What’s going on with the car industry in America? Americans falling out of love with their ultimate symbol of freedom? They just aren’t buying American made cars any more, apparently. They want Jap cars or German cars or Swedish cars and the only British cars which make it across the pond are no longer British owned and at the luxury end of the market. Even Chrysler has been bought out by the Germans and is now called Daimler-Chrysler.
Somehow, the new world order is commercially inspired. What Hitler and Hirohito tried to accomplish in the forties has been a walk over since VE and VJ day. How can that be? What happened to the industry in the west? What happened to western technology? Is it that we were lazy or complacent or under-invested or was it just a case of pure arrogance that western manufacturers expected their customers make do. I remember in the '70s comparing a new Sony sound system with a British made system. There was no comparison. The Sony was well made, solid and good to look at. It was cheaper too. It was like comparing a race horse and a Donkey. The Japanese had clearly looked at our technology and our market demands and decided that they could build it better and make it cheaper and sexier. They were hungry! Meanwhile our manufacturers played at it and rested on their laurels.
In the late '70s I remember the launch of the Austin Metro, in fact I was at its launch. A friend of mine had a hire car business and bought a new fleet each year. They invited him to test drive the latest offering from the British motor industry on the Isle of Man and I went along for the ride. I saw its ultimate demise right then and there. Here was a car that was meant to compete with the likes of the new Golf and the Passat, the Fiat Uno, the Panda etc. It didn’t have a chance. It had for a start, an engine that was thirty years old and barely updated. It was noisy, clunky and rough. The windows and seals were crap. The suspension was lifeless. The paint finish poor.
What struck me most was that viewed from certain angles, it looked clumsy and as sexy as a huge fat arse on a milkmaid’s stool. The bodywork hung over the wheels, somehow a non-integral adornment. A flat, fat rear end and a very un-sexy wedge front that didn’t work. It was the most embarrassing piece of junk you ever saw. Parked next to a Golf, it looked ridiculous. It attracted a certain type. It attracted Middle-Englanders. You could spot them a mile away; grey hair, comfortable means, cardigans, dried flower displays, tweeds, buns, plaid, corduroy, the wives of retired brigadiers, old money, English, very very English plodders. Loyal to the brand. Then you could spot the golf owners. Smart, well off, new money, style conscious, sexy, young, thrusting, and quick. People in a hurry wanting cache.
What’s more the Golf was reliable. It started easily on cold mornings. It’s engine didn’t labour when pulling up a hill more than 1 in 50 and was smooth, nippy and went round corners level - unlike the rolling Metro. It wasn’t an embarrassment.
The Golf sounded the death nell for the British car industry. That the name Rover lasted as long as it did is a wonder and at the end, the bottom of the range of Rover cars was still the old Metro in a different incarnation whilst at the top there was a Honda designed executive Rover which probably died because once more it said “Suitable for slow, boring, middle aged Middle-Englanders and cabinet members”, and hadn’t been updated for years.
The American market has fallen foul of the same principles. They haven’t moved with the times and thought they could get away with it. Though their cars are more reliable and sexy, they have been stuck in this rut of producing the gas guzzling monsters at a time when as a nation, they have become environmentally aware – with the exception of George 'Head-up-his-Arse' Bush who has been bought by big business and thinks global warming is a fable. When he’s wrong, it’ll be too late but by then, there’ll be a new President and he’ll be doing lucrative lecture tours and business trips glad-handing the clients of his old company Haliburton.
No, what young Americans demand is better value for money. They want the Japanese cars that do 60 miles to the gallon not 6. They’ve seen the film The Day After Tomorrow and it’s made them think. We should all think. Of course it would be sad to see the disappearance of American cars. Jim Rockford would not have looked nearly so cool arriving to an investigation in a Honda Civic. And neither would Horatio Cane in CSI Miami. That Hummer looks like he means business. But there must be an adjustment and rethink within their industry if they are to survive the onslaught of the Germans, the Swedes and the Japanese, not to mention the Koreans and soon the Chinese who you can bet your life will make it faster, more reliable and a lot cheaper.
It really is time for a rethink, don’t you think?
