Steve Parker Motoring / The Car Nut: AMERICA'S DOMESTIC CAR-MAKERS MUST CHANGE AT A MUCH-FASTER PACE

Let's get one thing straight: We want GM, Ford and Chrysler to succeed, and prosper. We want to see all three companies make record profits, produce forward-looking, high-tech, fun and fast cars and trucks which do well on a new and highly-restricted diet of oil products of all kinds. We want big trucks to go back to where they belong --- In the service of individuals and companies which need them to get their work done, and not in the driveways and garages of American homes. I don't care how many kids you have to take to soccer practice; no one really needs a Chevrolet Suburban, Ford Expedition, Jeep Commander and of course, the Hummer, to run errands and go grocery shopping. If foreign-owned companies want to make vehicles that large for the American marketplace, let them go ahead and keep on doing it; at some point, the price of gasoline is going to stop cold all of those privateer-owned trucks dead in their tracks. Analysts are saying that the coming Spring, '08 season will bring the highest gas prices we have ever seen in the US. Something else to consider: Whoever owns one of these behemoths will see the value of their vehicle decline so fast their heads will spin.

Hey, people! We are fighting a WAR over oil right now ... It's on the news every night. You must have heard about it. Has anyone noticed? Besides imploring us to go shopping, how else does the President ask we on the home front help the war effort? If he even suggested the public buy smaller cars and trucks which get better mileage, that would at least get us all thinking about the loss/benefit of small vs. large vehicles.

For GM, Ford and Chrysler to succeed, at least in this country (they are all doing much better in overseas markets, especially China), they must build products which are desired by Americans ... But that can only happen after we Americans go through an agonizing reappraisal of what a car and truck should be. The domestic companies say Americans want big gas-guzzlers, and that's why they build them. Bullsh*t. The car companies created the demand on their own through marketing and advertising; they knew if they could sell huge numbers of huge vehicles, the more money they'd pocket.

Unless and until we make serious changes in how we view private and public transportation, our domestic car companies are destined for failure, at least in America. Why are these companies succeeding so admirably in other markets, countries where the giant, luxurious trucks we take for granted here are not sold? Because North America, specifically the US and Canada, are the only markets in the entire world where trucks made primarily for work are also bought and used by private citizens. Anyone who has traveled overseas, to European or Asian nations, to India and Southeast Asia and Africa and South America know through their own experience that in those countries and continents, big trucks are made and sold for work; cars and minivans, crossovers and small SUVs are used by private individuals. (Photo - 2009 Chevrolet Camaro concept displayed for enthusiasts at a weekly So Cal "Saturday morning coffee and donuts" meet; sure, it's a 'looker', but is it right for America's long-term future?).

So frankly, with America and Canada the only markets where big trucks are sold in huge numbers (and Canadians buy a tiny percentage of these vehicles compared to their American cousins), domestic car-makers desperately want to keep selling these vehicles to private parties, because trucks have a much longer life-cycle than passenger cars; many cars are brand-new every four to five years, while trucks can go relatively unchanged for five to ten years and even longer (Dodge's Ram pickup went relatively unchanged for more than 20 years, at one point, starting about 1965). Analysts said that Ford's Explorer, at the height of its popularity, made $15,000 for the company every time one sold (and at its height Ford was selling over 1,000 of them every week). We in this country are enabling and supporting the worst habits of our domestic car-makers by continuing to buy huge trucks and SUVs which serve no sensible purpose apart from somehow "one-upping" our next-door neighbors.

GM, Ford and Chrysler have been able to change their own internal mind-set and the way they conceive of, engineer, build, advertise and then sell and service very different vehicles in countries outside the US and Canada; why haven't they done so in the US yet? Because they don't want to shut-off the flow of big trucks to very willing American buyers, and keep riding the "gravy train" which started almost 100 years ago based on then-cheap and virtually unlimited oil. Those days aren't soon going to be over, they have been over for at least 20 years, but for various reasons, the Big Three don't want to admit it.

This week, some 10,000 car dealers gathered in San Francisco for the annual convention of the National Automobile Dealer's Association. While both Ford and Chrysler made some important statements, General Motors had quite an interesting week, all things considered. Here's a look at just some of the stories about GM this past week:

First, the company reported a $38.7 billion loss for 2007, the largest annual loss ever for an automotive company, and said it is making a new round of buyback offers to U.S. hourly workers in hopes of replacing some of them with lower-paid help.
But in spite of that remarkable loss, GM Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner said that the company made significant progress in 2007, reducing structural costs in North America, negotiating a historic labor agreement and growing aggressively in Latin America and Asia. We wonder which of the Silverado- and Tahoe-sized trucks GM is expecting to sell in those countries. We'll tell you: Apart from government and military uses, with the vehicles in many cases being purchased with money received from the US, practically none.
GM also said it was offering a new round of buyouts to all 74,000 of its U.S. hourly workers who are represented by the United Auto Workers. We wonder what Wagoner meant by " an historic labor agreement". It means starting out new hires with lower wages and fewer benefits than the workers which came before them. That's normally what's going on when a big shot management-type like Wagoner says "historic" when it comes to labor. The domestics' decades-long attempts to kill the UAW, combined with building and selling huge vehicles which they simply can't, don't and won't sell outside the US are just part of the panoply of problems facing GM, Ford and Chrysler right in the face. (Photo - Ford's Mustang is almost 45 years old).
Our US-based companies' homeland competition, the so-called "captive imports", are the car-making companies from Europe and Asia which have set-up shop in the US, from the plant shared by Toyota and GM in Fremont, CA, to the various German car-builders in our nation's Southeast. As you'll read below, a company with a long history in India will soon be making and/or assembly small pickups in the US; and most Americans know about the plans of Chinese companies to sell product here in the US, and if they sell enough, they'll do like Hyundai, Kia, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Subaru and the rest of them ... Making money here and sending the profits back home.

And they generally build their factories and/or assembly plants in what are euphemistically termed "greenfield" areas; these companies say that the term means an area well-served by major highways and a nearby airport and which has an eager-to-work population. What the term really means, when translated into American English, is an area relatively far from a large city, with high unemployment and a population made up of those mostly with no college-level education and, perhaps most importantly, carrying a strong anti-union sentiment.
As one of these companies plans for their new American facilities, they work with supplier companies from their home country (not in the US), and these suppliers open their own factories near the assembly plant, in what is then termed a "campus". No union has been able to get a "foot in the door" at any of these captive import plants, save for the Flat Rock, MI plant shared by Mazda and Ford. And it's not for lack of effort on the workers' parts. These companies pay their workers salaries lower than union employees would make, but still one considered high for the area. The company might even supply some form of health care and other perks normally associated with union membership.
While most of the workers in these plants are usually happy with their jobs, what these plants do not offer is quite important: First, no job security whatsoever, no union contract which spells-out how the company and workers are bound to treat each other in a respectful and mutually-agreed upon system of relationships. Second, profits from the company have no guarantee of staying in the US; they go to Tokyo, Seoul, Munich and other cities in countries which are the home of these companies.

On to another story which came from the NADA Convention: That General Motors' new Chevrolet Malibu sedan is so popular dealers can barely keep it in stock, and that even with boosted production, it will likely be April or May before demand is met. GM needs a "Malibu-type" car in every one of their divisions; not the near-exact copies which the company traditionally made available through a process called "badge engineering", but a car or crossover so right for that particular division that buyers simply must have one. How long has it been since GM (or Ford or Chrysler, for that matter) was able to pull that off?

Then, this story hit the newswires, also from the NADA meeting: That in a move that could radically alter the used-car business, General Motors announced that the 3,900 dealers who sell GM's Certified Used Cars will list their entire inventories on eBay Motors. The listings will be free for dealers. This is true breakthrough marketing; someone should get a bonus not only for coming up with the idea, but also getting it rammed through the company's board of directors and other top executives to make it happen.
The GM Certified brand includes used Buick, Chevrolet, GMC, and Pontiac vehicles. Cadillac, Hummer, Saab and Saturn have separate certified used-vehicle programs, but their certified-used inventories will be listed on the site, too. (Photo - 2009 Dodge Challenger; many will be sold with powerful, gas-guzzling Hemi V8 engines).
The agreement enables dealers who sell GM brands to show their certified-used inventory to eBay Motors' 11 million unique users. The program will become even more attractive to dealers and consumers if other manufacturers post their certified-used inventory on the site, too. And, this bears repeating, we think this is a great, forward-looking move for GM, something which will probably (and should) be copied by every other car-maker doing business in the US. Most all of them have some form of "certified used vehicle" program, and making all those vehicles available for potential buyers' perusal through eBay Motors is an idea whose time was going to come eventually anyway ... and we say, good for GM for being the first to see its value.

But at the same time GM gets some very well-deserved good press, leave it to The General to give the appearance that they are trying to manipulate what governments should be able to request of their company and the entire car-making industry, specifically those 50 sometimes 'pesky' states (to hear Wagoner talk about them) of the United States of America. Also from NADA: Rick Wagoner urged a group of auto dealers to lobby against individual U.S. states trying to set their own limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Wagoner said several states want to go beyond requirements passed by Congress.
If that happens and automakers must focus on state regulations, they won't be able to focus as much on alternative fuel vehicles to reduce oil consumption and pollution, he said.
Wait ... let me get this straight ... The head of GM is complaining because he wants stricter controls on emissions and mileage and especially on alternative fuels? He doesn't want individual states to circumvent Federal law? Of course not ... We all know that the only states asking for different standards are those asking for tougher standards, with California in the lead, as usual. (Photo - 2008 Ford Expedition).
EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson in December denied a federal waiver that would have allowed California to enact its own law slashing greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. Other states could then have followed suit and 12 were ready to do so, with others making preparations.
Because global warming is an international phenomenon not unique to California, the state doesn't need its own standards to meet "compelling and extraordinary conditions" as set out in the law, Johnson has said.
OK, now I get it ... The Bush EPA (which, in another case, is being sued for not implementing Federally-mandated rules on companies' controlling levels of mercury) is proving too tough for GM, too.
It says that Wagoner also said dealers and automakers should push for infrastructure to handle new technologies including hydrogen and ethanol fueling stations and charging stations for electric vehicles.
Sure, Rick ... just as soon as you start building cars which need hydrogen fueling stations and electric charging stations, we'll start voting to spend our money on infrastructure. (Photo - Example of one of the SUVs which Global Vehicles says will be offered in the US by 2010; it's made in India by Mahindra).

Another highlight, but this one not from NADA, and not specifically about GM, but still a story which shows the state of the car- and truck-making business in the US right now: Indian auto maker Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. plans to assemble and sell thousands of light pickup trucks annually in the United States by 2010.
The company hopes to export whole vehicles to the US. At this point, the Mahindra exec did not identify the US company which they'd be working with to produce their trucks, if the trucks prove so popular that it would make financial sense to build them here.
Mahindra is now in a partnership with Atlanta, Georgia-based Global Vehicles USA, which would distribute the vehicles and manage a network of American dealers. Global is the outfit which tried for some 15 years to import a Romanian-made SUV, an attempt which some now call a "fiasco".
The head of the company through those years, John Perez, is still in that position and will oversee (according to the GV website) the import and sale of various diesel-powered SUVs from India, beginning in 2010. The vehicles include two pickup trucks (a 2-door and a 4-door), and three different variants of a SUV model. The vehicles are expected to be sold for around $25,000. (Photo - 2008 Chevrolet Suburban).
Mahindra is one of the top 10 industrial operations in India, making trucks, sport utility vehicles, cars and tractors. Last year, the company unveiled a line of sport utility vehicles and trucks which it plans to sell in the United States. Great; we Americans will soon be able to buy even more vehicles imported here and designed and built in another nation, and with any profits going back to India (Chinese companies will be doing all this and more, too).

Finally, an old car business joke is that GM depends on their customers to do the final one-million miles of Research and Development (R&D) on all their new cars and trucks. Maybe some people at GM took that joke a little too literally, because GM is putting a 21st Century, open-source twist on the way its history is going to be told. GM is inviting people worldwide to contribute to the Generations of GM Wiki on GMnext.com and share their personal, first-person experiences from the company's first 100 years - everything from a story about a summer job in an assembly plant to pictures of a first car to favorite experiences with GM products. GM thinks its best authors are those who experienced the company firsthand - its employees, retirees, dealers, customers and the generations of people who have shaped GM.
The Wiki will be based on a timeline of basic facts about GM's history from its incorporation to the present. Using technology similar to that pioneered on the popular Wikipedia Web site, the GMnext Wiki will expand on the company's history through links to stories, images, videos and audio.
The Generations of GM Wiki is the latest initiative under GMnext, a dialog-based global platform that marks the company's 100th anniversary and spotlights GM's next generation of people, products and technologies. (Photo - 2008 Jeep Commander).

As we said at the top of this piece, we desperately want (and our country desperately needs) GM, Ford and Chrysler to succeed and prosper for their next 100 years ... One out of every seven industrial jobs in the US (and the world) is connected to the auto industry, from the people who plan, design and build them, to those who sell and repair them, to all the millions of workers in the ancillary industries, from oil production and supertankers to container ships and the folks down at the local car wash. We'll see cars and trucks sold in the US for the next 20 years or so which look pretty much like the cars and trucks we buy today. We'd just like to see more of them made in America ... and sold in America, and not overseas.

Oh, and by the way --- sports cars. We love 'em. The best of them are sold in very small numbers already, so no need to change any of their production numbers to a great extent. But the "sporty" cars, the Mustang, the new Camaro and the new Hemi-equipped cars from Chrysler all need to get better mileage and produce fewer emissions. Existing "Gas Guzzler" taxes already forces the buyers of the "worst" of them pay for the right to drive them, in a sense. (Photo - 2008 Ford Focus SST, not sold in the US).

This past week the British decided to make driving in the most central part of London, called "The City", more expensive than it already is; it could cost some drivers to pay as much as $30 a day to drive in and out of that congested and polluted area. Speaking of Brits, it seems that Down Under in Oz, the people there are stuck in some sort of perpetual "1950s America" state of existence, with big sedans and coupes sporting huge V8 engines fed on $2.63 a gallon high-test are still very popular. But, they, too, will have to answer the siren call of reality in due time.

We fear that alternatives of the kind practiced in downtown London are going to be seen in this nation more and more; our goal is to forestall those kinds of events as long as possible. If the Former Big Three built and sold the cars and trucks they build and sell in Europe and India and Japan and South Korea and China right here in the USA, 75% of the problems the massive low-mileage, high-emissions trucks are causing now would go away, and quickly, too. And frankly, we can't wait.