The Wonk Room

Scenes From An Auto Exhibition

Going to the Los Angeles Auto Show, I felt something like I was entering an alien world, a planet where the native inhabitants are automobiles and all the humans just interlopers. The centrality of the automobile to Los Angeles is no secret, but only when you spend an hour journeying from the airport through the congested ribbons of the freeway system, the red streams of taillights pushing past the white streams of headlights in every direction you look, does it become a visceral truth. Even downtown, walking the sidewalks seems an odd pursuit. Every block is parking lots and parking garages. The dry, summery air carries the dusty odor of exhaust.

Inside the Los Angeles Convention Center, the press preview days of the Auto Show are intended to present the auto industry as it wishes to be seen. Executives read from teleprompters to unveil the Exciting New Car from under a silken shroud to the strange crush of industry officials, press, autobloggers, and PR reps that comprise the crowd. As I walk through the sparse, gleaming field of cars from one great unveil to the next, workers quietly buff every surface with static-resistant dust mops and photographers snap shots of dashboard layouts. It is surreal.

So far as I — no gearhead or racing fanatic or auto show habitué — could tell, the industry right now doesn’t know who it wants to be. Brash, adolescent machismo, from the Ferrari girls to the Tony Hawk Jeep Commander, is juxtaposed uncomfortably with so-earnest-it’s-painful celebrations of efficiency and eco-friendliness. Green autobloggers, like Gas 2.0, AutoblogGreen, and HybridCarBlog, had enough material for dozens of posts.

Automotive environmentalism, clockwise from top left: the “Unsurpassed Fuel Economy” of the F-150, “Drive @ earth” with Mitsubishi, Toyota’s “Regenerate Your Thinking” and “Green Technology Quiz” displays, Ford’s “EcoBoost” display.

Only the bespoke high-end sports car manufacturers like Spyker — who turn out about one hundred handmade $250,000 cars that look vaguely like 1950s era jetplanes each year for billionaire car collectors — and the self-deprecatingly geeky Smart Car salespeople seemed to be having genuine fun. But I just may not be able to read the vibe. For example, I don’t really know how I’m supposed to respond to the introduction of a more efficient diesel midsize sedan or a hybrid midsize sedan or a fuel-cell midsize sedan.

That said, the somber circumstances of this year’s show were apparent and unavoidable, with global auto sales down about 20 percent, and GM, Ford, and Chrysler on the brink of collapse. Trinkets, goodies, and glitz were cut way back. The Ford executives were mobbed by the press with questions about the bailout hearings and the company’s future. As a Honda executive acknowledged before unveiling a new high fuel-economy midsize sedan, “None of us is immune.”

2 Responses to “Scenes From An Auto Exhibition”

1. 5th Estate Says:

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   That “Tony Hawk Jeep Commander” is perfect for the typical off-roading skateboarder!
   The winch will come in handy for recovering the broken bodies bodies of fellow all-terrain skateboarders who fail to land a reverse 360 Smedberg (or some such other maneuver) whilst shredding a rock strewn ravine!

   And for how long has the market been demanding a vertical skate board rack?
   Nothing’s more non-conformist and radical than a roof-rack that will not only reduce highway MPG by about 20% and increase the chances of loss of control or even a rollover in crosswinds, but also prevents the owner from parking in their own garage!
   There’s no doubt that off-road skateboarding is going to be the Next Big Thing and Chrysler/Jeep clearly intends to lead the way!
   Suck on that, Toyota/Scion, BMW/Mini and Honda Fit!

   November 23rd, 2008 at 2:20 pm

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2. 5th Estate Says:

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   BTW , Mr Johnson as you say you are “no gearhead or racing fanatic or auto show habitué” you may not be aware of the following auto-industry points of interest:

   A) The Big Three have a guaranteed market for municipal, State and Federal vehicles.

   Have you ever seen a government official chauffeured in a Volvo or a Lexus? Ever seen an M.A.G. or Mercedes Police Emergency Service Unit truck? Ever seen a BMW Highway Patrol car? Ever seen Land Rovers used by National Park Rangers? Ever seen a Honda suburban-neighborhood Police patrol car?
   The Big Three could still survive, on a smaller scale, with these guaranteed markets.

   Compare this kind of ‘auto-industry socialism’ to the supposedly more-socialist UK.
   Official vehicles are chosen more for their suitability for the task at hand, not for political reasons.
   Rural and suburban patrol cars can be domestic or imported, usually 4 cylinder hatchbacks.
   Specialized police vehicles that need to carry rescue/emergency equipment are often station-wagons–the Volvo is popular. Pursuit and rapid-response vehicles are usually BMWs.

   Despite their market losses to the Japanese, the Big Three in the US don’t and never have faced the level of competition that exists in the European car market. Europe had to compete with the Japanese just as the US did, but the Europeans met the challenges whereas the Big Three never took them seriously until it was too late.

   B) 50% of European cars are diesel-engined and the ratio of diesel to petrol pumps reflect that fact. European manufacturers have consistently refined the diesel engine over the past 20 years so that the gap between gas a diesel dynamic performance has been significantly reduced. A present day diesel can equal the performance of its covnentional equiavelent from 5 years ago).
   Diesels are also now generally as ‘clean’ as their gasoline competition but they are significantly more fuel efficient–with the added bonus that they can run on used cooking oil.

   Though Mercedes sold a respectable number of Turbo-Diesels in the US in the 80s no one followed suit. Mercedes stopped selling diesels for the US but never stopped developing tehm for the rest of the world.

   For the past decade European manufacturers have offered diesel models in almost every range, from the most humble budget-car to luxury models.

   The dramatic increase in gas prices over the last two years prompted a rapid abandonment of American-made gas guzzlers in favor of smaller more economical cars all of which are imports (including those of the of Big Three which are just “badge-engineered” versions of foreign products).
   Now that gas prices have fallen the Big Three ( and some of the car-buying public) may be tempted to assume that the pressure to move to smaller more fuel efficient cars is less urgent.
   However though the price of oil has dropped, the price of investment has risen, wages have fallen, disposable income has shrunk significantly and priorities have changed. The Hummer is not poised for a comeback.
   The Big Three have neither the products, nor the cash, nor the imagination to respond quickly and effectively to the latest circumstances–unless they outsource product for the short term and ‘in-source’ management, marketing and engineering expertise for the longer term. They have to rediscover the notion that it is the physical vehicles that they make that will ensure their financial success and longevity, not the financial, marketing vehicles that have been their major source of income lately (and the source of their losses too)—credit for crap, in effect.

   Assuming the Big Three are bailed-out (and I think they ultimately will be, and should be)what will they then produce and how quickly with they produce it?
   As I mentioned before they have the “official vehicle” market sewn-up, but what about the ‘free market’?
   They don’t have an economy car of their very own (they are “borrowed’).
   Their current hybrid technology is also borrowed and currently stuffed in mid-size SUVs, which cost more gas SUv;s and though they offer better economy an actual car or minivan is a simply a more practical choice as an urban/semi-urban vehicle.
   The cash-strapped and increasingly unemployed general public is finally looking at long-term ownership and operating costs, not easy credit-fueled indulgence.

   The Big Three is touting newer low-consumption/low emission technologies as their ‘present future’–such as electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles but in public at least there had been little or no discussion of the refueling infrastructure that will be required to make these viable.

   Thanks to the relatively recent integration of robotics, computers and materials technology the time required to go from concept to production has been reduced to as little as three years (but not necessarily for large-scale production, say 50.000 units per year instead of 100,000 per year).
   What the Big Three are now proposing is a combined leap of fundamental engineering and production–without mention of necessary infrastructure, for only $25 billion (divided by three), the products of which are supposed to be available when? Three years? Five years?
   What is supposed to happen in the meantime?

   What IMHO is really being discussed here is not an infusion of operating capital, not a timely rescue but the conversion of three private companies into a 5-year government research project, one where $25 billion won’t last more than a year and which doesn’t as yet include equivalent financing and effort in concomitant political and physical infrastructure.

   Meanwhile, given that automobiles are key to America’s economic and social well-being, Europe offers an immediate short term solution which can also offer long term benefits–super-economical diesel cars.

   Diesel infrastructure would be relatively cheap and easy to implement, no new technology (or major new legislation/administration needed).
   As I said Europe offers diesel cars for almost every need. A Diesel BMW-MINI gets 50+MPG. mid-size sedans, the largest market segment anywhere, get 4O MPG, and the extremely Urban- friendly diesel SMART-Car achieves around 80 MPG.

   Just because these would have to be imported would be no bad thing–in the longer term.. Economics are global, not just national as is all too obvious today. The automotive expertise of the Europeans can be traded against US expertise in other sectors from which they can benefit in turn. Trade would be encouraged, citizens would get the products they really need to be productive.
   All it would take is a little bit of give and take and a balanced approach between short and long term goals and opportunities.

   At this moment what is currently being “discussed” are radical schemes prompted by radical crisis, not just in the AUto industry but in other areas as well.

   And its precisely this reactionary attitude that got us into this mess in the first place—boundless, mindless enthusiasm for a get rich forever gimmick; (be it a subprime-backed CDS or adding more speakers and Bluetooth technology to even the cheapest car instead of making it more fuel-efficient and reliable).
   The Big Three executives are STILL being reactionary, as too are some of the politicians. Neither are being realistic, or even thoughtful.

   I may be totally wrong, but at least I’m thinking about both the short and long term and using my imagination. Meanwhile all I see the usual suspects doing is bitching and/or pleading.

   November 23rd, 2008 at 5:36 pm

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