Daily Podcast: Is Detroit All Martha Stewarted Out With No Place to Go?
Did you know that Martha Stewart has a horse farm? Well, duh. A wealthy WASP without a Connecticut horse farm is like a Detroit executive without a Gulfstream. To her credit, Suzy Homemaker on Steroids takes that old "I had a farm in the Constitution State" thing to the next level. According to Vanity Fair, the animals inhabiting Stewart's antebellum mansion equivalent are all black. Goats, sheep, dogs, cats, horses– all black, all the time. Get this: because black horses' coats can turn auburn in the summer sun, Princess Tippy Toes II has instructed her horse people (as opposed to horsey people) to keep the equines in their stables until dark. Now that's something with which this OCD automotive website editor can identify. So when I saw Martha Stewart vintage chardonnay at the package store, I just had to quaff. It was/is immaculate. And bland. Boring. As fundamentally characterless as a Toyota, Lexus and, yes, Scion product. Which got me thinking. If Detroit has anything left to add to America's automotive scene, it's soul. The Chrysler 300C had soul. The Ford GT had soul. Other than that, what? Mustang? Nitro? Malibu? And if American soul isn't a gas-guzzling V8, as it can no longer be, what it it? While you're contemplating that conundrum, Justin and I discuss the day's car news.
More by Robert Farago
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Absolutely right on Farago. If the domestics want to survive in America, they need to build American souled vehicles. Of course, they also have to match the foreign quality. With the success of the 300, the Hummers, the Mustangs, you'd think SOMEONE in Detroit could figure that out. BTW, Toyota owners are usually just as bland as their vehicles. Appliance.
Drifter: Very funny. It appears Martha Stewart is a self-hating Polish-Catholic with roots from the old country. She has clearly run away from her upbringing to the life of WASP-iness. Proving the point hat WASP-iness is really as much about a way of life than it is bloodlines. That said...I hear she has a helluva good pierogi recipe. Last----while Rhode Island can be equally as Waspy at Connecticut (ever been to Newport on a summer weekend ?)...at least Robert doesn't run away from his proud Hungarian roots. Shame on you Martha !
Cars don't have soul. They never have. They never will. They are inanimate objects with a purpose. What enthusiasts constantly mistake for "soul" or "passion" or any of those other Clarkson-esque sickeningly humanizing buzzwords is simply the projection of said enthusiasts' favored characteristics onto a car. Power. Handling. Style. Basically nothing that really matters to the average person. It's another way of elevating their favorites above the "pedestrian" choices of the masses. A bit Obama, if I do say so myself.
News Flash: Ok so some of you guys believe former Detroit porducts had "soul"! Hell for that matter I can name several far more recent Toyota products that had far more soul than anything coming out of Detroit since 1972! State correctly a very limited number of cars made during the competition free 1960s were endowed with some very nice features and options that made them feel and appear special to a very limited segment of the car buying public in America at that time. The truth of the matter is most muscle cars were based on cars that truly sucked in their base and average forms. A Camaro z28 or SS was special, a base Camaro has always been a cheap POS. The problem for the domestics and "soul" is that far too many of us do/did not consider domestic cars to have the type of "soul" we were/are looking for. A VW Bug had "soul", a BMW 2002 had soul, a 240z had soul. A big doofy 5000lb+ BOF car riding on tiny little 14" wheels with silly graphics and side pipes did NOT have much soul. Needless to say it only took a very short period of time for far too many Americans to discover this fact and Detroit has been paying one hell of a price for it ever since. Keep on knocking those Oh so boring Japanese appliances if you want but in 2008 it is obvious that they are exactly what the majority of Americans are looking for today, souless or not. The demographics are a changin in the good ole US of A. Too many of us want nothing to do with a car that evokes images of the General Lee.