Car Guys vs. Bean Counters - Bob Lutz [18]
A creature or group that is damaged psychically will respond like a wounded animal. The ensuing attack will be more aggressive and prolonged—an attempt to convince their “enemies” that they are correct....
Therein lies the problem for the American automobile industry, as well as for the rest of the country’s manufacturing, commerce, and transportation industries.
I suppose I naïvely grew up believing that the media existed to provide new facts and information and, in the case of controversial subjects, to confine the publication’s own opinions and bias to the editorial page. Not so with AGW, where 90 percent of the nation’s media remain hell-bent on driving the societal change to “save our planet” from CO2.
I find it interesting that, of all types of motor vehicles, sport-utility vehicles, or SUVs, were singled out as the epitome of automotive evil. Not 500-hp mid-engine sports cars costing $200,000 or more. Not large European twelve-cylinder sedans, which guzzled more than any SUV. No, the nexus of negativism centered on the workhorse of the American middle-class suburban family.The vehicle used to tow horse trailers, boats, snowmobiles; the vehicle that can carry five to eight adults in comfort over long distances and difficult terrain. I find it telling that vilification of the SUV often includes references to it being the vehicle of choice for the “well-dressed blonde suburban wife and her golden retriever.” Can it be that the evil that must be banished resided not so much in the vehicle as in the affluent suburban lifestyle it represented?
This drumbeat forecasting imminent CO2–caused global doom (despite almost twenty years of such predictions without a single one realized), coupled with the media-driven demonization of the SUV, again did disproportionate harm to U.S. producers who, between the three, commanded more than 90 percent of SUV sales. (Mind you, the Japanese and Germans, far from demonstrating the noble, even saintly motives generally ascribed to them by the media, were actively, but largely unsuccessfully, attempting to gain more access to this lucrative segment.) With the media-driven decline of the SUV, America’s carmakers saw their profitability severely impaired, especially GM, which in the years between 2002 and 2010 accounted for half of all large SUV sales.
The body blow to the U.S. companies may or may not have been intentional. Many media practitioners carry an inherent bias against the domestic producers. They helped create the myth of Japanese infallibility and perpetuated it long past the time there was any semblance of truth to it. Given equal successes, it was “ho-hum” for the domestic company but enormous fanfare for the Japanese. For failures, the opposite applied. Massive early Toyota recalls (prior to the recent ones from 2009 on) were largely relegated to the back pages, but any recalls by one of the Detroit Three received front-and-center attention because they demonstrated once again the manifest ineptitude of America’s car producers. During one major Toyota recall a few years ago, Micheline Maynard, journalist, Toyota fan, and author of 2003’s The End of Detroit: How the Big Three Lost Their Grip on the American Car Market, breathlessly reported that the recall was voluntary. Hello! All recalls are voluntary.When NHTSA “suggests” a recall, you do it—voluntarily! Maynard added that correcting the problem had the huge advantage of putting Toyota in even closer touch with its customers.
Thomas Friedman, author, columnist, and noted person of the left, once suggested, in a scathing editorial, that the salvation of General Motors could be effected only if Toyota took over GM. What acute embarrassment both of these esteemed journalists must have felt when their shining idol, Toyota, the epitome of automotive, managerial, and technological excellence, suddenly developed major cracks in the marble pedestal, and the whole monument, lustrous from the constant polishing