Editorial: The GM Boner Collection

There are x+1 reasons GM is where it is today, with x being a very large number. Those reasons have been hacked and stacked here and elsewhere: a chief executive so hesitant it’s a wonder he didn’t daily swaddle himself in Cottonelle; a Board of Directors so frightened of change that they never swapped out the pine paneling and shag carpet in the board room; and a union stuck so far in the past that Bakelite seems to them unspeakably futuristic. To paraphrase JFK, while success may have a thousand fathers, GM’s defeat also has a thousand fathers—and a network of 6,200 dealers.

But to only blame the current crisis on management is to miss the broader picture: for more than a generation, with few exceptions, GM just hasn’t made cars that inspire people. While factors like fuel economy and build quality no doubt contributed to the slide, it’s been 30 years since GM had a stable of pulse-quickening, shorts-constricting cars. Consequently, GM failed to convert decades worth of excitable, reachable teens and young adults into the sort of loyalists and enthusiasts that sustained the company this long in the first place.

The more Geritol-ed among us remember a time when things were not thus. In the Harley-olithic Era, the good Lord saw fit to provide not just the ’53 Corvette (dayenu!), but also the Skylark, the Rocket 88, the ’57 Chevy, the ’59 Caddy and the Eldorado (dayenu times five!). Our bounty was, um, bountiful for the next ten or fifteen years, too, with the muscle car boom that gave us the GTO and Camaro. If you were lucky enough to come up then, GM was synonymous with sleek and sexy and bold and daring.

And then came the late ’70s, when GM brought us to the edge of the Great Mediocre Desert and, feeling the warmth of the sand, walked right in.

I was born in those lost years, and I’ve never known a time when GM wasn’t wandering the desert. My generation never got its GTO, its ’59 Caddy. We got Impalas, yes, but they were rusty and rickety, not cool and threatening. My friend’s creepy, chain-smoking dad drove the kind of Bonneville driven by creepy, chain-smoking dads. Our Olds were for the elderly.

Those cars thrummed exactly no one’s chords. Worse yet, they were as reliable as someone on Intervention.

In 1950, the Great and Powerful Earl said, “It is a matter of record that poor styling or improperly timed styling has proved financially disastrous to some automobile manufacturers.”

Now, I’m not the brightest rocket surgeon in the picnic shed, but it seems that was a lesson never learned. And during this Craptastic Period in came the Japanese. Honda and Toyota didn’t compete on design; they fought it out with quality. Perhaps their cars were less in—or aspirational—but at least you’d get out of the dealer’s driveway before your feet went through the floorboards. GM never fought that battle, and so when they all but gave up on design, too, the war was lost.

The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is high school parking lots. Sure, you may still see some guys taking a Huggies to their babies, but you’ll definitely see row after row of Corollas, Elantras, and Whogivesashitimas. GM’s lost a generation of passionate brand loyalists—the sort of loyalists who popped their first boner over a ’58 Impala, not nakednymphs.net. To this generation, a car’s a car. A tranny with limited differential is just a guy in a dress who hasn’t cut off his nuts yet. The appliance-ification is basically complete.

Today’s Generals are certainly better than those of a few moons ago as far as reliability goes, but, man, Garrison Keillor is more exciting than the average Chevy. Were it not for the memory of those older, cooler cars—the fast and aggressive, the sleek and the styled, the innovative and inspirational—GM would not be around today.

That’s well worth noting, and quickly. GM makes a point of saying that their cars are now as reliable as anyone’s. But “as good” and “good enough” are not the same thing, and customers have 30 years of pent up distrust. If GM is to get customers back into its (culled) showrooms, it needs to banish bland, or there won’t be another 30 years. A Malibu can’t be an Impala can’t be an Aveo can’t be a Cobalt. And this commitment can’t be just a Skystice here and a CTS there; if it’s true that the General’s motors earn them a tie with the imports, inspiring design running through their entire line should be what puts GM over the top.

Pretty will get customers in the door. Distinctive will earn GM another look. Erections will make people remember. If GM is to survive and (gulp) thrive, they have to set their designers free, and give them the freedom to live into Harley Earl’s legacy. They have to en-boner-fy or die.