So what about Chrysler’s halftime ad? You know, the one with a Clint Eastwood who looked like he would die on the set? It did not show up in any of the Edmunds.com rankings. It is neither on the “that ad’s the bomb!” list. Nor is it on the list of ads that bombed. Maybe because Edmunds could not find the car. Car? What car? The ad tried really hard to repeat the “Imported from Detroit” success. Instead, the ad created a lot of controversy. Controversy? The [forbidden word] hit the fan! It might cost Obama the election!

A lot of people mistook it for a political ad. Chrysler Group Chairman and CEO Sergio Marchionne had to quickly refute the rumor on a Detroit talk radio program:

“It had zero political content. I think we need to be careful, and God knows I can’t stop anybody from associating themselves with the message. But it was not intended to be any type of political overture on our part.”

After Karl Rove, former top political aide to President George W. Bush, said that this is tantamount to “using tax dollars to buy corporate advertising,” the White House had to deny that the ad was a “I give you Chrysler, you help me getting re-elected” deal.  After claiming that all the ad wants to do is “sell cars” (what cars?), White House press secretary Jay Carney went on to say:

“It does point out a simple fact, which is that the automobile industry in this country was on its back, and potentially poised to liquidate three years ago, and this president made decisions that were not very popular at the time that were guided by two important principles: One, that he should do what he could to ensure that 1 million jobs would not be lost; and two, that the American automobile industry should be able to thrive globally if the right conditions were created, and that included the kinds of reforms and restructuring that Chrysler and GM undertook in exchange for the assistance from the American taxpayer.”

So there. Marchionnegate off the table.

Leave it to what Wikipedia calls “an American neoconservative^[2][3][4][5] opinion magazine^[6]” to light one hell of a fire under the ad. The Weekly Standard found out that Detroit’s comeback ad was – are you ready for this –not filmed in Detroit. Really. The Weekly Standard cites Chrysler spokeswoman Dianna Gutierrez who admitted:

“Yes, part of it was filmed in New Orleans . . . and some was filmed in various parts—such as Los Angeles.”

Shockingly, Gutierrez is quoted as saying that the tunnel scenes were taken at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the stadium shots were in New Orleans. According to the Weekly Standard, stock footage of Detroit was used:

“Asked whether any part of the ad was filmed in Detroit, Gutierrez said that previously taken footage from various parts of the Motor City was used. No image of Detroit was shot for the specific use in this ad.”

Now THAT is a juicy scandal. Who needs allegedly illegal; campaign contributions if we have THAT? Fake Detroit! Two hours after the Weekly Standard, Fox News was on the story, and there’s no stopping it. This thing is more viral than Ebola.

At the time of this typing, the ad had 2,730,612 3,933,192 views on YouTube. THAT’s what we need in these trying times: Free advertising.

Nah, not those dogs. We are not referring to the cute canines that populated many commercials aired during the Super Bowl last Sunday. We are referring to the dogs that didn’t hunt, we are talking bad ads, bad, bad, bad, baaaaad ones. The worst. Ads imported from Yucksville. Those we make you watch again today.

Yesterday, we showed you the best commercials, as voted by the people. The data come from Edmunds. How did they measure it? Advertisers expect from their commercials what women expect from a bra: A lift. A lift in interest for the wares being hawked. That lifted interest resonates in the respected pages being hit at Edmunds.com, because people rush to their computer to research the car they just saw on TV. Or so the theory goes.

Yesterday, we showed you the ads that lifted like a multistage rocket. This time, we show you the duds. These ads don’t lift. They suck.

Third worst: The Toyota Camry commercial (above.) I’m sure the creative were pretty proud of that one until the research came in. But I tend to agree: I don’t like it when guys get reinvented as girls. And I like them real, not 3D rendered.

Second worst: The Honda CR-V commercial. What a waste of money.

Worst of the worst: The Chevrolet Silverado 1500 commercial. Looks like people are not moved by frogs falling from the air. Or whatever.

Marketing Directors responsible for the aforementioned ads: Don’t fire your agency just yet. Hold off on putting the account on review. Look, it could have been worse. Says Edmunds in a letter to TTAC:

“At least this year no one’s consideration was flat after their ads ran. Last year, BMW saw no lift from its “Defying Logic” ad for the X3 in the second quarter, and Lexus aired a number of pre-game ads and saw no lift in consideration for its models or the make.”

In case you want to know how the unmentioned middling commercials fared, here the complete Edmunds tally as a bonus:

You may notice that today’s percentages are slightly different than yesterday’s, and that the ranking is different as well. We saw that too. This is market research, not the table of primes, for crying out loud. People change their minds. Or something to that effect.

GM noted that Fox has issues with the Volt. They give Eric Bolling a Chevy Volt for a week. And this is what GM receives in return. Ingrates.

So what was the best Super Bowl ad yesterday? Edmunds has the answer: It’s the commercial for the Fiat 500.

The alluring advert must have touched the inner submissive in America’s men. They are shown an ad where a dork is slapped around by an (allegedly) Italian beauty with an Abarth tattoo (on her neck,) and they obligingly click it to the top of the charts, without even thinking of hissing: “On your knees, Ffffffffiat.”

Wimps.

Of course, it could also have been American females who had their inner dominatrix tickled. Thankfully, we won’t know. Edmunds measured the effectiveness of Super Bowl car ads by monitoring the traffic on the respective pages on Edmunds.com, before, during, and after the ads ran, and clicks are gender neutral.

Edmunds measured whether these ads actually aroused something more than prurient interest – do people want to know more about the car? From a pile of data emailed by Edmunds, we give you the overall cumulative results.

That old Fiat ad that had been around since November last year, but hey, sex never gets old, only we do. The Fiat 500 ad made the top spot by increasing traffic at Edmunds by 138 percent.

Next in line is a more or less unsexy ad (unless you are into suppressed zoophilia): The Lexus ad for the GS 350, titled “The Beast” racked up an impressive 102 percent increase. Apparently, a Lexus busting a box talks to people.

Definitely more production value has the number 3 on the list, the ad for the Chevy Sonic, where perfectly good cars are thrown out of a perfectly good Hercules. That drove up Edmunds traffic by 95 percent. But wait, didn’t ”don’ call it Chevy” Ewanick want to kill“Chevy runs deep?” Maybe nobody found a better one, happens.

PETA should approve of this Hyundai ad that garnered an increase of 81 percent traffic for the Hyundai Veloster, landing the ad in slot number four. PETA loves people that get eaten by animals. The other way ’round, not so much.

In the fifth spot: Volkswagen’s Beetle ad, here shown in the director’s cut versions. Up 67 percent, but what will PETA say about the shameless exploitation of plus-sized dogs for marketing purposes?

Finally, coming in as number six, the Hyundai Genesis ad. (Here depicted with the proper Hyundai badge.) It leveraged boredom into a 63 percent increase.

Speaking of dogs, we asked Edmunds to disclose the worst of the Super Bowl Roman numeral XLVI. If we get this info, you will get it.

Now what was your favorite ad?

PS: AutoTrader ran a similar study, and came to similar, but not totally identical conclusions:

“AutoTrader.com shows that Hyundai performed highest overall based on its pregame sponsorship and the commercials aired for the Elantra, Genesis and the Veloster by the first quarter of the game – rather than getting one spike during the game, they had elevated activity across the length of the game on multiple car models.  At the peak of the game, the heaviest online traffic spikes came from shoppers that were looking at Chevy Sonic and Toyota Camry.  The most unexpected result came from Fiat 500.  On Sunday, over 65 percent of Fiat 500 searches occurred after the big game ad aired.”

First it was Honda that had issues with TrueCar. Now, it is regulators in several states, along with dealer associations that claim that TrueCar’s business model is at odds with “long-standing state laws designed to protect the interests of car dealers and shoppers,” as Automotive News [sub] reports. Says AN:

“Regulators in Colorado, Wisconsin and Virginia have issued bulletins to dealers or sent letters to TrueCar concluding that legal problems exist with TrueCar’s business model of charging dealers for leads that turn into a sale. And dealer associations in three more states — California, Kansas and Ohio — say members who use TrueCar may be violating state law.”

This looks like an opening volley of an all-out war. TrueCar said that it has been contacted by regulators in six states: Colorado, Louisiana, Nebraska, Kansas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

What seems to be at issue here is that TrueCar dealers collide with state laws governing advertising and so-called bird-dogging, or paying a third party a fee that is contingent on a sale, as state regulators and associations claim. Dealers could have to pay hefty penalties, and TrueCar’s business model would be destroyed.

The troubles couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time. Or maybe, they have been timed to inflict maximum pain. In September, TrueCar raised more than $200 million  from investors. On January 1, TrueCar was scheduled to become Yahoo.com’s partner for auto shopping. TrueCar agreed to pay Yahoo $150 million over three years.

When Ed wrote about Honda vs. TrueCar, he opined that the “conflict could have profound impacts on the ever-changing face of the new car market.” It sure can.

The Internet changed the way we shop for cars, and the bird dogging fees pay for it. Buying services other than TrueCar can and will be next if this matter gains traction. Countless blogs that feed buying services with customers (TTAC does not) could find themselves out of money. Writers who whip up quickie “car reviews” could be looking for new work. Customers who seek price transparency may have to look harder.

It’s been a fascinating year for the compact car, as all six of the segment’s leading competitors brought out new or updated models over the last 18 months. But as our Chart Of The Day shows, the competition has hardly sent the segment into overdrive, as after an early-year boom, compact car sales have slackened considerably. Intriguingly though, Honda and Toyota, which lost sales early this year due to supply interruptions in the wake of the Japanese Tsunami, seem to be the only brands with recovering compact sales. What’s especially interesting about this is the fact that Toyota’s modest refresh and Honda’s poorly-received new Civic were once widely considered by automotive pundits to be under threat from the resurgent competition. Indeed, Honda’s Civic has been especially hard-hit by media criticism, earning a harsh review from TTAC’s Michael Karesh, losing its coveted “recommended” rating from Consumer Reports, and engaging in some ugly media-bashing. But now that the Civic seems to be one of the only compacts to enjoy a late-year sales rebound, Honda’s announcing that it will be upgrading the Civic for the 2013 model-year, just one year after the new model was introduced.

Tetsuo Iwamura, Honda’s top North American executive tells Bloomberg that

Civic is a good product; of course the expectation of the marketplace for Honda product is quite high. We have to once again make it great. The gap between Civic and the competitors has been narrowed. We have to once again make the gap wider.

Honda has not yet announced any specifics about its planned 2013 upgrades to Civic, preferring instead to let Sales VP John Mendel hammer home the relative nature of Civic’s fall from grace. Mendel tells Bloomberg

We disagree with [Consumer Reports]. Did they make some points? Yes they did. We haven’t gotten worse, everybody else has gotten better. Where we used to be four or five laps ahead in the race, there’s more people on the same lap with us.

Moreover, Honda’s execs argue that inventory levels, not product weaknesses are the cause of relatively low Civic sales, as Bloomberg reports

The company has about 117,000 models in inventory, or a 41-day supply, less than half what it should have, Iwamura said.

“Hopefully, by the end of March next year” Honda will have full inventory, Iwamura said. “If John could sell more, then it will be the end of April or May.”

Honda has set a target to increase U.S. sales of its namesake brand to 1.25 million models next year, from about 1 million this year, Iwamura said. It plans to boost sales of its Acura luxury line by 43 percent to 180,000 from about 126,000 this year, he said.

“It looks like quite a high jump, but because of the availability problem we had a really low year this year,” Iwamura said. “That is the reason why growth looks huge, but for us, it’s a natural growth.”

Of course, there are a few problems with this line of reasoning. First, and most obviously, why is Civic receiving an “upgrade” after one year on the market if there’s nothing wrong with it? Second, since when is an 80+ day inventory ideal? Wasn’t this industry supposed to be moving away from the stack-em-high-and-sell-em-cheap ethos? Inventory levels may be a convenient scapegoat for weaker-than-hoped-for sales numbers, but financial results in this industry are closely tied to keeping those inventories from running out of control. And considering Civic is one of the only compact cars showing signs of recovery in recent months, it seems that both the upgrade and the professed need for a skyrocketing inventory may not be as necessary as Honda now seems to think. In any case, we’ll see how Honda’s upgrades affect the quality of the Civic, and we’ll be watching this segment closely to see how this brutal competition pans out…

Automotive News Europe [sub] spotted a new trend in Tokyo: Daredevil CEOs:

“On Nov. 27, Toyota boss Akio Toyoda wowed a crowd of spectators in Japan by racing through a lineup of Lexus LFA supercars in the new Toyota 86 sporty coupe. One day later, Honda CEO Takanobu Ito hopped on a Honda MotoGP racing motorcycle and blasted around the company’s Twin Ring Motegi racetrack.”

Actually, the industry rag should know that Akio Toyoda is an active racer, under the nome de plume “Morizou,” he races for Team Gazoo. He is also a feared testdriver.

Automotive News’ Tokyo correspondent Hans Greimel even scored a ride-along with Toyoda.

But what about Carlos Ghosn? We know that he privately drives a GT-R to go fast, and a Leaf to go shopping. So will there be any stunts from him? Automotive News Europe doesn’t know either:

 “No word yet on whether Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn plans to jump 10 buses in a Leaf, but don’t rule it out before the show wraps up Dec. 11.”

Fat chance. Ghosn left Tokyo and Yokohama right after the press days. Jump officially ruled out. When Ghosn wants to fly, he simply flaps his wings.

Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! If you have enough followers on Twitter and the like, Chevrolet might give you a free 2012 Sonic. Not for keeps. But for 3 days. It’s the new long-term tester of the 140 character age.

According to Automotive News [sub], General Motors has hired Klout, a company that ranks a person’s “social influence.” Well, social networking influence. In the past, people with high Klout scores received free review copies of software, deodorant, or coffee. Now, they get a car.

To be eligible, you need a “Klout score” of at least 35. It’s probably too late to prostitute yourself for followers, AN says the program already began in November and runs through Dec. 14. follows a collaboration earlier this year promoting the Volt, Chevy’s $40,000 plug-in hybrid.

139 (gee, why not 140???) drives will be offered in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Dallas and San Francisco. All it costs GM is four or five Sonics on loan in each of the five cities.

The twitterati better be careful. A Federal Trade Commission guideline requires bloggers and social-media agents to disclose when writing about products they’ve gotten for free. It’s nice that the FTC has followed an example TTAC has set since day one.

We at TTAC get our fair share of complaints once in a  while. (They usually start with a “b” and end in “ias.”)

We are nothing compared to Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear.  The likewise UK site Carbuzz chronicled the biggest complaints against Clarkson.  According to The Guardian, “Clarkson, who flew out to China to film a new series of Top Gear as the row erupted on Thursday, issued an apology.”

Having read most of the latest raft of auto industry books, with titles like “Car Crash,” “Overhaul,” and “Sixty To Zero,” I have to say, Bill Vlasic’s “Once Upon A Car” is my favorite of the bunch. Not only does it lack the parochial form and voice that define too many of theses tomes, it populates its narrative with rich dialogue and intriguing character studies. In short, it’s got all of the lessons about industry, culture, and competition that you’d expect from a modern study of the auto industry, but it presents them in such a way that they never feel like a lecture or a business school study. Instead you get a well-spun yarn, still-newsworthy anecdotes and an unvarnished look at industry dynamics on their highest level. If ever there were to be a modern movie based on the auto industry, Vlasic’s book should be its basis. Read my full review over at The Wall Street Journal.

Tucked into a corner of the communication department of Nissan is a Japanese rarity: A closed room. Usually, a Japanese office is a sea of people, working elbow-to-elbow without even the suggestion of a cubicle. Most of the floor in Nissan’s swank headquarters in Yokohama is just like that.

Behind the closed doors however works an unusual group of people who probably have to be kept away from the general population anyway: An international team of professional journalists that could change the way companies interact with the media.

In May, Dan Sloan started his job as the Editor in Chief and General Manager of Nissan’s Global Media Center. His first assignment was the roughest job one can imagine: Nissan’s engine factory in Iwaki restarted, only miles from the exclusion zone around the exploded Fukushima nuclear plants. People on the other side of the globe were afraid of being irradiated, and Dan Sloan showed Carlos Ghosn walking through a factory while two more reactors had a meltdown.

All other car manufacturers in Japan avoided the story. Carlos Ghosn and Dan Sloan ran with it. Remembers Sloan:

“This story was radioactive in many ways. But when these things happen, you have to get in front of the story in an adult way, you have to become part of the discussion, and make the story work for you.”

It did work. Carlos Ghosn was once more the take-charge man of Japan, and ranked high in a survey of who Japanese would like to lead them out of the crisis.

The global Media Center is a fully equipped TV studio, and a single room into which Sloan and his team are crammed. The General Manager doesn’t have a corner office, he has a corner. All of the people in the windowless room are top journalists, and that is the big difference of this experiment. In-house TV studios are nothing new, but they usually produce yawners of inspirational messages for the workforce, and possibly training segments for dealers. They also aren’t staffed with this concentration of talent. Says Sloan:

“Other companies never hired in-house people with that external degree of quality.”

If I still would own an advertising agency, I would be worried: Crammed into this room is more talent than in most agencies, and it probably comes much cheaper.

Any wire service would be lucky if it had so much talent in one room.

Dan Sloan was Singapore Bureau Chief of Reuters before he came to Tokyo as Senior Correspondent for Reuters Business TV.

His deputy Ian Rowley worked as Tokyo correspondent for Business Week for 5 years. After Business Week was bought by Bloomberg, he was Deputy Team Leader for Asia.

Coco Masters was Tokyo Bureau Chief of Time Magazine. Now she works as Ghosn’s right hand woman  at the Media Center.

Camille Lim did TV documentaries at Reuters Singapore. Now she will document Nissan’s rich history that goes back to 1914.

There is Shotaro Ogawa, Nissan’s own Mobile Uplink Unit. And there are more whose cards and resumes I forgot to collect at my visit today. I played fly-on-the-wall during their strategy meeting for the upcoming Tokyo Motor Show. It wasn’t a corporate conference, it was very much a meeting like at any TV station or magazine before a big event: Who does what, who goes where, are hotel rooms booked, and what happens if we get stuck in Tokyo traffic. The studio is small, but fully equipped. A chromakey can produce the Yokohama skyline as a backdrop, or Waikiki beach, if that is needed. The editing is done via Adobe Premiere on a Mac, in a pinch on a laptop.

Soon, the Media Center will talk about more than just Nissan. Woven into their coverage of the Tokyo Motor Show will be trends at other manufacturers. Soon, there will be a weekly talk show about the car industry in general, and possibly beyond.

When I ask Sloan what’s different from working on the outside, he says not much. He tells the story that in Japan, the media often has a symbiotic relationship with large corporations anyway. His Media Center simply makes it official without maintaining false appearances:

“We still have to pass the ‘so what?’ test with everything we do.What we want is get a buy-in that we are not dishing out unpalatable corporate-speak. We deliver something beyond ‘everything is alright at the mothership.’ We have access people would not get otherwise, we have content traditional media would be envious to get. We want to provide content other media can take advantage of.”

Magazines and TV stations have budget cuts and fire people. They are being replaced by thousands of bloggers with no money, but a lot of enthusiasm. Any website that wants to do more than just regurgitate press releases will become an eager customer of  Nissan’s inhouse content-machine. This is where Sloan is going:

“People always say we are the death of the press release. I don’t think this is going to happen so quickly. We are a value-add to press releases, they can become more concise now. What we want is something that will be redistributed, reposted, watched multiple times.”

Other carmakers should make a pilgrimage to Yokohama and try to get into that closed room. They might learn something.

TTAC has long held that reviews of press cars made available by manufacturers at launches and press fleets must be complimented by reviews of vehicles acquired from dealer lots. It’s been a controversial position at times, and I’ve had to do battle with OEMs as recently as a few months ago to explain why dealer car impressions matter. Today, Consumer Reports is proving the point by revealing

When VW dropped off an early media car this summer, I remember looking at the trunk and saying to myself “well, at least both of the cheap hinges are dressed up with plastic covers, unlike the Jetta, which just has plastic on the side with the wiring.” As you can see in these two photos from Car & Driver and Edmunds it appears that the Passats in VW’s press fleet have covers on the hinges.

But not that Passat you just bought. No, your new Passat isn’t as nicely finished as the press version.

Like all the vehicles we put through testing, Consumer Reports buys retail samples at a car dealership. I personally purchased the Passat TDI we’re testing. (We also bought a 2.5 SE and a 3.6 SEL Premium.) As you can see in our images, none of the Passats have the two plastic covers found on the press cars. Consumers apparently only get a cover for the wiring loom hinge; the other one goes bare.

Interestingly, we had a somewhat similar issue with VW when a Passat press car proved to be equipped in a spec that is not actually available at dealerships (V6 with 17-inch wheels). When we noticed the discrepancy (and by we, I mean Michael Karesh, of course), we asked VW how we had received a non-representative model, to which they replied that press fleet vehicles were “early builds” from the new Nashville plant, and therefore not necessarily in market-ready spec. Which is a reason, but not an excuse: the media can only serve consumers well if we’re given representative cars to review. So, while these discrepancies are all relatively minor, details matter when you’re spending upwards of $20k on something. Hopefully VW and the rest of the industry will learn from this experience and make greater efforts to equip their media cars exactly to dealer spec. One also hopes that Motor Trend has driven at least one Passat that’s not from a press fleet…

Are you unhappy with the fact that Chinese car sales were down 1.07 percent in October? No problem! All you have to do is to subscribe to the on-line version of the Financial Times. For the price of your subscription, you would be assured that “China’s passenger car sales in October surged 75.8 per cent from a year earlier.”  Don’t believe it?  The Financial Times will tell you it’s true. (If the link breaks, they woke up.)

By mistake, the Financial Times today republished an article that ran in Reuters in November 2009. It’s good that the FT is behind a paywall. Otherwise, the story would already be all over the Internet.

To subscribe to the feel good pink sheet costs you $7 a week. The Truth About Cars will remain free.

(No, wise guys. It’s not an old story that was found in the archives. Want proof?)

The New York Times has a story that’s fascinating in its own right: the number of people leasing a car on leasetrader.com without first test-driving the car has doubled since 2007.  Troubling stuff for most auto enthusiasts among us, but probably not much of a surprise to readers on the retail side of the business. One auto broker explains the most common reasons for taking this leap of faith:

Generally these are people who know what they want, whether it’s because they’re very brand-loyal or they’ve fallen in love with the styling of a particular model. Same goes for buyers who are strictly interested in getting the best deal, and those with limited choices like a big family that needs a nine-passenger vehicle with 4-wheel drive.

But, as one “enthusiast” explains, some consumers are just so well informed, they don’t need to drive their car before they buy it. That’s what they subscribe to magazines for!

Here’s how Charles Van Stone,  ”retired human resources executive and well-read car enthusiast,” sees it:

I never test-drive a car, but I do subscribe to five different car magazines. So by the time I’ve read all these different opinions and finally sit behind the wheel, I have every reason to believe it’s going to be exactly what I wanted… Whether it’s because of my emotional connection to the car or all the reading I’ve done, I have never been disappointed. I’ve never bought a car and thought “Uh-oh, this was a mistake.”

Given that Mr Van Stone most recently ended up in a Camaro SS, it’s safe to say that how it drives per se wasn’t his overriding concern anyway. Which is a good thing, because if a “well-read car enthusiast” asked me, I’d have told him to drive the more playful V6 before committing to the SS. But then, my idea of what an “enthusiast” might be interested isn’t the only one… and ultimately, if the guy is happy, he’s happy. That’s all that matters, especially with a car like the Camaro.

But the strangest thing about Mr Van Stone’s representation of the test-drive-free lifestyle is his reliance on the automotive media. Though I wasn’t in the least bit surprised to see analysts reference the rise of online research as one possible explanation for the test-drive downturn, I was not expecting the Times to quote someone letting his buff book subscriptions “take the wheel” in an auto buying decision. On the one hand, it’s a rare show of relevance for the mainstream automotive media. On the other hand, their champion is a guy who bought his car without even driving it. If such is the modern automotive enthusiasm, I wouldn’t rush to overstate the vitality or relevance of the media outlets that nurtured it.

At the end of the day, no form of media can replace a test drive. No Youtube video, no spec sheet, no eloquent review is a substitute for actually driving the car you are considering committing to. At least, it can’t if you actually care about the details of a driving experience. And you should: understanding the nuances of car control can make you a more efficient, courteous, and above all, a safer driver. Conversely, the fact that more people are buying cars without having ever driven them does not speak well of our collective relationship with these powerful, dangerous, expensive machines. And though the car industry needs people to be passionate about the act of driving in order to thrive (and not merely survive), its collective answer to this trend thus far has been to introduce more distracting gizmos. Apparently it really isn’t important to drive cars anymore… as long as we keep buying them.

Like most corporate trends, the rush to social media is often little more than an opportunity for new consultants to sell common sense packaged in the buzzwords du jour. And though it’s easy to just laugh off the process as just another fad, it’s important to remember that common sense is in relatively short supply these days… if the only way to get it across is to punctuate it with words like “engagement” and “voice share,” so be it. And because social media is forcing companies to come to grips with every possible kind of feedback, the trend is actually helping validate the hard-hitting editorial approach that TTAC has long embraced. At Motor Trader’s social media conference, Richard Anson, CEO of the consumer review site Reevoo, explains the simple truth:

Social content will help drive sales so trust and transparency are vital; we all trust our peers more than any vendor or brand. Negative reviews are good for business. Retailing is all about transparency so perfection is not credible. Customers expect and want negative reviews and they give dealers a great opportunity to engage.

Hear, hear!

This is a lesson that the auto industry often struggles with, especially with in-house social media efforts like The Ford Story (now social.ford.com). But even within the larger automotive media scene, there’s a lack of appreciation for the constructive powers of negative reviews. Due to a long and pointless tradition in the automotive media of trying to objectively evaluate all vehicles on a single rating or “star system,” there’s a sense that negativity in a review implies that a car is not worth considering. In reality, if someone is going to own and live with a car, aren’t they going to be as interested in its flaws as its charms? Consumers aren’t stupid, and if they feel like they’re getting a whitewash from any one review outlet, they’ll look elsewhere. And thanks to the internet and “social media,” they’ve got lots of options.

After decades of offering some of the best C-segment products available, Honda made the mistake of phoning in its latest generation of Civic just as the entire competition stepped up its game. Compared to the previous generation of Cobalts, Corollas, Elantras and Focii, the current Civic might be a fine car… but compared to the new crop of compacts, its barely competitive. In his TTAC review, Michael Karesh called the new Civic “a low point” and “dreadfully dull,” while Consumer Reports struck the body blow by failing to recommend the Civic for the first time in memory. And though Honda’s initial reaction showed signs of a potentially fatal bunker mentality, lashing out at CR and pointing to a second place Motor Trend showing (because that’s proof of an absence of mediocrity), it seems the company is coming around.

Automotive News [sub] reports that a mid-cycle refresh planned for Spring of 2014 has been pulled forward to 2013, as Honda’s John Mendel says

We take feedback seriously, regardless of who it’s from, and we will act accordingly quickly. I don’t know how much we can do, and how quickly. But the comments of Consumer Reports and our customers have not gone unnoticed. We are appropriately energized.

If the late-2013 refresh date is right, Honda should have a few months before Hyundai’s new Elantra (which is on a four-year development cycle) hits the market, and the Civic refresh should coincide with the Cruze’s mid-cycle update as well. Behind the eight-ball in this segment for the first time ever, Honda is going to have to dig deep and work wonders to return the Civic to its previous greatness.

It’s safe to say that most of the seemingly infinite number of “car of the year” competitions are so utterly bunk that they’re not even worth the effort of exposing. But the reality is that you still see advertisements for cars proudly proclaiming them the favored choice of some local, national, or media outlet’s car of the year competition. So, to show just how non-representative and unscientific these awards can be, we thought we’d share the categories from the Automotive Journalist Association of Canada (AJAC)’s “Test Fest,” which will determine the “Canadian Car Of The Year” as well as the favored cars in several categories. Our Canadian tipster writes:

They do all kinds of crap that skew the results.  For example, they use the cars “as tested” price to determine what category it falls under, rather than MSRP.  So what category the car falls under is completely at the whim of whatever car the manufacturer drops off and what category THEY want the car tested in.  You could have an Elantra fall into the “Over $21,000″ category or “Under $21,000″ category depending on content.  Same car, 2 different categories.  But it gets better.  Some of the categories I call “lump” categories because they just throw everything in one category.  My favorite is Sports Car Under $50K.  They actually have the Veloster competing against an Charger SRT8 and a C Class Merc.  No, I’m not making this us.  I’ve included the list for you, so that you may try and decipher WTF these boobs are doing.

Hit the jump to check out the categories for yourself. But first, it should be noted that despite previous questions about the AJAC award’s ethics, the competition now has a page on its website dedicated specifically to enumerating the ethical obligations of participating journalists and the award’s organizers. Unfortunately that page is limited to the following content:

Code of Ethics

AJAC Ethical Guidelines

Under review.

Oy…

Small Car < $21K
Chevrolet Sonic Sedan
Fiat 500
Honda Civic Sedan
Hyundai Accent
Kia Rio S
Nissan Versa Sedan
Scion iQ

Small Car > $21K
Ford Focus
Hyundai Elantra
Subaru Impreza
Volkswagen Beetle

Family < $30K
Chevrolet Orlando
Chrysler 200
Kia Optima LX
Mazda 5
Toyota Camry
Volkswagen Passat TDI

Family > $30K
Chevrolet Volt
Dodge Charger
Hyundai Sonata Hybrid
Kia Optima Hybrid
MINI Countryman
Toyota Prius V

Luxury Car
Acura TL
Buick LaCrosse eAssist
Chrysler 300S
Infiniti M35h
Lexus CT200h
Mercedes C-Class C350 4MATIC

Sports/Performance < $50K
Buick Regal GS
Dodge Charger SRT8
Honda Civic SI Coupe
Hyundai Veloster
Kia Optima SX
Mercedes C-Class Coupe

Sports/Performance > $50K
BMW 1 Series M Coupe
Chevrolet Camaro Convertible
Chrysler 300 SRT8
Hyundai Genesis R-Spec
Mercedes CLS C-Class
Porsche Cayman R

Prestige > $75K
BMW  6 Series Cabriolet
Jaguar XKR-S
Mercedes S-Class S350 BlueTEC 4MATIC

SUV-CUV < $35K
Dodge Journey
Jeep Compass
Jeep Wrangler

SUV-CUV $35-$60K
BMW X1
Dodge Durango
Ford Explorer
Range Rover Evoque
Volkswagen Touraeg TDI

SUV-CUV > $60K
BMW X3
Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8
Mercedes M-Class

Usually it’s the Germans who we find continually pushing the crash-test envelope, but this time around the UK’s Fifth Gear TV Show that decided to crash a car at 120 MPH. Sure, the Germans already proved how much of a difference can be made by crashing at 50 MPH instead of the traditional 40 MPH, just as the Chinese can make any of their cars appear safe by testing at 35 MPH rather than 40 MPH. But 120 MPH? It’s never been done before…

Earlier this year, when Tesla sued Top Gear for libel (allegedly committed way back in 2008), I argued that Tesla was likely to lose the case. And sure enough, The Guardian reports

Electric sports carmaker Tesla Motors has lost a major part of its high court libel claim against the BBC’s Top Gear programme, but is still suing the corporation for malicious falsehood over an episode that showed the company’s Roadster model running out of battery in a race.

Ruling at the high court in London on Wednesday, Mr Justice Tugendhat said that no Top Gear viewer would have reasonably compared the car’s performance on the show’s airfield track to its likely performance on a public road.

Judge Tugendhat ruled

In my judgment, the words complained of are wholly incapable of conveying any meaning at all to the effect that the claimant [Tesla] misled anyone.

This is because there is a contrast between the style of driving and the nature of the track as compared with the conditions on a public road […] are so great that no reasonable person could understand that the performance on the [Top Gear] track is capable of a direct comparison with a public road

Which is remarkably similar to the argument I forwarded earlier this year:

Since even Tesla has admitted that the first-gen Roadster wasn’t a track car, wouldn’t it have been even more misleading for Top Gear to depict it as a car that is capable of driving its entire claimed range in hot-lap driving?

Justice Tugendhat is expected to rule on the “malicious falsehood” complaint later this week, but don’t be surprised if it’s thrown out. And even if it isn’t, one wonders why Tesla went to all this trouble. Their claim in court is that the 2008 broadcast continues to impact their business because of its availability via download, DVD, and syndication. But really, that can’t be than the negative publicity generated by Tesla’s belated and highly-public attempt to sue the world’s most popular motoring show.

Here’s a simple truth. Virtually everything that I write online about cars gets ripped off. Whether I publish it here, at Cars In Depth, over at The Truth About Cars, or Left Lane News, I can go to sleep at night safe in the knowledge that I’m getting ripped off by other websites, usually single topic content aggregators. When the site operators are nice, they just excerpt the first paragraph and link back to the originating site. While that’s still a copyright violation (it’s not “fair use” because the excerpt isn’t used for the purpose of commentary or criticism), at least the original publisher gets some traffic out of the situation. Other site operators just go ahead and steal the entire post.

Take just about any post on TTAC, select and copy a complete sentence, drop that phrase in Google and you’ll probably find a plethora of purloining publishers. This site, copied Steve Lang’s post about repossessing cars verbatim. Another site, Edwards420.com, does nothing but publish content from TTAC, probably from our RSS feed.

It’s so commonplace that those of us who write for the site have a ho hum attitude about it because there really isn’t much that we can do about it.

Unfortunately, the only reason this can go on is because of Google and their AdSense and AdChoice programs. Were it not for Google paying those sites for ads that Google AdSense runs on those sites, they wouldn’t have a reason to exist and rip us off. AdSense specifically is based on site content, and those sites’ content is stolen. The theft is actually on two levels. First, there’s the basic copyright thievery. Then there’s the traffic and ad revenue we don’t get because readers find our content somewhere else. Google is the “fence” that pays for the stolen goods. To keep this in an automotive vein, Google is the chop shop that pays the car thief to steal your car.

Also, Google isn’t just paying websites to rip off high traffic sites like TTAC, which gets millions of pageviews every month. I’ve found content from my own site, Cars In Depth, all over the place, and CID gets a tiny fraction of TTAC’s traffic. The fact that Google is paying people who rip me off is all the more aggravating because AdSense keeps turning CID down. The bots that Google uses to evaluate AdSense applications aren’t very smart and apparently can’t navigate the site. Google won’t pay me any ad revenue for my original content but they’ll pay someone else to rip me off.

This doesn’t just harm the writers and publishers. It ultimately harms you, the reader, because if enough traffic and ad revenue is hijacked, the sites that you go to for original content may not thrive.

This is little more than a rant because, as I said, there’s nothing we can do about it. Google is about as unresponsive a company as exists today. If you think that the Detroit automakers were convinced of their own infallibility, the Big 3 were meek and humble compared to the magnitude of Google’s hubris.

My fleeting 15:21  minutes of dubious fame.

The third day of the Chengdu get-together morphed into what was called a “Global Automotive Media Summit.” The idea was to prep the Chinese car manufacturers for their global push as far as the global media are concerned. For that, the services of TTAC were enlisted.  The manufacturers need any help they can get when it comes to handling the media. From BAIC to SAIC, from Chery to Geely, from state-owned Dongfeng all the way to wannabe manufacturer Pangda, they all were there and delivered their speeches. The speeches could be summed-up in two words, looped like techno-rock:

“Global. Global. Global. Global. Brands. Brands. Brands. Brands. Global Brands.”

Paul Ingrassia, deputy chief of Reuters and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the management turmoil at General Motors, was there and warned about too much haste. His warnings largely fell on deaf ears. Then it was time for a round-table that was supposed to teach the manufacturers what the international media expects from them and what it can do for them if handled right. It was a good group.

All the way from Sao Paulo came Micheli Rueda, the editor of the business paper Brasil Economico. From London came Jim Holder, editor of the venerable AutoCar. The “Chinese, writing for a foreign publication” side was well represented by Yang Jian, Editor in Chief of  Automotive News China. The Made-in-China foreign media had its ambassador in Zheng Wu, founder and CEO of the Chinese edition of Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport – honestly, I heretofore had no idea that something like this existed. Just like China is full with car manufacturers, there is no shortage of buff-books covering every conceivable angle. Yours truly was the moderator.

In a way, the round table showed everything that is wrong with how Chinese manufacturers handle the media in general and the international media in particular. We discussed how the big ones in Japan, Europe and the U.S. do it, we talked about what ideas the Chinese can appropriate for themselves. However, the first two rows of chairs, reserved for the captains of the Chinese auto industry, were mostly abandoned. After making their announcements, the execs had quietly left the room. No questions were fielded.

My remark “this round-table should be especially interesting for China’s auto manufacturers, but I see they mostly went home” caused a minor scandal in a room packed with Chinese auto journalists.

Make a mostly substance-free statement, and hide before anyone raises a question – that’s usually the way it goes in China, and the Media Summit did not break that mold.

Paul Ingrassia was right. Go slow, and do your homework first.

(Excerpts, in Chinese, are here.)

Foreign reporters are a welcome interview target at the Global Automotive Forum in Chengdu, much to the amazement of the reporters who are used to interview other people. There is a lengthy interview with someone from TTAC. I don’t know what it says, it’s all in Chinese. (Don’t trust Google translate. Informed sources tell me the headline says: “Schmit: China’s car makers should open up to the media.”)

This will be the topic of tomorrow’s round table discussion. It’s not that Chinese automakers are biased against foreigners. Even Chinese colleagues tell me that doors close and phones get hung up when they reveal that they work for a foreign news outlet.

GM seems hell bent on convincing the automotive media that it’s better to stay behind their keyboards than show up to events like the Chevrolet Centennial event I was lured into. While my fellow oblivious “automotive journalists” and I were shuttled around GM’s facilities for some luxurious but entirely un-newsworthy “access,” the folks that aren’t here have scooped us suckers on the only remotely relevant news to come out of this event. The Detroit News‘s Christina Rogers reports that a news conference scheduled for about 12 hours from now will give GM occasion to announce that it will bring a

a small, battery-powered vehicle designed for urban market

to the US market. And, in the time-honored blogging tradition of speculating about speculation, GreenCarReport‘s John Voelcker has connected the dots that seem to confirm that this forthcoming EV will be based on the Spark City Car. All while us event attendees were still at the bar, drinking on GM’s dime. Oy…

First off, the Detroit News report seems reliable, as a couple of Volt-program employees that I spoke to this evening were suddenly very amenable to the idea that GM might bring a “small, niche” pure EV to market (without actually confirming anything, of course). And, naturally, none of them thought for a second that such a hypothetical pure EV might in any way take away from the Volt’s “range anxiety”-centric marketing approach. Despite the fact that their boss has publicly ridiculed the entire concept of a pure EV (when a competitor was launching one). Which, given the way these things work, seems to be about as close to confirmation as a lowly blogger like myself is ever likely to receive that a GM pure EV is in the offing.

And if GM is bringing a “small” pure EV to market, there’s only one possibility: a developed-in-India Spark conversion, which GM took over from its former partner REVA in May of last year (and recently showed off in India). GM only has one other A-segment city car in development, the “Opel Junior,” which is still in the mule prototype phase, and won’t be released until 2013. The Spark, on the other hand, has been around for several years now, and GM’s in-house development of the EV version dates back a good year-and-a-half.

But why would GM risk the validity of its “range-anxiety”-focused Volt marketing approach over what is likely to be an even smaller-volume vehicle in the US market? In a word: California. As Voelcker puts it

volume will be low, perhaps 2,000 cars a year. This may be just enough for GM to comply with California’s unique Zero-Emissions Vehicle mandate.

That number may, in fact, be roughly similar to the planned volumes for the 2012 Toyota RAV4 EV, another battery electric conversion of a gasoline car to be sold in California by another large global automaker.

So, we’re looking at a super-low volume, CARB-pacifying, Spark-based EV… likely with batteries from GM’s partner LG. And, if an Indian-developed, Indian- or Korean-produced EV with Korean batteries isn’t what you had in mind, consider that the only possible alternative is a larger all-Chinese Chevrolet “New Sail” EV, which were supposed to start testing at the end of last year. And in terms of post-bailout green-car optics, “Made In India” or “Made In Korea” beats “Made In China” hollow. In other words, my money’s on an EV Spark… but I’m willing to make some reasonable odds if you have a more plausible scenario.

[Disclosure: GM has been stuffing me with food rather than information for the last several days, hence the speculation. Also, gambling is wrong.]

Over at CNN Money, Alex Taylor III makes an astute observation about Bill Vlasic’s new book “Once Upon A Car,”

When Hollywood has tried capturing the auto industry on film, it aimed at realistic drama but wound up with suds… What filmmakers have lacked is believable characters and realistic dialogue. Until now, that is, thanks to a new book, Once upon a Car, by veteran Detroit newspaperman Bill Vlasic. Vlasic knows the industry in and out and enjoys near-universal access to its key figures. He recounts a tale filled with shrewd insights into their characters and conflicts told through verbatim accounts of their conversations. It’s the first nonfiction auto book that reads like a screenplay.

This, in a nutshell, is what I found so appealing about Vlasic’s book: it avoids the temptation to turn Detroit’s drama into a morality play, allowing the story to unfold in a personal, organic fashion. In my review of the book, to be published shortly by The Wall Street Journal, I argue that Vlasic’s approach holds a valuable lesson for automotive journalists of all stripes. Taylor, on the other hand, thinks Vlasic’s story is the perfect basis for a movie, and even goes so far as to make some casting suggestions (Al Pacino as Sergio Marchionne, Tom Hanks as Bill Ford, Tom Cruise as Alan Mulally, Sean Connery as Bob Lutz, Tom Wilkinson as Rick Wagoner). We already know there’s an auto industry video game simulation in the works, so I wonder, does the drama of the past few years make the auto industry a worthy subject for a great movie? At least worthier than, say, “The Prince Of Motor City“? If so, would you rather see a historically accurate film based directly on sources like Vlasic’s book, a fictionalized account with real-life characters, or a fictionalized film-à-clef interpretation? Also, wouldn’t Kyle McLaughlin make the better Rick Wagoner? Discuss…