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Inspired by an impromptu meeting and discussion I had with Chris Bangle and Jack Telnack at the 2008 Detroit Show, originally published in Speed:Sport:Life three years ago, but I think it is equally true today —- JB

“…so we’ll hunt him. Because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A Dark Knight.”

It feels more than a little trite and melodramatic to begin this column with a quote from a Batman movie, but if the auto business has any profession which lends itself to celebrity culture, it is that of the stylist. Harley Earl set the template: physically enormous and personally outrageous, he created our modern notion of the automobile as aesthetic object. And while there have been many flamboyant “superstar” designers who followed in his footsteps, from Tjaarda to Stephenson, history will surely acknowledge that a few men managed to accomplish more than merely sketching a pretty shape. Bill Mitchell brought us the 1961 Chevrolet, which set a visual template for modern sedans that persists to this day. William Lyons fathered the XJ6, perhaps the greatest sporting sedan design in history, even if he didn’t actually draw it. Alex Issigonis invented the “small car” as we know it today, and Giorgetto Giugiaro rationalized it into the unmatchable first-generation Golf. Marcello Gandini created the supercar; Jack Telnack revitalized the Mustang and with it an entire generation of automotive enthusiasm.

Years from now, when the smoke of history clears, another name will be added to that list of designers who were capable of re-imagining the automobile. Born and raised in the American Midwest, Christopher Edward Bangle joined BMW with a rather singular goal in mind: to create what would be only the second major design direction in the company’s history. His complete and utter success in this task has permitted BMW to become a major player on the global stage; along the way, he rewrote the design language for the entire auto industry.

Such is the man’s star power that, like George W. Bush, Bill Gates, or the Almighty Himself, Bangle is regularly blamed for or credited with the accomplishments of others — but it isn’t necessary. His own successes are enough. To understand them, and to grasp why it is possible to respect or even admire the man himself without particularly loving his creations, we will have to take the advice of David E Davis and open our hymnals…

…not to page 2002, as DED Jr. originally commanded, but to the year 1962, when the BMW Neue Klasse debuted.

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The BMW Neue Klasse would spawn the 1602, and in turn, the 2002.

It seems almost impossible to conceive now, but forty-seven years ago BMW was very far from being an unstoppable market force or a purveyor of so-called “ultimate driving machines”. Germany was still recovering from the nightmare of the Second World War, no more distant in time from 1962 than the First Gulf War is for us today and powerfully present in the memories and mindsets of Germans in a way that a brief overseas bitch-slapping could never be for the average American. The floundering Bayerische Motoren Werke had scrimped and saved to create a new family-sized sedan, complete with a rather extravangant one-and-a-half-liter engine. For those efforts, they were promptly rewarded with more business than they could handle, even though the “1500″ model couldn’t break the hundred-mile-per-hour mark, it had only four cylinders, and it could easily be hidden behind a modern Hyundai Accent. In other words, it was a BMW, but not as we know them today.

Still, the car was a success and it was eventually developed into the two-liter, two-door 2002 that captured the heart of Car and Driver’s chief editor and made BMW the expensive, exotic choice of the leather-driving-glove crowd in the early Seventies. By then, BMW was on a roll and had developed a “full-sized” sedan, the most common US-market variant of which was the “Bavaria”. The conception of the Bavaria is a story in itself, involving as it does the amazing Max Hoffman, but but suffice it to say that in general size, style, and (six-cylinder) power, the Bavaria set the template for BMW’s products in this country. It would be several more years before the 325e brought the inline six to the US-market 3-series, but by then the general idea of BMW — sporty, expensive, square body, round headlamps, six cylinders — was pretty well-fixed in the American mind.

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The “Bavaria” was a full-sized BMW, equipped like a German “2500″ model but with the larger “2800″ six.

The Eighties and early Nineties were good times for the men from Bavaria. In the space of thirty years, BMW transformed itself from a niche company that sold fewer than ten thousand miniscule “bubblecars” and irrelevant, mostly disregarded high-end luxury cars to a solid volume player worldwide. There was just one little problem.

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The successor to the Bavaria was the E23, available in this country as the 730i, 733i, and 735i. As you can see, it was not a major stylistic change from the Bavaria.

The entire reputation of BMW, particularly in the United States, was based on the Neue Klasse sedans and the derivative “02″ coupes. Among BMW enthusiasts, the 2002 was widely understand to be the “heart” of the company. For that reason, every successive BMW was required to pay visual homage to the Neue Klasse, which meant round headlamps, a relatively square profile, a big greenhouse with a kinked rear window, and a set of proportions best suited to a small car.

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More than twenty years after the first big BMW sedan debuted, the E32 735i was still required to “sample” the proportions and details of its predecessors.

This required styling relationship to a sedan which had been hastily designed for a 1961 introduction into the German family-car market was both blessing and curse. Bimmers (for the record, a “Beemer” has two wheels until you cross the pond to the United Kingdom, where they call everything from Bavaria a “Beemer”) were instantly recognizable worldwide and as such possessed very powerful branding. It would be virtually impossible for a Rip van Winkle from 1962 to recognize a 1993-model Chevrolet or Ford, but he would have no trouble picking out a BMW from the crowd.

On the debit side of the equation, BMW was rapidly starting to look a little, well, stodgy. Audi had long since embraced avant-garde aerodynamic styling, a change undertaken in somewhat more reserved fashion by Bruno Sacco and his W201 “baby Benz”. The Japanese had launched three luxury brands with flagship cars that simply looked far more modern than any Bavarian box ever could. When the E38 large sedan and E39 midsized sedan were introduced in Europe, the press started to grumble that, just maybe, BMW was being a little conservative in its visual approach. CAR magazine went farther, referring to the E38 as “depressing and timid”. Truth be told, they had a point: the E39 was virtually identical to the outgoing E34, and the very few styling changes it did have were generally held to be unfortunately executed.

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The 1997 E38 big BMW probably represented the nadir of BMW’s styling paralysis; it looked like a squished E32, with a relatively cramped interior and crass-looking headlight assemblies that became even uglier in the “baggy-eyed” mid-cycle refresh.

Faced with the prospect of perpetually redrawing the same basic car, an approach memorably described in the UK press as “selling the same sausage in three different lengths”, the board members of BMW AG made what had to have been an unbelievably difficult decision: they looked to the outside for help. That assistance came in the form of a man who had recently gained notoriety for drawing a series of bizarre-looking Fiats, someone who said that design leadership consisted of taking the customer where “they don’t want to go”. Chris Bangle had worked at Opel prior to his Fiat engagement, but it was with the Fiat Coupe — a raw slash of a car which would later donate much of its fundamental proportion and design thought to the infamous “X Coupe” concept — that he caught the attention of BMW’s management.

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This was not your grandfather’s Fiat. As it turned out, it wouldn’t be your kid’s Fiat, either. His Fiat would be the New 500, which was a retro rip of your grandfather’s Fiat.

The attractiveness of the Fiat Coupe could certainly be debated, but its originality and vision were plain to anyone with a bare minimum of aesthetic sense. The BMW board, in many ways a puppet whose strings were pulled by the mysterious Quandt family, gave Bangle its full public support. No matter what happened, the new design direction would be pursued to its conclusion.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Europe, another “luxury” manufacturer was returning from a frustrating, unprofitable dalliance with modernism. Jaguar had built its seminal XJ6 sedan with fairly minor alterations from 1968 to 1986, having considerable success along the way and escaping the hellhole known as British Leyland, but the successor “XJ40″ had been publicly crucified for its “digital dash” and — horrors! — square headlights. Shortly afterwards, Ford rescued the company from a financial collapse which was more or less entirely the XJ40′s fault and immediately threw in a quick “retro” restyle to bring the “X300″ into visual line with the 1968 original. Sales went up, customers were happier, and plans were made for the “X350″ successor to imitate the retro look. Although the X350 was a technologically daring aluminum-unibody sedan in the mold of the Audi A8, it would not be permitted to visually differ from the X300, which was itself intended to be nearly indistinguishable from the 1968 XJ6.

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Well, this looks different, doesn’t it?

The first production “Bangle BMW” was the “E46″ 3 Series, but anybody who had bothered to take a look at the concept cars being shown at the same time, most notably the aforementioned X Coupe, should have known that the real future design direction of BMW had yet to appear. When it did, it literally shocked the world. The “E65″ 745i full-sized sedan looked like no BMW in history, which made it quite a departure from the company’s previous practice of having all BMWs look like every BMW in history. (Understanding, of course, that “history” started in 1961.) The E65 could hardly be accused of being beautiful, but it struck a chord with buyers. For the first time in most peoples’ living memories, a genuinely new BMW was available.

Naturally, the always-fickle Press As A Whole completely forgot their vicious panning of the previous-generation 740i in their unseemly haste to dogpile this “challenging” new Bimmer. The BMW board never blinked in their determination to back Bangle; the E60 5-Series which followed was an uncompromsing extension of the styling themes seen in the E65. “Flame surfacing” entered the automotive enthusiast vocabulary, along with the less complimentary (and utterly inaccurate) “Bangle Butt”.

The man behind the aforementioned Butt held fast in the face of criticism from all quarters. Although Bangle had not styled the new generation of BMWs himself, he cheerfully served as the lightning rod for the storm of negative reaction, the board continued to back him, and sales continued to climb. The leather-driving-glove crowd was eventually won over by the sheer mechanical excellence of modern Bimmers, although the “Letters” section of Roundel continues to boil over even today with cartoonish indignation. While Mercedes-Benz writhed in quality-control turmoil and Audi plotted a future renaissance, BMW quietly assumed the title of the world’s premier mass-market automotive brand.

Jaguar released the sublime and satisfying X350 in 2003, complete with perfected “homage” styling calculated to satisfy the most ardent Jaguar traditionalist… and the car fell on its face, setting off a chain reaction of events that would eventually result in the brand’s sale to an Indian industrialist. Meanwhile, BMW went from strength to strength; the long-awaited arrival of the “Bangled” 3-Series (a tag which ignored the fact that the 1999 3 Series had also been “Bangled”) proved to be an unqualified success. Still, there was a sense that BMW was pulling the reins tighter on its maverick design team; each new BMW appeared just slightly less daring than the one before. Who could blame them? After all, it’s one thing to bet the farm, but it’s quite another to bet the farm, win the bet, and leave your chips on the table to do it all again.

In a conversation I had with Mr. Bangle at the 2008 NAIAS, he noted rather caustically that his “old” E60 was still the most “challenging” car on the market, years after its release. The 2009 release of the relatively conservative new 7 Series (castigated as “timid” once again by the ever-schizophrenic UK press) does nothing to invalidate that statement. The past half-decade has also seen the fundamental principles of Bangle-era styling stolen, excuse me, “appropriated”, by everyone from Audi (with their “emotional surfaces”) to Toyota and Lexus (the LS460 and current Camry, in addition to looking exactly like each other, also look like generic-label versions of the E65). Even Jaguar has finally wised up and delivered a car — the new XF — which contains just enough “flame surfacing” to look vaguely modern.

What would a BMW without Bangle be like? It is hard to imagine that even the most doggedly mundane of stylists could have squeezed two more generations of sausages from the Neue Klasse tube, but had they done so, the highways would look very different today. We simply take it for granted that the “man from Ohio” solved a variety of automotive styling problems on our behalf. Ever notice just how tall cars are today? That’s a packaging requirement, and it can be done awkwardly (the non-flame-surfaced 2008 Taurus) or invisibly (the flame-surfaced 2010 model). Ever bothered to read the Euro pedestrian impact standards? They forced blunt noses and tall bonnets on sedan makers, who were then able to look at a BMW to get a sense of how to meet those requirements. Have you noticed that the trunk on a 1999 740il is a “two-person” trunk while the new 750il has luggage room for four? That’s courtesy of the “stacked” trunk profile popularized by you-know-who.

My friends in the blogosphere are stage-whispering to anyone who will listen that Bangle was “forced out” or “pushed”, but anybody with a lick of sense can see that it was time for the man to walk away. What’s left for him to do? He has saved BMW from a Jaguar-esque retro-fate, re-imagined the way cars are styled in the twenty-first century, and lived to see his critics either dwindle into irrelevance or voluntarily engage in shameless “copypasta” of his ideas. Why not walk into the sunset? His parting phraseology — that he is moving “beyond automobiles” — could be an indicator of anything, or of nothing.

Chris Bangle has taken a million morons’ hatred, ignorance, and misunderstanding squarely on the chin and kept moving the art of automotive design forward, often alone, always under fire. From the crucible of fifteen years’ effort and battle, he’s emerged as more than just a “hero” or “celebrity” designer, more than just an opinionated controvery artist. If you ask me, he’s earned a rest. And if you love BMWs in particular, or just cars in general, he’s earned your thanks, as well.

In the last couple of weeks, we have travelled to France, Germany, Czech Republic and Oman. Today we fly North to land in Israel.

Now if you’re already Middle East-ed out after one week in Oman, that’s ok because I have prepared 159 additional countries for you to visit in my blog, so don’t be shy and click away!

For those of you who have been meticulously reading my articles week after week you will remember that we have already been in Israel back in August last year. Oh yes but at that time the only ‘data’ I had access to was from 2010 and it was very incomplete. Plus a lot of change has happened since, with Mazda not dominating anymore!

So jump into it after the jump…

Over the Full Year 2011, the Israeli new car market reached the record level of 225,949 registrations, up 5 percent year-on-year. Surprise surprise: Mazda is no longer the best-selling brand in the country with Hyundai taking a definitive advantage at 33,060 units and 14.6 percent share vs. 21,145 and 9.4 percent for Mazda…

But Mazda gets a consolation prize: for at least the 7th consecutive year, the Mazda3 is the best-selling model in Israel, with Australia the only other country in the world where it leads. However while in 2009 it commanded 12 percent of the market, this year it is down to 5.2 percent and 11,642 sales…

…only 221 units above the Toyota Corolla, #2 at 11,421 units and 5.1 percent share.

The Hyundai i30 rounds up the podium with 8,901 sales and 3.9 percent, the first of 6 Hyundais in the Top 25! Compact cars are definitely the favourite car size in Israel with the Chevrolet Cruze at #4 with 6,909 units and the Ford Focus at #5 with 6,286 sales.

The Hyundai i20 is the best-selling small car at #6 and 6,098 units, followed by the Mazda2 at #7 and the Suzuki Alto at #8. The Kia Rio and Renault Fluence close the Top 10.

Israel Full Year 2011 Top 30

Two US imports otherwise pretty discreet in the region rank within the Top 70: the Chevrolet Malibu at #55 and Buick LaCrosse (instead of the Opel Insignia) at #63. You can check out the Israel Full Year 2011 Top 80 here…

But wait there’s more: in January 2012, the Israeli market has gone into a spin…

And this is your mammoth-size golden nugget for the week… If you won’t shine in post dinners this week with that one, you’ll get your money back:

For the first month of the year, the Israeli car market is up 3 percent year-on-year at 20,194 registrations, and both brands and models ranking are totally upside down! Brand-wise, Kia takes the lead with 2,126 sales ahead of Ford (2,104) and 2011 leader Hyundai (2,019). Toyota and Skoda also sell more than Mazda, down 65 percent on January 2011 and the uncontested favourite brand in the country up until 2010…

In the models ranking, the Ford Focus flamboyantly takes the top spot with 1,719 sales and a mammoth 8.5 percent market share, compared to #5 and 2.8 percent in 2011.

It is followed by the Seat Ibiza at 1,034 units and 5.1 percent vs. 1.7 percent and #13 in 2011…

…and the Skoda Fabia with 711 sales and 3.5 percent (vs. 1.1 percent and #26)! The Toyota Corolla is down to #4 at 3.4 percent, ahead of the Kia Rio and Skoda Octavia.

Leader for at least the last 6 years, the Mazda3 is down to a worrying 7th place at 526 units and 2.6 percent share. Kia places 3 models in the Top 10 with the Forte at #8 and the Sportage at #9 while Hyundai lodges 5 cars in the Top 20: the i25 (aka Accent) is #14, the i10 #15, the i20 #16, the i35 (aka Elantra) #17 and the i30 #19. Notice also the Nissan Juke up to a brilliant 11th position and the Ford Edge up to #46.

Israel January 2012

You can check out the Israel January 2012 Top 55 here

And now you’re even more of an expert on Israel car sales than you were last August!

Till next week…

Data sourced from es.autoblog.com

Matt Gasnier, based in Sydney, Australia, runs a blog named Best Selling Cars, dedicated to counting cars all over the world.

From the good old days of 2007…

“Is that yours?” Millions of car buyers spend billions of dollars hoping that this statement will be born of admiration rather than pity. When these words come out of a car dealer’s mouth at trade-in time, they can be especially hurtful– even if the salesman is as honest as their spiel is long. That’s the moment when most car buyers finally discover whether or not their automotive “investment” has walked off a cliff and fallen into the financial abyss known as depreciation.

Here’s how to avoid the freefall.

It simply can’t be stressed enough. Depreciation is the mother of all automotive operating costs. Even if gas soars to four bucks a gallon, depreciation STILL represents the biggest hit to the car owner’s wallet.

To wit: The average cost for a new car in these great United States currently hovers around $30k. After seven to eight years–  still a few years less than the ever-increasing average amount of time American new car buyers hold onto their whips– the car’s owner will be looking at a depreciation rate somewhere between 65 percent and 85 percent.

In other words, come trade-in time, they’re facing an average loss between $19,500 and $25,500. That’s before any considering of the “opportunity cost” (i.e. money lost by NOT investing the cash in a house/money market/alpaca farm). Or inflation.

Bottom line: if you want to avoid depreciation, forget about buying a new car… or even a near-new car.  Yes, a new car offers warranty-related peace of mind and late model vehicles can be purchased as certified pre-owned models. . But it’s an extremely expensive security blanket. A carefully-selected used car may need repairs. But in most cases, repairs of those expenses still cost a lot less than depreciation.

If you’re willing to forgo that new(ish) car smell, figuring-out your buying pattern is the next step. There are two basic buying types: Keepers (keep cars for the long haul) and Traders (trade them in after a few years).

Many Keepers are ready, willing and able to enjoy a vehicle for well over a decade. “Keepers” believe their car should be a cruising companion until the point where the perceived risk of owning it (usually the cash outlay for major repairs) outweighs the fact that ownership itself eventually costs them nothing/virtually nothing.

In the automotive world they are what we call “married.”

The key to being a successful Keeper: marry genuine quality, not reputation. Say what you will about “import bigots” and brand loyalty. The automotive market is a place where perceived reputation translates into dollars and cents.

Toyotas and Hondas routinely receive price premiums– even though many of their products fall far short in value and performance as compared to their peers. By the same token, overlooked or unloved models represent an excellent way to keep the hounds of depreciation at bay.

In most cases, car buyers get more bang for their buck (power, features, etc.), lower up-front costs, and lower depreciation costs simply by buying a used example of a less well known/accepted car. Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Buick– there are plenty of brands that sell excellent products that simply fail to capture the public imagination. The fact that these cars take a huge initial hit on depreciation works entirely in your favor, both buying and selling.

For example, if you’re looking at a midsized commuter, a 2004 Buick Century or 2004 Oldsmobile Bravada, both of which finished first in J.D. Power’s dependability study and received strong ownership ratings, will cost thousands less to purchase than a comparable Camry, Accord or Pilot. Remember: badge snobs must pay for the privilege.

The Trader is a different animal. They are looking at a shorter time horizon than the Keeper. They require a different strategy.

To avoid depreciation, Traders are best off buying a carefully vetted seven to nine-year-old car of their choice. At that point, depreciation has exacted the majority of its revenge.

With due diligence, Traders can get a superb return on their money. The average seven-year-old car kept for two years experiences minimal depreciation (20 percent or so). The average nine-year-old car experiences even less, and so on. It’s a simple but highly effective buying pattern.

And then there is the Sage. The Sage can buy nearly anything and make a buck at it. Yours truly has enjoyed hundreds of vehicles over the last few years– and it’s only taken huge chunks of my free time to do it. Mechanics, auto auctioneers, wholesalers, retailers and hobbyists will always have an edge when it comes to depreciation costs. We know what’s hot, and we know plenty of people who appreciate hotness.

Again, wisdom comes at a cost. Sages don’t pay for depreciation (much), but their insight requires years of hard work, money (mistakes are never free) and a feel for the auto biz’ cycles of fashion and fame.

Whether you’re a Keeper, Trader or Sage, remember: a car is an expense. It may excite you or be a daily nuisance, but it is still an expense. By minimizing depreciation you will avoid the single largest cost in the process. With that money you can save the world, buy groceries or save up for your next car.

One of the most famous cars in the world is one of the most despised cars on my very short list of despised cars.

Hell – who am I kidding? I love all old cars more than most people.

But I don’t love the General Lee.

I love 1969 Chargers- maybe not as much as ’68 Chargers – but I hate the General Lee. I have never even watched ten minutes of ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’, but I also hate this old TV show – probably more than the General Lee.

Sadly, I have seen the commercials and ‘highlights’ from ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’ and the horrible carnage of too many ’69 Chargers sailing through the air toward a very uncertain future. I am no expert on physics, but I do know that large cars will fold like a cheap suitcase every time they get launched into a low orbit and return to earth.

The TV show was a rip-off from the Burt Reynolds “Bandit” movies that starred a Firebird Trans Am. The herd of ‘TA Birds were not thinned as drastically because movies are not filmed on a weekly basis, unlike ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’.

As a result, many 1969 Chargers were harmed during the filming of this highly forgettable TV show. This ridiculous excuse for a TV show wiped out a big chunk of 1969 Chargers and infringed on ’68 and ‘70 models during the process.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a sophisticated comedy guy. In fact I love the Three Stooges almost as much as I love old vehicles, but Moe and the boys were smart enough to inflict most of their damage on themselves and other people in the successful pursuit of comedy. The idjits behind ‘The Dukes of Hazard’ simply wiped out vintage Chargers every episode, and that is a very serious eye-poke-worthy offense.

Excuse me if I feel nothing but contempt for the General Lee. It is the ugly bastard child of a brutally bad TV show that only serves as a sad reminder of the extermination of a fine car model from the Mopar boys.

In a perfect utopian world, the next General Lee that goes over a cliff would have every one of the bozos who created this TV monster strapped inside and screaming like girls.

For more of Jim Sutherland’s work go to mystarcollectorcar.com

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Another one from the vaults: 2007 to be exact! — JB

I’d like to start this week with a bit of an apology – not for what I’ve done, mind you, but for what I am going to do. Fourteen years ago, I was a flat broke, know-nothing kid starting at the bottom of a small-town Ford dealership’s auto (and light truck!) sales department. The hours weren’t great, and most of the actual minutes were even worse, as Douglas Adams would say. On a monthly “draw” against commission of eight hundred dollars, I didn’t exactly live like a king. Heck, I couldn’t even afford to eat a real lunch. Instead, I’d buy two fifty-nine-cent McD’s cheeseburgers and wander over to the used car department, where “old Frank”, the finance manager for the “used side”, would be telling stories. After forty-plus years in the business, Frank knew all the tales of the car biz, and he wasn’t shy about telling them, no matter how disturbing, slanderous, or just plain obscene they might be. One lifeless Tuesday afternoon, I said to him,

“Hey Frank, you oughta write a book about this stuff.” Frank reacted to this mild suggestion with unconcealed disapproval and what was very possibly contempt, as if I’d suggested that he put a firecracker in the dealership toilet. His lit cigarette – yes, you could still smoke indoors at a car dealership back in 1994 – dangled dangerously out of his stained hand. He “fixed me with his eye”, as the Ancient Mariner did, and replied v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.

“I could do that,” he said, “but I won’t. I would never write or say anything against this business. I wouldn’t share our secrets, our business, our life, with people on the outside,” and here his glare became quite focused and intense as I shrank back in one of the used car building’s rickety old wire-frame chairs, “and neither… should… you.”

As the years went on, I came to appreciate and understand his statement. I arrived at a deep sympathy with, and later a bit of nostalgia for, the business as it once was. Once upon a time, the car business was a real profession, not a dumping ground for low achievers and double-fisted-handshaking douchebags. Those days are gone, and Frank went with them, dying at the end of a short but brutal bout with cancer well before the turn of this century. I’d like to think Frank wouldn’t mind it if I talked about the business now, but just in case, I want to apologize to him, wherever he is. I’m not going to write a book, but I am going to spend some time talking about the business. We’ll cover it all, from the way dealers finance their stock to the tale of the salesman who took a female customer in a Mustang convertible for a “test drive” that ended with the two of them having rather public sexual intercourse on the road adjacent to the service building…. Today we’re going to talk about how a dealership is really organized, and who really makes the decisions.

I feel silly mentioning this at the beginning, but if the discussions on automotive forums are anything to go by, I’d better do it anyway: In the United States, there is an absolute division between manufacturers and dealerships. When you go to a Toyota dealership, you are not dealing with Toyota; you are dealing with an independent business. In many states, it’s not legal for a manufacturer to own a dealership; in others, it’s merely discouraged, but it’s important to understand that the Toyota dealer is not Toyota the manufacturer. This is not the case in most countries, and if the manufacturers had anything to say about it, it wouldn’t be the case here in America either. Independent dealerships are the worst enemy of consumers and manufacturers. They’re outrageously profitable – the number-one profession of self-made millionaires in this country is “auto dealer” – and, as an aggregate group, they are also outrageously crooked, which means that manufacturers simultaneously envy their profit and weep for the damage they do to their brands.

Consider the case of the “Taurus II”. The 1986 Taurus was what they call a “game-changer” for Ford, and it was widely considered to have “saved the company”. Incidentally, that wasn’t true – full-sized trucks “saved the company” in the Eighties – but it was reflective of the esteem in which the Taurus was held by the public. By contrast, the smaller Escort wasn’t all that great of a car, and that’s putting it mildly. When Ford revised the ‘Scort in 1991, changing it from a rather depressing little “Erica”-platform car into a rather decent and sporting vehicle which shared quite a bit with the Mazda Protege, many people were confused as to why Ford had kept the name “Escort”. Why not call it something different, perhaps something which capitalized on the positive reputation of the Taurus? One dealer decided that if Ford wouldn’t do it, he would. He announced the “Taurus II” in 1991 to an extremely positive local response, said local response diminishing in fervor somewhat when the owners of new “Taurus II” automobiles got home and their neighbors said, “Hell, that ain’t nothin’ but one of them Escorts with a Taurus badge. How much didja pay?” As it turns out, the “Taurus II” cost more than an identical “Escort”. Quite a bit more. Thousands of dollars more – for a badge! And here’s the best part – Ford couldn’t stop ‘em! The dealership is free to call its cars whatever it wants! It’s in the law! In the end, the state attorney general clamped down on it as a deception case, to Ford’s massive relief, leading our intrepid if slightly ethics-challenged dealer to move on to his next project, a television ad in which it was strongly implied that he was building brand-new “used cars” at a factory located on dealership property… But that’s another story. The point is that dealers are independent companies and they have very strong protection under the law.

So now we’ve established that dealers are independent of their manufacturers, and fiercely so, the question becomes: Who makes the decisions at most dealers? Well, every dealership has a “dealer principal”. Surprisingly enough in the year 2008, most dealer principals are simply the guy who started the dealership, or that guy’s favorite son. Many dealerships are true mom-and-pop shops, even if they are worth millions of dollars. If you have a problem with a dealership – and “you” could mean you, or it could mean the manufacturer, or even the state attorney general – the buck stops with that fellow. At most dealerships, he has absolute powers. He can sell you a car for any price he wants. He can authorize any repair, or force a warranty repair down the throats of the manufacturer involved. He can call you a son-of-a-bitch, leading you to beat his ass right there in the sales office, as memorably happened to one of “my” dealer principals while I was employed by Ford Credit. There’s no appeal past the dealer principal for dealer-related issues.

Of course, the dealer principal isn’t always some crochety, foul-mouthed old World War II bomber pilot, like mine was when Frank and I sold Fords together. Owning a dealership is so profitable that it leads to owning other dealerships, which leads to eventually forming corporations, which means that sometimes a dealership or group of dealerships has a CEO, who is effectively the dealer principal. These guys are not as interesting as traditional dealer principals, because they usually have no experience either flying bombers or sucking up literal mini-mountains of cocaine, which is another favorite pastime of traditional dealer principals. But they’re still principals as far as we’re concerned. Do not, by the way, confuse dealer princpals with dealer principles. Every dealer has a principal, while very few of them have any principles whatsoever.

Very few dealer principals want to come to the dealership every day. They have condos in Vail, homes in Naples, teenaged prostitutes with lumps of that sweet, sweet coke between their pert young breasts. So they appoint a general manager to do their job for them. The general manager, in turn, supervises the parts manager, service manager, F&I manager, and sales manager. I listed the managers in that order deliberately, because that’s the order of their importance. Selling parts keeps a dealership afloat, servicing cars pays for the dealer principal’s criminal attorney (with special expertise in DUI cases, of course), finance and insurance rakes in the cash, and selling cars… well, that’s a piece of crap. With very few exceptions where markups are insane and customers utterly complacent, drooling morons – I’m thinking Ferrari and Lexus here – selling cars is a money-losing business. Nobody would sell new cars if they didn’t need to. Why do they need to? Because you gotta sell ‘em to finance ‘em, service ‘em, and load ‘em up with parts.

Now, I don’t mean to imply that dealers don’t make money on individual car sales. They do, pretty much every time, no matter what they’re telling you. It’s almost unheard-of for a dealer to lose money on the sale of a particular car. The problem is that once you pay for the big signs, and the television ads, and the DUI convictions of the sales manager, and the DUI convictions of the salesmen (starting to see a theme here?) and the attorney fees, and the settlements with customers and the state attorney general, and the balloons, and the popcorn machine, it just isn’t a money-making business. It was a money-making business back when my friend Frank got started. Back then, cars didn’t have window stickers, women were told to go home and get their husbands’ permission to test-drive a car, and wrecked cars were often sold as new. It was a free-wheeling era that came to a close in the Seventies. In the Fifties, a dealer might expect to hold a 25% markup, the same as the appliance store down the street did, but by 1990, most domestic dealers were selling for between two hundred and fifteen hundred bucks over invoice, a practice which has now been expanded to almost every brand out there, including BMW and Honda. It’s now a very tight business.

The parts, service, and sales managers are engaged in a daily life-and-death struggle to screw each other over and become the next General Manager of the dealership. They’re also constantly embroiled in the little disputes which arise daily between the three departments, usually due to horribly dishonest promises made by the sales manager to new-car customers, or over gross misrepresentations of parts prices by service advisors. “Take the car home today, and if you really rip the bumper off towing that little ol’ Bayliner, take it to the guy in the back and they’ll give you a gold-plated receiver hitch free of charge!” “No, bring that ’73 Fury right on in here! We’ve got plenty of differentials for that old girl, just lyin’ around in parts. Hell, might be fifty bucks, might be free! We might pay you to take ‘em!”

I forgot to mention one fellow – the used car manager. Some dealerships separate the sales of new and used cars. As we’ve established, selling new cars is not profitable – but selling used cars is, and tremendously so. The average markup on a used car is two grand or higher. The customer has no idea what you paid for the car, and as Frank used to say with a smile, “Every used car is different, so there ain’t none of that comparison-style shopping.”

Below all these managers, there are the people who do the actual work, like counter guys, mechanics, admin staff, and humble salespeople such as I was back in 1994. Salespeople don’t make too many decisions, but if they keep their eyes open, they can learn a lot – everything, in fact, from the way manufacturers bully dealers into taking cars they don’t want, all the way to how parts are sold out the back door for big money at your expense. We’ll be covering all that in future weeks – along with the story of that Mustang I talked about before, and the story about how I sold the color-blind guy a wagon with a pink interior, and the day I learned what it means when a female customer has hairy arms. See you next time!

Detroit had a big comeback last year. Let’s look how big. And let’s discuss whether Bloomberg is right when it predicts that “U.S. automakers led by General Motors Co. may lose share in their home market this year.”

U.S. Automakers By Market Share Gain/Loss 2011

These are automakers, ranked by their gain (or loss) of share in the U.S. market for the full year of 2011.  The big gainers are Chrysler and Hyundai (incl Kia,) followed by GM and Volkswagen. “Big gainers” is relative. Each of the carmakers on top of the list had double digit (in the case of Volvo even triple digit) growth rates. However, when the year was over, the ten carmakers that gained market share only dislodged a combined 4.4 percent of the market. Who lost it?

Let’s go to the bottom of the list. There you see the tsunami victims. Toyota lost a whopping 2.35 percent of the market, more than half of the total market share that had been gained at the top of the list. Toyota is followed by most of the Japanese makers. But oops, amongst the losers is also Ford. Ford gained 9.4 percent in 2011. But with an overall market gaining 10 percent, that gain translates into a loss of share. Market share is brutal. You need to grab it from someone else. And you need to make money while you do it.

The list also provides a partial answer to the question many people asked in private after March 11: Who benefits from the tsunami?

What about this year? Bloomberg asked five analysts that very question. Bottom line answer:

“The U.S. automakers may each increase sales by less than the total market’s growth this year, according to all five analysts surveyed. While falling unemployment, rising consumer confidence and the need to replace aging vehicles will drive demand, increased Japanese output and improved competition from Korean brands and Volkswagen AG will test Detroit’s discipline on protecting profit rather than simply selling products.”

The analysts think that the Detroit Three “may drop a combined 1.3 percent of U.S. market share in 2012.”

That may not sound like a lot. Consult the table, and you will see that it would eat up most of the gains two of the three made in 2011. Who will take that share away? Says Bloomberg:

“Asia’s largest automaker, Toyota, may capture 13.8 percent of the U.S. market this year, from 12.9 percent last year, and Tokyo-based Honda may take 9.5 percent, from 9 percent, analysts estimate.”

That’s already 1.5 percent. Volkswagen will grab 0.3 percent, Hyundai 0.1 percent, think the analysts. Who else than the Detroit 3 is in for a haircut? Except for Nissan, which is predicted to experience a 0.2 percent slide, no other losers are mentioned in the Bloomberg story.

Who do you think will gain or lose?

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Shall… we… play… a… game? How ’bout that old Sesame Street standard, “One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other – One Of These Things Just Doesn’t Belong.” I’ll name four people, and you tell me which one “doesn’t belong”. Ready? Setta? GO!

• Brock Yates
• Alex Roy
• Felipe Massa
• Lawrence Pargo

Okay, time’s up. Which one doesn’t belong? That’s right – Felipe Massa, who is an actual race car driver. The other three are non-racers who have become semi-famous for jerking around on the freeway and endangering other drivers at triple-digit speeds.

Wait – you didn’t say Lawrence Pargo, did you? I mean, come on! Pargo’s right there with Yates and Roy, having recently been caught on a speed camera running a rented Hyundai Sonata down the road at a staggering one hundred and forty-seven miles per hour. In Pargo’s defense, it must be noted that his attorney told the court that he couldn’t possibly be guilty of the crime. It turns out that the lowly previous-generation Sonata, commonly considered to be a crapwagon suited only to “credit criminals”, elderly people, and minimum-wage healthcare workers such as Mr. Pargo himself… well, it can only do 137.

Consider if you will, dear reader, that when Sir William Lyons released his all-new sports car in 1948, he was so proud of its top speed – a speed that made it possibly the fastest standard production car in history to that point – that he simply named the car after that top speed! The XK-120! One hundred and twenty miles per hour! It was the stuff of legends. Fast-forward to the modern day, and Hyundai doesn’t even bother to name a 137-mph car something appropriately cool like “G6DB-137″. Instead, it’s simply the “Sonata”, staple of rental fleets everywhere, capable of blowing by top-end postwar sports cars as if they were bolted to the ground. This Pargo fellow was no race car driver; he isn’t even a wannabe racer like, ahem, certain other people named in the list above. He was just a young fellow who was late for work. It didn’t take him an ounce of skill to reach triple digits, didn’t cause him a moment’s worth of concern, didn’t require a Nomex suit or a competition license. With a simple shove of the drive-by-wire, traction-controlled accelerator pedal, he was running a rental car at the same speeds Stirling Moss reached in the Mercedes 300SLR.

How did this happen?

In our last episode, we discussed how the concept of “luxury” became utterly debased during the nineteen-seventies, eventually resulting in such oddities as the Buick Skylark Limited. The democratization of luxury features, trim, and nameplates had a number of far-reaching consequences for the industry, but perhaps the most significant of those consequences was the American public’s realization that “luxury” simply didn’t mean much anymore. No longer would it be possible to shock and depress one’s snooty neighbor by pulling a new Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight into the driveway; that bastard knew full well that his Caprice Classic matched or beat it, feature for feature. No longer did the gas-station attendant whistle with respect at the arrival of a Lincoln Continental; his Fairmont packed an equal velour punch and didn’t look that much different at a distance. Luxury as everyone had known it was all but dead.

And yet human nature will prevail. No drug, extreme sport, or disturbingly acrobatic sexual position has yet been invented that can compare with the raw thrill of putting one’s foot directly on the neck of one’s peers, so it stood to reason that people would figure out a way to indicate their economic status regardless of the domestic manufacturers’ puffy-seat promiscuity. There had to be a way to obviously spend more money, right? If a Cadillac wouldn’t show the Joneses who was running ahead in the rat race, perhaps something else would.

The answer wasn’t long in coming. By 1980, the efforts of import pioneer Max Hoffmann and his imitators had ensured that there were a few German-car dealerships in every major American city. The cars they sold were ruinously expensive, thanks to currency fluctuation, a variety of tariffs, and the obscene dealer markup required to make their sale profitable at relatively low volumes. They were also rather Spartan.

Spartan! That was a code word for “Although this Mercedes-Benz 200D costs more than a Skylark Limited perched on top of a Cadillac Fleetwood, you’re still gonna roll the windows up by hand.” The Europeans had different ideas of luxury, you see. Their idea of luxury could best be characterized as “owning a car”. Then as now, the standard of living for the average person in Europeland was quite a bit lower than for his American counterpart. It cost a German driver far more to own a four-cylinder diesel Mercedes than it cost Joe Sixpack to drive a Fleetwood d’Elegance – and thanks to all of the aforementioned economic factors, the same was true on this side of the pond.

The initial virtue of the Mercedes-Benz was simply that it cost more and everybody knew it. By putting a Benzo in one’s driveway, one was declaring that one had not only forgotten the vagaries of the now-discredited American luxury ladder, one had soared well above it on a refreshing wave of cold cash. The 220D, 300SE, or 450SL might be outstanding cars, but that was beside the point. The point was that they cost more. I cannot stress this enough. They were not necessarily “better”. The Cadillac deVille of 1975 was larger, roomier, faster, quieter, more comfortable, and probably more reliable than nearly any Mercedes-Benz available on these shores, but it mattered not, because the Benz was more prestigious due to its cost. By 1984 or thereabouts, there was only one genuine way to climb to the top of your neighborhood heap, and that was to drive a Benz. Period. For those unlucky shlubs who couldn’t afford the double-deVille price necessary to put a sixty-three horsepower, vinyl-interior, stick-shift 240D in their driveways, it was possible to still proclaim disdain for the American “tanks” by driving a Saab, a Volvo, or perhaps even an Audi – but Mercedes-Benz stood alone at the prestige pinnacle, and nobody doubted it.

Make that almost nobody. There was a small group of drivers, most of them devotees of David E. Davis, who believed that BMW made the best sedan in the world. They were generally Autobahn-obsessed wearers of string-back gloves, the sort of fellows who purchased vinyl bras for their cars and attended SCCA races as spectators. They were evangelists for the BMW brand, and they tended to be wealthy, influential people, so as the Seventies wore on, Bimmers became the car to have for successful young people who considered a Mercedes to be far too staid for their active lifestyles. And, of course, those proto-yuppies liked the idea of owning the Ultimate Driving Machine.

Let’s get something straight. No BMW was ever the “ultimate driving machine”, period. The famous four-cylinder 2002 was a great car, but it wouldn’t have stood a chance against a Porsche 911 or – whisper it – a Corvette Stingray. And yet driving a Bimmer was still a very different experience from the Mercury Monarchs and Buick Regals which had traditionally been the province of America’s middle class. They were frisky, nimble, different-looking, and, don’t forget, they were just as drab as Mercedes-Benzes on the inside. This drabness led to endless self-righteous drivel from American auto-rag writers regarding the unbelievable superiority of having a cheap, dark interior, because that’s what the Germans preferred, dontcha know. With benefit of hindsight, we now know that what the Germans really preferred was the blonde-wood bordello known as the 2001 BMW 745iL, but the fine people at Car and Driver didn’t have a functioning crystal ball and therefore didn’t know that the black-vinyl-and-silver-paint cockpits of their contemporary Bimmers just meant that the Krauts were marking time until the buttock-massaging twenty-one-way contrast-piping seat could be fully perfected.

As the famous “morning in America” took place in the early Eighties and our country emerged blinking into the sunlight of the post-Carter era, there appeared to be no limit to what Mercedes-Benz and BMW could accomplish in the United States. Eighty-horsepower two-door sedans containing less metal than a Chevy Citation but selling for more than a Cadillac deVille? Check! Thirteen-year-old two-seater convertibles with smog-strangled 3.8-liter V8s priced to compete with four-bedroom homes in the Chicago suburbs? Check! Bullying the wealthiest people in the United States into placing their privileged rumps on perforated vinyl seats, simply by calling it “MB-Tex” instead of “perforated vinyl”? Check! As a nation, we’d gone cuckoo for German Puffs. It seems difficult to believe today, but people actually paid good money for satin jackets which said “PORSCHE 924″ on the sleeves. Remember the Porsche 924? It was a twenty-four-hundred-pound vinyl-seat penalty box powered by, and I use that term loosely, the limp-wristed engine from a Euro-market VW commercial van! It was very possibly the most disappointing Porsche in history, and it still rated its own satin jacket!

From their palatial offices in downtown Detroit and elsewhere, the executives of the American automakers looked upon the complete crumbling of their velour-lined Fake Luxury empire with stunned disbelief. They’d spent decades convincing Americans that personal achievement was inextricably linked with chrome-plated plastic, pillowy seats, and singularly unconvincing wood trim, only to find that, while they were busy waging their own little inter-divisional wars, the public had gone crazy for cars with none of that stuff! The most miserable Buick Century “Custom” Aeroback sedan made the Mercedes-Benz 300D look like a taxicab, in part because the Mercedes-Benz 300D was a taxicab everywhere else in the world, and the customer didn’t care! He wanted black plastic! He wanted perforated vinyl! He wanted a weeble-wobble four-or-five-cylinder engine! A more enlightened generation of men would have inquired as to whether or not these preferences were a byproduct of something more significant, such as appreciation for German build quality or enthusiasm for the relatively taut way in which the European sedans went down the road, but these were not enlightened men. If Americans wanted black plastic instead of chrome, GM, Ford, and Chrysler would provide it to them. If the man in the street wanted a four-cylinder car that combined an excitingly aggressive airdam with a depressing inability to drive up a five-percent grade in any gear above second, they would receive that as well. Also, since the magazines kept bleating about “handling”, they would make the cars “handle”.

This last point was how the era of Rich Corinthian Swaybars began. Detroit had always been full of weekend racers who designed Landau tops during the week, but in the new era of Euro emulation these fellows were given carte blanche to cover their cars in black plastic and make ‘em “handle” around their test tracks. Lateral “G” figures began to displace mileage in the two-page Motor Trend ads. The Chevrolet Celebrity “Eurosport” – a car that bore, incidentally, perhaps the most humiliating nameplate in automotive history, being named after the general concept that another continent was better than this one – could generate .80G! The Pontiac 6000STE retaliated with .84G! The Dodge Shelby Lancer beats ‘em all with .88G! An entire generation of sad, square FWD econoboxes such as the GM A-bodies and Ford “Erica” cars, conceived to compete with the Japanese on the battlefields of cost, economy, and rear-passenger hiproom, now found itself dressed in blackout plastic, saddled with overstyled alloy wheels, and sent out to do battle on an imaginary American Autobahn. Each new car was given more aggressive suspension tuning. Oldsmobile introduced three levels of “FE” suspension, with the top “FE3″ level having spring and shock rates roughly equivalent to what you’d find on a Street Prepared-class SCCA racer nowadays. These cars hopped and skipped over bumps, transmitted every possible road imperfection directly to their owner’s fingers via their always-buzzing steering wheels, and rhythmically kidney-punched helpless children over freeway expansion joints. Even Cadillac got into the act, creating an Eldorado Touring Coupe which looked about as Euro as Euro Disneyland but which had the spring rate to cheerfully shake the dentures right out of its elderly owners’ mouths.

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Meanwhile across the Atlantic, the European economy was finally recovering to the point where people could buy gasoline on a regular basis again, leading the almighty Germans to open up the taps on their powerplants. The 380SEL became the 500SEL and then the 560SEL. BMW introduced a three-hundred-horsepower twelve-cylinder engine in the 750iL and Mercedes-Benz retaliated with a four-hundred-horsepower twelve in the 600SEL. The 318i became the 325e, then the 325i, then the 328i. Power and speed was the order of the day, and woe betide the company whose entry-level sedan couldn’t outperform a 1984 Ferrari 308. It was no longer enough for a car to annihilate a laser-leveled skidpad somewhere on the GM proving grounds; it was now necessary that family sedans haul ass.

Our Japanese friends had been slow to pick up on the whole “handling” thing, their home-market being a place where cars crawled through day-long traffic jams and rarely reached triple digits on a kilometer-per-hour speedo, but as a nation of splendid engine builders they immediately saw that they could meet the Germans on level ground in the power wars. Camrys and Accords sprouted V6 engines from beneath newly bulging bonnets. Turbochargers appeared on the exhaust manifolds of everything from the mighty 300ZX to the three-cylinder Chevrolet (by Suzuki) Sprint. Nissan revealed the astounding Infiniti Q45, a 276-horse sedan capable of walking a 500SEL down any stretch of highway with power to spare.

The battle for ridiculous family-car power reached its climax in the killing fields of the mid-sized sedan market, where the Americans were weak and the Germans were disinterested at best. Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Subaru and Mitsubishi engaged in an arms race to capture the loyalty of a very particular customer: the angry middle-aged man who was forced to drive a CamCord by his nagging wife but who insisted that it be a sporty CamCord. The glory from victory in this battle would shine its light over an entire sedan range, so the Japanese fought for each milestone like Marines coming up the beach at Iwo Jima. Who could be the first to provide two hundred horsepower in a mid-sized FWD-based sedan? It was Toyota, with the 1999 Camry. Who would reach 250 first? Subaru, with the 2005 Legacy GT. Who would provide a three-liter V6 before the others? Toyota, in the Camry V6. What about a 3.5 V6? Nissan, in their Altima 3.5SE.

What the Japanese could do, the Koreans could copy, so it didn’t take long for Hyundai to make sure their Sonata and Azera had more power than a top-of-the-line 7-Series BMW from the mid-Eighties, complete with “Sport Package” monster alloy wheels and oversized swaybars… which brings us back to Lawrence Pargo and his triple-digit freeway exploits. The world didn’t need a Chevrolet Caprice with dual power velour seats and fake wire wheels, and it certainly doesn’t need a Hyundai Sonata capable of blowing past a Jag XK120 in a straight line, but as we have seen, the American auto market has never concerned itself with what people really needed. Marketing and trend-awareness drive vehicle availability with all the relentless of young Mr. Parago’s late-night Sonata blast. What’s next? Just look for price premiums. An entry-level BMW sedan used to cost twice what a top-of-the-line Accord sold for; today, they’re priced about the same. The price premium nowadays is on a little hatchback which has about as much room as an old Chevy Citation but sells for Chrysler 300 money. That’s right – the next trend might just be called Pious Prius Pods.

For a long time, Japan’s automakers had pressured their government to enter free trade talks with Europe and the U.S. The Japanese government had dragged its heels, putting the interest of ageing farmers first. With a trade agreement, Japan would be a ripe market for American rice farmers and cattle breeders, and I would finally be able to enjoy a good steak in Japan without risking a heart attack. Caused by the price, not by the cholesterol.

After the Japanese car industry did flee the strong yen and the country, its government reluctantly entered negotiations. Not surprisingly, the American car industry is opposed.

When Japan announced its intentions to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, U.S. car companies represented by the American Automotive Policy Council (AAPC) expressed “adamant opposition,” Inside U.S. Trade reported. The AAPC represents Ford, Chrysler, and GM. Last November, AAPC President Matt Blunt demanded that Japan should not be allowed to join the TPP negotiations until U.S. and other foreign cars have achieved a higher market share in Japan. Which is a crafty way of saying “never.”

Now, the AAPC found another straw man argument. Japan should give up its beloved kei cars. Or rather the preferential tax treatment of the pint sized cars.

“Japan’s ‘Kei’ super-mini car segment has consistently represented over 30 percent of the auto market, but no longer has a clear policy rationale to be provided preferential treatment,” the AAPC wrote in an opinion paper submitted to the U.S. Trade Representative.  Imagine the uproar it would cause if a foreign trade organization would dare to doubt the policy rationale behind preferential treatment of the American pick-up. There is nothing that precludes the importation of foreign kei cars to Japan. If there would be foreign kei cars.

Of course it would be more honest to say: “Look, 2.5 percent import duty on foreign cars brought to the U.S. is low enough, who wants zero like in Japan. We want to keep that tariff. We especially want to keep the 25 percent chicken tax on trucks that worked so well. Exports to Japan? Are you kidding me?” That would be honest, but honesty does not get you far in politics.

Nobody knows that better than the former governor of Missouri Blunt, who did not run for re-election after one term, rocked by scandals. He chose a career in lobbying, which got him the job as AAPC president last year. Blunt riles against non-tariff barriers that unfairly prevent the success of American cars in Japan, but Blunt is hard pressed to name the barriers when asked what they are.

In an interview with Inside U.S. Trade, Blunt said that the AAPC will not develop an exact list of barriers its members face in Japan. Blunt said that would be a “classic whack-a-mole” approach under which the United States would seek to address one barrier only to have another one pop up.

Come on, Matt Blunt. Release the documents.

Meanwhile, the AAPC “is fully supportive of the ambition of a 21st century TPP agreement with Australia, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Malaysia, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.” No wonder, they don’t have much of a car industry.

In the unlikely case that Japan should succeed with that TPP business in an election year, Blunt could always declare an emergency and shoot them.

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To provide a little light weekend reading in the months to come, I will be syndicating some of the “Avoidable Contact” columns that I wrote for our friends at SpeedSportLife back in the day. At the same time, I will be restarting the “Avoidable Contact” series and publishing it here. Be aware that these are long posts, running from 2,000 words to twice that. You’ve been warned. Don’t forget to check out the nice folks at Speed:Sport:Life: their current lineup includes some great young writers and the well-known photographic excellence of founder Zerin Dube — JB

Gather ‘round, everybody. I have an epic tale to tell. It’s the story of how Fake Luxury Conquered The World. There are heroes, and villains, and sweeping vistas, and if we don’t exactly have a princess cooped up in a tower, we might have a few sexually liberated young women in airbrush-mural vans. Interested? Follow along with me as we return to the dark days of the early Seventies…

Our story begins with another story. More properly, it’s a legend. Nobody’s sure whether it’s true or not, but if it ain’t true, it ought to be. The legend says that once upon a time there was a General Motors. This General Motors, GM for short, had a car and a brand for every need, along the plan developed by the great Alfred Sloan prior to the Second World War. There were Chevrolets for regular folk, Pontiacs for the cautious old people (and, thanks to John Z. Delorean’s development of the 1964 GTO, for angry young people as well), Buicks and Oldsmobiles for doctors and successful businessmen, and Cadillacs at the very top, for the most successful men in the land. Yes, I said “men”, because this story happened in the time before Nicky Hilton showed that women could run a business just as well as men could. Since the men at the very top levels of the various GM divisions were all very successful men by definition, they all drove Cadillacs, even though they were in the business of making cars which were definitely not Cadillacs. This led to a rather curious situation, because it meant that most of the people at the top of the various GM divisions had no first-hand experience with their own vehicles, but nobody wanted to rock the boat, and that’s the way it stayed, all through the Korean War, and the Fifties, and the Kennedy assassination, and the beginnings of the Vietnam War.

It would have stayed that way forever, but one day a mysterious yet important man at GM had a mysterious yet important idea: Executives should drive cars from their own division! Seems like a good idea, doesn’t it? If you are the business of designing, building, and selling Pontiacs, shouldn’t you drive a Pontiac, or perhaps even – as crazy as this sounds – a Pontiac competitor? And yet it took a long campaign by a very determined fellow to make it happen. His name is lost to history; if you know who it was, write me and let me know. Whoever he was, though, he knew what buttons to push, and he knew how to make his idea a reality. Given the atmosphere at the time inside GM, which John Z. would later go on to skewer in his book On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors, I can only guess that he had Max Mosley-style photos of quite a few important folks, and he used ‘em to overcome the objections.

And so, some time around 1970, the word went out that, from then on, all GM executives would drive cars from their own brand. I can only imagine that there were a lot of angry faces at the dinner tables of Oakland County when it all went down. Imagine, for a moment, that you are a Vice President at the Chevrolet Division of General Motors. As a GM executive, you lead an unbelievably pampered life. It’s been years since you purchased a car from a dealer, or vacuumed out your carpets, or even pumped your own gas. Instead, you have a top-of-the-line Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special or something similar, which is cleaned, serviced, and fueled during the day while you are working. In the evenings, you put on a dinner jacket, festoon your handsome, socially active wife with expensive jewels, and drive your brand-new Cadillac to posh dinner parties; on the weekends, you glide to church with your perfect children, a shining example of the American dream…

…until one day, at the end of work, when your valet arrives with, not your normal Fleetwood, but a f***ing Chevy Impala! An Impala! The “full-sized” car driven by pipefitters, plumbers, Catholics, and recent immigrants! The official car of poor people! And everybody at that night’s dinner party sees you step out of a car universally driven by losers! Remember, folks, this was back in the early Seventies, before foreign cars had conquered the world. It was an era where the Sloan-created GM hierarchy was as natural as breathing – an era when the gas station attendant could guess everything from your annual income to your graduating rank at university simply by reading the script on your front fender. Cadillac to Chevrolet – there could be no more humiliating disaster for one’s prestige! Think of how a Flying Spur owner would feel if he found a Kia Optima in his parking space, and you’re right there with Mr. Chevrolet Executive as his new Impala rolls up. And that’s not the only thing that’s rolling up – the hero of our tale soon finds something out which he may have known intellectually but not fully understood. The windows in a Chevy roll up! By hand! There are no power windows in a basic early-Seventies Chevrolet. A standard Chevrolet does not have a vinyl accent roof, wire wheel hubcaps, leather upholstery, a soft-touch trunk closer, or a “Twilight Sentinel” automatic headlamp system. It’s a basic car designed to compete on price. It’s not a case of Mr. Exec’s car not having all the options – it’s a case of there being no options to have. Chevrolet wasn’t allowed to have equipment that would step on Oldsmobile’s toes.

Not that Mr. Chevy Exec’s neighbor, Mr. Olds Exec, is feeling much better about his situation. Sure, he’s not driving a Chevrolet, but neither is he driving his old Cadillac. He’s still driving a mid-range car despite being an executive, still short on equipment, still woefully lacking in prestige. To put it back in a modern perspective, he’s got a Lexus instead of a Kia – but who wants to replace a Bentley with a Lexus? He’s angry, his wife is angry, and his relatives are whispering that perhaps he’s been “moved aside” at work. The combined angst in the thickly carpeted halls of GM’s executive levels would have been enough to turn everyone emo, if only they had known what “emo” was. Instead, being men of action, the off-brand GM execs swung into just that – action.

If the Buick man couldn’t have a Cadillac – and he couldn’t, at least not now – there was nothing to stop him from building his own Cadillac. Why not build a Buick with a Cadillac’s level of equipment and poshness? And so the Buick Electra 225 – the famed “deuce-and-a-quarter” – became available with a “Park Avenue” trim level. That’s right! Park Avenue! Suck on that, Mr. Cadillac Executive! The Park Avenue had everything a Cadillac had, from a monster chrome grille to – don’t tell anybody – the infamous Twilight Sentinel. Before long, our self-satisfied Buick exec was rolling up to church in style… only to see that his friendly rival from Oldsmobile had arrived in a Ninety-Eight “Regency”, named after the famous hotel on… well, on Park Avenue! The “Regency” was to the Ninety-Eight what the “Park Avenue” was to the Electra. And no sooner does Mr. Buick recover from the shock than the man from Pontiac arrives in the new “Gran Ville”! It’s just as chrome-laden and luxed-up as a “Regency” is! And as the three men stare at each other in the church parking lot – shocked beyond belief that the “other guys” had also managed to create ersatz Cadillacs from their brand’s full-size cars – what do they see coming down the road? It’s a bright-grille, vinyl-roofed Chevrolet “Caprice Classic”! Can you believe it? Even the man from Chevy managed to build himself a Cadillac! The Caprice Classic even had its own badge – which looked kind of like a Cadillac badge redrawn by a fellow high on LSD and limited to one color of paint. And thus the tableau was complete; denied their own Cadillacs, each division had managed to create a Fakeillac to serve in place of the Standard of the World.

Meanwhile, the men from each division’s marketing office were sweating bullets, having received strong orders to make sure the new chrome boats sold in volumes sufficient to justify their existence. For the Buick and Oldsmobile people, it wasn’t too tough; there were plenty of people out there successful enough to buy a Cadillac but afraid of the social implications. For Pontiac and Chevy it was much tougher, and the way it was done helped bring about the eventual collapse of GM’s carefully orchestrated brand hierarchy. The ads for the Caprice hinted – just barely suggested – that the Caprice was pretty much the same as a Cadillac, and people listened. They didn’t buy Caprices – virtually nobody did – but they did understand something: that luxury wasn’t just for rich people any more, and that Cadillacs couldn’t be all that special, if you could get all the Cadillac stuff on a Chevy.

At the same time as the fellows from Pontiac and Chevrolet were busy designing new variants of tufted-pillow seats and woodgrain shift knobs, the EPA and the insurance companies were busy nailing the coffin shut on the musclecar era. Big power was all gone. I’ll tell you a secret, though: all of those Hemis, Six-Packs, and SS396es mostly existed in the imagination anyway. The man on the street couldn’t really afford ‘em, so he ended up buying a cheaper model with a detuned small-block V8 and a few racy stripes, and that’s what really sold in the Sixties. When that tumultuous decade came to a close, the average buyer was ready to relax in a genuinely comfortable car – and thanks to their new obsession with affordable luxury, GM, and their perennial imitators at Ford and Chrysler, found themselves ready to provide it.

What’s the definition of luxury? That’s a tough question, and one which keeps a lot of people very well-employed, but I would suggest that luxury is simply something beyond what the common man can afford. So what do we make of the 1975-1985 era, where every car from the monstrous Cadillac Fleetwood to the compact X-body Buick Skylark, advertised as “the little limousine”, could be had with puffy velour seats, cruise control, power accessories, and a vinyl top? Let’s call it Fake Luxury – luxury for everybody, which by definition is not luxury at all. When every car on your street has wire-wheel hubcaps, there’s nothing luxurious about ‘em. And when a Buick Skylark can be equipped the same way as a Cadillac de Ville, people are going to start to wonder whether it’s worth buying a de Ville, and that started a long downward spiral for Cadillac.

By 1981, ten long years after that original, mysterious decision at GM, Fake Luxury had taken complete and utter control of the market, to the point where a “personal luxury car”, the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, was moving over half a million units a year and regularly winning the title of America’s Best-Selling Car. The man on the street no longer wanted rally stripes and a Positraction diff; he wanted a Landau top and faux-woodgrain door pulls. It took a practiced eye to tell the difference between the Caprice Classic, Park Avenue, Ninety-Eight Regency, and Fleetwood Brougham, as they were all vaguely prestigious-looking boxes that looked more like each other than anything else. Every GM brand sold a full line of cars. The Sloan hierarchy had been destroyed. When a yacht-esque Olds Ninety-Eight Regency met a tiny Cadillac Cimarron in the church parking lot, who was the more successful owner? Was it better to have a Caprice Classic Brougham than a basic Caddy de Ville? For that matter, where did the Ford LTD Crown Victoria stand in relation to the base Lincoln Continental?

At the time, it didn’t seem important. All that mattered was moving the metal, and that was being done tolerably well even in light of rising fuel prices and the aftereffects of Jimmy Carter and his “malaise” economy. There was plenty of alarm about “foreign cars”, but they didn’t account for all that much of the market. In ’81, GM still held nearly a sixty percent share of the US auto market, which meant that in reality it was mostly competing with itself.

1981. I remember it well. It was in 1981 that Honda finished the expansion of its Marysville plant. For the first time, a “Japanese” car – the 1982 Accord – would be built on American soil. The unbelievable success of the Accord and its successors would trigger a firestorm of change in the auto industry that would eventually result in Toyota’s becoming the largest automaker in the world, but for the purposes of this story, there was another 1981 introduction which deserves attention: the 1982 BMW 528e. With that new “E28” model, BMW would soon write a success story of its own, one which would end with the death of Fake Luxury and the introduction of Rich Corinthian Swaybars – and that, my friends, is a tale for another time.

Today, the Volvo 760 celebrates 30 years on this planet. Concieved in an uncertain time in the auto industry and launched in 1982, the 760′s various incarnations lasted until the S90 and V90 were laid to rest in 1998.

Like so many great cars, the 760 was built with whatever happened to be laying around at the time.  Cost-effective was the operative word, and the 240′s basic architecture was lengthened slightly, while losing 220 lbs in the process. A 2.8L V6 (the famous PRV motor) was available, as well as a diesel, but the 760 Turbo would live on in the hearts and minds of enthusiasts.

My friend Chris, who took the above photograph, grudgingly gave up his own pristine 700-Series Turbo this summer, for a Lexus IS250. I only got the chance to drive it once, but reveled in the massive turbo lag and equally entertaining turbo boost and the utilitarian nature of the cabin. The 760 Turbo was arguably the last idiosyncratic Volvo (though the 740 and 900 Series carried on its lineage despite re-skins and name changes), with a host off oddities like the self-leveling Nivomat suspension, a turbo boost gauge without any calibration, and the “4-Speed plus Overdrive” manual gearbox.

The introduction of the 850 range in the early 1990s marked the end of an era, as front-wheel drive and transverse engines asserted their dominance in the Volvo lineup. While I’m a fan of the current cars (the S60, XC90 and XC90 are solid vehicles), the old, boxy rear-drivers are iconic vehicles and arguably the heart and soul of the marque.

A 19 year old student in Halifax, Nova Scotia put up a classified ad looking for a vintage car. The make, model, year and body style are all irrelevant. What Spencer, the ad’s creator, is looking for is “…a classic car with a past that I can keep alive, and continue to keep alive through future generations, continuously adding to the history of a special car.” And he doesn’t want to pay a cent for it.

For those of you who live and die by Farago’s fatwa of 800 words or less, be warned - the ad is a bit lengthy. Spencer wants a cool vintage car, something to set him apart from the masses. It must be able to go on ultra long jaunts through the Nova Scotian countryside while delivering the utmost pleasure behind the wheel and also be a reliable grocery-getter. As far as I know, no vintage car can do all of the above in a trouble-free, cost-effective manner.

Nicholas Maronese of Sympatico Autos spoke to Spencer in an interview, and the comments were split between criticizing the “entitled” attitudes of today’s youngsters, and sympathy for a young man with a dream. Personally, I think Spencer is way in over his head, and his repeated viewings of The Graduate have put ideas in his head that have zero grounding in reality. Owning a modern, reliable car is expensive. Owning a vintage car, with carburetors, flimsy build quality, scarce spare parts and peculiar driving characteristics is expensive and trying – especially for someone on a student budget.

The idea of carrying on someone else’s automotive legacy strikes me as a flight of fancy, the kind that dissolve rapidly when your car won’t start at 3 A.M. in a desolate parking lot in a shitty neighborhood. Everyone’s first car, no matter what it is, will be part of a series of unpredictable and unknowable series of triumphs, failures, financial ruin, bliss and heartbreak. But they are yours, and yours alone.

Fortunately for Spencer, there is a car that can do everything he wants, whether its buying cereal or blasting around with the top down – it’s called a Miata. It’s great on gas, drives like a dream, and starts every single time you turn the key. Hopefully you have your own Elaine to keep you company.

I’m standing in the office of the New Orleans Guitar Company when I see it: a odd-looking, neck-through double-cut six-string, tossed in the corner and smothered beneath a completely opaque layer of sawdust. I pick it up, brush it off. It’s gorgeous; a combination of rare woods, mirror-matched and burnished to a gleaming finish. It’s easy to imagine this instrument occupying pride of place in some anesthesiologist’s home studio. Grasping the neck in one hand, I gesture with the other: How much?

Vincent Guidroz, who for all intents and purposes is the New Orleans Guitar Company, replies defensively: “Oh, that’s a primitive effort, really, compared to what I’m doing now… and it survived the flood here, I really couldn’t sell it, I want to keep it around, I’m sorry.” I can feel the frisson travel from the soles of my feet to my furrowed brow. In a world which has gone utterly mad for authenticity, this is weapons-grade guitar uranium.

I can just see it hanging on the wall next to my pair of Marv Lamb H-357s and my hand-made Korina Moderne, silently lending authority to my collecting savvy as I tell the story: “And, you know, when the water receded, and the looters were gone, this lone instrument lay on the floor of the workshop, perfect despise the immersion… I wouldn’t call it ‘immersion’ so much as ‘baptism’, really… You say you own a PRS Private Reserve? How, ah, financially impressive.”

No dice. Vincent won’t sell. As a consolation, he offers me directions to a “real New Orleans place to eat.” Authenticity on the half-shell. My companion, the infamous Vodka McBigbra, is already waiting outside in a car which offers a fair amount of authenticity itself: a 2011 Nissan Cube. After just three days, she loves the little box without reserve, but I’m personally afraid that, in this case, authenticity is something to be avoided. I will explain.

When Jonny Lieberman reviewed the first-gen Cube almost four years ago, he was doing so in the shadow of the Brobdingnagian betrayal known as the Scion xB, Generation Two. The horror with which “xB1″ owners describe that particular vehicle rivals anything reported from the Nuremberg Trials, and to be honest the actual truth of the matter is far from reassuring. The unexpected success of the first xB somehow convinced Toyota that the second one needed to be a completely different type of vehicle. The current one is the Squarebird of Scions, with one difference: it doesn’t sell.

What a relief to see that this Cube is close enough in execution to its predecessor to make dubstep-addled hipsters wail and gnash their teeth as they beat out the tempo of despair in impotent drum circles outside Scion dealers. True, the delicacy of the original is lost. The first Cube appeared to be related in some way to the S-Cargo and Figaro, while the current one looks positively pugnacious from the front. The interior trades a little quirk for increased cupholder size and loses the delightful column shifter. That’s right: in 2012, BMWs shift from the steering wheel while little Japanese boxes force you to row the floor ashore.

A minor point: the Cube is built in Japan. To some people, that matters. It’s that authenticity thing again, the thing that stabbed the Z3 through the heart before Neimann-Marcus had sold the introductory edition and leads to endless Rennlist forum posts along the lines of “My new Boxster was built in Finland… HELP!” I’m not exempt from this. If anything, I’m worse than the average hipster. I like to personally know the guy who tailored my sportcoat, built my guitar, sewed my shoes. Distance is distrust for me. For others, it’s necessary. They want their Cube to be built in Japan by faceless Japanese people on whom they can project any characteristic which suits their inner needs. They wish they could escape their American tormentors and attend a Japanese high school, but they are too old and too American. Feels bad, man.

V. McB and I drove the Cube all over New Orleans and Baton Rouge in the course of a hastily-conceived vacation. On the long causeways, it was acceptably quiet, acceptably free from crosswind-induced insanity, acceptably rapid when the CVT was called into max ratio. I didn’t spot any assembly or material flaws in this very sub-$20,000 vehicle. After approximately 16,000 miles of use, the interior appeared to be more or less wear-free, in stark contrast to the Elantra I had a month and a half ago. Of course, the Elantra would have left it for dead had pace been required. Mr. Lieberman spoke glowingly of the first-generation Cube’s handling but presumably that was left at the import docks.

Driving around Treme, through the French Quarter, and down the still-reviving streets of Metarie, the Cube’s size was a tremendous asset. Parking was easy, and the very short nose made accurate placement on crowded streets entirely stress-free. On one absolutely tiny one-and-a-half-laner near the Tulane campus, we drove between two rows of parked cars with scarcely six inches on either side. An F-150 entering the street from the other direction wanted to bully us backwards but had to turn around itself when the front bumper proved to be too wide for the available road surface.

The instrument panel is deliberately minimal, as are the controls: cheapness as a virtue. If you’re wondering where the content gap is between this car and something like a Ford Focus, you’ll find part of the answer on the dashboard. Somehow, the utterly basic complement of controls seems far more cheerful in the green-and-white interiors commonly seen in Japanese Cubes. In basic black, it looks and feels both drab and uninspiring. I’m sure that American Nissan dealers coughed up a veritable mountain of recently-snorted cocaine when confronted with the possibility of Nissan with interior colors, but someone in Japan should have made ‘em take it like good little girls.

Nor is there unalloyed joy in the Cube’s packaging. I’m barely any larger than the average North American male (at 6’2″ with a 32″ inseam) and I prefer to sit close to the steering wheel; nonetheless, my left shoulder was actually behind the B-pillar once my seat was adjusted. A passenger sentenced to sitting behind me in the Cube wouldn’t be much better off than someone trying the same task in a Scion iQ. Unlike the 120-inch Toyota minicar, however, the Cube had decent luggage space. Vodka’s monstrous dark-green Atlantic suitcase, which I have privately come to think of, and dread carrying, as “Leviathan”, fit without difficulty.

The Cube’s authenticity carries another, more unexpected penalty. The squared-off windshield worked very well on the original Scion xB, but applied to the Cube, it’s a step too far. The headliner seems extend three feet in front of one’s nose. Entering an intersection requires a positively Apatosaurian neck extend-and-twist to see the traffic signal overhead. My misreading such a light almost got me killed in Baton Rouge. For the first time in years, I was genuinely frightened behind the wheel. How ironic that it would occur in this tiny, placid little box.

The original Cube apparently needed the square roofline for another party trick: the driver and passenger could rotate and face the rear passengers for a little Tokyo-traffic chat. I can’t find anything on the Web to substantiate the idea that this feature actually appeared in production Cubes, so take it with a grain of salt. In the current US-market car, however, this vestigial feature only serves to annoy. I would like the Cube quite a bit more if it had a proper windshield, even if some of the JDM (yo) authenticity was irretrievably lost.

Kia doesn’t care one damned bit about JDM authenticity. For that reason, their Soul has a sloped front windshield. It’s also usefully larger than the Cube, being six precious inches longer. Somehow, that’s just right; the xB is six inches longer still and that’s a greater offense to common decency than Leviathan The Suitcase. Kia doesn’t make me put up with a CVT, a Pocky-box instrument panel, or too-small front doors. I can sit behind myself, should my cloning machine ever prove successful. Oh, speed that day! I can just imagine taking a posse of myselves to beat up former high-school enemies, perform rapid pitlane wheel changes, and engage in certain authentically JDM activities upon the blinking visages of various kneeling females.

Freed from the constraint of making the Soul authentic, the Koreans have made it useful; freed from the constraint of keeping it Japanese, they have made it irresistible to Americans. Some journalists have rated the Cube ahead of the Soul, but that’s the closet otaku speaking through their squeaky voices. They’re afraid to like the Soul, because it’s so obviously a crass, cut-rate imitation of the xB1 and the Cube, adulterated for our self-loathing American tastes. Their finely-honed palates, refined by relentless exposure to the very best lifestyle PR departments can buy them, demands that they seek out the authentic with your money the same way I chase it in guitars using my cash.

The hell with that. The Cube is a good car. You could buy one in clear conscience, particularly if you need to imagine yourself on the Ginza strip with Bertel Schmitt’s sister-in-law. No shame in that, but there’s a better choice. If you don’t care about Tokyo, authenticity, or smallness for its own sake, and you just want a decent, spacious, affordable small car, do what everybody else is doing: buy the Kia.

I may be the only auto journalist who hates the Cadillac CTS-V Wagon. Funny, because I like station wagons. And I like the CTS-V. A lot.

At the CTS Coupe launch in June of 2010, a Cadillac exec told me that only 5 were needed to be built to break even, making it effectively a wonderful bribe for journalists. Say nice things about GM products (and hell, maybe even bash the competition) and you can have one of these for a week. Or a year.

I’ve only seen one privately owned CTS-V Wagon ever. By comparison, I’ve seen three separate Mercedes R63 AMG wagons, a vehicle that could only be ordered, not purchased off the lot. It wasn’t long before even menswear fashion bloggers were driving this thing for a week, delivered to their door with a tank of gas and insurance provided. The world kept on buying Camrys. CTS sales were marginal.

Taking a page out of Cadillac’s PR playbook is Mercedes-Benz. A friend of mine uploaded the above Facebook photo – a brown E63 station wagon. The E63 wagon is a special order car. You cannot just walk in and buy one off the lot. The one pictured above is obviously a press car, so somebody at Mercedes PR knew exactly what they were doing – AMG customers, as a rule order their wares only in silver, black or white. So why brown? Simple, car geeks love brown. Liking brown cars gives you a weird, hipster-like status. Precisely because brown cars are considered repulsive to society at large, those who pledge allegiance to brown cars must be true enthusiasts to love such an obscure hue.

Our first review of the $111,665 Teutonic Turd (really, that’s what it looks like) comes from the world’s foremost expert on high performance  wagons. A cursory glance at the article suggests that the E63 wagon is awesome. I may be the only auto journalist to have never driven an AMG car at 10/10ths on an autocross course, but I do know that nightclub floozies from the Commonwealth of Independent States absolutely adore them.

While we at TTAC mock the idea of flying “social media influencers” on charter jets across the country, there’s actually a much cheaper way of bribing social maladroits to say nice things about your company – give them a press car that’s tailored to their geeky, self-satisfied sense of sophistication. Having manufacturers send ringers into the press fleet is nothing new, but tailoring press cars just to suit the tastes of a very small cadre of automotive autistics is something that hasn’t been seen before.

The broader issue here has nothing to do with ethics, or Motor Trend’s relevance, but the evolution of PR tactics in an age where someone with 1,000 Twitter followers (half of them bots for X-rated wbesites) can be considered someone of influence. Pandering to the automotive press used to mean sending call-girls up to their rooms on press trips. Now it means ordering a very narrow interest presser in the hopes that it pays dividends in future.

Is $111,665 really such a big sum to ensure some good press? Compared to the millions of dollars spent on advertising, marketing, PR and/or damage control when one of your execs is caught committing dipping into company funds for personal uses, or bribing 22 foreign governments it’s not such a big figure. Or maybe a drive in the E63 means that your products will get good press, your competitors will get slagged and all of that will help you capture some imaginary, arbitrary bragging rights?

I saw Dave Chapelle in 2007, right after his “breakdown”, and during the performance, he explained why he turned down Comedy Central’s $50,000,000 offer. Dave said that the execs wrote the check and then metaphorically “laid their dick across the table, over the money. To get the money, I’d have to grab their dick, lift it up, and take it.” We all know Dave didn’t take the money. But someone took the keys to the E63.

The breadth and diversity of TTAC’s readership is such that I really cannot manage to offend you all at once. If I talk about evading the police at night, some of you just shake your heads and say, “What a scamp!” If I admit to selling a female friend’s body to a wealthy industrialist for five thousand dollars, most of you assume I’m either fibbing or just, well, allowed to do that sort of thing. Even my use (while quoting someone else, admittedly) of an infamous term commonly used to refer to a bundle of loose branches resulted in as many pro-Baruth comments as anti-Baruth ones. I admit it: the commentariat can’t really be trolled. You win.

Some people aim higher than I do, however, and Jalopnik’s Ray Wert is one of those people.

In his post entitled I Would Go Gay For Bob Lutz, Ray brags that

I would absolutely “go gay” for former General Motors Vice-Chairman “Maximum” Bob Lutz… Yes, that’s right, I’m sitting next to Owen Thomas on a park bench in San Francisco, and yet somehow I manage to be the gayest thing in the entire clip.

Make no mistake: Ray Wert is an extremely intelligent fellow who has a reason for everything he does. It’s never a good idea to bet against him. The Jalopnik editors who laughed at him and demanded his removal now either lick his boots in staff meetings or rage at him impotently from dead-tree dead-ends. His decision to successfully (appear to) play king-maker at Car and Driver confirmed what most of us already believed: Ray is the most powerful individual in this business, as well as being one of the most influential.

With this “go gay” business, however, Ray may have committed a rare mis-step. His gay readers don’t appreciate the idea that being gay is a choice; his straight readers are alternately bemused and offended. Wert trivializes homosexuality even as he pretends to embrace it.

While there are many women in this business whom I have been lucky or deceptive enough to would love to sleep with, I can’t imagine liking a car dude enough to change teams. Even Maximum Bob doesn’t exert that kind of charm on me. But, for the record, as our respective times in the “CTS-V Challenge” using the same car demonstrate, if I did, I would totally be the “top”.*

* Oh, behave!

Some of you may have noticed that it is no longer possible to add HTML code to comments. If you ask now “What is HTML code?” then nothing is lost for you. If, on hearing this, you are inclined to write “<strong>WTF!</strong>” then don’t do it. It is futile. We locked-out HTML.

Why? Two reasons. One, as you may have noticed, some people added huge pictures and sometimes videos to comments, causing the site to load slower than it already does. Second, it’s  safer for everybody. Sure, we could have written code that separates “bad” from “good” HTML. I decided that’s discrimination.