Historical Summer 2007 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Well, if you own a PT Cruiser, a Sebring, a Pacifica, or a Town & Country, you’re a bit poorer than you were a few weeks ago. Did you feel your wallet lighten or recognize the caching sound when you were brushing your teeth? Your depreciation just depreciated. Yep, Chrysler is being sold. Again.
In case you’ve been living in a cave and missed it, Daimler Benz of Germany has just divested (that’s a fancy word for sold) itself of Chrysler for the tidy sum of $7.4 billion bucks. That number may not seem tidy, I realize, but to put it in perspective, Daimler Benz bought Chrysler for billions more just nine years ago.
Now Cerberus, a private equity group, is betting that they can turn the profit that escaped Daimler Chrysler and plain old Chrysler before it. What gives here? Why is it so hard to make a buck selling automobiles?
I mean, it’s not like they’re an option or something.
In the U.S. of A., everyone needs a car. Mass transit is woeful so there’s a built-in market. Yet cars don’t sell? OK, to be fair, cars do sell.
It most communities, including our own, mass transit is more mass than transit. And I’m not referring to religion! Lots of people buy cars, it’s just the American puppies that are left in the kennel.
After all, Toyota has surpassed General Motors as the biggest auto manufacturer in the world. Seventy years ago the head of G.M. said “What’s good for business is good for America.” Fifty years ago the world was ruled by American automobiles, and now this? Where did we go wrong? However many fingers you have, there are more than enough culprits at which to point them in this one. You can even take off your shoes and point some more. No one is without sin here, including Henry Ford. Given the mistakes made time and time again, it’s a wonder that the auto industry remained strong for as long as it did.
I mean, how consumerfriendly is Ford’s line “the customer can have a car in any color he wants as long as it’s black”? Huh? Conventional wisdom (how’s that for an oxymoron?) is that the American auto industry underestimated competition from foreign countries. Major inroads – pun intended – were made by auto manufacturers in Germany and Japan, yet the old white guys in Detroit ignored the handwriting on the dashboard. Indeed, and this is sort of related, they also ignored the gas tank gauge on the dashboard.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to look around the world and see that the price of gasoline was going to change and, guess what, it wasn’t going to go down. Despite my youthful appearance, I’m old enough to remember when gas was, gasp, 25 cents per gallon. Not only that, but if you filled your tank you’d get steak knives or drinking glasses. Really.
But looking around, it wasn’t hard to figure that gas in other countries was four or five times more expensive, maybe higher. Of course, it’s hard to look around if you’re not looking around. Strike one, we failed to realize that Joe Sixpack might buy a VW bug and that his wife, Dee Facto, might want to meet the nicest people on her Honda.
These are big mistakes, folks, probably fatal errors that can’t be overcome. Consider them of the same magnitude as the City of St. Louis electing to separate from St. Louis County in 1876 or voting for George W. Bush.
As with ignoring cheaper and higher quality competition, one has to ask “What were they thinking?” Why would the City want to be devoid of the County? Why would anyone vote for W?
But it’s the third mistake, strike three, on which I want to focus.
In fact, I think it’s the most crucial boo boo; more, it’s the only one that is really fixable now. Yes, “fixable”: that’s an automotive term that means fixable. Strike three is style and innovation. More properly, it’s the lack of style and innovation. People don’t buy a VW, Toyota, Honda, Kia, or Audi out of loyalty to a foreign flag. Pure and simple, they buy that foreign car because (a) they like it more (b) they think it’s better (c) it’s cheaper (d) all of the above. Yes, (d) is the answer. Foreign cars have more styling, pure and simple. American cars look like linebackers; foreign cars look like Audrey Hepburn or Billy Bob Thornton.
The foreign cars are sleeker and carry a bit of pizzaz. American cars look like they should be owned by the police department and used for the paper route.
This should not be the case.
It shouldn’t be that hard to design a car that is fun and attractive.
Most fifth graders can do this, but then the creativity is beaten out of them by the time that they are paid to be creative.
If you stood at the St. Louis Bread Company on Delmar, for example, and tried to identify American cars at 30 yards, you’d be in trouble.
Most of them look like the rest of them. That may be OK for blenders and bananas, but it shouldn’t be the case for cars. Their bodies, after all, aren’t really functional. Sure, they provide a cocoon while driving but the cocoon could be in any shape. Why do all cars have to look like boxes or house slippers?
Then there’s the inside of cars. Do you know that it took years and years, and years, before American cars started including cup holders in the dash or on the console? How many gallons of coffee were spilled before cup holders became automatic?
In a way, that’s “any color as long as it’s black” a half century later. “Balance that cup, young lady, that’s why you have cruise control!” And how about dashboards? You’d think that since dashboards are in such a prominent place and impossible to ignore – Tip of the day: If a driver can’t see the dashboard, do not ride with him – someone would give a bit more thought to their appearance. No, that’s not the case. Dashboards remind me of ironing boards, and you can at least iron on an ironing board. Have you ever tried to dash on a dashboard?
Finally, there’s reliability.
It wasn’t an accident that while American manufacturers were offering a 10,000 mile or seven-day warranty, whichever comes first, Japanese cars came with a warranty of 900,000 miles or until the Chicago Cubs win the World Series, whichever comes last. You could tell the difference in quality just by closing the door. That wasn’t hard because often the doors on American cars wouldn’t fully close. And gas mileage? Or is it mismileage?
I used to own a Pontiac, and it felt like I was driving a couch.
It felt even more like a couch when I’d fill up the tank.
The car drank and drank and drank.
Then a few days later, it drank again. Ethyl and I became good friends. Enough of beating up on American autos. Things are better. Think of economy and what comes to mind is the Prius, for example, the hybrid car that… Oh! It’s a Toyota? Hmm. OK, think of sporty and a Miata pops on your mental screen, zooming around the corner.
But wait, it’s a Mazda? How about the semisporty Passat? Oops, it’s a Volkswagen. OK, I’m willing to cede auto domination to the foreign car manufactures.
We had our moments in the sun and now it’s theirs, pure and simple.
This is distressing, I know, but it’s the way of the world. Countries and industries evolve and migrate; as Walter used to say, “That’s the way it is.” The key, in fact, is not dwelling in an industry that is long gone. Find what you do well and stick with it. Pursuing that logic, next month I’ll write about a major U.S. strength: the airline industry. Happy trucking!
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, Summer 2007.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times2007_06.pdf, printed page(s) 8; PDF page(s) 8.
