Car Guys vs. Bean Counters - Bob Lutz [61]
One reason: less damage to the paint when driving on gravel roads.This might have been a major issue in the 1930s, but today it’s easily solved by applying a rubberlike primer to the lower portions of the body. It’s called anti–stone chip primer, it’s universally used, and it’s not rocket science.
The second reason was the tire clearance standard. Our tires and wheels had to be sized and located in such a way that, under full-lock, with the largest tire and wheel available, and under full suspension travel (as in going over a large pothole, at speed, with the steering maxed to one side—an unlikely combination of events, when you think about it), there was to be no tire contact with any sharp, unfriendly metal. Fair enough. “But please tell me how BMW and Audi do it and, closer to home, Chrysler?” “Oh, well, they use a different type of flange to join the front fender to the wheelhouse. There is no unfriendly contact.” “Is there anything preventing us from using the same type of flange?” “No.” Problem solved. We got larger wheels and tires, and they moved outboard to greatly improve the visual proportions of the cars.
My favorite was the sliding ashtray. One day, comparing the interior of a Cadillac STS with a similarly sized and priced Acura, I touched the tray, which shot out of its recess as if from a gun. To return it, I nearly stressed my index and middle fingers to the point of discomfort overcoming the massive spring pressure. But on the Acura, a slight touch to the face of the tray sent it gliding slowly and silently to the open position. A gentle, effortless push returned it, just as silently, to its closed position. A senior interior trim engineer was watching me perform this comparison: “Did you see the difference?” I asked. “I sure did, Bob, and this is a proud moment for me!” Say what?! “Proud?” I exclaimed. “Proud of the fact that ours is almost impossible to use?” “No, sir, but ours is the only ash receiver in the industry that meets the requirements of GM standard 33909664780 [I am making this number up]. None of our competitors, not one, not even Mercedes, meets that standard!”
The standard, and you will have a hard time believing this, was that any movable opening in a GM interior must be fully functional after a night at minus 40°F. (Or Celsius, for that matter—they’re the same at 40 below.)
So here’s the logic: A guy goes to his car in North Dakota at 5:30 AM on a minus-40° morning. The doors, hopefully, are not frozen shut. The engine, mercifully, starts, assuming the battery is fairly new and in good condition. As the car coughs to life, the driver, shivering and waiting for the defroster to clear the windshield, decides he needs a cigarette. Imagine his surprise and shock, his utter disgust with the car, when the gliding ash tray won’t glide! Once again, we engineered for an extreme situation, one likely to occur, oh, maybe once every five years, and alienated literally thousands of customers living in more normal climates on a daily basis. People could be forgiven for thinking GM doesn’t “know how”! But, sadly, we did know how; we just wanted something “better.”
There were hundreds, maybe thousands of these sacred do’s and don’ts embedded in the engineering culture, and Captain Queen’s special team, meeting day in and day out at 6:00 AM, systematically eradicated 90 percent of them. (The rest, I think, probably made sense, somehow.) The fact that this “death by a thousand small cuts,” as Design liked to say, existed in the first place is, once again, testimony to a culture that was inwardly focused in pursuit of its own goals, with the customer left out of the equation (except for that chain-smoker in New Leipzig, North Dakota).
8
Learning to Go Global
(What Took So Long?)
FOR ABOUT TWENTY YEARS, A TOYOTA COROLLA HAS BEEN THE SAME, whether built and sold in Japan, China, Brazil, the United States, or Europe. The same is true for the