THE AUTOEXTREMIST

September 16, 2009

Things that make me want to go ugh.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

(Posted 9/15, 11:00am) Detroit. In the ten plus years of doing this publication, there is a whole raft of things about this business that still bug me. Things that shouldn’t be, but are, things that are and should never be, and so on. Obvious things, obscure things, blatant things, “insider” things and just plain bad things. I never seem to run out of them, unfortunately.

Back when we started AE, I wrote a call to arms entitled “The Autoextremist Manifesto” and remarkably, there are many things in that document that still resonate today. So now - ten plus years after - let me remind you of three things in this business that still aren’t right today.

Introductus Interruptus. This is a pet peeve of mine, and it’s still not getting any better. Ford ruined the Thunderbird launch years ago by introducing it at three straight auto shows and then - when it was finally ready for production - flubbed its build date due to assembly issues. The result? It was dead in the water before it even had a chance. Not that the car needed much help to reach its demise early, seeing as it was a timid design exercise that had as much passion as a phonebook, but that’s another story. And there have been, of course, others. Many others.

Let’s take the Camaro, for instance. Three years after it was first shown at the Detroit Auto Show - and hyped relentlessly in two Transformers movies - it finally arrives in showrooms. Is it doing well? Yes. Would it be doing even better if half the free world hadn’t grown used to seeing it beforehand? Yes. How about The King of Introductus Interruptus - the Chevrolet Volt? Relentlessly hyped, dissected and over-analyzed, by the time the Volt finally arrives at the you-can-actually-see-it-in-the-showroom stage in the early spring of 2011, it will have been around in the “air out there” for four long years. Is this any way to run a car company? How about no?

And yet, here we go again with two new examples. The Cadillac CTS Coupe, a slam-dunk hit and a stunner by any measure, wowed the crowds at Cobo Hall a couple of years ago. When will it be available at dealers? One year from right now. Then why is it appearing in a Cadillac commercial that’s running right now? Uh, that’s an excellent question. And Ford is introducing the new C-Max people mover – which by all accounts will be a very smart and capable entry in the category – this week at the Frankfurt Motor Show. When will it actually be available in a Ford showroom near you? Two long years from now, at the end of 2011 as a 2012 model. Then why is it being talked about now again? Anyone? Bueller?

Introductus Interruptus appears to be a particular affliction of the domestic automobile manufacturers (although there are several imported manufacturers who lapse into this bad behavior too), as they constantly shout from the rooftops, “We’re gonna show you, just you wait and see! We got it goin’ on! The good stuff is right around the corner, etc., etc., and blah-blah-blah.

Memo to the manufacturers: If you’re going to show it, you best be ready to sell it. Meaning when it appears on an auto show stand you should have people taking orders for it immediately. Stop showing the stuff that you’re working on for intro down the road, and start selling the stuff you have right now.

Is it really that hard?

Corporate PR-speak disease. I am so tired of auto executives sounding like they just won a NASCAR race with their rote and carefully constructed comments I could just scream. And it’s a disease that has run rampant in this business for years now. Memo to all you well-meaning (at least for the most part) auto execs out there: We not only know who you work for, we have figured out what your company stands for too. We get the fact that you want to be good corporate citizens projecting a benign, non-offensive view of the world that will offend absolutely no one, just in case there’s someone out there who might want to actually buy something. But that’s not going to sell cars because it’s disingenuous for the most part. Have you ever stopped and listened to half the stuff you guys –and girls – prattle on about? It’s not pretty. As a matter of fact, too often it sounds ridiculous, a lurid combination of Master of the Obvious platitudes combined with a dollop of Shiny Happy Babble. All adding up to a heapin' helping of Not Good.

A couple of weeks ago Johan de Nysschen, president of Audi of America, caused a stir when he had the temerity to actually let us know what he really thought about the Volt, and he took a lot of heat for it. And that was bullshit. Not for what he said, but for all of the hand-wringing that went on about it afterwards. If you knew Johan like I do, you’d know that was vintage Johan. He’s smart, talented, and lo and behold, he actually can talk about a lot of things beyond cars. He’s certainly entitled to his opinion, and it was fine that he expressed himself. His take? The Volt isn’t for everyone, and it’s not likely to be a game changer because electric vehicles are just one part of the overall solution to our future transportation needs. And he’s right. Remember when Bob Lutz talked about GM’s “damaged brands” at the New York Auto Show four years ago? He was right too.

I’d rather know the auto executives working for these car companies actually have a pulse and can think beyond their insular cultures. As a matter of fact, I demand it. GM PR had a term for when Bob Lutz went on one of his jags with the media as “just Bob being Bob.” That after all is said and done and given his iconic stature in this business, Bob can say what he wants without it necessarily meaning that the walls of GM would crumble down because of it.

And do you know what? It’s okay. I’d rather know that a car company has real people working for it rather than a gang of soulless robots because, guess what? Soulless robots produce soulless robot cars. And I – along with the readers of this publication - am not interested in that approach to this business.

The plague of lowest common denominator everything. I’ve written about this since Day One of AE, and I’m still not seeing enough evidence to convince me that this kind of rampant serial mediocrity isn’t still flourishing in some corners of these car companies. What do I mean by it? Lowest common denominator thinking – the concept of good enough is “good enough” – is what drove Detroit in its darkest days and yielded 20 years (approximately the late 70s to the late 90s) of slipshod - or more accurately nonexistent – quality, piss-poor engineering decisions, and a total lack of focus, cohesiveness or philosophy of how it’s done.

In other words - and I’ll use GM as an example - there was no GM “way” of doing things. Yes, there were pockets of lucidity throughout the corporation, and some decent cars and trucks managed to escape the bowels of the company in spite of the pallor of mediocrity that cloaked the company in a dark evil shroud, but at the end of the day if good vehicles slipped out it was usually because of a small group of committed individuals working together who refused to settle for the bean counter-driven mediocrity that ran unchecked throughout the rest of the company.

There was nothing like the “Honda Way” of doing things at GM. None of the focused consistency that drove that little car company to do great things, no, not even close, as a matter of fact. GM was overrun by the bean counters and the P&G marketing hacks who were hell bent on extracting every last cent of cost out of the system and reducing the passion and commitment required to build great cars down to a process that could be researched, distilled, quantified and finally, repeated.

And it failed miserably.

In an interview conducted by the Detroit News this week, Bob Lutz said "For decades, we directed ads at the lowest common denominator, and not saying too much about the product…”

Actually, Bob, and to be more exact: GM built lowest common denominator cars, developed with a lowest common denominator mindset, fueled by years of serial abuse by a bean-counter-driven “culture,” all enabled by a passel of lowest common denominator thinkers masquerading as marketing “experts” who rotted the company from within. And GM got exactly the advertising it deserved.

I am still not convinced that GM gets it, by the way. I am still seeing pockets of lowest common denominator thinking throughout the company. And I’m still seeing evidence in some of their marketing missteps that are happening at this very instant that the rampant serial mediocrity that drove the corporation into bankruptcy is still alive and well and percolating underneath the surface.

Which is a mile-long freight train of Not Good from where I sit.

So those are my three things for this week, but there will be more. As long as these companies and their execs still either don’t get it - or can’t even understand what they’re supposed to be getting in the first place - I will have plenty more to write about.

That’s one “thing” you can count on.

Thanks for listening.

See another live episode of "Autoline After Hours" hosted by Autoline Detroit's John McElroy, with Peter De Lorenzo and friends this Thursday evening, September 17, at 7:00PM EDT at www.autolinedetroit.tv.

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