Hudson's Blog

Sep 3, 2007 - The Ultimate Car Dream!

Surfing through CarSpace the other day, I ran across this guy who is discussing his dream of starting a car company. He video blog addresses the people who have pointed him in different directions to design is production car. I admire his dedication to his dream and I wish him all the luck in the world. Because he'll need it.

I've been a car person since I could express my fanaticism around age two. I started designing cars around age six. And I started designing my first car company when I was 10 or 12. Yes, I share the ultimate dream of many car fans. And I still have it today.

But I have become realistic about my dream.

Since I first developed the germ of an idea to build a car company, my car company has changed many times. Sometimes it changed because of sudden pangs of Henry Fordism where I wanted to build the car for the masses. Sometimes it changed because I wanted to build a better sports car than anyone else and put my name up there alongside Enzo and Ferruccio and the Brothers Maserati.

(By the way, "Hudson" is just a pseudonym. I know there was a car with that name.)

A few years ago, I was about to be in-between jobs. My employer was eliminating my office and I was going to need a new means of support. Having spent some time in the publishing field, I thought I'd start my own car magazine. I found the niche I wanted to cover and I was sure that I had access to some great writers. I was missing many parts of this puzzle and quite a bit of the knowledge that I knew I'd need, so I asked for help. After a few calls, I had David E. Davis on the phone.

Mr. Davis launched Automobile magazine back in 1986. It will probably be the last successful mainstream car magazine launched in print form. He seemed like the best person to ask about this publishing attempt. And, besides, he was about to be "in between jobs" as well and maybe he'd be interested.

Our discussion started with my idea. I wanted to launch an upscale car magazine; a sort of coffee table magazine like Architectural Digest or Cigar Afficianado for car fans. Something that would make Automobile look plebian, no offense to Mr. Davis' magazine.

Mr. Davis continued by telling me just how much his magazine cost to launch. In 1986, Automobile cost $11 million to start. ELEVEN MILLION DOLLARS?!?! I figured I'd rather start a car company with that money.

And so it went. I planned out a car company that I could launch for far less than that $11 million price tag. I mentally designed a car. Ran spreadsheets to show the cost and projected sales of the company. In a perfect world, the company would be profitable in six years and would be debt free in ten.

Alas, life got in the way and I moved the "company" to the back burner again. And it's not the only one back there. I have two or three other, ranging to $1 billion, companies sitting on that back burner. I'm counting on a Powerball win to move them to the front burners.

But I was born in the wrong era. Had I been born 100 years earlier, I could have started a car company. Today, however, it's nearly impossible.

A century ago, it was the wild west. There were no rules and anyone with the ability to tinker could put together a car or truck and get it into production. In the US alone, there were three or four thousand vehicle manufacturers prior to World War II. And nearly every concept was put into those vehicles.

Radial engines, sleeve-valve designs, electric power, steam power, and various other engine designs hit the market. Three-wheelers, four-wheelers, six-wheelers, and even eight-wheelers were put into the field. Today, the car industry consists of simply internal combustion engines (diesel or gas) placed in the front (for the most part) of the car and driving (typically) two wheels. Nothing radical there.

Sure, there are oddities like McLaren's highly exotic F1 which sat three with the driver in the middle. Mazda has their rotary (unlike radial) engine in the RX8. And a limited number of hybrid powertrains which use the tried-and-true gasoline engine as their primary motive force.

But all of this homogenization is a necessary after effect of the world of vehicle regulations. In 1900, there were very few laws stating what could or could not be put into a car. Today, the car is rigidly defined and must conform to regluations that differ from country to country and even from state to state. Many of these regulations are improvements that I could not imagine a car not having. They also prevent the "small guy" from entering the industry.

In the past 40 years, regulations have required seatbelts and air bags and crumple zones to protect us. Lighting and steering and braking improvements have made it much easier to drive safely. Emissions controls have literally removed 99% of the pollution from exhaust gases. And Europe is even working on protecting pedestrians from impacts. All of this comes at a cost.

Two generations ago, car manufacturers radically changed their products each year. You could tell a 1955 Chevrolet from a 1956 Chevrolet from a 1957 or 1958 model because each one was quite distinct. Today, manufacturers need four to five years to get their money out of their investment. You can still tell differences in many cars by the detail changes, but, for the most part, the first year of a model is very similar to the fifth year of that model.

And if multi-billion-dollar, multi-national corporations can't afford to change a million-unit vehicle more often than every five years, what makes you think that a start-up company could even afford to build ONE model? This is why it is generally believed that the automotive world will soon consolidate to six car companies.

As he was preparing to leave Chrysler, Bob Lutz was talking over dinner to a bunch of journalists. He said that technology is improving to the point that automotive start-ups could work. I was quite skeptical but a year later, he outlined his "virtual" car company when he announced his plan to revive the Cunningham. I read all of the articles and I believe he's right and it is possible, even if Lutz abandoned the idea and went back to the big corporate automakers.

All of these positive ideas followed by negative results has made me a skeptic. It has been my job to follow the goings-on in the industry so when someone would announce that they planned to launch a new automaker, I'd look into them.

I've been given business plans for amateur attempts to lauch new car companies over the years. Some are basic, some are laughable. Oddly enough, the laughable ones are from the more experienced of these entrepreneurs. And then there are the companies that actually build a concept or prototype.

There have been obvious flops along the way. The American Vector company was doomed when it took 15 years to get their first car produced, but the surprising part was that it took another decade for the company to fully collapse. A revival of the Packard nameplate seemed to be quite ambitious and ended with a failed auction of all the company's assets on Ebay. Romano Artioli's attempt to revive Bugatti was even more ambitious but also collapsed under the weight of all that hype. But the best ones are the ones who aim to change the world.

The most memorable of this type was called Build-to-Order. Talk about hype, this company was going to do everything different. From building cars within days of an order to eliminating traditional dealerships, BTO was going to be the wave of the future.

As a car nut and a fan of the underdog, I want these guys to win. But when you look into them, any reasonable mind will say that it's just not going to happen. BTO was this way...and has become a minor footnote in history. And I've got a list of dozens more in just the past 30 years. This doesn't count the hundreds or thousands of companies that American Cars Since 1775 called "cars that never turned a wheel" over the last 120 years or more.

It's a great dream to have. I hope that some of them make it to the prototype stage. And that one of them actually makes it into production. This industry will always have conglomerates like Hyundai who decide to go into the automotive business, but I'm always rooting for another Lotus or Porsche who turns their automotive expertise into a road-going product that car fans can desire...and perhaps even drive.

One day, maybe, I'll sit down with a multi-multi millionaire who likes cars and we'll discuss some of my concepts. And then, just maybe, my dream can come true. And maybe one of these blogs will win a Pulitzer Prize. Perhaps I'll find a cure for cancer. And then onto world hunger and world peace and intergalactic...

3:40 pm | Categories: dreams, manufacturing, vector, packard, bugatti, porsche, lotus, bob lutz, chevrolet, mclaren, mazda, david e. davis Comments (2) | Permalink | Alert Administrator

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Aug 13, 2007 - The Reports of the Minivan's Death are Greatly Exaggerated

When I was a kid, most families had a station wagon. It was the symbol of family-mindedness. In the days before widespread use (and laws to enforce it) of child safety seats, having a station wagon told people that you had children.

Most wagons held four or five, but the real station wagons held eight or nine. One or two seats in the cargo area of bigger station wagons allowed two or three kids to sit in the “way back.” Some seats faced each other but the way to go was for those seats to face backwards allowing the kids to make faces and hand gestures (like the international symbol for truck drivers to blow their horn) at the rest of the traffic.

Chrysler’s last big wagon ended production in 1978 when their full-sized cars were downsized and offered only as sedans. GM and Ford kept the large wagon after their downsizing efforts in 1976 and 1978, respectively.

Both GM and Ford offered three sizes of wagons in those days. For young families just starting out, GM had the Chevrolet Vega and Pontiac Astre/Sunbird wagons while Ford had the infamous Pinto and Mercury Bobcat. Mid-sized wagons were large enough in those days to offer rear seats as options. But at the top of the heap were the Chevrolet Caprice, Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser, Pontiac Bonneville Safari, Buick LeSabre Estate, Ford LTD, and Mercury Marquis…the big nine-passenger people haulers.

And then the world changed in 1983.

The ailing Chrysler Corporation introduced the “maximum space passenger car.” Advertising called it the “Magic Wagon” and corporate engineering called it the T-115, but everyone knows it as the minivan.

Introduced as the Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager, the minivan turned the marketplace on its ear. It was styled like the full-sized Dodge and Plymouth vans but on a 3/5 scale. Like its larger brethren, the minivans had removable seats in the second and third row for better cargo capacity and a sliding door on the passenger’s side for better access in tight quarters. Like the station wagons it would come to replace, it was based on a car powertrain for better gas mileage, it had relatively compact dimensions so it would fit in a garage, and a low center of gravity for better handling.

Chrysler had an immediate success. The four-cylinder minivans got better gas mileage than the full-sized wagons from GM and Ford while still carrying up to seven passengers. GM and Ford were behind the times.

GM introduced the Chevrolet Astro and GMC Safari while Ford brought out the Ford Aerostar. Instead of being “maximum space passenger cars,” the Big 2 came out with small vans. They were trucks, not cars.

Sales were good for GM and Ford, but not the overwhelming success that the minivans were for Chrysler. Traditionally an “also ran,” Chrysler held more than half of the marketplace for this new type of vehicle even after Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, and Mitsubishi joined the fray.

It took a few years before the other manufacturers actually understood what a minivan was. GM introduced the “dustbuster” minivans in 1989. Nissan and Mercury teamed up to sell the Quest and Villager starting in 1992. Ford followed with the Windstar in 1994. Chrysler had the corner on this market for over ten years before Toyota and Honda actually introduced similar minivans, and still Chrysler held the lead.

Aside from the Toyota Sienna and Honda Odyssey, Chrysler has had no serious competition in this market for nearly a quarter century. This segment sells about a million vehicles a year in North America and three manufacturers make up nearly all of it. Sure GM still makes minivans and Hyundai and Kia have tossed their hats into the ring, but the Dodge Caravan and Chrysler Town & Country remain the best-selling and third best-selling nameplates in this field.

And everyone is proclaiming the death of the minivan.

Minivans have acquired a bad reputation. It’s not because of anything they do poorly, more to the point that they do something well…haul lots of kids. Everyone knows the “soccer mom” label that has been given to the drivers of minivans, and this has gained a negative connotation.

SUVs and, more so, “crossover utility vehicles” have been replacing minivans as the vehicle of choice for parents. These vehicles look more rugged (read: “outdoorsy”) and can have up to three rows of seats. They just fail to have the interior space or handling qualities of minivans. But the neighbors are typically more impressed by an SUV or CUV than a minivan, so utility loses out to prestige.

When people ask about vehicles to recommend, I refuse to name SUVs. Unless you’re going off-road or hauling something, these (typically) truck-based vehicles offer nothing to the average driver aside from bad gas mileage and a higher propensity for bad handling. CUVs only improve the gas mileage and handling slightly. But minivans usually top my list, especially if the person has multiple kids and/or large pets.

If someone takes my recommendation, I’ve done something to convince them of the utility benefits over the “soccer mom” branding. So far, everyone has been more than satisfied with their choices. And when the handymen of the group realize that a full sheet of plywood or drywall will fit inside of many minivans (something that most SUVs or CUVs cannot claim), they’re even happier with their choice.

Concepts by Ford (rejected) and Chrysler (delayed and then approved) became the 1984 Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager. Today, their descendants are still the primary vehicle choice for families.

You can keep your Ford Edge and Chevrolet Equinox and Toyota Highlander and Honda Pilot. I’ll keep my Chrysler Town & Country. And whether I’m hauling kids or adults or plywood or a mattress, I’m sure I’ll be doing it easier and more comfortably than anyone in those newfangled CUVs.

The minivan is NOT dead yet.

11:42 am | Categories: automobiles, automotive industry, buick, buick lesabre, cars, chevrolet, chevrolet astro, chevrolet caprice, chevrolet equinox, chevrolet vega, chrysler corporation, chrysler town, minivans, ford ltd, mercury marquis, toyota sienna, honda odyssey, dodge caravan, plymouth voyager, ford aerostar, chevrolet astro, gmc safari, mitsubishi, mazda Comments (6) | Permalink | Alert Administrator

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