OK, my first post in this group. I've been writing for a long time, and have been published,

[Redstone]

but have slacked off tremendously in the last few years.

So, when I got inspired today and cranked this one out, I was a bit unsure not only about the quality (though I think it's damn good if I say so myself), but about the market for it as well.

I'm intending to send it to the Hartford newspaper as a "guest editorial" piece, though it may be a bit too long for that. Any other ideas for an outlet, if you indeed think it deserves publication?

Please be honest in your evalutions. (And Peg, you don't need to reply here because I did get your e-mail, for which I thank you.)

Redstone

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Apparently, the Big Three automakers haven’t used any of the Government loans to hire intelligent people to work in their management or marketing functions. The blunders they continue to make in both of those fields are closely related, and show clearly that they simply have not learned anything about how they got into such life-threatening trouble, nor about how they might be able to get out of that trouble.

As I said, their management and marketing mistakes are intertwined, so I’ll discuss them together:

Starting with General Motors: From what I can see, the only idea GM’s marketing department could come up with to spend the loan money was to revise all of their TV commercials by adding a tag-line at the end of each, displaying the GM logo with a voiceover that says, “Made by General Motors. Surprised?” This is utterly pointless for two reasons: First, who doesn’t know that Chevrolet is a subsidiary of GM? Second, and even worse (because, after all, the point of advertising is to entice people to buy your products), it will not persuade even one person to buy a GM vehicle. The reaction to this tagline by anyone who even notices it is, “So it’s made by GM? Who cares?”

And they’re still largely advertising large pickup trucks, which, if they haven’t noticed, nobody is buying anymore.

GM is also shooting itself in the foot by announcing its new policy of “concentrating on its core brands” of Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC, and (really)...Buick. Isn’t that going to make the people who build and sell Pontiacs and Saturns feel comfortable about their future prospects? (There’s also the minor fact that Pontiac and Saturn sell more cars each year than Buick, by an order of magnitude.)

I only need to point out one blockheaded example of GM’s product-line “strategy” to give you a good feel of how out-of-touch they are with the real world. Holden (GM of Australia) makes a wildly popular vehicle type that the Aussies call a “ute.” It’s essentially a car that’s chopped off behind the front seats and outfitted with a pickup-truck bed. (Remember the Chevy El Camino?) Well, rumor has it that they’re going to bring that ute into the U.S. market and sell it as a Pontiac. Good idea, yes? There’s nothing else like on the market, and if they made it with an economical six-cylinder engine and a manual transmission, and priced it at about $25,000.00, I’d buy one in a heartbeat. And I’ll bet that quite a few other people would, too. Lots of people would like to be able to cart around large items without having to deal with the bulk of an actual pickup truck.

But is Pontiac planning to provide the ute in a practical, affordable configuration? Of course they’re not. They plan to sell it only outfitted with large V-8 engines and high trim levels - which, I’m guessing would peg the price at well over 35 grand. Who’s going to buy one at that price?

There’s so much more that GM is doing (or not doing) that simply makes no sense, but it’s time for me to move on to discussing...

Ford. Right now, Ford has some absolutely terrific vehicles, and has made some smart moves in the past. But they’ve fallen down lately both in strategic direction and by not utilizing the strengths they have in order to solidify their product lines and increase sales.

Ford has decreased their stake in Mazda, and is talking about selling Volvo to raise cash. Selling Volvo would be a dreadful mistake, because the way Ford has dealt with Volvo as a subsidiary is one of the best examples of a car company doing something exactly right. Unlike what GM did to SAAB after buying the company (which was to turn SAAB cars into bland, Saturn-like cars with no character), Ford has essentially used Volvo as its engineering arm, to the extent that a large percentage of Ford cars are built on platforms developed by Volvo (and some from Mazda as well). And they haven’t changed Volvo cars, so they haven’t lost sales to people who like Volvos because they’re Volvos. (Ford has also, wisely, allowed Mazda to continue to produce their own line of unique and widely-acclaimed models.) Ford has retained some of their stake in Mazda, so they will continue to benefit from the relationship. But selling Volvo, although it would bring in some quick cash, would hurt Ford in the long run.

Ford’s product-line missteps are not as glaring as GM’s (and minuscule compared with Chrysler’s), but there are some opportunities they’ve not taken advantage of. One is their refusal to replace their current Focus with the European version, which is highly-regarded by all the car magazines, and sells very well in Europe. Another is the fact that they’re not advertising the hybrid version of the Fusion - which, in a recent comparison test against five other hybrid cars in Car and Driver magazine, was rated by far and away as the best of all - even beating out models from Honda and Toyota. In fact, the magazine’s summary of the hybrid Fusion was: “Ford hits one out of the park and into the ionosphere.” Why isn’t Ford advertising a model that is that good?

Lastly regarding Ford, remember when it seemed like every second family sedan you saw on the road was a Ford Taurus? You don’t see that anymore, do you? Ford seems to have just given up on the idea of having a family sedan that sells well. However, they do have an easy opportunity, if they’ll just take it, to get back into that market in a big way. The family sedan made by Ford of Australia (called the Falcon) is a sleek, stylish car that has, from all reports, excellent performance and value. If Ford brought that car into the domestic market to replace the current blocky and bland Taurus, they’d have a winner almost on the scale of the Mustang.

Now we get to Chrysler. Poor, poor, rudderless Chrysler. They’re not even on the radar anymore, and it’s their own fault. If one of the Big Three fails, it will be Chrysler, and nobody except the people who make and sell Chrysler vehicles will shed a tear.

That loud thud you just heard? That was the sound of the sales of Chrysler’s flagship 300 sedan hitting the floor; like the sound of a brick (which the car so closely resembles) being dropped onto that floor. People simply won’t buy a family sedan that looks like a locomotive and is hard to see out of because the windows are about the size of a hand mirror.

Chrysler has eviscerated its valuable Jeep brand, watering down the product line from its brawny past to the consistency of non-alcoholic beer. What was once an iconic brand with a solid character and a loyal following has been expanded to a confusing, insipid lineup of far too many models that nobody wants to buy, because they’re largely pointless variations of vehicles that are not, actually, Jeeps, notwithstanding the nameplate.

Chrysler’s Dodge division is utterly directionless, along with being astonishingly clueless. They tried to compete with the success of the new Mustang by producing their own “updated version of a 1960’s classic,” the Charger. Hey, Dodge, even these days, people aren’t going to think of a car as any kind of Muscle Car if it’s porky (and ugly), has four doors, and isn’t even available with a manual transmission. Even if it does have a Hemi. And even though your Challenger is a better copy of the real thing than the Charger, what makes you think people will buy one for 37 thousand dollars, when they can buy a nice Mustang for about $25K?

The only vehicle Chrysler makes that is worth anything is their superb minivans (and Dodge trucks, if anyone ever gets back to buying trucks). But Chrysler doesn’t seem to understand that there are still many people who need to haul a bunch of kids and a pile of cargo around, and who realize that a minivan is a much more sensible way to do that than a brutish and expensive SUV (most of which SUVs don’t have beans for cargo capacity anyway, despite their size). There’s not much competition in the minivan market anymore, and Chrysler’s minivans are still the standard by which all others are judged.

I don’t know if an emphasis on promoting Chrysler’s only worthy product would be enough to save the company, but it might keep the wolves from the door long enough for them to develop some cars that people would actually want to buy.

Oh, and like GM, Chrysler’s marketing people are so oblivious that not only do they sink their advertising dollars almost exclusively into commercials for large pickup trucks that nobody’s buying, they do so with big-buck extravaganzas, featuring lots of gasoline fires (way to lower your carbon footprint, there) and yahoos beating the bejabbers out of the trucks in ways that nobody who actually was paying their own money for a truck would ever consider, even after drinking a case of beer.

I haven’t owned an American car since the 1953 Chevy I bought back in 1970. Not because I’m a snob or unpatriotic, but because the American car companies simply never made a car that I wanted to own. They’re making some good cars now, though; if I were in the market for an inexpensive family sedan, I’d certainly have to give the Chevy Malibu and the Ford Fusion very strong consideration. And if I needed a minivan, I’d buy a Chrysler model without hesitation. Detroit still makes the best pickup trucks on the planet, even though they’re going to have to get used to the idea that only people who actually need trucks are going to be buying them from now on.

Welcome to reality, Big Three. Things have, indeed, changed, and you’re going to have to get a whole lot smarter than you’ve been for a long time in order to survive in this new reality. I wish you well, but I do have to tell you that this is looking like it’s your last chance. Don’t blow it, please; if I’m in the position to be able to buy a Mustang or a Corvette some day, it would be nice if you were still in business and making them.
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[BlueIris]

1. Very nice.

And hooray for coming out of writing slackerdom!