Since I posted this article in 2009, the city of Milford has settled for $2.5M with the family of David Servin, one of the victims of the incident discussed below. The police officer driving the vehicle is facing manslaughter charges. Note that manslaughter cases don’t normally drag for three years before going to trial; that’s a little courtesy that the local “justice” system is doing for Officer Anderson. Go run someone down in the street in most American cities and you will be facing a jury within six months, tops — JB

The nice folks at Jalopnik link to us so often, it’s the least I can do to begin this column by suggesting you watch this video over there. For those of you who don’t like watching videos, this particular one shows a police car operating at a velocity of ninety-four miles per hour in a marked 40 zone. At around the one-minute mark, we see the police car strike a Mazda containing two teenagers. Both are killed. The police car is not running its lights, was not operating the siren, and was not even responding to an emergency.

Here’s the best (or worst) part: the officer who killed the kids, Jason Anderson, was apparently “racing” the officer whose car recorded the video, one Richard Pisani. Pisani is traveling at about 74 mph during one part of the video. In a marked 40. I cannot find any evidence that Officer Pisani was in any way disciplined for his conduct. Think about that for a moment.

Perhaps most worryingly, the video shows absolutely no awareness, driving ability, or evidence of the vaunted “high-speed police training” on the part of Officer Anderson. It’s fairly obvious that the Mazda is going to cross Anderson’s path. We’re regularly told that by police departments that their officers have “special training”, but this is an accident that most solid NASA HPDE drivers could easily avoid. A modest amount of steering to the left would have saved two lives. Instead, Anderson simply drives right into the Mazda, with his car’s “black box” recording 100% accelerator pressure up to the crash. He was flat-out to the very end.

The good news is that the technology exists to prevent a tragic event such as this from ever happening again. In fact, the technology has existed for a very, very long time, and it could be easily installed on every police vehicle in the country. Let’s discuss.

I live in a little suburb outside Columbus, Ohio. My afternoon commute takes me through an even smaller suburb of perhaps five hundred residents. This suburb rigorously enforces a 40mph limit on the 1.5 miles of state highway passing through its borders, and it has at least two police-liveried Explorers with which to do so. I’m used to having my lime-green Audi S5 lit up with multiple laser shots and frustrated, angry looks from those Explorers as I cruise-control by at 38 miles per hour, not a bit more. I know that if I stray above forty I’ll be ticketed. A friend of mine got a $200-ish ticket a while ago for running his Supra by the local yokels at forty-five.

Today, as I was idling through that town, I was nearly struck head-on by one of the aforementioned police Explorers, running flat-out to catch a speeder. I’m no accurate judge of oncoming-vehicle speed (and, for that matter, neither is anyone else I’ve ever met) but I think it’s fair to say this cop was doing at least sixty, maybe seventy, and he was treating the double-yellow separating me from him with a considerable amount of disregard. It didn’t take me much mental effort to move over and avoid a collision, but it started me thinking about some basic assumptions regarding speeding and police conduct.

We can start by examining the most basic assumption regarding speeding, namely the idea that there should be such an offense. For better or worse, I’m inclined to think that some sort of speed limit is a reasonable idea. I’d like to buzz down the freeway at a buck-fifty, and I occasionally do buzz down the freeway at a buck-fifty, but I’m not certain that the current states of vehicle repair, tire inflation, driver education, and drug/alcohol/phone/boomin’-system use in this country support the idea of unlimited speed on all roads.

Now we arrive at the first contradiction in modern speeding laws: the fine-based approach. If you break a speed limit by less than thirty miles per hour in most areas, you will be fined and/or receive “points” on your license. If speeding is dangerous, and if people die from speeding, why aren’t speeders thrown in jail? Throwing old-school “Jarts” into a crowd is dangerous, and if you get caught doing it chances are you won’t simply be permitted to avoid criminal penalities by mailing a hundred bucks to your local mayor’s court. Why do we, as a society, treat speeding differently? Could it be a tacit recognition by the justice system of the fact that nearly everyone exceeds the artificially low speed limits in the United States?

Of course, if you live in an area where photo radar or some other Orwellian automatic enforcement hasn’t yet become popular, you will have to receive your speeding ticket from a police officer. Unless you slow down below the posted limit upon seeing said cop and then patiently wait for him or her to arrive behind you, your pursuer will have to break the speed limit as well.

Think about that. It’s not usually necessary to murder people to catch a murderer, nor is it necessary to rape innocent bystanders to punish a rapist. If your car was stolen, you would not expect the policeman taking your report to arrive in a stolen car. And yet we generally accept the idea that a police officer will break the speed limit in order to catch speeders. Even more interestingly, we accept that it will be “necessary” to break the speed limit by considerably more than the original offender did.

Some back-of-the-envelope stuff: If a driver is doing fifty in a forty and passes a stationary cop in a P71 Crown Vic “Police Interceptor”, that cop will need at least ten seconds to pull out and accelerate to fifty miles per hour. At that point, he is at least four hundred feet behind the speeder, probably more. If he wants to catch that speeder within three or so minutes and stay within his jurisdiction, he needs to step it up to fifty-five or sixty miles per hour. He’s now doing half again the speed limit and possibly represents a greater threat to the public welfare than the original offender.

This wouldn’t be a problem if cops didn’t crash, but they do. All the time, as a matter of fact. A long time ago, I had a police firearms instructor tell me, “There are two things cops can’t do: shoot and drive.” He was right. NHTSA states that over 3,000 people have died in police chases during the past decade. In 2001, for example, 365 people were killed, including 140 who were in no way involved with the chase. For more information, check out Victims Of Police Pursuit. Many municipalities are moving to reduce high-speed chases — or eliminate them altogether.

If we, as a society, are not willing to risk innocent lives to catch bank robbers or fleeing felons, why should we endure a similar risk simply to tax motorists who are often traveling at a speed which is entirely reasonable and appropriate for the conditions? Speed limits could still be enforced through cameras, automated devices, and the old Ohio Highway Patrol standby of having a cop call ahead to another cop up the road who waves the motorist over to receive a ticket. If this increases the cost of speeding enforcement, perhaps it will inspire municipalities, and the citizens of those municipalities, to more closely consider whether their police are best serving the public by serving as roadside tax collectors.

It seems reasonable enough that police shouldn’t be allowed to drag-race down the road, endangering the public simply to write tickets. The problem then becomes: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will watch the watchers? How can police be prevented from endangering the public? In the long run, an OnStar-style system of GPS-based speed management could be used to ensure that police (and, come to think of it, any other person who suckles from the teat of public employment) adhere to the speed limit at all times. This is the only fair system. While I’m sure that we all like the idea of police rushing at triple digit-speeds to save us from a home invasion, that implies that the lives of crime victims are somehow more valuable than the lives being risked by police who operate vehicles at a speed beyond their capacities. If a policeman kills innocent kids through negligent speed, does the fact that he is rushing to respond to a break-in bring those kids back to life?

While we are waiting for a perfect, nationwide-capable GPS speed-enforcement mechanism to arrive, action can still be taken to save thousands of lives every decade. It’s this simple: an electronic speed governor can be installed on every cop car. The maximum speed should be set to the limit chosen by that state for two-lane highways. Simple as that. For most states, that limit is fifty-five miles per hour.

As fate would have it, a few months prior to the Milford crash, the Connecticut State Senator for Milford had opined that a broad increase in requirements and penalties for teenaged drivers would be justified “if it saves one life.” I don’t know if changing the curfew for teen drivers from midnight to eleven p.m. will save any lives, but I’m pretty sure that governing the Milford Police’s cruisers to fifty-five would have saved two lives. Those lives have names: Ashlie Krakowski and David Servin.

I once had a vehicle that sat on my lot for over 9 months. It wasn’t anything too bad. A 1998 Plymouth Grand Voyager in the tannest shade of brown. But no one wanted the thing.

I couldn’t figure it out. Did it have too many miles on it? Did brown all of a sudden become the new purple, orange or lime green? It did have four doors instead of the three door minivan albatrosses that were common during the pre-Y2k era. But I couldn’t get so much as a nibble on it for months on end.

Denial can be a hard pill to cough up. Lo and behold, this is what I figured out.

Dead Brands Don’t Go Walking: Pontiacs, Saturns and Saabs may have a little issue with public recognition. But a Plymouth? Most folks simply didn’t know what one was by the time Obama got in office. Over the last few years I have also seen Oldsmobiles and Eagles slowly go the way of Daihatsus and Peugeots. Fewer folks remember them, and fewer folks want them.

No One Loves A Large Marge Barge: Minivans have become the automotive version of disco. Not a lot of people admit to liking them, and it’s fashionable to bash a vehicle made for a brood in a Western world where large families are becoming ever less common. Who among you thought Ford and GM would ever throw the proverbial towel in a market that once spanned the seven figures every year? OK, besides you Bertel!

Brown Isn’t Sexy On A Car: With apologies to Sajeev and the rest of the brown gawkers, brown has indeed become the new purple, pink, lime and orange. The only way you can sell a brown car these days is if it’s rare or cheap. Otherwise this color palette has joined the nostalgia circuit along with forest green and beige.

No One Wants Sticks, Unless It’s Sporty: “Yeah! Yeah! That’s what I really want! A base car with no options on it so that I can get a true feel for the road. You know… today’s base car. With power windows, door locks, mirrors, cruise, ABS, traction control, comfortable seating for five, USB port, Bluetooth, Six Speakers, Eight Airbags, and… an Automatic!”

When it comes to commuting in most major metropolitan areas, only hypermilers and tightwads still appreciate the benefits of a stickshift. Everyone else wants to give their left foot a rest.

Base Cars Always Get Stuck In The Back Of The Lot: A leather seat with minor tears on it will almost always sell faster than a cloth vehicle with minimal wear. Even in hot climates like Atlanta and Phoenix, there are countless consumers who still believe that cloth interiors are neither luxurious nor comfortable.

And The Rest: There are countless examples of cars that don’t sell. Too many miles. Too much body damage. The distinct smell of the prior owner (and their pets). So along those lines, let me ask the B&B a question.

What car was the hardest vehicle for you to sell… and why?

If all your cars have sprinted out of your driveway like  O.J. trying to catch a flight to Barbados, then feel free to mention a friend. Or a family neighbor. Or even someone who is more distant from you than a father’s cousin’s former roommate. The day is long. So feel free to share a story.

Wherever the hollow tubes of the InterWeb may reach, there you will find the argument that “it’s always a better idea to buy a CPO used car than a new one.” The mean transaction price of a new car in the United States is about $29,000. That kind of money will get you a loaded-up Camcord, a discounted LaCrosse, or any number of other mass-market sedans… but can it get you the BMW of your dreams? A friend and former co-worker of mine decided to find out, using his own time and money.

(Dramatic voice) This… is his story.

My search is over; now the love affair can officially begin. I had decided on the 535xi because it falls into an unbelievable sweet spot for me. It has the twin-turbo inline six (that eliminated the 2007 5-series and the 2008/9 528xi). It could be found for around $30,000 with the CPO warranty (that eliminated the 550). It has the room to seat four adults comfortably (that eliminated the 335xi). It has the AWD (which eliminated older 650′s, M3s, and M5′s). And it has looks, tech, and power.

So then came the comparison stage, how to compare nearly one hundred 2008′s and 2009′s? After flailing about for a few days and repeatedly confusing cars, I settled on a grid analysis which would score each car on the criteria I considered important; price, miles, exterior color, interior color, premium pkg, cold-weather pkg, sport pkg, heated rear sets, navigation, carfax, CPO warranty end date, etc. Then I weighted each of these criteria based on their necessity. That process gave me a score for each car.

Not knowing what I would say or how the conversation would go, I nervously dialed the dealer that had my top-scoring Bimmer. After I made every mistake that a novice buyer can make in the first five minutes (including naming my price), the salesman told me the car was still on the lot but appeared to have been sold the previous Saturday. WHAT?! Impossible. I was certain he was blowing me off because I had asked for a pre-purchase inspection (PPI). I had a friend with a cell phone in a different area code call and ask about the car. Sold. Damn.

I got a little desperate, calling three dealerships, naming my price, confirming that the options listed in the ad were correct. I focused on cars that had been on the lot for a while, thinking maybe I could negotiate thousands off the price as the dealer would be glad to be rid of it. Not so. A particularly fetching Monaco Blue Metallic w/Natural Brown leather was firm at $32,000 even though it had been available for more than four months. It can’t go any lower, I was told, that’s what we have in the car. What a shame. Oh well, on to the next one.

After another near miss where I ended up perhaps being a bit too eager to buy what was, in retrospect, the wrong car, I cooled it on the phone calls for a few days. All incoming calls from the circling sharks were put off with lame excuses, just enough to get them off the phone. I’m sure I was labeled “luke-warm” on Post-It notes in New Jersey, Michigan, North Carolina, and New York. I deleted my initial grid analysis and started over.

I scrutinized my weightings; asking questions like, do I really care more about the cold-weather package than the CPO warranty end date, and do I care about Nav at all? Also, in this interval I dug into the 535, learning about the HPFP problems, the gremlins in the electronics, warrantied items, and perhaps more important, those items that are not warrantied; like the batteries (foreshadowing). I investigated independent BMW shops, locally and near dealerships I might call. I began reading articles on the psychology employed by salesmen. I learned the techniques that supposedly counter these tactics (silence is big). I compared Fair Market Value (FMV) on KBB’s and NADA’s websites to the Dealer trade-in price. I decided I would be myself; honest and direct. This may seem idiotic, but I have always been uncomfortable when I stray from the truth (though I still sometimes do). I simply refused to believe that I had to lie to succeed.

Now I was ready, renewed, and excited to start again. Maybe I was just a little wiser…maybe. At the top of the list were two; one a 2008, the other a 2009, both blue, both with brown leather, both with sport, cold-weather, and premium packages. The differences were small and/or inconsequential; the 2009 had fewer miles and a longer CPO warranty, and the 2008 had the 18″ wheels. The asking prices were just $200 apart. What swayed me toward the 2008 initially was BMW Financial’s incentives; first two payments and 1.9% APR for 48 months. The 2009 had a respectable offer of 2.9% APR for 48 months. At this point it was February 21st.

I called on the 2008. In my confusion, I had forgotten it was one I had already called on. The price had come down $900 to $32,000 and Bob, the salesman, was emphatic that they needed to get that out of the car just to break even. I was skeptical, and I was armed with some pretty good (as it turned out) estimates of what they paid, and what they put into the car to recondition it for CPO status. I knew how long the car had been on the lot. Finally, I knew that there were other cars. This last bit of knowledge proved to be the most crucial.

I was working against a clock, as well. Due to the impending expiration of the incentives and the 400-mile distance between me and the dealership, the upcoming Saturday, February 29, was the only day I could buy this car.

I explained to Bob that I would not buy the car without a PPI. He responded with details about the CPO program, and the singular excellence of this car. His sales manager was more direct: no PPI, period. I called on the other car, and was told that a PPI would be no problem. The next day, Wednesday, Bob called back. The CFO is involved, he said, and a PPI can be done if I’ll put down a deposit. Refundable? Yes. Done. Paperwork was faxed, signed, and returned. Interestingly, the paperwork I was asked to sign included the $32,000 price tag. I suppose they wanted me to think I had agreed to the price by signing. I was also asked to apply for the BMW financing. I guess they wanted to know if they would be able to sell me a car. (I think asking for the financing worked against them as you’ll see later on.) The inspection was scheduled for Friday morning, February 24th.

Thanks to a busy morning at work, I didn’t see the results of the inspection until 11:30 AM. Codes pulled from the computer showed 11 separate items. Uh oh. “Not to worry,” said the inspector, “I think it is all due to a dying battery. Ask them to replace it.”

Now I’ve got a problem. Maybe all of those codes are battery-related, but what if they aren’t? The timeframe is too short to replace the battery, recalibrate the ECU, and pull the codes again. I decided to ask for battery replacement and $1000 off the car. I was convinced the price was too high, and now I had a solid reason. Bob, who had repeatedly told me that he stood to make nothing off this car, stated that they wouldn’t give that much. Maybe the battery, but a grand on top was too much. “I will buy the car if you’ll do it,” I stated. The answer: No deal. End of the adventure.

I didn’t bother to call on the 2009. That could wait until the following week. The pressure that had built all week evaporated in an instant. I was disappointed, but I felt confident I had done the right thing. I’m pretty sure they were banking on using my desire for the car and my commitment to the process against me. I’m still not sorry I expressed how much I wanted the car. A month of research had tempered my enthusiasm. They just didn’t know that. Then the phone rang. I felt the anger start to build the moment I saw the number of the dealership come up on the caller ID. Didn’t they know that this was over, at least as far as I was concerned? Three rings went by, and I almost let it go to voice mail. Almost.

“It’s Bob. You’re not going to believe this (correct, I won’t), but the CFO and the sales manager are arguing over your offer.”

“I don’t have an offer. You turned it down. I have no interest in playing games.”

“No games. We’ll do 31k and the new battery if the offer is still valid.” You’d think I would have been happy to hear this, but I wasn’t. I said almost nothing. I didn’t trust myself to speak.

“Let me get back to you Bob. I’m not pleased.” This is where my friends and my wife were crucial. It took a while for me to calm down. Honestly, I’m not completely sure why I was so angry, but I finally realized that I was getting what I wanted. I accepted. The breakneck pace then accelerated. I raced home, making calls the whole way to address the logistics of driving to St. Louis on short notice (which I had canceled when my initial offer was refused). Then to the airport to pick up the rental car. Back to the house to pick up the wife and an overnight bag, and we were off.

As if to drive home the logic of buying German, the Malibu LTZ we rented would not let us take the key out of the ignition once inserted. Calls to the rental car company and a Chevy dealership service department were not helpful. Of course, this problem is probably an isolated incident. I have no idea if this is a common problem (Google didn’t think so), but it made me feel better about my decision.

When I finally arrived at the dealership, the car was right out front. I looked right past it because I thought it couldn’t look that good. Then I drove it. Wow! How could this car have sat for five months? I hope there is not an unhappy answer to that question somewhere in my future. The car is now mine. I own a 2008 BMW 535xi. Still can’t believe it!

Did my friend make the right decision, or was he blinded by the allure of the Roundel? You could get out your slide rule and make the argument either way, but let’s face it: new cars aren’t dishwashers. Emotion plays a role. No matter what happens in the years to come, my friend will walk out to the driveway knowing that he has the car he wants. That’s worth a little bit of money, hassle, and time, if you ask me.

Not surprisingly, the most fuel efficient cars are sold by smart and MINI. Duh, all they have are small cars.

Once the offerings get a bit more diverse, Hyundai emerges as a clear winner with an average MPG of 27.8 in February 2012. Hyundai is closely followed by Volkswagen with 27.4 MPG. JLR can boast that it affords the luxury of absolutely atrocious mileage, a label Jaguar and Land Rover share with truck-heavy Ram.

With one narrow exception, Detroit cars are below average when it comes to combined mileage. A Volt doesn’t do anything to the environment if people don’t buy it. The only Detroit brand above average is Buick. The German and Chinese influenced brand is a tenth of a mile better than run-of-the-mill.

TrueCar TrueMPG By Brand, February 2011

The YoY column says what manufacturers actually do about mileage. It compares the combined MPG of cars sold in February 2012 with that of cars sold in February 2012.

The star of the MPG improvement category clearly is Ford. Within one year, Ford delivered 4 miles per gallon more across all Fords sold. If Ford keeps up this performance, it will soon be found in the hero category. The company not rescued by the government has the best improvement and the best overall MPG ranking of all Detroit makers.

Top ranking Hyundai and Volkswagen improved their MPG by 1.9 and 1.7 miles respectively. Buick surprisingly improved a below-average 20.3 MPG last year by a class-leading 2.1 miles. Ford and Buick protected Detroit’s virtue: The mileage may still be sub-par. But at least, something is being done to improve it.

Actually, I still know nothing about the car carriers that sail the high seas. The Nichioh Maru is a coastal ship. It steams, well, diesels up and down the Japanese archipelago on its route between Oppama, Kobe and Kyushu. On four decks, the Nichioh Maru has room for 1,380 cars. Yesterday, the ship completed its first day on the job by bringing cars to Oppama. Today, it loads Leafs while I watch.

By comparison, the Panama-flagged Eternal Ace that swallows cars for overseas shipping in the dock next door has room for 5,563 cars. That according to Jane’s merchant ships. If you want to get the inside track on a 5,000+ unit class car carrier, simply multiply this story by three and a half, and then deduct the green.

Did I say green? After building zero emission vehicles like the Leaf, Nissan is tackling the ships that bring them. The Nichioh Maru is not quite zero emission yet, but the ship achieves a 20 percent reduction of fuel used and CO2 produced over conventional ships, I am told today.

The ship does so with an electronically controlled 18,000 hp diesel engine (produced by MAN.) The ship has LED lighting in the ship’s hold and living quarters, and its hull is painted with the latest in low friction coating.

The top of the ship is covered with solar power panels, the first time on a coastal ship in Japan, my handlers say. The solar panels create a hefty 50 kW of power, some of it stored in a battery for when the sun don’t shine. That ship is so green that the fire extinguishing system is foam type, and not CO2. Even when in flames, that ship won’t emit unnecessary CO2.

For the nautical gearheads, the engine is an MAN B&W 8S50ME-C8. That is an eight cylinder, super long stroke, 50 centimeter piston, M-program, electronically controlled, “compact” engine, Mark 8. Glad you asked.

Inside, the ship looks like a big multistory garage. Except that there are tie-downs in the floor. To prevent the ship from rolling too much (with possible ill effects on not tied down cars), the ship can shoot water from port to starboard ballast tanks, and back.

First 40 cars loaded. Only 1,340 more to go.

On the bridge of the Nichioh Maru.

I couldn’t find a steering wheel on the bridge until I found this small thing. The ship appears to steer itself.

It does so assisted by the latest in on-board navigation. Front and stern thrusters obviate tugboats. Just line up with the dock, push a button – dozo!

No messes in this ship’s mess. Everything is neat and tidy, this is a Japanese ship.

And yes, take your shoes off, this is a Japanese ship.

Galley. The crew can dine in style.

A half-empty bottle of sake is quickly removed. I am being assured that its content was offered solely to Shinto deities to bring good luck to the ship.

Captain’s wardroom. More space than in an average Japanese apartment.

An that’s it – tour’s over! While I write this, the Nichioh Maru is already underway to Kobe and Kyushu.

“Look, when we started the Prius project in 1993, we did not even think of a hybrid system for the Prius. We did not set out to build a hybrid. We studied what was needed for the 21^st century, and two things were certain: The need to protect the environment, and the need to bring consumption down. That’s all we knew, and you did not need to be a clairvoyant to know it.”

The man who told me this last Friday better become clairvoyant. On Satoshi Ogiso’s shoulders rests the future of Toyota. Ogiso is responsible for all new technology at Toyota. As Chief Engineer, he is in charge of the Prius and its many siblings, he is responsible for plug-in hybrids, EVs, fuel cell hybrid vehicles, anything apart from the aging internal combustion engine is his.

I meet Ogiso at the world headquarters of the (still, officially) world’s largest automaker in Toyota City. It took me 1 ½ hours to get from Tokyo to Nagoya by Shinkansen, and then about as long again to get to Toyota-shi by subway. Three hours well spent to find out what the future will bring .

I like to talk to engineers about future cars. The answers usually are down to earth, and devoid of marketing hype. In the 80’s, I talked to an engineer at Volkswagen who told me that he was working on the car for the 21^st century. I immediately demanded answers. “Well, it will have four tires, a steering wheel, and it will run on gasoline,” was the answer. The man was right.

The Toyota HQ is a 15 floor office building that would look subdued in the suburbs of Cincinnati. A Renaissance Center towers over a city in ruins. A Toyota HQ is hidden between small houses and factory buildings, and is easily missed unless you know where it is. A lone Camry stands in the lobby. The security is likewise unassuming: Three of the usually polite and smiling ladies behind a wooden desk. No ID check, no “Guest” clip, a smiling lady says “dozo”, and there I am, face to face with Toyota’s future.

Satoshi Ogiso doesn’t look the big 50 which he had reached in January. His trademark hairdo is a bit less spiky than usual. He wears a tie. The days of super cool biz at Toyota are over.

Ogiso had worked at Toyota for ten years before he joined what became the Prius team in 1993. He was a suspension man. He worked his way up the ladder by designing chassis parts for the Tercel and the Camry.

In fall of 1993, Toyota created G21, a committee to research cars for the 21st century. The “G” stood for “global”, the “21″ for the 21st century. 32 year old Ogiso joined the group as one of the men of the first hour. He is the longest serving Prius team member.

In spring of 1994 the work started in earnest under Chief Engineer Takeshi Uchiyamada. Ogiso remembers:

“Environment and consumption. These were our sole engineering parameters. Otherwise, a blank sheet. We studied this for more than a year, until February 1995.

This is when we learned that the hybrid system is essential for the future of the automobile. At the end of the study, we were convinced: We need a hybrid system, even if it is difficult.”

It was a gutsy decision. Hybrid technology is nearly as old as the car. Other companies were pulling their hairs out over the technology when Toyota picked it as the system for the new millennium. Audi produced three generations of its Audi Duo concept before the Audi A4 Duo made it into production in 1997. It was a spectacular failure: Only 60 were built. Engineers and journalists questioned the sanity of someone who wanted to save gas by adding extra weight and cost in form of heavy batteries, electric motors, and controllers.

Ogiso smiles when he thinks back:

“At the time, the battery, motor, controller, these components were all huge and heavy. I drew a compact car, 4 meters or so long, with enough interior for 4 passengers. The rest of the space was very tiny, and I had to stuff these huge components somewhere. We had to miniaturize these components. When we showed the drawings around, every engineer, every division, every component supplier said:

Sure, this will be possible – give us 10 years.”

The team did not have that time. In the contrary. The Prius became Toyota’s equivalent to putting a man on the moon. But not by the end of the decade. Says Ogiso:

“In the middle of 1995, we decided to use the hybrid system. Then it was decided to have a market launch 1997, only 2 and a half years later.”

When the Prius arrived, the market was skeptical. The price was high. When the Prius came to the US officially in the year 2000, a gallon of gas did cost $1.50. Officially, Toyota broke even on the car. For Ogiso, turbulent times began, which propelled him in 2005 to the top spot as the Chief Engineer of the Prius.

“Many customers recognized the first generation Prius as a very innovative car, but honestly speaking, the volume of the first generation Prius was not so good. It was beyond our expectations, but we sold maybe 1000 units per month or so.

The customers were a big inspiration for us when we started developing the second and third generation of the Prius. Now the Prius is the best selling car in Japan, and it is also very well sold in the United States.”

In March 2011, Toyota had sold more than 3 million hybrids worldwide, the bulk of them the Prius.

However, the success of the Hybrid remains a Japanese and American phenomenon. In Europe, hybrids are a rarity, when Europeans want to save gas, they drive a diesel. In the emerging markets, hybrids are a dud. According to lore, only one Prius was sold in China in all of 2010.

As it is often the case, the lore was misinformed: Toyota had sold a total of 60 imported Prii in China in 2010. Toyota elected to stop selling the Prius to the Chinese until production of the 3rd generation Prius starts in China early next year.

Ogiso believes that wholesale adoption of hybrid technology around the world is  only a matter of time:

“Generally speaking, the environment and the energy resource situation will get increasingly worse in the future. Other markets will wake up to it. The timing is different. Japan was first, U.S. second. By 2020 to 2025, hybrid systems will be mainstream even in Europe and in the emerging markets.”

Now is the time to ask the question that had brought me here. What car will I be driving in 2020? Will I put gas in it? Will I plug it in? Or will I have to take the train? More on that tomorrow in Part two.

Haiti: Workhorses get a boost after earthquake

Norway: Volkswagens tough enough for extreme conditions
In Norway, cars are required to do one thing: work. Start in the morning by -30 degrees and not fail in the middle of a lonely snow-covered road in some remote part of the country… And that, Volkswagens and Toyotas can do, which is why they have dominated the models ranking in Norway over the last 12 years…

India: It’s all about Bollywood and Maruti Suzukis The Indian market is fascinating because: 1. Market growth is sustained and therefore a lot of models beat their volume records month after month, 2. The car landscape is totally unique with models designed specifically for India (Tata Nano, Toyota Etios…) and 3. They mostly speak English, so we understand them (if they speak slowly).

Many new Automotive Histories as well as updated and expanded versions of many of these articles below are at the author’s new Curbside Classic site here]

Industry

Detroit Deathwatch – The Prequel (Part 1: 1950s-1960s)

Detroit Deatwatch – The Prequel (Part 2: 1970′s)

Detroit Deathwatch – The Prequel (Part 3: 1980′s)

GM

Those Amazing Psychedelic Pontiac Ads by Fitzpatrick and Kaufman

Wild and Garish Cadillac V16 Concepts From the Sixties

Those Deadly-Glamorous Seville Conversions

The Cars of Bob Lutz: A Gallery of Winners and Losers

The Story Behind The Best Bob Lutz Photo Ever

The Birth of the Camaro

GM’s Suburbans: Celebrating 75 Years of Myth and Reality

Chevrolet Veraneio: Brazil’s Own Suburban

Mid-Engined Corvette Concepts

In Praise of the ’55-’57 Chevy

In Defense of the Corvair

Stunning Corvair Concepts by Pininfarina, Bertone and GM

Cadillac’s OHC V12 Engine That Was Almost Built

Pontiac – Part 1: 1926 – 1970 (2010)

Pontiac RIP: An Obituary

GM’s Branding Fiasco: Buick (Updated 2010)

GM’ Branding Fiasco Part 1:  Sloan’s Vision Betrayed (2007)

GM’s Branding Fiasco Part 2:  Chevrolet’s ADD (2007)

GM’s Branding Fiasco Part 3:  Pontiac Only Lived Twice (2007)

GM’s Branding Fiasco Part 4: Oldsmobile Pegs Out (2007)

GM’s Branding Fiasco Part 5: Buick, Fading Fast (2007)

GM’s Branding Fiasco Part 6: Cadillac Falls Down (2007)

GM Deathwatch 2752: Mistakes from the 1940s-1950s

Ford

Lincoln: Up to 1961

1972 Ford Carousel Concept: The Minivan’s True Father?

Ford’s Déjà Vu Moment, Part 1 (re: Donald  Petersen/1981 crisis)

Ford’s Déjà Vu Moment, Part 2

Ford’s Fox Platform Cars

Chrysler

Chrysler History: 1929 – 1979

Chrysler History: 1980 – 2007

Chrysler RIP: An Obituary

The Truth About Why Chrysler Destroyed The Turbine Cars

Book Review: Chrysler’s Turbine Car – The Rise And Fall Of Detroit’s Coolest Creation

Hemi Love: A Personal Retrospective on the Hemi

Other US Makes

Checker Motors

Vintage Checker Ads

Germany

The Birth of the VW Bus

VW Kübelwagen and Schwimmwagen

VW’s Stillborn Big Wide Car: The AmiWagen (EA128)

The Amphicar

1949 DKW Schnellaster: The Mother of all Minivans?

Mercedes 207D and other Vintage MB Vans, Small Buses and Campers

Tempo Boy – Three Wheeled Trucks And World Speed Record Holder

England

Bristol Coupes: The Ultimate Living Dinosaurs

The Jenson-Built Austin A40 and other Austins of the Fifites

France

The Remarkable Panhard

1968 Quasar Unipower: The Rolling Glass Cube

Italy

Ferrari Pinin: The Four Door Ferrari That Was Almost Built

Czechoslovakia

Illustrated History of Tatra

Tatra T613 and T700: The Ultimate Rear-Engined Sedans

Japan

TTAC Celebrates Forty Years of the Corolla

Honda’s Wild 9000RPM Mid-Engine 1963  T360/T500 Pickup

Subaru: The Scrappiest Car Maker Ever?

Vintage Subaru 360 TV Ads And Promo Film

Technology

Automotive Aerodynamics: Part 1

Automotive Aerodynamics: Part 2

Automotive Aerodynamics: Part 3

“If you’re going to do something wrong, do it big” (Jayne Mansfield)

Can you blame me for thinking of a certain larger than life blond bombshell of the era while looking at this big topless Buick? But then I said to myself, no, it’s wrong; been there, done that. But googling  to find the vital statistics of this Buick turned up the fact that Jayne Mansfield was killed in an Electra in 1967. Holy coincidence! Or did I subconsciously remember that? Whatever. So despite the risks, I’m forging ahead, hopefully for the best, because frankly it might be a stretch to write much about this overstuffed Buick. Like Jayne, it was meant to be looked at, not analyzed.

That was by Jayne’s own admission. She was acknowledged to be intelligent (she claimed her IQ was 163), spoke five languages, and was a classically trained pianist and violinist. Mansfield admitted her public didn’t care about her brains. “They’re more interested in 40-21-35″. And that first number eventually swelled to 46.

The Electra flaunted its size too, perhaps even more blatantly than Jayne. The Electra 225 first appeared in 1959, with the name a handy reminder to the public of how just long it was, in inches. That would be like Mansfield changing her name to Jayne 40-21-35. I never did find out just how long this ’67 model is, since Buick didn’t see fit to ever change its numbering, probably because the 1961 version was actually shorter than the ’59. Can’t have that; it would be like Jayne having breast reduction surgery. For what it’s worth though, the original ’59 Electra 225 would have been an even more fitting memorial to Jayne.

Vera Jayne Palmer was born in 1933, in Pennsylvania. Aged sixteen, she secretly married Paul Mansfield, and they moved to Austin, Texas where she studied dramatics at the University. She won several beauty contests there, with titles that included “Miss Photoflash,” “Miss Magnesium Lamp” and “Miss Fire Prevention Week.” The only title she ever turned down was “Miss Roquefort Cheese,” because she believed that it “just didn’t sound right.” A few years later, they moved to LA, of course.

I don’t know of any beauty titles the Buicks were winning, but they were mighty handsome in this period. Whereas the big Pontiacs were hard to beat up through 1966, by 1967 the Buicks were giving them a serious run for the beauty gold. In my book, this particular model year stands out as perhaps one of the best of the whole classic big car genre: huge and excessive, yes; but with just enough restraint to keep it from winning any “Cheesy Big Car” awards.

Jayne’s career was a mixed bag, kick-started by an endless stream of publicity stunts that all centered on exposing her mammaries to one degree or another. In a period of 18 months in ’56 and ’57, she appeared in 2500 newspaper photos and had some 122k lines of copy written about her breasts. There were numerous “accidents”, which made Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe failure” look like child’s play. She was smart enough to know which of her assets to leverage, given the times.

Unlike for Jayne, I do have SFW shots of the Buick’s ample rear. This would have made a perfect car for her to plant her tush on the rear deck for a parade: “Miss Magnesium Lamp”.

It wasn’t only men that checked out Jayne’s assets. These two pics are are the proof: Sophia Loren taking stock of the competition. Looks like she’s finally more than met her match. Nothing subtle here; neither Loren’s gaze nor Mansfield’s dress. This incident was actually another publicity stunt designed to upstage Loren at a dinner party in her honor.

But then some things never change.

Drop the top all the way on the Electra, and there’s two big cushy seats to run your hands over. Looks to me like these are vinyl though, not genuine mammal skins. And if you really feel like cozying up, just flip up that center arm rest, and snuggle away. There’s plenty of room for two to have fun, preferably if the car isn’t actually moving. Just the thing to park at the lake on a warm and starry summer night.What else is a big convertible good for?

I picked this picture for two reasons. It appears to prove that Jayne really did play the violin (right before her second marriage in 1958). But look at this simple fenced-in back yard pool and patio; it looks so middle class. It’s easy to forget how actually modestly paid the stars of the fifties were compared to today, and the impact a 90% top incremental tax bracket had. They almost seemed to live like mere ordinary people in 3,000 square foot ranch houses.

The Electra Convertible wasn’t exactly the most common middle class fare, but then it wouldn’t have been that much of a stretch either. Its list price of $4421 ($28k adjusted) was quite a chunk less than the next step up in GM’s convertible hierarchy, the De Ville, which went for $5600 ($36k adjusted). For that extra $8k in today’s money. you got the same basic car under the skin, but the Caddy name, prestige and a bit nicer interior. Performance wise, there was probably no real difference; Buck’s new 430 CID V8 was a 360 hp gem, and every bit as smooth and silent as the Caddy. Money well saved.

The times they were a changing, for both Jayne and big convertibles like the Buick. Their heyday was the the fifties; by the mid sixties they were both anachronisms. The platinum bombshell days were over in Hollywood, and Mansfield’s career steadily declined, until she was doing cheap magazine covers and playing nightclubs, and getting to them in a Buick Electra.

On June 28th, 1967, late at night near Biloxi, Mississippi, she met her grisly fate riding in an Electra sedan driven by a twenty year old. He plowed into the back and of a chemical tanker, shearing off the top of the Buick and Mansfield’s upper head. The since-mandated low bars attached to the back of all trailer trucks designed to prevent such an accident are commonly called Mansfield bars.

The big Buick convertibles, like the rest of GM’s big rag tops, were nearing the end of the line too. Less than 6k of these ’67s were made and within a few more years exposing their large private spaces in public became passé. Air conditioning and changing social values made folks want to ride inside, not outside; sitting out on front porches after supper went the same way too. But the joy of floating along in a big open-top deuce and a quarter is still as timeless as certain female attributes, as this owner will tell you. And if I’ve made a mistake co-mingling Jayne with this Buick, at least it was a big one.

More New Curbside Classics Here

]]> http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/04/curbside-classic-1967-buick-electra-225-the-jayne-mansfield-of-convertibles/feed/ 42 http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/04/curbside-classic-the-best-european-car-ever-made-in-american-car-1965-corvair-monza/ http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/04/curbside-classic-the-best-european-car-ever-made-in-american-car-1965-corvair-monza/#comments Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:26:51 +0000 Paul Niedermeyer http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=353698

You wake despite the hope that you would never awake, in fear that the wildest night of your life with Corvair was all just a dream…ooops; never mind. But if a car ever inspired one to emote and wax poetically, it was the Corvair, especially the 1965. So I’ll try hard to restrain myself: the 1965 Corvair was the best European car ever ever made in America. And if that alone doesn’t explain the Corvair’s inevitable failure, lets just say that in 1965 Americans were eating a lot more Wonder Bread than baguettes.

I’ve been sitting on this gem of a Monza coupe Stephanie found parked in front of a small wood products mill in the industrial part of Eugene. Shooting it sure brightened a rainy day. It’s a brilliantly clean and timeless gem. I hadn’t planned on using it today, but then I realized how critical it was in telling not only the story of the Camaro’s existence, but also so much about why Detroit lost the war against the imports and eventually crashed.

I can’t do the Corvair’s birth and development full justice here, but it started out to be something quite different from how it ended up. Or did it? What arrived in the fall of 1959 was a terribly stripped little car, with a drab monotone gray taxi-cab interior, rubber floor, and totally devoid of chrome trim. Born in the depths of the 1957-1958 recession, the original 1960 Corvair lost its $4 sway bar and any pizazz to GM’s bean counters who wanted a cheap car to fight the VW Beetle and the Ford Falcon, and still make a profit. Given the Corvair’s complex alloy engine, that was already seeming unlikely.

But a rear-engined small car intrinsically offered great enthusiast potential, as Porsche had shown so convincingly. In fact a Porsche 356 was used as a test mule for the Corvair engine. The Corvair had great potential, but its intended mission in life was as confused as its buyers. The Falcon made a much better compact for most Americans’ needs in schlepping the kids and the groceries, and GM realized it instantly. The highly pragmatic Chevy II was rushed into production, and the Corvair was quickly dressed up with bucket seats, a higher output engine, and an available four speed: the Monza. Out of desperation and necessity, GM invented a new genre: the small sporty car; for American cars, that is. The Europeans had been chasing that for quite some time.

The fact that GM bean counters didn’t give the early Monzas that sway bar and other suspension upgrades that the Corvair’s father Ed Cole bitterly wanted every Corvair to have from day one is very telling, and perhaps the most significant aspect of the Corvair story and its failure to compete against the imports: GM perpetually elevated style and flash over substance. With just a few more bucks and a costless change to a faster steering ratio, the early Corvairs could have been as brilliant as they inevitably had to make the 1965.

Instead, the Corvair Monza’s real role in life was to inspire the Mustang, which elevated style over substance to a whole other level, resulting in a colossal commercial success. America’s brief fling with chasing the sporty imports ended before it even properly started. By the time Chevrolet sorted out the Corvair’s suspension and added some zest to its engine via turbocharging, the game was already essentially over, although Chevy didn’t quite realize it yet.

It assumed (hoped?) that Americans were much more in love with the Corvair’s inner beauty than its bucket seats and cute looks. Not so, as the Mustang made so perfectly clear. Who cared if the Mustang had a flaccid Falcon suspension, dull steering, mediocre brakes and a large percentage of them came with a feeble little six? Never underestimate the power of a long hood to create a fad, especially in America. A cheap V8 didn’t hurt either.

The Corvair, and the idea of what the Corvair could be, died on March 9, 1964. Within a few months of the Mustang’s introduction, Chevrolet rushed the Camaro into production, and halted any further development and marketing of the Corvair. And so the brilliantly styled and refined 1965 appeared that fall as an unloved orphan, or even worse, as an abortion.

I’ve always been torn about my feelings for the gen1 and gen2 Corvair. Let’s just say that my first car was a white ’63 Monza with the optional higher output engine and with a four speed stick. And I’ve always regretted not finding a barn to keep it for my old age. So I’ve got a bit of a built in bias, to Corvairs in general, and the gen1 in particular. It’s hard to be objective about  the first real car love of your life.

Of course the ’65 and up was the better car, with its new Corvette-sourced non-swing axle IRS and faster steering ratio. Styling wise is where it gets hard. The ’65 is certainly a brilliant design, so light and airy and almost timeless. But for reasons that go beyond having one, I’m also deeply emotionally involved with the original 1960 design. It was the more radical of the two, for its time anyway; the 1960 Corvair was a an utter bombshell when it was shown in Europe, and created a styling revolution there whose influence was all too obvious well into the nineties.

Ironically, the gen1 Corvair’s styling is not as highly praised in its home country as the 1965, which in turn had very little effect on Europe. Among other things, that may well be because four doors are much more common in Europe than coupes, and the 1960 four door was so superb and worked even better than the coupe, whereas with the 1965 was the opposite: the four door didn’t work well at all. To each their own: they’re both some of the best to ever come from the Bill Mitchell era at GM, and will go down in history as classics.

The 1965 Corvair handled unlike anything ever made in the US up to that time. I had the pleasure to whip a friend’s 1965 Monza coupe just like this one through the back roads of northern Baltimore County on more than one occasion, and I’ll relive them, curve by curve, forever. And  his had the wretched two-speed automatic. Whatever; Corvairs, except the higher output Spyders and Corsas, were pretty much a stand-on it proposition anyway. Ok, I’m rationalizing; the Powerglide sucked big time. But even it couldn’t diminish the pure joy of setting up the Monza in each curve, harder and deeper each time. In those days of flabby power steering, there was nothing finer than the unassisted steering on a rear-engined car, especially with the ’65′s faster ratio.

I had flung my old ’63 through several hundred miles and several thousand curves of a deserted Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway in the late fall of 1973, and it never once tried to bite me. Having the right tire pressure was the key, as well as understanding how a swing-axle rear engine car will react if you hit the brakes in a curve. While the ’63 would dance if you knew how to lead properly, the ’65 was a trained pro. It made anyone with a half-way decent touch feel like they were Dancing With The Stars. And unlike the earlier ones, it was never going to give you a push for stepping on its toes.

It’s easy to forget one of the Corvair’s finest but most overlooked virtues: braking. In that era of pathetic little drum brakes on front-heavy conventional cars, the overworked fronts always overheated and faded, and the rears locked, as what little weight was on them shifted forward. The Corvair, like any rear engined car, almost perfectly weighted its brakes evenly, as its rear weight shifted forwards. That alone was worthy of an Eureka! moment the first time one fully experienced and appreciated it.

So what happened to the Corvair faithful, the true lovers of the fine art of Dancing With a Car? They discovered the BMW 1600/2002. Or maybe the Datsun 510, if they couldn’t afford the baby Bimmer. Or something else; but whatever it was, it wasn’t very likely to come from Detroit in any case. The 1965 Corvair might have been the last chance for GM to keep a critical and influential segment of the market. I say might, because it probably wasn’t in the wind anyway. The breezes blowing from Europe and Japan were becoming stiff gales, and it would have taken a hell of an effort to head them off. The Corvair was left to wither on the vine, and the Vega sure as hell wasn’t it; pissing into the wind never was a particularly smart thing to do.

The Corvair was just the innocent canary in the mine, and it’s croaking was inevitable. Americans wanted a Camaro, even if it was the antithesis of the Corvair: lousy brakes, heavy or over-assisted steering, terminal understeer, rear axle hop under acceleration and braking, etc.. But it had that long hood and big, cheap V8s. The Big Gulp trumps a Perrier. Good times too, once you do some work on that mono-leaf rear end, put on some proper brakes, and some shocks, and…well the Camaro eventually got there, more or less. But certainly not to start with.

Its an irrelevant issue now; old history. The Corvair lived in an era when cars were still all imperfect, unlike today. And it had its shares of imperfections too. But the few things it did well made it stand out head and shoulders from the (American) pack. And those very qualities that it excelled in are ones we take for granted now. The Corvair was way ahead of its times, calling out from the wasteland; but then prophets are rarely appreciated in their time.

More New Curbside Classics Here

Welcome to Havana, Oregon. Back in the eighties, living in tony Los Gatos, I used to gaze longingly at photos of old American cars and trucks still hard at work in Cuba. But within days of moving to Eugene in 1993, I came across this very truck, hauling its daily cargo of recycled cardboard. And it planted a seed in me, to document the old vehicles still earning their keep, which finally came to fruition with Curbside Classics. Although we’ve strayed from the strict interpretation of that mission a few times along the way, no other vehicle more perfectly embodies the original ethos than this 1956 F-350.

I’ve seen this rolling relic coming and going all these years, and tried to catch it since starting CC, even searching futilely in the Yellow Pages for “B&L Recycling”.  But on our daily walk yesterday, there it was, with its owner loading up a week’s worth of cartons from Cafe Zenon. After a hard first twenty-five years as a farm truck, since 1979, “Gus” has been earning a living for owner Mike McCool, hauling cardboard to be recycled at the local pulp mill five and six days a week, year in and year out.

Let’s get the preliminaries out of the way first: either you “get” Gus and his owner, or you don’t. If you do, you can skip this paragraph. If not, I’m not sure I can change your perspective, but at least give Mike the credit that every aspect of his truck and his life’s work is deliberate. That goes for his precarious-looking load in the back: he’s been at it so long, he knows exactly what it’s doing; hasn’t lost one yet in thirty years. Mike’s hardly some marginal or pathetic character to either pity or wish the hell he’d get his battered eyesore off the road. He’s a successful independent small businessman who’s found a niche that allows him to make a reasonable living while living his passion for recycling. And keeping old things running forever.

It’s a way of life that I can relate to, even if I chose not to live it quite to Mike’s level by a long shot. Although my similarly battered ’66 F-100 isn’t getting worked as much anymore as it was during my old-house moving and rebuilding days. Let’s just say Mike and I share at least an old Ford truck in common, and we hit it off. He was happy to show me the various tricks employed to keep a fifty-five year old truck running happily, like the original oil-bath air cleaner that never needs replacing. He did just mount an alternator to the old 223 cubic inch six, and recently splurged for some new custom-made 16″ front wheels to replace the 17″ split rims that are such a pain. After he’s amortized that rare and pricey investment, he’ll buy some for the rears too. Finally having radials on the front were like suddenly getting power steering. I know the feeling.

Lest I forget, Mike did rebuild the engine after he first bought it in 1979. Burning a quart of oil every hundred miles was a strong incentive. He used high quality parts, and it’s still running strong. The 223 six started life in 1952 as the 215, Ford’s first modern OHV engine. It developed a rep as a rugged work horse; but then that pretty much applied to all of Detroit’s sixes back then. It’s definitely the way to go if maximum reliability and minimum upkeep are high on the priority list and V8 power isn’t. Gus sticks to the surface streets, and the six purrs contentedly.

These old American trucks used a healthy grade of steel throughout. They come from a time when American trucks were still exported throughout the world, as paragons of durability, power and utility. And it really isn’t hard to keep them on the road pretty much forever. Except for some rust on the lip over the windshield, Gus is good to go for…as long as Mike wants him to.

Although it may seem that Mike lives in a world a bit different from ours, he’s actually as or more intimately connected to world affairs and the global economy than most of us. The global price of cardboard fluctuates dramatically, based obviously on the demand for cartons to ship the world’s products, especially from China. Having weathered a crash in the price down to $5/ton in the worst months of the recent recession (living debt free and cheaply made it possible), its recently jumped dramatically to $70. Not exactly back to the all-time highs of $110 a few years back, but that’s probably a good thing. According to Mike’s cardboard price index, the recession is quite truly over. But he’s not running out to buy a new truck. Enough chatting; Mike and Gus have work to do.

More new Curbside Classics here

]]> http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/04/the-ultimate-curbside-classic-1955-ford-f-350-still-hard-at-work-six-days-a-week/feed/ 48 http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/04/an-illustrated-history-of-checker-motors/ http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/04/an-illustrated-history-of-checker-motors/#comments Thu, 15 Apr 2010 17:33:28 +0000 Paul Niedermeyer http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=352626

[Note: Three related Checker posts: 1967 Marathon Curbside Classic; Vintage Checker Ads; and Tomorrow's Checker? Also note that these pictures were found at a variety of sites, but it appears that the original source for most of them were posted on this Flickr account by Drivermatic. Thanks for the superb photographic resource!]

For sixty years, Checker Motors had a record unbroken run of profits building a few thousand cars per year in a small little factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In 1981, it posted its first loss, $488,326, and its owner made good on his threat to stop production of the iconic Marathon if his workers didn’t accept wage concessions. But Checker continued to stamp out body parts for GM into 2009, including for the Buick LaCrosse. The Carpacolypse of 2009 finally shuttered the ancient plant, but no need to shed a tear for the original owner’s son, David Markin: his wealth is estimated at over $100 million. And it was all due to a shrewd investment of $15,000 that his father made in 1920, which put him in the driver’s seat of Checker Motors. Let’s take a ride through Checker’s history. Taxi!

To understand the origins of Checker, one has to know that the taxi business was once very different than now: two or more companies competed fiercely in each city for the growing and lucrative business in those days. If you want the remarkable details of shady deals, graft and stock manipulation that created the two largest cab companies, Yellow and Checker, head over to coachbuilt.com‘s very detailed history. A slightly less detailed but also excellent Checker history is also at checkertaxistand.com. Lets just say the upshot was that Checker Cabs wanted a custom built taxi, and somehow the son of a poor Russian tailor, Morris Markin, cleverly managed to manipulate himself (and some stock holdings he managed to get revalued) in the position to provide it, the first Checker Model C of 1922.

It’s important to remember that in the twenties, there were dozens of small car manufacturers, so in its early days, Checker’s scale wasn’t at all unusual. And the factory instantly became a profitable enterprise. And Markin expanded his holdings with Checker stock and profits including some large taxi operating companies and in later years truck trailer building (Great Dane) and other businesses.

During this period, taxis competed on prestige, size and comfort, as most working folks stuck to taking the streetcar or bus. The Checkers from the late twenties were large handsome cars, and as in the old coach-built tradition, often had a rear roof section that could be lowered in nice weather, as much as to be seen as to see.

Checker styling started becoming a bit adventurous in the thirties, but the the full degree of that was still a few years off.

As always, Checkers were designed specifically for the job, both in their layout and rugged construction.

The all-new 1939 Model A feature a highly bizarre front end whose only redeeming feature was that it was recognizable from half a mile away. The debate who designed it is still unresolved, but actually, from the front end back, it was a quite a conservatively styled sedan with a highly unusual feature.

It had a remarkably advanced (and patented) optional steel rear laundalet roof section that could be lowered as seen here.

Rather unusual for such a small company, Checker ambitiously explored advanced designs during the forties, including this one-off rear-engined prototype. Looking all the world like a giant Fiat 600 Multipla, it was probably for the best that it was not developed further.

But a FWD prototype, with the straight six in a transverse arrangement was built and seriously considered. This is the first I’ve seen or heard about this, and its quite a remarkably advanced design for the times, looking much more French than Kalamazoo. Technical difficulties with the FWD transaxle killed it, probably for the best in terms of preserving the Checker reliability reputation.

The conventional new A6 of 1946 had traditional styling, and with minor retouches, was the iconic cab of the post war era.

Like the legendary later Aerobus, Checker was building extended wheelbase vehicles in the forties, like this six door, twelve passenger wagon. These were the shuttle buses of their day.

In 1955, an all new Checker was developed in their advanced styling sudios (a corner of the factory partitioned off with drapes). The new A8 was designed to meet Manhattan’s new taxi regulations, and featured independent suspension on the front for the first time. Not that it made the Checker famous for its ride, however. The suspension engineering department lived in the janitor’s closet.

Interior space was always the highlight of the Checkers, and the Marathon’s tall roof, totally flat floor and two folding jump seats meant that up to five patrons could be accommodated in the rear compartment alone. Guess who got the jump seats? The pretty young lady. Beats sitting in the guys’ laps, anyway.

There’s a treasure trove (143) of vintage Checker photos that have been posted at this Flickr account, the source of many of the pictures here, including an extensive tour of the Checker factory led by this charming and knowledgeable woman, who here is pointing out the finer details of Checker’s legendary frame, the source of its ruggedness and flat floor.

The six and eight-door Aerobuses were the stuff of legends in their day. Unlike today’s stretch limos with their cut and welded frame extensions, these long boys sat on a completely unique and specially designed frame, and enjoyed a high degree of structural integrity.

Not surprisingly, the rugged Checker frame lent itself well to custom coachbuilding, like this Swiss ambulance. It was the Checker’s taxi cab image that probably kept it from more success in the US as a limo and hearse source. If folks couldn’t afford a Cadillac while they were still alive, they at least wanted to ride to their graves in one.

Checker also made an extended body sedan, and pushed it as a limo alternative, including versions with padded roofs and even an opera window. But time was moving on, and the garish seventies made the Checkers look like stale bread.

Checker Motors operated most profitably with an annual production of 6-8k cars, but after 1970 that became increasingly difficult, due to major markets like NYC loosening their taxi regulations to allow conventional sedans to operate. They were obviously cheaper for the Big Three to build, and the fleet dumping practices of the seventies was Checker’s coffin nail as a producer of cars. In 1981, Checker had its only posted loss after some sixty years, having survived the Depression profitably, if on a smaller scale.

Former GM President Ed Cole bought 50% of Checker for $6 million and began plans to build a completely new car for a new era. His first prototypes were based on lengthened VW Rabbits, but his death at the controls of his personal airplane ended that. But some work continued based on his ideas, and utilizing GM’s X-Body (Citation) FWD drivetrain and a solid rubber rear suspension spring. Checker founder’s son David Markin was more interested in tennis than new adventures, and it all came to naught.

But Checker continued to build parts until 2009, when the downturn finally swamped them too. The little factory that hummed away for almost ninety years has been razed, leaving just the footings to mark where one of the more unusual automotive stories played out.

[Note: This piece first ran in May 2007. It seems particularly relevant again in light of the current Toyota unintended acceleration (UA) situation. But please note that the circumstance that caused the Audi UA may, or may not be very different, depending on the circumstances. In the early eighties, electronic gas pedals and complex engine controls and other interfaces such as with ABS/brakes were still on the horizon. Nevertheless, the rules of physics have not been repealed. And an unknown percentage of Toyota UA events undoubtedly are the result of pedal misapplication. Audi's near collapse in the American market after this incident remains a painful lesson in the power of the media, the slowness of the NHTSA, and the critical PR choices manufacturers make in the wake of a crisis like this. PN]

When I first heard about the Audi “sudden unintended acceleration” segment on CBS’s 60 Minutes in 1986, I knew instantly that they were blowing smoke. Literally.

Some years earlier, I was part of a TV crew shooting an educational program. Legendary race-car driver Parnelli Jones was the guest celebrity one day. The producer offered to take us to lunch in his 1976 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham. Three or four of us hopped into the giant back seat. Parnelli took the wheel, and the Caddy owner/producer rode shotgun.

Parnelli fired up the Caddy’s giant V8, dropped it in gear and floored it – with his left foot on the brake. One of the rear wheels lit up in a screeching howl, and the car was soon engulfed in a cloud of acrid smoke. The Caddy didn’t move an inch; obviously. And neither did Parnelli, glancing at the wincing producer with his wicked grin. he probably burned off half the rubber of that tortured tire before he stopped grinning and gunning. I had assumed (wrongly) that race-car drivers grew up eventually.

The experience seared in a lesson in basic automobile physics: brakes are always more powerful than engines, even when they have 500 cubic inches (8.2 liters). Too bad we didn’t have our cameras running; we could have made a graphic rebuttal to 60 Minutes’ fraudulent destruction of Audi.

Let’s set the scene: it’s 1984, and Audi sales had shot up 48 percent on the strength of their new aerodynamic 5000, the latest hot weapon in the perpetually-escalating suburban driveway status war. It was a stunning slick piece, and Audi was on a roll.

Suddenly, the war turned bloody. Moms in runaway Audi 5000′s were mowing down their little kids in the driveway and pinning granny against the far garage wall with the four-ringed front of the Audi.

This had never happened with the Olds Cutlass Supreme Brougham Coupe, the previous “hot” suburban car Mom traded in for her Audi. The German car certainly felt different. Unlike the Olds’ wide push-bar brake pedal – that some Americans still operated with their left feet – the Audi had that weird, small brake pedal, set kinda’ close to the gas pedal.

And these Audis had a mind of their own. No matter how hard Mom pushed on the brake pedal, the Audi kept on charging, right through the garage door with granny on the prow. This despite the fact that the little five-cylinder mill only cranked out 130 horsepower. And the top-notch four-wheel disc brake system probably could generate well over 600 equivalent horsepower.

Apparently, the brakes were failing at exactly the same moment that the gas pedal decided it had a mind of its own. Perfectly plausible, at least to the 60 Minutes crew, the Audi (non)drivers, and much of the media and public.

About as plausible as ignoring the police report of the most dramatic victim on the show, Kristi Bradosky, who ran over her six year old son. That report said “Bradosky’s foot slipped off the brake pedal onto the gas pedal accelerating the auto.” Denial isn’t just a river.

Ed Bradley’s 17 minute “investigative report” aired on November 23, 1986. Between interviews of the teary-eyed “victims” (drivers) of unintended acceleration swearing their feet were on the brake pedal, CBS showed a clip of a driverless Audi lurching forward on its own.

Viewers didn’t get to see the canister of compressed air on the passenger-side floor with a hose running to a hole drilled in the transmission. An “expert” had rigged the Rube Goldberg device to shift the big Audi into drive and, like any automatic-equipped car, move forward (unless the brakes are depressed).

The clip was blatantly deceptive AND totally irrelevant. Nobody claimed driverless Audis were taking off and killing kids and grannies. Mom was always at the wheel, pushing the 5000′s “brake” pedal with all her might.

In 1989, after three years of studying the blatantly obvious, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued their report on Audi’s “sudden unintended acceleration problem.” NHTA’s findings fully exonerated Audi and some other implicated foreign makes”.

The report concluded that the Audi’s pedal placement was different enough from American cars’ normal set-up (closer to each other) to cause some drivers to mistakenly press the gas instead of the brake. 60 Minutes did not retract their piece; they called the NHTSA report “an opinion.”

(Update: Audi and many manufacturers quickly added an automatic transmission interlock, making it impossible to shift into drive or reverse without a foot on the (real) brake.)

A flood of lawsuits was already washing over Audi, not to mention a tsunami of bad publicity. Audi took a questionable stance: they didn’t blame the drivers for the problem, even after the NHTSA report came out. Hey, the customer’s always right, and we sure wouldn’t want to make our American customers look stupid. Anything but that.

So the German automaker took it on the chin. Audi sales collapsed, from 74k units in 1984 to 12k by 1991. The timing added insult to injury; sales fell exactly during the same years when Lexus arrived to battle for the hearts and wallets of America’s up-scale consumers. Lexus quickly became the latest suburban driveway prestige symbol.

As a final kick to the near-corpse, Audi’s suddenly wanna-be-Lexus drivers launched a class action suit charging lost resale value. No wonder the brand almost abandoned the U.S. in 1993. It’s a killer market.

Here’s TTAC’s and the web’s only complete guide to Toyota’s gas pedals (so far), with tear downs, pictures, analysis, explanation, the shim fix, and commentary, all consolidated into one portal:

Part 1: Exclusive: TTAC Takes Apart Both Toyota Gas Pedals: Tear down of both the recalled CTS pedal assembly and the non-recalled Denso pedal assembly. Note: Assumptions and conclusions in this initial tear down lack the more complete understanding of the importance of the friction arm aspect of the CTS unit.

Part 2: Toyota Gas Pedal Fix Explained – With Exclusive Photos: Describes Toyota’s proposed fix for the recalled CTS gas pedal assembly, with detailed photos and graphics. Explains the significance of the friction arm assembly and its limitations.

Part 3: Toyota Gas Pedal Fix Simulated – Friction Reduced, By Too Much?: TTAC simulates the fix prescribed by Toyota for the recalled CTS pedal assembly, and notes how the fix changes the degree of friction, and the possible unintended result. With detailed pictures

Part 4: Why Toyota Must Replace Flawed CTS Gas Pedal With Superior Denso Pedal: Detailed analysis with pictures of the two pedal assemblies, an explanation as to why the Denso design is superior, and a call for having all CTS pedals replaced with the Denso pedal.

Part 5: TTAC Does The Toyota Pedal Shim Fix:  Stop Gap Solution At Best: Toyota’s solution is carried out here with detailed pictures, the whole Toyota document detailing the fix, and our commentary.

Part 6: Toyota Floor Mat/Gas pedal Recall Includes Computer Reflash And Trimming Of Gas Pedals: Info on the details of the floor mat/gas pedal interference recall.

Part 7: Toyota Recall  Creates Unintended Accelerator Consequences: As predicted in Part 4 (above), the CTS shim fix reduces the carefully designed amount of friction required for comfortable and smooth pedal action to the point where pedal action may now be jerky and potentially unsafe.

(Thanks to you-know-who-you-are for access to these parts and info)

At the Wednesday press conference in Tokyo, Toyota slipped in the remark that they “will more actively use on-board event data recorders, which can, in the event of a malfunction, provide information necessary for conducting such activities as technological investigations and repairs.”

This remark was widely overlooked. It should not have been.

Five days before, the Wall Street Journal had written:

“The safety problems that have engulfed Toyota Motor Corp. are focusing renewed attention on one of the most controversial components in an automobile: the black box. The box, officially called an “event data recorder,” is a small, square, virtually indestructible container akin to those found on commercial airplanes. Tucked inside the dash or under the front seats of most newer vehicles, it records vehicle and engine speeds as well as brake, accelerator and throttle positions and other data that can help determine the causes of accidents.”

If there would have been such a black box in the Toyotas that had crashed, it would have been easy to read out whether the foot was on the gas or on the brake. Guess what: Toyota has this box. It had been in many of the crashed vehicles, says the Wall Street Journal:

“Toyota, like Japanese peers Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co., has a proprietary black-box system, and it says the data it collects isn’t intended or capable of accident reconstruction because it is only recorded for a short duration—about one second. The system mainly monitors the performance of a vehicle’s safety devices, such as air bags, seat belts and, in some cases, throttle application. Toyota says there is no rule or legislation that requires otherwise until a new NHTSA rule comes into effect later in the decade.”

One would think that Toyota is pouring over the contents of its data recorders to prove that nothing more serious than a loose carpet or a missing metal shim creates mayhem in their cars. Instead, Toyota seems to have strange troubles with its proprietary system, as chronicled by the Wall Street Journal:

- On Nov. 27, 2009, 55-year-old Barbara A. Kraushaar drove through three Auburn, NY, downtown stoplights at high speed and crashed into another vehicle, killing its driver, Colleen Trousdale. Says the WSJ: “According to the Auburn police, an investigator from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration arrived in town and took the Camry’s data recorder, saying he planned to take it to California, where Toyota has its U.S. headquarters, so their expert could download the data.” Auburn Police never heard from Toyota, says the WSJ. Also “NHTSA didn’t reply to requests for comment on the Auburn incident.”

- “In 2007, Bulent Ezal was pulling into the parking lot of a cliffside restaurant in Pismo Beach, Calif., when his 2005 Camry surged, went over the bluff and crashed on rocks 70 feet below. Mr. Ezal, 75, survived, but his wife, who was in the passenger seat, was killed.” Police could find no mechanical fault, and concluded that Ezal was at fault. Ezal’s Lawyer, Donald Slavik, has been trying to get data from the car’s black box for nearly three years. He was told by Toyota that the data would only be provided if Mr. Slavik got a court to order the company to do so. Later, Toyota told the lawyer “the data in the black box was unusable.”

- “On Dec. 26, Monty Hardy, 56, was driving three passengers in his 2008 Toyota Avalon on Lonesome Dove Drive in Southlake, Texas, when the car ran through a stop sign at about 45 mile per hour, crashed through a fence, struck a tree and landed upside down in a pond, according to a police report. All four occupants were killed… After the crash, investigators from NHTSA and Toyota’s black-box expert flew to Texas to join police in searching for the cause of the accident. They found the black box in the car covered in muck from the pond. According to police reports, the Toyota investigator tapped into the box and said the only data it contained was the difference in the speed of the car immediately before and after hitting the fence and the tree.”

- A black box was in the 2009 Lexus ES350, driven by Mark Saylor, a 45-year-old California Highway Patrol officer. He and three members of his family were killed when their vehicle hit speeds exceeding 120 mph and crashed. The 911 call made by one of the family members was on all the airwaves. In an answer to the questions of the LA Times, Toyota said :“Toyota agreed to perform a readout of the EDR in the Saylor vehicle. In the presence of representatives of all interested parties and the Sheriff’s department, Toyota attempted to perform the readout as agreed. However, due to the extensive damage to the EDR unit from the crash, it was impossible to perform a readout.”

Is the black box technology in such an early stage of development that there is only one prototype readout tool, as Toyota said to the LA Times, and that it is so hard to retrieve conclusive data? Thetruthaboutcars.com asked an interested reader with 20 years experience in automotive safety components and recall investigation to give us an update on the state of the black box art. Here is his report:

Event Data Recorder Access: What Is Toyota Hiding Behind Its Black Box?

For almost a decade, the increasing sophistication and interconnectedness of the electronically-controlled devices and systems in passenger vehicles has offered the opportunity to collect and store ample data for post-crash accident investigation.

Since the late 1990′s, individuals have participated in DOT-sponsored workgroups with the aim of developing industry guidelines (e.g. IEEE & SAE) for and advising government rule-makers on EDR-related topics. Represented were the US and Canadian governments, EDR suppliers, universities, the insurance industry, and certain OEM’s, among them GM, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, VW, Honda and Toyota.

According to an August 2001 report from the workgroup, “The results of a NHTSA-sponsored engineering analysis show that EDR data can objectively report real-world crash data and therefore be a powerful investigative and research tool, by providing very useful information to crash reconstructionists and vehicle safety researchers. Due to significant limitations however, EDR data should always be used in conjunction with other data sources.”

The types of data that can be captured and stored are limited only by the available sensors, integration into a vehicle-communication protocol (i.e. CAN-BUS or Flex-Ray), software-design, computing power, and available memory. At the time of the NHTSA report (2001), GM’s EDRs were already capable of the following:

Capture: State of the driver’ belt, vehicle speed, engine RPM, “brake odoff,” and throttle position;

Transmit and Input: The driver seat belt switch signal is typically input into the SDM, while the remaining sensors are monitored by one or more other electronic modules that broadcast data according to a ”send on change” based design (e.g. a change in engine speed of more than 32 RPM, broadcasts the new RPM value on the serial bus).

Store, archive, update and recover: In airbag deployment or a near-deployment crashes, the last 5-seconds of data are stored in an EEPROM (recoverable with appropriate PC-based equipment.) This means, every second, the SDM takes the most recent sensor data values and stores them in a recirculating buffer (RAM), one storage location for each parameter for a total of 5-seconds. When the airbag sensing system “enables” on impact, buffer refreshing is suspended;

Certain 1999 models had this capability, and almost all GM vehicles were expected to add that capability over the next few years.

Compare where GM was in 1999, with the claims found by the L.A. Times on the Toyota website. Toyota’s EDR’s are capable of recording data including, among other things, brake pedal application and degree of application of the accelerator pedal.

On the side of reading data out of EDR’s, in 2000, the Robert Bosch Corporation developed their CDR (Crash Data Retrieval) unit. Many models by GM (1994), Ford (2001), Chrysler (2005) and Nissan (2007) have the capability for crash-event data to be stored in their proprietary EDR’s, and to be freely retrieved by licensed 3^rd parties via a Bosch CDR unit.

While the Bosch CDR units can be freely purchased and used, and training and support is widely available through Bosch, in North America, Toyota takes a totally opposite posture. Toyota appears to engage in practices intended to limit access to the data recorded by Toyota’s EDRs.

Contrast the situation surrounding the OEM’s above with Toyota’s own answers to questions from the L.A. Times (edited for brevity). Given Toyota’s apparent lack of confidence in the software or electronics in its prototype crash analysis tool, one can not help but wonder if this is really due to the tool, or the production systems it was designed to analyze:

“Toyota does not yet have a commercially available EDR readout tool and currently has only one prototype readout tool in the U.S. Toyota performs EDR readouts for law enforcement under certain circumstances. We are also occasionally ordered by various courts to perform EDR readouts. A readout for law enforcement is a community service that Toyota performs. Toyota does not have the capacity to perform readouts using its one prototype tool in all cases.”

“Toyota’s EDR is capable of recording only the previous several seconds of activity before and/or a fraction of a second after a crash or near-crash situation.”

“Given the fact that the readout tool is a prototype and has not been validated, it is Toyota’s policy not to use EDR data in its investigations. However, Toyota has used the readout tool under certain circumstances.”

“EDR data ownership varies state by state. The prototype software used by Toyota to perform EDR readouts is proprietary, as is the case with all auto manufacturers. Toyota does not contend that the EDR readout data is proprietary. When a data retrieval tool is commercially available, any data retrieved will then as now be subject to applicable state law.”

“Federal regulators require Toyota and all other OEMs w/EDR equipped vehicles to make a data retrieval tool commercially available by 9/1/12. Toyota will, of course, comply with this requirement.”

Given the mature nature of EDR technology and the degree to which its competitors have made their EDR data available for 3rd-party download; the limited circumstances (e.g. court order) under which Toyota makes its single “prototype” device available, the way in which Toyota characterizes the software within as “unvalidated” and unreliable, and Toyota’s persistence in these actions despite the obvious conflict of interest (as the sole party that can release EDR data), one has to wonder what Toyota is hiding behind their black box.

And the hits, they keep on coming. Now, brakes of the Prius flake out.

Japan’s transport ministry has received 14 complaints about problems with brakes on Toyota’s latest. The ministry has asked Toyota to investigate the complaints, says the Nikkei [sub.] “Those are purely reported cases, so we still need to investigate to find out where problems really exist,” said a ministry spokesman, who said that the number of complaint over such a short time-span “more than usual.” There is more in the U.S.A.

As of Tuesday evening, the NHTSA had received 102 complaints about the brakes of the new Prius hybrid, says the Nikkei [sub.] The complaints center around the brakes cutting out for about one second when driving on slippery roads. Toyota is “looking into the technical aspects,” said a spokesperson.

In the pedal-gate dept., Toyota will recall a combined 180,000 vehicles in the Middle East, Latin America and Africa due to faulty gas pedals, says the Nikkei [sub]. According to a Toyota spokesperson, the total number of vehicles to be recalled in all regions stands at 4.45m vehicles. That’s not including the ones that were carpet-bagged.

We overlooked a key point in our write-up on Tesla’s IPO plans: the profits Elon Musk has been touting are a mirage. As this balance sheet from Tesla’s IPO prospectus [read the whole thing at the SEC here, it's a giggle] proves, Tesla might have fudged a one-month profit, but the company is hardly on a sustainable footing. Unless you consider seven million bucks in “gross profit” (including Zero Emissions Vehicle credits) enough to offset a nearly $29m operating loss, in which case, I’d like to talk to you about underwriting TTAC’s budget. This also puts into Tesla’s disclosure that it faces declining revenue into some scary perspective. Notch another one up for Farragoian skepticism…

Welcome to hell.

The Parker Waichman Alonso law firm , of Great Neck, NY, teamed up with the Becnel Law Firm, in New Orleans, LA and put on Businesswire that they “filed suit on behalf of several consumers who purchased Toyota vehicles subject to various recalls issued in January 2010 for defects in the vehicles’ gas pedals. The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, seeks class action status.”

So what does the Esqs. from Long Island and New Orleans want? That Toyota is ordered to recall all affected vehicles? Isn’t Toyota already doing that? To the tune of some 8m (and mounting) cars worldwide?

Au contraire!

Their complaint “asks the Court to enjoin Toyota from implementing any fixes in the accelerator pedals of the subject vehicles without approval from the NHTSA.” To those who are not familiar with a strange language called Legalese, “enjoin” means “issue an injunction,” or, in even plainer English, “order someone to stop doing something.”

The lawyers ask the court to stop Toyota from fixing the recalled cars without approval from NHTSA. If the court grants this request, the cars will never get fixed.

The NHTSA never grants an approval. Toyota issued a press release that says “Regarding reports that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has “approved” a plan for our pedal recall; it is Toyota’s understanding that NHTSA does not officially approve recall remedies.”

The NHTSA can disapprove a recall plan. Approving one would mean taking responsibility. The NHTSA would never do that.

In case the judge wags his or her finger at the attorneys about that frivolous detail, they allege some more:

“The class action lawsuit filed by Parker Waichman Alonso LLP and the Becnel Law Firm, LLC alleges that, as a result of these recalls, Toyota owners lost the use of their vehicles, and sustained, among things, economic losses and severe emotional distress.”

TTAC is discussing with its legal team whether we should join the class action suit, and allege the loss of untold man-hours while covering the saga, along with losses incurred due to spikes in bandwidth and the cost of purchasing two accelerator pedals.

I wasn’t going to do this car today. But venting my spleen on yesterday’s 1971 Ford Galaxie 500 and all the discussion it prompted forces the issue: what was the best of the big popular-priced big cars of the era? Having handily eliminated the Ford from the running leaves a tough choice: The Plymouth Fury/Dodge Polara, or the Chevy Impala. Now I have a pretty major soft spot for the big Mopars of the era, and I wrote quite the paean to a ’69 Fury here. But that memorable ride was colored by the circumstances of the day. Truth be told, both the big GM and Mopars had it all over the Fords, but there were a few crucial differences between the two; one in particular.

I had three driving experiences with 1970 Chevys, each quite different, yet they were all in four-door sedans. Well, those were the driving ones. There was another, as a worshiper and passenger, and we might as well get that out of the way first. In the fall of 1969 at Towson Senior High, a brand new dark green ’70 Impala convertible with a white top and interior, sporting Rally wheels and the numbers 454 on the front fender appeared on the parking lot, daily. Who the hell would buy their kid that; I thought to myself as I walked to school each morning. Life is truly cruel.

Even more so, when I saw who the driver was: an Italian-American…well, I can’t quite summon up the word “girl” to describe her, because she looked/seemed at least twice as old as my pathetic late-blooming self. Very much a Linda Vaughn “Miss Hurst” type, but her bee-hive was (still) black. Not my cup of tea, and I wouldn’t have had the guts to get within ten feet of her. Daddy bought the Impala for her; he was probably in the sanitation business.

But one day a couple of us juniors were hooking classes at mid-day and walking out the parking lot, and there she comes, off to her afternoon job (she was in some marketing program that let her do that). We stuck out our thumbs, and against all hope and odds she stopped. Of course we goaded her to floor it, and sure enough, she obliged us with a fairly short but highly memorable blast. She might as well have been opening her most intimate orifices to us as the giant secondary venturies on the Quadrajet  carb kicked in and sucked the fresh spring air. It was probably the lo-po 365 hp version, but who cared? I should never have told this impressionable preamble, because now you’re convinced I’m lacking any impartiality (or taste).

In that summer of 1970, I finally became a legal driver after almost three years of illicit preparation. I made up some BS story to the driver’s ed teacher that I had lived in Iowa and had legally driven there. So he skipped the parking lot preliminaries with me, and told me to just get in and drive out to Loch Raven Reservoir and back. A brand-new 1970 Impala sedan beckoned, and off we went. And almost immediately, I discovered the main reason why this is a better car than the Chrysler products: the steering.

I had never driven a big American car with power steering like this. The Saginaw unit had a variable ratio, was surprisingly accurate, with a modicum of actual feedback. Who knew that existed? Not this seventeen-year old. And GM’s suspension guys were a little less sleepy than the competition too. Yes, the Mopars might have been a tad more buttoned down, which in some circumstance gave it an edge, perhaps, in cornering. But lets not forget, the mission of these cars was maximum comfort, quiet and refinement. And in that equation, the Chevy had them beat.

It didn’t end with a leisurely but impressionable cruise around Loch Raven, though. That very summer I started hanging out with a girl in my neighborhood whose parents had just bought the same spec Impala sedan, with the standard 350 V8 and Turbo-Hydramatic. We drove it out to go skinny-dipping in the Gunpowder many a hot night. And I was driving big Fords during the day at work. I was conducting the most prolonged comparison test in history.

Lets start with the basic structure: the 1970 was the last year of the perimeter-framed generation that started in 1965. By 1970, it benefited from what any car (usually) does after having been made for six years: build quality was the best. The Ford was a distant third, and the new fuselage Mopars felt a little short on development time, at least the first year ’69 I drove. The Chevy was impeccably quiet, refined and smooth. It’s engine started and ran smoother than the other two too. Chryslers, like our own ’65 Coronet, were notorious stallers and ran rough in rainy weather until electronic ignition came along. The Fords didn’t start as effortlessly. GM’s Rochester carbs seemed to be better sorted out.

Chevy small blocks were always velvety runners, the 327 being a real gem. The 350, with its longer stroke, couldn’t quite equal it, but its extra torque was welcome. The level of standard V8 power, with 250 hp, was a substantial improvement over the 283 that had to huff and puff through the Powerslide just a few years earlier. The Turbo-Hydramatic was undoubtedly the best autobox in the world at the time terms of smoothness. Here’s the deal: in 1970, the standard engine/automatic combo of this plain-Jane pedestrian sedan was a good as any in the world in terms of its mission.  You’d have to go to a Mercedes 6.3 for competition, and its transmission was a lot harsher. Never mind its price.

And by 1970, the Chevy finally had decent sized 15″ wheels and tires, compared the absurd little 14″ donuts they were putting on these cars a few years earlier. And disc brakes! The improvement from 1964 to 1970 was pretty remarkable, and made 1970 was a high water mark for the big American sedan, for at least another seven years anyway. The 1971 big GM cars had a shocking drop in quality of build and materials, and were drastically bigger and less efficient. A giant step backwards from the comfortable but fairly-reasonable sized 1970s.

Yes, the 1970 Chevy was the pinnacle of its genre. It was supremely refined, quiet, reasonably well built, comfortable, and if ordered with the available HD suspension, was a decent handling and steering car considering its size. Mopar steering was utterly devoid of any feel or sensation, and the Torque-Flite was rugged and efficient, but didn’t shift as smoothly. And as hard-charging as the 383 and 440 were, they still couldn’t hold a candle to the Chevy rat motors.

I almost forgot; my third and very much final ’70 Chevy sedan experience. It was mostly the polar opposite of the others so far, but it still earned my grudging respect. In 1976, I got a job with Yellow Cab of San Diego driving a taxi (obviously). As the newest driver, I got the oldest car: a totally clapped out ’70 Chevy with probably well over a half-million miles on it. And it was the beneficiary of GM’s willingness to accommodate any wish of its fleet buyers: it had a tired 250 CI six backed up by the ancient two-speed Powerglide, manual (!) steering, and un-assisted drum brakes. 1950 technology was just an RPO away.

I drove this poor thing mercilessly, tearing up and down I-5 at eighty-five, and ripping through San Diego’s endless canyons with the tires howling. Speaking of which, these were tires unlike any I’d ever seen before or again: special taxi-cab rubber that was unusually wide, like a wide-oval, but the tread was totally smooth except a series of straight cuts, that would be re-cut when the “tread” got low. It looked exactly like the F1 tires now in use. Bizarre.

One day, after weeks of the most extreme abuse, I was leaving the garage and stopped a tad harder than average for a light, at about 25 mph. The left front wheel sheared off, thanks to a ball joint that gave out then instead of the un-guard-railed  canyon curve I had been screeching down the day before. It was like a racehorse stumbling out of the gate, and it had to be put down. They gave me a 1971 fat-boy, still with a six and Powerglide, but Chevy finally put a stop to the manual steering for 1971. But I hated it compared to the ’70; the body was a bucket of clattering junk, and the rear seat bottom cushion wasn’t even attached anymore. The ’70 felt lithe and lively compared to this heap of jello, even with a six and biceps-building steering.

What a beginning and end to my ’70 Chevy rides, from that lust-object 454 convertible to that tired smoking taxi. They’re not exactly what I day-dream about these days, but if I could have a time warp shopping spree of  any big sedan from that era, it would be a black ’70 Impala four door, with the 454, HD suspension, Rally wheels…a lot like the one in the picture here. Sorry, Mopar fans, but those wide hips don’t quite cut it compared to a mean, lean, clean-steering Chevy.

More New Curbside Classics Here

The ongoing kerfluffle over Toyota’s recall of over 2m vehicles for a gas pedal defect which (allegedly) caused unintended acceleration has caught much of the automotive media flat-footed. How could it be, many have wondered, that the automaker most associated in the US market with the concept of quality has slipped so badly? As TTAC’s Steve Lang recently discussed, Toyota has been on a decontenting binge since the mid-to-late-1990s, putting profit above the quality obsession that had defined its operations up to that point. As a result, the current generation of decontented Toyotas and accompanying quality issues and recalls can be seen as the culmination of a long-term trend. But why did that transition take place? Though it’s easy to blame greed and mismanagement for the decline in Toyota’s quality, the decline in standards was actually a natural progression of Toyota’s constantly-evolving, efficiency-obsessed production system.

Since the 50s, Toyota had been introducing management techniques such as kanban (just-in-time inventory management), shusa (heavyweight product managers), and kaizen (continuous improvement at all levels of production, including assembly-line problem solving). In the 1960s, what is now known as the “Toyota Production System” came into its own, as Toyota integrated suppliers into its product development and established Total Quality Control over every area of its operation. These developments led to huge efficiency gains, allowing Toyota to launch its full-scale assault on the US market in the 1970s.

By the 1980s, the principles of the Toyota Production System were well-established, and the global auto industry began to take notice of Toyota as the automaker made increasing gains in the US market and elsewhere. The first half of the 80s saw the introduction of export limits in the US, which limited production expansion but kept Toyota’s profitability high thanks to artificially inflated prices. In 1985 however, a sharp jump in the value of the yen put major pressure on the Toyota system and reduced its competitive advantage relative to US manufacturers.

In the short term, this challenge was masked by bubble-driven Japanese economy, which added another 2m units of annual demand in the late 80s, but as Takahiro Fujimoto writes in The Evolution Of A Manufacturing System At Toyota,

as appreciation of the yen eroded their cost competitiveness, Japanese firms had to increasingly rely on the quality side of their strength. Real-term productivity growth had been slowing since the early 1980s, but total quality continued to increase.

The Japanese market took back its volume gains in the early 1990s as it entered recession, and the yen rose again in 1993-94, putting even more pressure on Toyota’s Japanese production. Though the rise of transplant production is the best-known result of these challenges, it’s no coincidence that Toyota made major changes to its product development philosophy in this turbulent period.

These changes were a response to the emerging concept of “fat product design,” a term that consciously clashes with the “lean” ideals of the Toyota system. The “fat product” critique held that Toyota’s increasing reliance on quality advantages resulted in product “overquality” in terms of design “overquality,” relatively lower component sharing, frequent model changes and product variety run amok. In short, a weakening Japanese market and upward pressure on the yen created conditions in which Toyotas strengths with its customers were systematically turned into a concept that was anathema to the Toyota system: the “problem” of “fat product.”

Fujimoto explains the subtle rise of the “fat product problem” thusly:

…these problems didn’t emerge because the Japanese makers built a wrong set of capabilities in the first place. To the contrary… “overbuilding” of the same capability that created new competitive advantages in the 1980s has been the source of new problems in the 1990s. Overall, the dilemma of fat product designs provides us with new insights about the subtle nature of the capability-building dynamics: effective manufacturing routines are difficult for a firm to acquire, but once it gains momentum to build them, it is also difficult to avoid overrun.

Fujimoto illustrates this dynamic in a number of areas. First, he argues that high product development efficiency aided by supplier integration into the design process (heretofore a competitive advantage) resulted in too much product variety. This efficiency was also measured in terms of shortened development lead times as facilitated by standardized development processes, a phenomenon that Fujimoto maintains was a contributing factor in fat product design as it prevented improvements in design efficiency by emphasizing routine practice. “Heavyweight product managers,” another Toyota innovation that allowed high levels of product integrity (and therefore success in the market) also became overemphasized, creating more unique components and requiring an accompanying increase in prices that could not be sustained when the Yen’s value took off in the mid-80s and early-90s.

Another area of product development “fatness” that is especially resonant in light of recent developments, is Toyota’s emphasis on the consumer satisfaction index (CSI) as a measure of customer satisfaction. The use of CSI results in product development was problematic in the sense that it emphasized the elimination of points of customer dissatisfaction. Fujimoto writes:

elimination of customer dissatisfaction does not automatically mean higher customer satisfaction, as the two are often different dimensions. As a result, the pursuit of the CS technique based on the dissatisfaction list may create high-cost [i.e. "fat"] products that have no problems– but no fun built in, either.

What did “fat product” mean in real terms? Around 1990 Toyota’s global output was about 300k units per month, comprised of no fewer than 60k product variations, 25k of which were assembled only once per month. The worst-selling half of these variations made up only five percent of total sales. This variation proliferation was caused by Toyota’s ability to respond to the market’s demand for product differentiation, but in the cutthroat global car business, this was not a sustainable state of affairs.

In addition to overbuilding variety in response to consumer demand, there is evidence that Japanese firms also overbuilt for quality in this period as well (although this is often difficult to objectively quantify). Fujimoto notes:

When I interviewed a product engineer at a German car maker in the late 1980s, he commented that one of the leading Japanese models was about $500 more expensive that the equivalent German model owing to overquality and excessive designs, other things being equal.

Whether this phenomenon existed across Toyota’s product range is nearly impossible to prove, but one thing is certain: in the early to mid 1990s, Toyota’s managers clearly believed that it suffered from “fat product” and moved aggressively to limit its effects.

In 1993-94, Toyota lost about 100b yen due to currency fluctuation alone, making lean product design a jarring necessity. Over those two years, Toyota saved about the same amount in cost-cutting alone, preventing the need for right-sizing capacity or cutting jobs. Instead, Toyota reduced product varieties, increased component-sharing and generally introduced more “value engineering” into its designs. Again, this was not obviously a product of  cynicism on the part of Toyota’s management, but a realization that reforming Toyota’s super-lean manufacturing system would not yield the kind of savings the firm needed. In Fujimoto’s words, the focus of competition had changed, and Toyota’s response was to de-emphasize individual, product-focused development in favor of multiple project development which would allow greater component-sharing across models, and fewer variations of each individual model.

In theory, this sea change in Toyota’s culture could have been effectively managed to prevent the steady decontenting of products and declining quality. And, in the interest of fairness, it could also have led to even more dramatic drops in quality and content. Fujimoto’s analysis of Toyota was published in 1999, when Toyota was still (if only by reputation) the king of quality in the automotive world, a fact that at the time was still attributed to its manufacturing, rather than its product-development system. However, Fujimoto does leave the reader with a warning that should probably have been posted on every bulletin board in Toyota City:

Achieving product integrity and product simplicity at the same time is not an easy job. As of the mid-1990s, there have been some cases in which excessive simplification of the Japanese new models, which apparently resulted in loss of product integrity, lack of product differentiation and perceived deterioration of design quality, have created customer dissatisfaction and loss in market share, despite their competitive prices. This seems to indicate that lean designs actually involve a subtle balancing and that there is always a risk of overshooting– or oversimplifying product design.

Obviously, we need to know a lot more about the specifics of Toyota’s recent quality woes before we can establish causal links between the rise of lean product design in the 1990s and the current rash of bad news. The fact that Denso-built pedals do not appear to suffer from the same problem as CTS-supplied pedals indicates that this might be a supplier-specific problem, rather than the result of a systemic de-emphasis on quality at Toyota. Still, the Toyota practice of working closely with suppliers in the development process indicates that there’s more than enough blame to go around.

The real extent of this cost-cutting, decontenting and “design leaning” won’t be easy to quantify, but the fact that it’s been taking place since the early nineties and is only now yielding negative effects suggests that it’s been relatively well-managed. But Toyota’s reputation was built on those “fat” products of the mid-80s to early-90s, and it won’t be returning to the old practices that created them anytime soon due to their competitive disadvantages. This seems to suggest that, once damaged, Toyota is unlikely to ever recover its former quality halo.

The Datsun 240 was as a true revolutionary, smashing the long-stagnant sports car market of the sixties into smithereens. It was long overdue too; folks were getting cranky for the messiah: a truly modern sporty two seater with four-wheel independent suspension, a zippy OHC six engine, dazzling styling, all served up at a reasonable price; say $3500 (about $20k adjusted). The hole in the market for such a car was begging to be filled. And Datsun stepped up and delivered, with a grand-slam home run. But like most revolutionaries, the Z was anything but truly original. But then neither was Che nor Lenin; they studied Marx. And Datsun? They took their studies seriously too.

Prior to 1970, the sporty two-seater segment was over-ripe for change. The creaky and outdated British roadsters were rolling relics begging to be put out of their misery; the superb Porsche always was pricey and quickly getting more so; the attractive but none too cheap nor reliable Italians were barely hanging on by virtue of their pretty faces; and the Corvette wasn’t exactly budget-priced and was entering the long dark decade of the seventies.  Nissan took note and sent its Z right at the bulls eye of that target market. And where did their inspiration come from? How about another famous Z?

GM’s John Z. DeLorean saw the same market hole: something below the ‘Vette in price and yet smashingly more attractive than the MG or Triumphs. And he saw it years earlier. The 1964 Pontiac Banshee concept had the formula nailed: Pontiac’s new OHC six wrapped in a delicious and highly advanced bod. It’s styling foreshadowed the ’68 Vette, but without the exaggerations. The nearly production-ready Banshee was nixed by the timid GM brass, fearing the market wasn’t big enough for it and the Corvette both.

An iffy speculation? Perhaps, but the story of the 240Z’s origins and paternity is endlessly intriguing and rife with rumor, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to throw another ingredient into it. In the early sixties, Nissan wanted an image-mobile to spicy up its stodgy rep. Albrecht Goertz, a protege of renowned stylist Raymond Loewy, went to Japan around that time to help Nissan develop their clay modeling expertise. Nissan and Yamaha entered into a development project for a sporty coupe using a Yamaha engine, and Goertz did the design. To be called the Nissan 2000GT, the project was still-born, and a restless and eager Yamaha took it to Toyota.

In need of some image polishing themselves, Toyota bit and the result is the stunning and legendary Toyota 2000GT. Toyota claims their own designer Satoru Nozaki did the final work, and that may well be. But Goertz’ influence on both the Toyota and the 240Z is undeniable. But the expensive production GT was much more of an image-mobile in the mold of today’s Lexus LFA than what the Banshee promised and the 240Z finally delivered.

The Z may have numerous claims on its parentage, but a few are too obvious to discount, in lieu of DNA tests. The Datsun 510, a revolutionary car in its own right, and the subject of a recent CC, was a key genetic donor, in that its new OHC four sprouted two more cylinders to make the Z’s six. And given that Yatuka Katayama (Mr. K) had helped shepherd that into its final form, and that he fought successfully for a renaming of the Z’s Japanese Fairlady moniker, he certainly can take a bow.

The Datsun 1800 donated its front suspension, and other pieces from the corporate bin were used wherever possible. The rear suspension was new, but so similar to the Lotus’ that it is rightfully called a Chapman strut. And then there is that body that wrapped it all. John DeLorean would have been proud; it’s decidedly un-GM-esque in detail, but the long flowing hood, the clear lines, the well set-back cockpit, the bulging  hood, the delightfully resolved tail; there’s just not a bad angle, line or detail on this Z.

I mean that generally and specifically; this particular car was a nice find, because it’s hard to find one of the early Zs that is as clean, untampered with, and shows off its designer’s intent as well as this one. They tend to look too fussy, burdened with too much trim and emblems. But this one, having lost its hood ornament, looks as good as as any Z I’ve ever seen. It has almost a concept car’s purity, and every angle is a joy to behold. I’d forgotten just how terrific and timeless a design this car was until I stumbled unto this one.It was hard to stop shooting and walk on.

Of course, things went only down hill after the first few years of Zdom. It’s a depressing tale; I know there are fans of the later cars and its successors, but for me there will only ever be the early 240Z  to speak its brilliant intent and execution. Light, lithe, with a motor that still had some genuine Zing in those last days of pre-smog choked dullness and crankiness. Yes, the 240Z was far from perfect, its handling exhibiting some of the same twitchiness at the limit like its 510 little brother. Nissan would soon take care of that all too well; it slowly morphed the Z from a poor-mans XK-E into a bloated Camaro wanna-be.

But the Z’s decline into plushly upholstered boulevard cruiserdom was soon exploited by Mazda with their gem, the RX-7. Taking the original Z formula (minus the IRS but with a rotary), and keeping it tight and light, the RX-7 carved out as nice a chunk of the market as it carved canyon curves. Of course, the RX-7 lost the way too eventually, until the Miata reclaimed it for good. It’s taken a while, but it was inevitable that someone would eventually find the sweet spot and stick to it as religiously as a warm tire on a hot back-road curve. Just imagine if the 240Z had been available as a roadster too, and stuck to its mission: revolution would have become orthodoxZy.

More new Curbside Classics here

Enough with these pathetic little Briggs and Stratton powered sidewalk toys like the Rabbit and Starlet! We need us a real car to counterbalance that axis of Cozy Coupes. Hell, this Imperial weighs a half a ton more than both of them together. Its 7.2 liter engine is almost three times as big as their egg beaters combined. And its got enough torque to twist those little tin cans into shreds. This baby rocks, even if it is to a song that abruptly played out the year of its birth. Yes, this Imperial was born under a bad sign: the crescent moon. And it marks the end of the road for Chrysler’s pride and joy, save some pathetic efforts to revive it. But Chrysler’s loss is our gain today, because it isn’t every day we stumble onto one of these bitchin’ waterfall-grilled monstrosities with big twin exhausts to rumble our memories and fantasies far away to another time and place…

I’m going to call this the coolest big sled since finding the hot-rod ’50 Caddy coupe. They have a lot in common too; they’re the beginning and end of the whole crazy and uniquely-American idea: the biggest, meanest luxury coupe with the biggest, baddest motor in the house. I know; Caddy and Lincoln were still at the game with big rigs in ’74, but which of the three would you pick to put mag wheels on and hang a couple of big exhaust pipes out the ass end? I thought so. For whatever reason, and wherever your loyalties to the Big Three lay, the big Chryslers were the only ones that still could pull this sort of stunt off in 1974.

Was it the styling, or what was under the skin? The return of the waterfall grille was a bold and distinctive step, even if it was a reprise of that divine sales flop, the Airflow.  The rest of Chrysler’s new look wasn’t exactly original either; it looks like a slightly warmed over ’69 Buick Electra except for that outrageous front end. The stunning and original fuselage styling of ’69-’73 was worn out, as were Chrysler’s creative juices. The crap that came out of Highland Park from here on out was nothing but the result of death rattles moving the hands of the designers. That is, until Lido showed up and taught them to fold, spindle and mutilate a simple box in more ways than had ever been…; well “imagined” is too flattering a word. That resulted in zombie Imperials that still haunt our nightmares.

Yes, the Arabs put a kibosh on this barge that Cleopatra would have been proud to float down the Nile on. And her tush would have been sitting pretty on all those acres of gen-u-ine Corinthian leather. The 440′s blubbering dual exhausts didn’t even need to be submerged under water to sound like an old Chris Craft speed boat. They don’t call these barges for nothing.

No, it wasn’t the styling alone. Chrysler’s big unibodies were always the eating-disordered unpopular sister of the big luxury three. A ’74 Lincoln had a good 600 pounds on this Le Baron (oh God, was that name ever dragged through the mud by Lido’s Kars). Does anyone still know what Le Baron once was? The builders of the finest coach-built custom bodies in the land, like this Duesenberg. All things must pass. Well, this Le Baron isn’t exactly a Duesey, but it’s a lot closer to it in spirit than what followed all to soon. Just for good measure, here’s the tracks this ’74 was following.

But the tracks ended here; well, technically the following year in ’75. If you can tell the difference between the two, you should be writing this. Less than 4k of these coupes were made in ’74; even fewer the year after. Then it was over, for Chrysler’s perpetual wild goose chase for Cadillac gold. Since breaking away from the Chrysler brand in ’55, it managed to beat Lincoln just twice, in ’59 and ’60. But the brilliant ’61 Lincoln showed its trim little taillights to the Imperial, and never looked back. Twenty-one years of true Imperials, and every single one a memorable one. That’s more than I can say for its competition. Nothing like going out in style at the top, big time.

More new Curbside Classics here

]]> http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/01/curbside-classic-the-last-cool-and-real-imperial-1974-imperial-lebaron-coupe/feed/ 71 http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/01/dealer-arbitration-168/ http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/01/dealer-arbitration-168/#comments Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:25:28 +0000 Edward Niedermeyer http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=342487

Almost exactly a year ago, we heard that Ford wouldn’t be developing a global RWD platform in Australia.  That came as sad, but obvious news back then… but check it out: Motor Trend just got a hot “scoop”!

Under the global rear-drive platform plan, the 2014 Mustang was to have shared its basic architecture with the next generation Australian Ford Falcon, and possibly a new flagship sedan for Lincoln. The Mustang would have been on the short wheelbase version of the platform, the Falcon on the mid-wheelbase, and the Lincoln on the long wheelbase. But that strategy has changed…

…By the time a new rear-drive Lincoln could appear, the Town Car will have been out of production for three to four years, and with high gas prices in Australia, no-one expects major growth in Falcon sales. These factors taken together seem to have conspired to torpedo the global rear-drive platform. “The [next generation rear-drive] Falcon is dead,” said one Ford insider bluntly, in apparent confirmation.

Shocker! The problem is that Ford’s just released a new Mustang, meaning the current model will be a bit long of tooth when the nameplate’s 50th anniversary rolls around in 2014. The good news? Motor Trend’s “scoop” isn’t that Ford will be slapping together a “very special edition” consisting of paint, wheels, badges and certificate of authenticity.

The bad news?

They have no freaking clue what they’re doing!

Ford planners are reportedly looking at three possible directions for the 2014 Mustang. The first — and perhaps the easiest — is an evolution of the current car, with styling cues that would appeal to the traditionalist, and a continued focus on the 5.0-liter V-8 as the halo engine. The second is more of an M3-style car, probably with turbocharged V-6 power for markets like Europe. The third – and probably the least likely, says our source – is to transform the Mustang into an ultra-high tech, ultra-high performance coupe along the lines of Nissan’s giant-killing GT-R.

Well that sure narrows it down!But hey, at least the 50th Anniversary cars will be… uh… something.

MT’s source does anonymously insist that the 2014 ‘stang will be lighter and smaller than the current generation, and will finally offer all-independent suspension. That sound like a start in right direction, but let’s not fool ourselves: the next Mustang will almost certainly be another evolution of the current chassis. Ford would be crazy to develop any all-new RWD platform until the Mustang starts its second 50 years. And Ford pays off the ruinous debt that Motor Trend is kind enough to never mention.

In case you were wondering, Ed Whitacre’s assessment that the Volt will “make a margin” at a price point “in the low 30s” is the GM Chairman/CEO’s second big lie in as many weeks. Well, lie might be a bit harsh. Gross and willful misrepresentation is probably more accurate. GreenCarReports‘ John Voelcker got in touch with a GM spokesman who confirms what we all pretty much knew from the get go: GM “has not officially announced final Volt pricing, a price in the low 30′s after a $7,500 tax credit is in the range of possibilities.” In other words, we’re back to the same old $40k-ish number that GM execs have been throwing around for ages. Unless GM is talking about the electric-only (non-range-extended) Volt that Bob Lutz recently confirmed. But what about the margin thing?

The only real explanation for any reduction in Volt build costs would probably come on the battery side, and sure enough GM has already bragged that it will get Li-ion packs down to $500 per kw/h within the next year or so. Of course Toyota has basically laughed off this possibility, saying they’d buy up any of these mythical battery packs if they were actually available.

But mass production is a wonderful thing. Maybe, just maybe, GM could order enough battery packs from its Volt Li-ion supplier LG Chem to bring the price down, right? Wait, what’s that? GM has just signed a deal with an all-new batter supplier called  SB LiMotive (a JV between Bosch and Samsung)? “We have been conducting joint research into automotive batteries with SB LiMotive and there is a strong possibility that the company will be chosen,” a GM source tells the Chosun Ilbo. “However, that does not mean we will change our supply orders from LG Chem.” Huh? Unless these (relative) newcomers have come up with something that A123, BYD, LG Chem, Panasonic and the other big battery firms aren’t aware/capable of, how does it makes sense for GM to not stick with LG Chem and work out the costs of the already-chosen battery pack? Color us confused.

Despite everything we tell our kids, sometimes procrastinating and prevaricating actually pays off. Like this photograph, for instance. I’ve been wanting to do a Rabbit/Golf CC focusing on its role in succeeding the Beetle ever since I started this series, but the cars I kept finding weren’t genuine early (’75-’76) versions. So I just kept pushing it off. Then one day on our daily walk: bingo! A superb red specimen, exactly like the first Golf I ever drove. I shot its profile first, than moved  to shoot it from the front quarter (above), and just as I was about to push the trigger, I realized there was a red Beetle in the background. Kazaam! It doesn’t get better than this if you want to tell the story of how VW replaced the Beetle with the Golf, especially considering how much dithering and just plain luck played into its birth and existence. It also perfectly captures the day I stepped out of my ’64 Bug and drove a new ’75 Rabbit; I couldn’t have staged it better. Children: there are times when dithering and dumb luck trumps all the (business) plans in the world.

From a modern perspective of short model cycles, it’s difficult to fully grasp VW’s situation in the sixties and early seventies. They had been building essentially the same car for some thirty five years. The Beetle and its offshoots were a global phenomena and success story of remarkable scope and dimension. But VW knew it would some day have to replace its cash cow, but it was terrified of the prospect and possible failure. What could possibly replace the most widely built and iconic car in the world?

The Type III (1500/1600/Squareback/Notchback/Fastback) was a tentative step to reduce its dependence on one model. But it was really just a boxier body on the VW chassis with a slightly bigger engine. And despite some decent success, it still had most of the Beetle’s limitations. The traditional RWD competition from Opel, Ford and many others were getting consistently better, and a whole new generation of advanced space-efficient FWD cars inspired by the Mini were increasingly showing the way forward. VW’s rear engine format was looking more ass-backwards by the day.

VW’s development department cranked out numerous prototype projects all through this period; there’s a great photo I can’t find right now of a whole parking lot full of prototypes from this era. The most promising one that was almost put into production was designed and built by Porsche, with its water-cooled engine flat under the rear seat. But VW was profoundly concerned about the profitability of complex new designs, given how cheaply they had learned to build the Beetle and its offspring.

The VW 411/412 of 1968 is the most extreme example of VW’s inability to break the over-ripe mold. Essentially a giant Super Beetle, it failed to gain traction in the mid-sized market that was dominated by RWD and FWD sedans that had better performance, economy, handling and trunk room. The 411/412 was the wake-up call, and VW entered its final performance-anxiety stage, knowing the long-procrastinated Beetle successor had to come, and come quick. In Europe, Beetle sales had started dropping off much sooner than in the US, where VW was still selling half a million per year and making enormous profits.

In the end, and just like in my serendipitous picture, the answer was right under their nose, and where it had been since 1964: Audi. VW bought Audi from Mercedes in that year (imagine if that hadn’t happened), and Audi had been building FWD cars since the twenties. In the early seventies, Audi had just finished developing their superb Audi 80 (US Fox), including a very advanced and compact OHC four to power it, the EA827. And Audi was already at work on an even smaller, highly space-efficient transverse-engine FWD hatch, the Audi 50. Bingo! Everything VW needed was at hand, if they could just get their arrogant head out of their rear (engine stubbornness).

Out of desperation and the failure of the 411/412 and even the advanced but flawed NSU-sourced K70, VW finally sucked it up and got on with it. The Audi 80 was co-opted, hatch-backed and re-badged into the highly successful Passat (US Dasher). And the development work on the Audi 50 was highly useful: by blowing it up one size, kazaam! The Golf was born.

That’s probably understating things a bit, and perhaps the Audi 50 and Golf were in development more simultaneously. TTAC’s Bertel Schmidt, who was there at the time, may (will likely) weigh in with his perspective. But lets just say that the Golf owes a huge amount of its existence, and its engines, transmissions, suspensions, basic form and all kinds of other technical and conceptual aspects to the very advanced and competent work being done at Audi while VW was busy gazing at its navel for fifteen years.

But in the end it was worth all the anxiety. Despite VW’s great concern that the Golf wouldn’t really catch on and truly replace the Beetle (that’s why they kept building it for years still), the Golf is in every way as iconic and influential as the Beetle. Just like the Beetle’s design had borrowed heavily from Tatra, the Golf was hardly original. But that’s how it often is in the car world: the true engineering pioneers often don’t succeed technically, because of a lack of pragmatism. The Golf was highly pragmatic; an assemblage of the best that Audi, Simca, Fiat, Austin, Renault and others had pioneered, and refined into a practical, palatable and handsome box, thanks to its styling by Giorgetto Giugiaro.

The Golf went on to define the whole class it dominates; well, outside of the US that is. In reality and with the benefit of hindsight, one can rightly say that VW’s anxieties were not all that misplaced. Because just like Toyota and Honda have in recent decades generated a lion’s share of their profits from the US, the same was true for VW in the sixties. And in truth, the Golf/Rabbit really never lived up to the Beetle’s huge success here. VW’s long decline from domination of the US import/small car market began in earnest just before the Rabbit appeared, and the Rabbit never properly stopped it, despite massive efforts such as building it in the US (we’ll cover that ugly chapter another time).

But to those who could appreciate the Golf then, and like those that still do, as this featured car’s obviously enthusiastic owner, the Rabbit was a revelation. Count me as one of them. The picture above is so particularly meaningful to me, because it perfectly captures my first Golf drive. I was driving a ’64 Beetle at the time, exactly like in the photo. And a friend had bought one of the first Rabbits in Baltimore in the fall of 1974. He picked up one of the ultra-stripper models like this one, that was especially made for the US only, in order to be able to meet a sub $3k price ($2,999). It had textured hard-board for the partial door-panels (covered with some cloth on this car), and was utterly stripped of all excess and then some more. Ironically, VW wouldn’t have dared to sell this version in Europe! The closest thing to it was the Chevette Scooter some years later (coming to CC soon!).

But who gave a damn when you were twenty-one and lived a spartan existence? I parked my 34 (net) hp Beetle and walked over to his Rabbit, and he handed me the keys. Its 70 hp 1.5 L OHC engine might have been a Golf R32 compared  to the poky little slug-bug. Weighing barely 2,000 lbs, the Mk I Golf was a driver’s nirvana. The engine pulled and revved; the un-assisted steering was light and direct, with just a hint of torque steer; and the handling was just superb: I zinged, zigged and zagged it on the winding back roads of Baltimore County, and it was as much fun as I’ve ever had driving a car. Getting back into my Beetle was like taking off the latest Nike running gear and putting on a cave-man’s dirty old fur. That’s me below in 1974 taking a smoke break to absorb and ponder my rite of initiation into the cult of the Golf.

The European Golfs came with either the little 50 hp (EA111) 1.1 liter  from the Audi 50, or the 70 hp (827) 1.5. In the US, VW showed an bizarre restlessness about the Rabbit’s engines. In ’76, it went to a 1.6 with 71 hp. The best year for early Rabbits is 1977, when it got fuel injection and pumped out 78 horses. I so lusted after one that year, especially after my boss bought one, a properly trimmed LS version. It was a somewhat-poorer-man’s BMW 2002 at the time. Very German, nice quality interior, tight;  just all-round perfect. But they were getting pricey. The dollar’s slide in the early seventies was a terrible problem for VW, and was the reason they built the first modern import brand factory in the US in 1979.

In 1978, VW did a strange thing and reduced the Rabbit’s engine size to 1.45 liters and down to 70 hp. And from then on, they dicked around with engine size and output on an almost yearly basis. What was in the beer they were drinking?

I need to wrap this up for now. The Golf/Rabbit story is a huge one, especially outside of the US. And I’m going to do CC installments on all the key stages: the Malibuized Rabbit, the Diesel, the Caddy pickup, the GTI, the Cabrio, and of course the Jetta Mk I offshoot. They’re all in the can waiting to tell their story. Stay tuned!