Is the Writing on the Wall for the US Auto Industry

earllogjam

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Most American cars are designed in Michigan, not regarded as the bastion of creative imagination and cosmopolitan influence in America. And the cars reflect those middle American values. Those upper level designers and managers in charge hire and promote underlings who have the same aesthetics and values. Those values have shaped how domestic cars handle, ride and look - roominess, soft ride, plushy comfort, basic finishes, clumsy detailing and practicality. They have improved from the 70's and 80's but they still retain their heartland and middle American appeal. That is who they design for - fat people with no taste who live in the Midwest because those are the folks who buy their cars.

That unfortunately doesn't work when you are selling internationally and to the large more sophisticated California market. Foreign car companies like Nissan, Porsche, VW and Toyota understand this and have design studios in LA where designs reflect more accurately the tastes of their markets. That is why their cars look and perform the way they do and why Detroit's look and ride the way they do. At the end of the day in the design profession it is usually what the boss or his wife likes what gets built. If the car is a hit he'll take all the credit and if it bombs it'll be a finger pointing exercise at the designers. The boss will get another project and mediocrity will perpetuate mediocrity, mediocrity will hire mediocrity, mediocrity will design mediocrity, and mediocrity will manufacture mediocrity, the American auto industry in a nutshell.
 

SpeedoGuy

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earl,

Interesting assessment. Do you think catering nearly exclusively to the middle American market will be enough to sustain the Big Three US automakers indefintely through the future, particularly with oil prices rising and increased emphasis on "green" transportation?
 

RedScrotum

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[SIZE=-1]Interesting post. It's sure got a lot of peole fired up![/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Mercedes did not invent the diesel, "In 1898, Rudolf Diesel was granted patent #608,845 for an "internal combustion engine" the Diesel engine."[/SIZE]
In the latest customer satisfaction survey, Mercury scored better than Toyota.
Ford is not in bancruptcy
Some of the problems people are bringing up are 30 year old models...get over it!
GM did gain market share in the last quarter
No company has all the answers, but quit stereotyping american car companies as bad..maybe they were back in the late 70's, but they're producing some pretty good products today.
 

viking1

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[SIZE=-1]Interesting post. It's sure got a lot of peole fired up![/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Mercedes did not invent the diesel, "In 1898, Rudolf Diesel was granted patent #608,845 for an "internal combustion engine" the Diesel engine."[/SIZE]
In the latest customer satisfaction survey, Mercury scored better than Toyota.
Ford is not in bancruptcy
Some of the problems people are bringing up are 30 year old models...get over it!
GM did gain market share in the last quarter
No company has all the answers, but quit stereotyping american car companies as bad..maybe they were back in the late 70's, but they're producing some pretty good products today.

I never said Daimler Benz invented the diesel engine. I said it was invented in Germany, and it was. I said Daimler Benz was one of first cars.
Germany was way ahead in diesel technology for years. Pollution control has changed that. Now most all engines in the industrialized free world are very similar due to emission requirements.

I'm not at all surprised about Mercury scoring better that Toyota in a quality survey. Toyota doesn't usually win many of these surveys.
People hear all this hype about Toyota, and expect them to be perfect.
They aren't. When they find out the aren't, they get doubly upset.
Although Toyota still has the most repeat buyers overall. The less one actually knows about cars, the less difference one will notice in a Toyota.
At first glance for the average person, there is little if any difference.
The gimmicks, gadgets, and extra accessories on American cars fool many buyers. Toyota is just a well engineered, well built, reliable car for the money. That's all, nothing more.

As far as Consumer Reports is concerned, aren't they the ones who said that "Chrysler vehicles are judged to be ahead of others" a few years ago?
That didn't turn out to be my experience by a long shot. I don't agree with most of their opinions on anything, not just cars, appliances, tires, lawnmowers, etc. I don't even consult their info except to see the actual number of owner reported problems.

This is just my opinion, but I do think the "golden age" of the American auto industry is gone for good, along with quite a few other things...
 

B_New End

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[SIZE=-1]Interesting post. It's sure got a lot of peole fired up![/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Mercedes did not invent the diesel, "In 1898, Rudolf Diesel was granted patent #608,845 for an "internal combustion engine" the Diesel engine."[/SIZE]
In the latest customer satisfaction survey, Mercury scored better than Toyota.
Ford is not in bancruptcy
Some of the problems people are bringing up are 30 year old models...get over it!
GM did gain market share in the last quarter
No company has all the answers, but quit stereotyping american car companies as bad..maybe they were back in the late 70's, but they're producing some pretty good products today.

Ford and GM's credit ratings are really bad, I cant rememebr off the top of my head, but Ford is brinking on bankruptcy, ad GM is only a couple more bad years away.
 

Dave NoCal

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I concur with Earl. If you ask what cars people actually WANT it seems like it will rarely be a US brand. With the exception or Escaldes (barf) no Cadillacs are fantasy cars. There have been improvements but they have tended to be grudging. The complanies were very slow to adopt disc brakes, multi-valve engine technology, independent rear suspension in rear wheel drive cars, close tolerances for body fit, agile suspensions... The list goes on and these cars tend to remain a day late and a dollar short. What was the name of that two seater "sportscar" Cadiallac built in the 90's? At any rate, they tried to set their performance parameters to the Mercedes SL, a series that was then a twenty (or so) year old, and they failed. Chrysler had a similar misadventure.

They tried to compensate with highly vaunted superficial changes. Paint a black stripe around a Chevy and call it Eurosport! Forty years of this have caught up with them. There are some pretty sophisticated cars being built now such as the Lincoln LS, and Cadillac CTS, but I don't actually WANT any of them. That's because they don't stimulate my fantasies, lack road feel, and don't convey an image I like very much. It's also economic. A five year old CTS or LS is a used car. A five year old BMW is a BMW. A five year old Lexus is a Lexus.
On occasion I need to rent cars. Almost invariably, I'm just glad to get back to my 1986, 227,000 mile BMW 535i that is still going strong, looks good, gets 21 miles per gallon overall city/mountain driving and 26 miles per gallon on the road, and has rock-steady handling on its original shock absorbers. It's leather interior still looks good, it eagerly passes going uphill, the BMW sound system with a CD stacker in the trunk still sounds good and, when I detail it, it frequently elicits compliments from passers by.
These days I'm thinking about changing over to a 200-2006 3 Series coupe or am IS300 Lexus. You can pick up a good one for well under 20,000, about the proce of a Ford Focus.
Dave
 

jason_els

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Even without badges, I can spot an American car just from its looks. The switchgear is cheap plastic, the gaps and seams are wide or shoddy, the ergonomics are fair to poor, and the styling is questionable. American luxury cars stand out far more for their poor material quality (Zebrano "wood") and generally awful seats. There are three excellent American designs that I can think of off the top of my head, the 1984 Corvette, the new Thunderbird, and the Cadillac STS, but all before they got gewgawed to hell in years subsequent to their introduction. They were good designs and of them all, the Cadillac STS had the best lines which were promptly ruined by marketing departments trying to update their look in following model years. I say nothing about the quality of the mechanics in these cars, just their fundamental look.

But look at what American cranked out in the past! Packards were beautiful cars, so were some Cadillacs, Pierce Arrow, Auburn, and nothing has ever surpassed the Dusenberg which easily competed with anything Europe cranked out. America had talent for cars at one point and then, somewhere in the 50s, we promptly lost it selling it for tailfins and bloat. My brother's Vista Cruiser is ENORMOUS! The car has a 121" wheelbase and a 442 V8 engine! You can sleep three people on the hood which is over 6ft long! You turn the wheel and it heels over in the opposite direction, bouncing a bit, and then the whole mass moves. It's like driving a supertanker. I'm fond of the car because of the sheer madness of it, but I NEVER would have bought one.
 

jason_els

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I'm just glad to get back to my 1986, 227,000 mile BMW 535i that is still going strong, looks good, gets 21 miles per gallon overall city/mountain driving and 26 miles per gallon on the road, and has rock-steady handling on its original shock absorbers. It's leather interior still looks good, it eagerly passes going uphill, the BMW sound system with a CD stacker in the trunk still sounds good and, when I detail it, it frequently elicits compliments from passers by.

Without question one of the best BMWs ever made. You're fortunate to have it. It is a legendary model and well worth keeping.
 

earllogjam

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earl,

Interesting assessment. Do you think catering nearly exclusively to the middle American market will be enough to sustain the Big Three US automakers indefintely through the future, particularly with oil prices rising and increased emphasis on "green" transportation?

The dwindling market share numbers tell the story whether or not they can sustain by just catering to middle America. There seems to be a concerted effort to make their cars more BMW and Mercedes-like but bringing in some top people from Europe to change US car design seems like a marriage fraught with resentment and spite.

The US automakers have been innovators in the industry. They have created markets for themselves - the minivan, SUV's, 4 door trucks, crossovers are all US innovations. Technical innovations like fuel cell, CNG, hydogen, electric and hybrid cars also have started here. All that research somehow is never followed through to a marketable product. I think the gaps in quality among the automakers these days are probably not so big since most are manufactured by robots anyways and many have common suppliers. And like you, I don't think there is a short supply of talented people making US cars now.

But they are burdened with the reputation and perception that their cars are not as well made. It's hard to shake. It's difficult to convince people like Viking 1 and many others whom have been burned buying poorly made US cars in the 70's and 80's, especially when you hear stories of Camrys going for 500,000 miles with no problems. (Like my mom who drives one with 250K miles and still going strong.)

Many diehard American truck men I know have actually switched to Toyota Tundras (soon to go hybrid) and Nissans because in the end like everybody else they are looking for value - just a better percieved product for their money. Reputation, word of mouth and hearing actual experiences from people you know do a lot more in selling vehicles than any marketing promotion. I'm sure middle America is not immune to these things as I see more and more foreign cars and trucks in places like Texas and Georgia.
 

Principessa

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IMHO if Detroit really wanted hybrids, biodiesel, flexfuel and other more environmentally friendly vehicles to sell well in the USA they would sell them for less, not more than the current gas guzzlers.

Forbes First Drive: The First American Hybrid
Dan Lienert

As we roared uphill on a twisty, two-lane road outside Los Angeles, Sheri Shapiro interrupted the conversation in Ford Motor's new Escape Hybrid sport utility to point out a series of mountain bikers. The bikers wore blue shirts with individual words printed on the backs, so that driving past them yielded a Burma Shave-style roadside advertisement: "Thanks-for-the-clean-air-Ford-Escape-Hybrid."

"Sorry. I wanted to make sure you noticed," said Shapiro, the Escape Hybrid's marketing manager. "I had to pay for those bikers."

America's first gas/electric hybrid--for which print advertisements are already running elsewhere--has earned a little publicity. The bikers, who were paid to be seen by automotive journalists on the hybrid's first test drive, addressed what may be the chief virtue of the new SUV, which will come out in the late summer: It produces less than 1 pound of smog-forming pollutants for every 15,000 miles you drive it.

To give you an idea of how dramatic that difference is from non-hybrid vehicles, Terry Newell of the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Transportation and Air Quality says the average for all light trucks is 105 pounds of smog-forming pollutants for every 15,000 miles. For passenger cars, the average is 67 pounds.

Right now, hybrids are the hottest topic in American motoring. People are curious about how they benefit the environment, as well as their own budget for fuel. On the Escape Hybrid test drive, a man driving a BMW 3 Series asked us to roll down our window and posed a question we almost always hear when testing futuristic-looking vehicles: "Is that one of those new hybrids?"

The Escape Hybrid will be the first American hybrid, beating to market hybrid derivatives of General Motors' (nyse: GM - news - people ) 2005 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups, which are due out this fall. GM's hybrids are currently available in fleets. Ford (nyse: F - news - people ) was wise to make the first American hybrid an SUV, the most American of vehicles, for several reasons:
  1. Based on the regular Escape SUV, the Escape Hybrid has the looks and capabilities of a normal car, thus allowing Ford to sidestep the science-project styling that cut sales of Honda Motor's (nyse: HMC - news - people ) Insight hybrid coupe in half last year. The Insight was one of the first hybrids sold in the U.S., but Americans are buying newer, more conventionally styled hybrids in much larger numbers.
  2. Improving the regular Escape's city fuel economy by 75% seems more impressive, and more relevant to the average American customer, than putting out a new, standalone hybrid commuter car that gets 55 mpg. Ford estimates that the Escape Hybrid will get 35/30 city/highway mpg (the city figure is higher than the highway figure, which is unusual, because the engine cuts out during deceleration and at a stop).
  3. Toyota Motor (nyse: TM - news - people ), which currently is the only manufacturer beside Honda to sell hybrids in America, is about to release a hybrid SUV of its own, a hybrid treatment of the Lexus RX 330 called the RX 400h. With 92,366 unit sales in the U.S. last year, the regular RX is the backbone of Lexus. It's a hot vehicle whose sales continue to increase, and its hybrid derivative is going to be a huge hit, for which other automakers need to prepare competition.
  4. Sport utility buyers have the same desire to improve their fuel economy as buyers of compact cars. This may be hard to believe, but owners of General Motors' Hummer vehicles say that their number one complaint about the trucks is bad fuel economy. But...
  5. Rising gas prices don't seem to be making American drivers willing to compromise. Consumers are not buying less gas as oil prices dance near the $40 per barrel mark, challenging GM's longstanding theory that the only way to lower fuel consumption is to raise the price of gas. Drivers don't seem willing to give up space, either. Sport utilities are the favorite American vehicles because Americans value cargo utility above all other automotive priorities. If Americans will continue to demand gas-guzzling SUVs, a hybrid SUV with dramatic fuel-consumption benefits would seem tailored to their wishes.
With all of these conditions in place, the Escape Hybrid should be a hit--except that we have no idea how much it will cost. Ford is planning to announce pricing about a month before the vehicle goes on sale (the base price of the regular Escape is $19,300, $1,210 less than the base price of a Toyota Prius hybrid sedan). If Ford keeps the Escape Hybrid under $25,000, it will sell like hotcakes. If they price it closer to $30,000, they may find it to be less popular than they expect. In either event, Ford is planning for initial demand of the Escape Hybrid to far outstrip supply, according to Marty Collins, Ford's general marketing manager.
What the "Fuel Economy Challenge" does suggest is that, in addition to the socially conscious and the technologically savvy, motoring enthusiasts are also getting on board with hybrids. Take a look at why the first such offering from an American company is so interesting.


Click here for the slide show.
 

sigmajam

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Good comments from all, but GM is transforming thanks to Bob Lutz - a car guy finally running the company. I cite 3 vehicles that you need to look at - the Chevy Malibu, Cadillac CTS, and Buick Enclave. all of them are top notch. Drive the car and look at the reviews for the Malibu - most of the reviews are saying the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry are now behind in terms of content and refinement. I am shocked to hear that, but kind of proud that GM finally got it right.

It is fun to watch Toyota crumble now that they are in the number 1 spot. Did you see the latest Consumer Reports ratings? Camry, Tundra, and Lexus listed as "unreliable". OUCH - Transmission problems, AWD issues, and electronics glitches. It sucks to be # 1.


Most amazing to me was Consumer Reports stating that now they will require Toyota to earn their high ratings with data like all the domestics instead of getting an automatic high rating based on past performance. Unbelievable!
 

JustAsking

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Twice in the past year I have tried to rent an economy car from Budget on business trips. Each time they have been out of economy cars, so they gave me what they had left, which was a Mustang.

The first time I was in a hurry so I just drove the thing. The next time, I had it for an hour and just had to return it. I have never driven a bigger piece of shit in my life. It was huge, loud, amazingly bad ergonomics, and it handled like a covered wagon. If you hit a bump on a corner, the back wheels would break loose and the stupid thing would skidder sideways.

I am interested in the models that were mentioned here that might be very good American cars. I believe that because I believe we could make anything we wanted to. But instead, almost none of the decision makers in the US companies are car people. They are MBAs and marketing guys, following the Harvard Business School ethic which states that it doesn't really matter what your product is, business is simply business.

Well it shows, in the soulless crap that Detroit is turning out.

There is one consolation, though. If things get bad enough, enough heads will roll, and they might find themselves adopting a "what do we have to lose" strategy and really doing something innovative. I would love to see that. Until then, though, I will continue driving Japanese imports.
 

jnp

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I love my 2005 Mustang- Never had a problem. I'm pretty sure in your case it may have been the driver, not the car.

ANYWAYS, I owned a 1997 VW Passat- talk about a POS, there you have it. Every time we turned around, the moonroof motor was shot, the door locks quit working, the window's wouldn't roll down, reverse came out of the transmission, and on and on and on. Then, I drove our 1993 Taurus, which had been wrecked twice before us, dad hit 6 deer with it, I ran into a brick wall head on (bad day), and dad hit a downed tree in the road going 65 mph, and it will STILL go, no questions ask. It rode great, and would take us anywhere. The only reason we still don't have it is the last wreck bent the frame on it, so we bought a 1995 Taurus, and it's been just as awesome so far.
I'm really not trying to play favorites here, it's just that when I know first-hand what awesome vehicles Ford produces, and then I see people bash them like they're some of the worst cars ever made, it really flies all over me. Most people don't take car of their vehicles, or can't drive period, and then blame it on the car. I'm a terrible driver myself, and my Ford's have STILL gone above and beyond the call of duty. And yes, that includes my POS Mustang.
 

rob_just_rob

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Thanks, jnp. Why bother looking at consumer studies, buying trends, reliability records, and balance sheets, when we can rely on the driving experience of an 18 year old to show us the way. :rolleyes:

Seriously, I can't understand why people take these things so personally. If you like the car, drive it. And don't get so pissy when the rest of us have plenty of real-world reasons for not driving it.
 

jnp

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Okay, lets look at buying trends of the F-150 as America's number 1 selling truck for how many years now? Or the new Taurus being ranked as America's safest car? Well, how about I quote the official Ford Newspage-

'Ford Motor Company Vehicle Quality Soars'

DEARBORN, Mich., June 6, 2007- Ford Motor Company is the only company with five initial quality model segment awards this year, according to a customer-based Initial Quality Survey released today by J.D. Power and Associates.

In the research firm's 2007 Initial Quality Study (IQS), Ford Mustang, Mercury Milan, Lincoln MKZ, Lincoln Mark LT and Mazda MX-5 Miata swept their vehicle segments for top honors. "We are designing and building world-class vehicles, and it's great to have this acknowledgement from the customers who drive our cars and trucks every day," said Mark Fields, president of the Americas, Ford Motor Company. "While we're pleased that our internal focus on quality is receiving this kind of recognition from J.D. Power and Associates, we will not let up. We will continue to deliver even more high-quality products that customers want."

Overall, Ford, Lincoln and Mercury nameplates placed among the top 10 nameplates, with Lincoln in 3rd place, Mercury in 8th place and Ford brand in 10th . Jaguar ranked 6th. Ford Motor Company received 14 total vehicle honors, more than any other automaker.


Just in case, here is the link with information provided-
Ford Motor Company - Featured Story - Ford Motor Company Vehicle Quality Soars
 

rob_just_rob

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One year does not a trend make. The Big 3 have been losing market share for years. And the industry's problems have been documented throughout this thread. If Ford's products are so great, why did they lose $5.7 billion over the last year? Why has their stock dropped 50&#37; since 2004?

Kudos to Ford for having some good models in 2007, but that doesn't solve the problems they're facing. One being, how to win back the people who drove and disliked older Fords and gave up on the brand.