Carmageddon: Good for Business, Bad For You?

GM’s ex-Vice Chairman of Global Product Development left on a sour note. Bob Lutz claimed America is a nation that hates its own auto industry. It’s a remarkably nasty remark that’s almost as paranoid as it is insensitive. But not quite. The truth is much more specific and the other way around: GM executives hated their own customers. Why else would they have treated them with such contempt, selling them non-competitive products and inflicting such abysmal dealer service? (Heard the news?) Never mind. GM has built some tremendous enthusiasts’ cars: Corvette, G8, CTS and more. And now, the U.S. auto industry in general is about to experience a convulsive, cataclysmic change. Is that a good thing?

Where the future of automobiles is concerned, we, the American consumer, have become hostage to fortune. In any hostage or abuse situation, there will be some victims who come to identify with their captors. It’s no surprise, then, that some enthusiasts have reacted to the industry’s impending collapse by adopting the words, attitudes and beliefs of our “captors” in the worlds of finance, business and government.

Across the Internet, even here among the B&B, people are responding to this crisis, not as enthusiasts, but as craven cowards who believe that appeasement of, and identification with, those captors will somehow “save us” from what lies ahead. In doing so, these people are not only betraying their fellow enthusiasts, they are ignoring their own self-interest in favor of ephemeral, dimly understood goals.

Consider, if you will, the oft-repeated canard that “cutting brands, product variety, and dealership presence is a good thing.” For whom, exactly? Every time a manufacturer cuts a brand, thousands of enthusiasts are denied the chance to buy the car they really want. You may not have been an Oldsmobile fan, but somebody was, and that person can no longer purchase a new Oldsmobile.

Here on TTAC and elsewhere, pistonheads are ruthlessly cheering-on the death of Pontiac. But what about the people who have driven and loved Pontiacs all their lives? Are “they” less important than “we” are? Are we superior to them because we don’t like ribbed lower-body panels or superfluous eyeball vents?

When our favorite brand, whether it be Porsche, Lexus, or Hyundai, falls under the knife in the future, will we find it as ironically amusing as the death of “the excitement company”? Where has our empathy for fellow enthusiasts gone?

What about cutting product? The business press applauded when Chrysler cut the Dodge Magnum from its lineup, but why did we? How can reducing choice be a good thing? Sure, it may make business sense, at least according to the wizards of Wall Street. But who here values a number on a balance sheet more than a rip-snorting, tire-smoking Magnum SRT-8? I continually read members of the B&B talking about how a particular product needs to be “put to death.” Where’s the fun in that?

Here’s another slice of reality for you: when dealership counts dwindle, the customer suffers. The primary reason Honda and Toyota hold retail price levels better than the Detroit competition isn’t the excellence of the product. Rather, it’s the lack of intra-dealer competition, plain and simple. When dealers compete, to paraphrase the TV ad, you win.

I cannot think of any reason for anyone outside Wall Street to want a reduction in operating dealers. Trust me on this: unless you have a seven-figure investment in an auto company, you stand to gain more personally from saving money on a new car than you do from some stock-price bump resulting from closed doors at your local Ford store.

The facile response to every concern I’ve raised above is always “Toyota.” Toyota doesn’t maintain superfluous brands. (Except, um, Scion.) Toyota doesn’t pamper enthusiasts with money-losing models. Toyota doesn’t have enough dealers to result in bare-knuckle newspaper-ad price wars. Toyota holds its nose, curbs its enthusiasm, and sells more cars than anyone else in the world, primarily to people who hate cars.

Unless you’re a major Toyota stockholder, however, this doesn’t help you one bit. The companies that do go out of their way to connect with you, the automotive enthusiast . . . well, they may be irrationally exuberant, they may not always show a nine-figure profit, and once every so often they may require a helping hand. But they are on our side.

The bankers don’t care about cars; they care about money. The government, in general, hates automobiles and everything they represent. The mainstream media finds automotive enthusiasm to be amusing at best and despicable at worst. Who’s on our side? Who’s trying to provide exciting cars at affordable prices?

Answer that question for yourself, honestly, and then see if it doesn’t affect your attitude towards everything from gas tax to the much-derided bailout. Stop being ashamed, stop loving your tormentors and aping their discourse. The future those people envision—an endless series of identical, zero-impact crapwagons shuffling in a low-speed line down a carpool lane to nowhere—may be good for business, but it’s bad for us.