the power companies will happily go out and build the new generating stations they’ve been coveting, perhaps even getting together to add the odd nuclear facility, now that there’s a way to pay for it.

After all, wouldn’t you prefer a nice, steady, year-round demand for your expensive new generator, over the possibility that you’ll only be able to use it during the day, for twenty days a year?

Inventories still swollen

Though the Big Three have tried to cut back their inventories, a sudden economic squeeze (one could argue that through reckless spending and poor investment choices, it’s been building for years) has thrown sales off kilter, sabotaging efforts in an industry with long lead times. GM, Ford, and Chrysler would probably much rather be able to slash truck production right now; but contracts and other arrangements don’t allow for such sudden movements.

Chrysler remains one of the worst off in stockpiling; the Jeep Wrangler was very hot, and suddenly demand disappeared, leaving Jeep with the fifth highest inventory in the industry (according to Automotive News, as are all other figures cited here). Of mainstream brands, only GMC is worse, by a single day of supply. But Jeep’s average 106 days’ supply is nothing compared with the stock of pickups. There are 107,700 Rams floating around out there, good enough to support Chrysler for 160 days should they stop production right now. That’s a worry with the 2009s coming soon, but Ford and GM have their own troubles. The Silverado is in relatively good shape - more are out there but sales are higher so the total supply is just 117 days. The F-series has 215,000 copies out there - a 133 day supply. Toyota’s Tundra is not reported separately but Toyota trucks overall have just a 100 day supply - and there are 225,000 of them on lots.

Chrysler’s biggest “days’ supply” problems, aside from Rams, come from vehicles with relatively low stockpiles - the Pacifica (5,100 for around 400 days’ worth), Crossfire (1,300 of them), Nitro (15,400), and Aspen (8,600). The minivans are interesting to see - the Dodge version has a 42-day supply, the Chrysler a 96-day supply, as the market apparently changed gears suddenly and decided it wanted the Dodge. I suspect this is due to the perception that the Dodge is cheaper.

The LX cars are looking surprisingly good in days’ supply, other than the 300. Likewise, there’s just a month’s worth of PTs out there as production was switched to the Journey, which with 71 days’ supply, is no longer looking as though it has the bright future execs clearly assumed it would - it was meant to be Chrysler’s European entry vehicle, but unless the diesel-AMT version is much cooler than the gas-automatic version, it doesn’t look as though it’ll gain the traction it needs to justify dedicating Toluca to it. At this point, Chrysler would be better served by putting the minivan captains’ chairs back into the PT, putting the old air dam back on, and trying to get people to desire it more - again. (Throwing that 180 hp engine around more wouldn’t hurt, either.)

As for Jeep, it’s bad news everywhere but for the Patriot, which is probably benefitting from gas prices and financial squeezes. The Commander could stop production now and still last for around six months, the Grand Cherokee could go on for three months, and the Liberty and Wrangler are both at around 130 days’ supply. We don’t know if the Wrangler-based pickup will be pushed forward, because they need to do something with that assembly line, or whether it will be dropped as the manual transmissions are reportedly being dropped (according to the jk forums), to save money.

Daimler put their emphasis on the Chrysler brand, positioning it rather like Chevrolet, Ford, or Toyota. That appears now to have been a mistake. If I were to operate without market research, I’d say that Chrysler is probably positioned in most people’s minds in one of two ways: as a troubled automaker that was bailed out repeatedly and changed hands like Jeep, or as a formerly upmarket brand that never quite made it into luxury. Dodge appears to have a more solid rep as the everyman brand. Daimler’s attempts to essentially rename Plymouth have, I think, failed dismally. They would have been better off dropping Chrysler than dropping Plymouth, because if Plymouth did not have much in the way of connotations for the average younger buyer - or many older buyers - at least it did not have a lot of the negative baggage of Chrysler. (Also, it would make our job easier, because we could refer to “Chryslers” as “Dodge, Jeep, and Plymouth” without confusing people with the brand.)

Yes, I say it’s time for Plymouth to return. I know it’s expensive. I know it means sacrifice (though some more investment from the people who have more money than they could EVER spend would be helpful about now. Talk about patriotism is cheap - put your money where your mouths are, Steve and Bob.) But this is the time for down-to-earth, sold, frugal, and value-based auto investment by the average buyer, and that’s what Plymouth has always stood for.

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