The Heart Failure of America

That's today's Chevrolet.

The 2024 model year, which is winding down at the time in preparation for the new model year starting in the fall, is the last model year for two iconic cars that have in part symbolized the Chevrolet brand for most of my life.  The Camaro 2 + 2 sports coupe, above, and the Malibu intermediate sedan, below, are being discontinued as more and more motor-vehicle buyers in These States - and, let's confess, just about everywhere else on this planet as well - are flocking to sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks.  Starting in September, the only "regular" car Chevrolet will offer is the Corvette.

And that "regular" model has a middle-mounted engine and no rear seat.     

Of course, Mary Barra, the CEO of Chevrolet's parent company General Motors, will say that the phase-out of these internal-combustion vehicles is part of GM's push for more electric vehicles, but, as with virtually every other automaker you can name, this new generation of electric cars is mostly centered on EUVs - sport utility vehicles without the gas-powered motor and, thus, without the guilt.  (And for good reason, I suppose; today on the road, I saw two Rivian SUVs in traffic, bumper-to-bumper with each other.)  Except that the worse aerodynamics of an EUV will make those electric motors work harder and make them less energy-efficient, the size and scale of said vehicles require more power and more raw material to produce them,  and they're not very enjoyable to drive - no more than a utility wagon with a gas-powered engine under the hood.  Oh, sure, there will be some electric subcompacts available.  But with the electric Bolt models gone, just don't expect to find such vehicles at your Chevy dealer.

Chevrolet is only doing what it can to remain competitive, though, as it needs to give the people what they want - or, rather, what they think they want.  Part of the reasons so many Americans keep buying SUVs, even these Americans who had never bought one before, is because they don't know about whatever else there may be.  When was the last time you saw a television commercial for a Camaro or a Malibu?  I can't answer that question.  But I can certainly recall seeing a Chevrolet commercial for an SUV as late as last week.  And I've lost count of all the times I've seen those darn Chevrolet pickup-truck commercials starring Walter, the cat who thinks he's a dog.  

Oh, well, if you're going to by an SUV of any sort, buy American.  Which is why I recommend that you buy a Volkswagen Atlas.  Because that SUV ain't German - it's made in Tennessee, it's designed for Americans, and it has all of the characteristics of a Ford Explorer or a Chevrolet Traverse, including extra bulk.  The same could be said of the European-built Tiguan and the Mexican-built Taos.  All of these monster wagons have followed the rule former Volkswagen AG chairman Herbert Diess set for VW in the States - which is, appeal to American tastes and not so much Americans with European tastes, the latter being the very people that made Volkswagen a permanent presence in the U.S. market in the first place.  

As I write this, I am having the fraying cover upholstery on the driver's seat of my 2012 Golf replaced at my VW dealer.  Having already had broken and warped exterior trim already replaced earlier this spring,  I will have had my car restored to showroom condition or something close to it once the seat cover is redone.  Because the only new car I want is my old car, refurbished to look and feel new again.  I had hoped to get another base Golf as my next car. When VW decided that the eighth generation of the Golf would not have a two-door model, I was okay with the fact that I wouldn't be able to buy a new car exactly like my old one.  When Volkswagen of America, however, confirmed that the eighth generation of the Golf would only be available in the United States as a GTI and an R - the cheapest GTI being five grand more than a base Mark 8 Golf would have cost - it immediately became apparent that I wouldn't even be able to buy a new car remotely like my old one. So if you have a Chevrolet Malibu and you want a new car just like your old one, get to your Chevy dealer hence, because once their 2024 Malibus are gone, there will be no more Malibus for 2025.   

And no, I will never buy a Volkswagen made with American tastes in mind.  Because the last time VW offered a car like that, it felt like a Chevrolet.

A Malibu.

City Car Apocalypse

I never thought I'd live to see the day that small cars would start disappearing from European showrooms and, ultimately, European streets.

Numerous European auto companies have been discontinuing small cars, the sort of cars commonly seen in postcard photos on Paris, Rome and Munich, such as the Volkswagen up!, the Fiat Punto (above) and the Citroën Picasso, and even the Ford Fiesta - one of the most popular cars in Britain in the past half century - has been discontinued.  (Ford ended production of the Fiesta in 2023, four years after discontinuing it in North America.) 

European automakers blame the shrinking city-car market segment on, of all things, emissions regulations.  They insist that European emissions standards regulating carbon dioxide are getting so tight that small cars can't possibly meet them, and they also point to the growing investment in electric cars that, they say, make small gasoline-powered and diesel-powered cars less necessary.  Yet, demand for small internal-combustion-engine cars is still strong in Europe, even as it continues to wane big time in the New World (the Mitsubishi Mirage, a car no one liked, not even subcompact fans, was discontinued in North America after 2023.)  So what is the average European car buyer to do, with so many city cars disappearing from the market?

Buy a compact SUV.

Writing for Euractiv.com, Julia Poliscanova, senior director for vehicles and electric mobility at the environmental non-governmental organization Transport & Environment, notes that her organization has tracked new-car sales in the Old Country and found that someone who would have once bought a Fiat Punto or a Ford Fiesta is opting for a compact SUV that is positioned in the same European Union market segment. The bestselling European car in Europe in 2023, the Dacia Sandero, a traditional SUV from Romania, was the second-bestselling vehicle in Europe overall in 2023 - behind the Tesla Model Y.  The third-bestselling car last year in Europe, predictably, was a Volkswagen.  Unpredictably, it was not the Golf but the T-Roc sport utility vehicle (below).  The Golf came in seventh.

Poliscanova finds the argument about how small cars have to be sacrificed in order to meet tougher emissions standards to be spurious at best, cynical at worst.  Compliance with regulations, she writes, is "averaged across all sales, not per car.  So, while selling only [gasoline] and diesel cars will land you fines, selling smaller combustion models (that emit comparatively less CO₂) will mean less electric cars need to be sold to balance emissions.  The smaller, lighter vehicles also lead to more significant economies all around, given the growing raw material and energy costs."

The real reason for a shift to larger cars in Europe, Poliscanova argues, is simple - profit.  Automakers can make more money with higher profit margins on bigger vehicles, hence the switch to SUVs.  (Sound familiar?)  Also, the European carmakers are concentrating more on high-end models and brands, trying to make more money by selling fewer vehicles - at a time when the cost of living is going up in Europe and people need cars that are less expensive as well as more fuel-efficient.  Poliscanova also reports that the average weight of a European car has increased by 100 kilograms - that's 220 pounds, folks! - and the dimensions of the average European car has increased by 6 percent between 2012 and 2022, and with the price of a sport utility vehicle 60 percent higher than a car, companies such as BMW, Volkswagen and Stellantis  enjoyed a 15 to 30 percent growth in profits in 2021, even with the delta corona and supply-chain issues getting in the way.   

And Poliscanova says that getting rid of small cars in favor of this, er, American-style business model is bad for just about everyone.  Everyone.  "[E]xiting smaller car segments is not good news for the environment, drivers or the European industry," she wrote. "Larger cars put more pressure on the planet as they need more material to be built and more energy, be it oil or electricity.  Four Tesla Model 3s (standard range) can be made from the 200-kWh battery pack of a GMC Hummer EV.  For drivers, this means more expensive models and higher running costs, especially at a time of high energy prices.  Large cars, rather than electric, are expensive: a one-tonne (2,205-lb) electric model costs around €20,000 (US$21,532), whereas a two-tonne (4,409-lb) one comes with a price tag of €45,000-60,000 (US$48,445 to 64,593). . ..  Ultimately, Western carmakers might come to regret this.  While they can make more profit on every SUV sold, the small-car segment is where the volume is."

And who in Europe is ready to satisfy that demand?   The Chinese.  A few Chinese brands and some European brands owned by Chinese companies are ready to pounce and deliver cars for the small-car segment to the detriment of Volkswagen or Renault just as the Japanese ability to respond to a sudden demanded from small cars in the U.S. was to the detriment of Detroit in the early seventies.

Poliscanova makes a couple of points I've been making all along, most notably that bigger vehicles - even electric ones - are more harmful to the environment because of the extra materials and energy involved, but in their quest to make more euros, European automakers have proven to be just as shortsighted as Detroit.  Either give the people what they want or give the people what they think they want.

Meanwhile, I think I can say goodbye to the idea of renting one of those cute, cool little city cars if I ever get to Europe - and I actually have the opportunity to go as early as next year (unless Trump gets back in power and doesn't allow anyone to leave the country).  Ultimately, if I do make it abroad, if I want to get around the Old Country, I'll probably be better off taking the train.

Hey, I got no problem with that! 

Auto Show Boos

This video of a walk-through of the entire 2022 New York International Auto Show made me realize how wise I am to have decided not to attend the show in person this year.  This may be the most pathetic "international" auto show ever held.

The lovely woman above is Maggie Clark, a one-time auto show product presenter and a YouTube channel host who specializes in presenting automotive news and exhibitions.  On YouTube, she goes by the name of "Motor City Maggie."  She's an engaging host, and she's certainly likeable, but not even she can breathe life into what a dreary, dismal show this year's New York show is.

One reason the show sucks is due to automotive brands who have mostly ditched sedans and hatchbacks in favor of sport utility vehicles; I can count all of the luxury sedans offered by Ford's Lincoln division on zero fingers.  But the biggest problem is that many of the best-known automotive brands in America are absent; most of the German luxury brands are absent, as are my favorite American luxury brand, Cadillac, and my favorite Asian luxury brand, Acura.  Honda isn't there either.  True, Volkswagen is at the show, and I thought that the new ID. Buzz electric minivan would be the biggest reason to go to the VW display.  In fact, it's the only reason.  The rest of the cars at VW's display, nestled in a tight corner of the Jacob Javits Convention Center, are all SUVs except for one Golf R - no Golf GTI, no Jetta, no Arteon, and no Passat, which is now in its last year.  This is the worst VW display at an auto show that I've ever seen.  

But it's better than the Stellantis display across the hall,  in which Alfa Romeo and Fiat share space with the Chrysler Group (Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep), that appears to be smaller than the VW space.

As for the indoor EV tracks, well, that's all good and fine, but as most of the EVs available in this country are crossovers, I can't be bothered.  My only regret about the show is that I can't see the mid-engine Chevrolet Corvette in person.

The video above lasts only forty-five minutes, yet Ms. Clark manages to cover everything.  True, she did it on a press day without visitors, but there's so much open space in between the vehicles - and there are so many SUVs -  that, if I did go to the show, I could probably see everything I want to in half an hour.   

Yeah, I know the pandemic is part of the reason for the show's lameness, but with the unappealing (to me) product and the growing lack of excitement, the annual auto show was already in decline before COVID hit.   Even if the pandemic is over tomorrow, I don't expect the 2023 New York auto show to be any better.  I've been on YouTube watching old videos of international auto shows from the 1980s and 1990s . . . and remembering how fun they used to be.  

Luckless Pedestrians

The latest in an ongoing, interminable series of studies concerning the impact sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks have had on pedestrians says that pedestrians are 59 percent more likely to get hit - most likely fatally - by an SUV or a pickup than a sedan or a hatchback.

Why?  Because they're big muthas, that's why.  Well, that's the short answer.  The long answer is that the A-pillars of these vehicles - the pillars between the windshield and the front doors - are so thick that they create blind spots that make it difficult for the driver to see pedestrians.  They have to be thick, ironically, to keep the passengers of these vehicles safe in the event of a rollover.  The high hoods of these monsters on wheels also make it difficult to the driver to see anyone approaching on foot.

In 2020, the most recent year for which data are available, 6,519 pedestrians were killed in the United States by vehicles despite reduced driving as a result of the COVID pandemic.  It was also in 2020 that SUVs and pickups accounted for over 75 percent of all new vehicles sold in the U.S.

Don't expect SUV sales to be affected anytime soon by this news, because in most America a pedestrian is defined as someone walking to his or her vehicle.   (Do-good liberals who despise SUVs, having lost the battle to prevent their mass proliferation, have shifted their attention elsewhere.)   Rising gas prices won't deter anyone from buying an SUV either.  Besides, there's one thing President Biden can say that would make even Democrats side with the January 6 insurrectionists.  That one thing is, "We need to use less gas, so you should trade your SUVs in for minicars with three-cylinder engines!" 

That's a shame, because I'd really love one of these.

You can certainly see someone coming on foot in this vehicle!  Heck, you'd have to crane your neck up to look a pedestrian in the eye! 

Mondeo Sunset

For those wondering when it would become obvious that sport utility vehicles are a truly global menace, the suspense ended when Ford announced that it was discontinuing a once-popular sedan to concentrate more on monster wagons.

And no, I'm not talking about the Taurus or the Fusion in North America, the discontinuations of which you already know about.  I'm talking about the Mondeo sedan in Europe.

The Mondeo, which has lasted five generations (the latest and last one having been sold in North America as the Fusion), was once to Europeans, particularly Britons, what the Toyota Camry has been to Americans - the gold standard of family sedans.  But rising SUV sales and the grater popularity of the Kuga SUV in Europe (we know it as the Escape) have ended even the Mondeo's long run, with 2022 as its final model year.

Unlike the non-Mustang Ford lineup in the New World, Ford of Europe's offerings won't be entirely devoid of regular cars - the Focus and the Fiesta remain available there - but that may very well change in the very near future as monster wagons now account for 40 percent of Ford sales in the Old Country.  Ford is moving to an all-electric lineup in Europe by 2030, and I presume North American models (expect pickup trucks, of course) will also be predominantly if not completely electric, but who cares when the vehicles themselves will still be cumbersome, bulky, high-perched wagons with little aerodynamic styling and no joie de vivre in their handling characteristics?  Even the most boring family sedan is more pleasurable to drive than a "sport" utility vehicle.

That, of course, means nothing to Ford and its customers, both here and abroad, who continue to make life on the road more unbearable for those of us who cling to our small, zippy runabouts.    

Pride Comes Before a Fall

This is without a doubt the most obnoxious and most nauseating auto ad tagline I've ever seen.

As you all know by now, Ford no longer makes standard passenger cars in America except for the Mustang.  The rest of its passenger vehicle line in the U.S. (and Canada) is comprised entirely of monster wagons, my term for SUVs.  Implicit in the tagline "Built For America" is Ford's belief that, while people in other countries may be content with "regular" cars, Ford makes SUVs because real Americans want SUVs, they can't be bothered with sensible, small sedans or hatchbacks, and they certainly don't want station wagons!  Oh, no, they demand wasteful, inefficient, bulky sport utility vehicles because, God damn it, this is America, and Americans have a God-given right to buy what they want!  And Ford is ready, willing and able to satisfy that desire for big, nasty, brutish vehicles out of a patriotic duty to American values and blind devotion to American exceptionalism!  And heck, Ford couldn't be prouder to do so!  "Built Ford proud!"

Want a regular car?  You're obviously not a real American. Why don't you move to France?  At least there, you can still get a Ford Focus.

Making SUVs that pollute the environment, cause more blind spots than a regular passenger car, are cumbersome to drive, and can run over my Golf is Ford's idea of building Ford proud?

My advice to fellow SUV-haters is to stand back . . . and stand by as gas prices slowly rise as they've been doing. When they get high enough to make SUV owners - especially Ford SUV owners - berserk, that'll be fun to watch!  (I'll bring the popcorn.) 

Auto Show Blues - 2021 Edition

In New York City, Easter usually signals the arrival of the annual international auto show, as it has since 1987, when its organizers began holding it at the then-new Jacob Javits Convention Center on the west side of Manhattan.  But it was postponed, then canceled, for 2020 due to the COVID pandemic, and now it's being held in late August this year with the understanding that the pandemic won't end soon enough for staging it during Easter Week.  Heck, late August may be too soon.

At least there's a chance that the New York International Auto Show may be held this summer.  The Geneva show, usually held in March and canceled at the last minute for 2020, was canceled for 2021 as far back as this past June.  Going to a European auto show - nay, just going to Europe, period - has been on my bucket list, but it's become difficult if not impossible to hold an auto show anywhere on the planet when to do so would cause a lot of people to kick the bucket prematurely.  And I don't even expect to go to the auto show in New York this summer, either - mainly because the bus line to Manhattan that serves my town (which has no rail service) has shut down indefinitely and does not appear to have a plan to restart any time soon.     

It's gotten to the point where I don't really miss the auto show anymore.  Many of the brands that pulled out of the 2020 New York show even before the pandemic began will likely skip the 2021 event, assuming it takes place, and most of the cars I would see there are likely to be sport utility vehicles, so predominant are they in the U.S. motor vehicle market.  If I want to see the upcoming eighth-generation Golf GTI so badly, I can always see it at my VW dealer when I go back for maintenance on my Mark 6 Golf after the Mark 8 GTI's U.S. introduction.  The reasons for going to an auto show are few for me now, and those few reasons aren't worth it.  There is no reason for me to hang out at the Ford display at the auto show, for example, as there won't be a single sedan or hatchback to check out there.

So, it looks like my auto show going is over, and that will be the case even after the pandemic is over. 

Unless, of course, I make it to Geneva in 2022 or Munich in 2023.  Those exhibitions are still on for now, and I might make it overseas - at last - by then. But if all I'd see in New York are SUVs, then who cares about that?  

A Necessary Change of Semantics

You know how Jesse Jackson got everyone referring to blacks as African-Americans and liberals as progressives?  Well, I'm instituting my own semantic rule.  From now on, sport utility vehicles, or "SUVs," are no longer going to be called either of those things on this blog.

Henceforth, I will call them "monster wagons."

For obvious reasons.

And I'll be calling crossovers the same thing as well, because just as Republicans think that African-American progressives are black liberals as far as they're concerned, well, as far as I'm concerned, a crossover is still an SUV.  I'm sorry - I mean, a monster wagon.

And I also call them monster wagons in part because - here's a shout-out to fans of "The Flintstones" - they remind me of Weirdly and Creepella Gruesome's hearse.

Also, please be sure to support my blog advocating for the sale of the base eighth-generation Volkswagen Golf - a car that's really sporty and utilitarian - in America.  My cause needs a hell of a start.  It could be made into a monster, if we all pull together as a team. ;-)

Great Scott!

Here is a production version of the eighth-generation Volkswagen Golf, the world premiere of which is due next Thursday in Wolfsburg.  (The picture was nabbed by a resourceful chap in Slovakia.)  And whether or not the United States gets it in its VW lineup is still up in the air.  That was the message from Volkswagen of America as recently as this past Friday (October 12). 

The decision on that question, as always, rests with one man and one man only - Scott Keogh, Volkswagen of America's president and chief executive officer.  Other VW managers can persuade him one way or the other, but the final call is his alone to make.

Keogh (above) has been CEO of Volkswagen of America for a year now, and it remains to be seen how successful he will ultimately be in his job.  He has tough shoes to fill, given some of the legends among his predecessors, such as Carl Hahn, who built up the Volkswagen brand in North America in the early sixties (and later became chairman of Volkswagen AG, the only former Volkswagen of America president to achieve that position), J. Stuart Perkins, who succeeded Hahn and led Volkswagen to its best years during the era of the Beetle and later oversaw the transition to watercooled VW models, and Bill Young, who saved Volkswagen from oblivion in America with his insistence of better quality control from the factory in Mexico that began supplying cars to the U.S. and Canada in the early nineties.  Keogh has a tall order; he's faced with the task of keeping Volkswagen commercially successful in an era of sport-utility vehicles while having to balance that with the desires of America VW die-hards who prefer the traditional small hatchbacks and sedans that Volkswagen has long offered.

Right now, Keogh is pushing for more SUV models and even a pickup truck in Volkswagen's U.S. lineup, in order to appeal to those buyers (who make up seven out of ten new-vehicle customers), even as he has to decide on the base Golf's future in a market where hatchbacks are spectacularly unpopular but where loyal Volkswagen customers demand such a car because of their own tastes, which are outside the mainstream.  Keogh has talked up SUVs in the motoring press like a disc jockey talks up the latest Ariana Grande record on pop radio, but he's made it clear that hatchbacks won't be cut from the U.S. lineup entirely.  But which hatchbacks will stay?  He has sent signals that only the Golf GTI and Golf R, the Golf's performance variants, will stay in the U.S. market because he still wants to cater to VW "enthusiasts" - suggesting that no one could get enthusiastic or excited over a base Golf hatchback.  (I happen to be a VW  enthusiast who does.)  On the other hand, Keogh has also hinted that the base Mark 8 Golf is assured, despite the fact that it hasn't been confirmed.   

"We will be launching the Golf VIII," Keogh told Automobile magazine in May 2019, "which will be the next-gen and it will have a GTI, so we're 100 percent on board [with that model]. But right now the GTI is going to stay GTI. And the [eighth-generation version of that] will come, and it's going to be as cool as hell."

Koegh has already disappointed many VW enthusiasts in America by canceling the Golf wagon and giving a thumbs-down to the idea of the Golf-sized ID.3 electric hatchback for sale in North America.  (We're getting an electric crossover instead.) While I understand Keogh's desire to sell the more popular car styles to keep Volkswagen in business in America, I hope he remembers the loyalists - those of us who still bought VWs when consumer magazines told us not to, bought them during the depths of VW's misfortune in the early nineties, and stood by the brand even after the diesel scandal broke.  I hope he recognizes, as I told him in three separate letters (full disclosure), that the Golf embodies Volkswagen in the watercooled age and that the base car should remain in the U.S. lineup, with only enough cars for those who want it.  So maybe I should be happy that Keogh is trying to add a pickup truck to Volkswagen s North American lineup; a vehicle like that would certainly offset losses on every base Golf VW sells to loyal American customers who want the same car their German (and Canadian) counterparts get to buy.

My gut instinct is that Koegh would rather not take the base Golf out of the U.S. market, but he is aware of how poorly they sell not just against SUVs and sedans, but maybe even other hatchbacks, and his decision will ultimately be made based on the numbers.  If he can't justify keeping the base Golf in America, he'll drop it.  If he can find a way to include it in the U.S. lineup going forward, he'll keep it. 

That said, I leave you with this.  Scott Keogh says he wants to make Volkswagen matter in the U.S. again, though it's always mattered to the VW loyalists here.  So, a lot of us will be watching every move he makes with baited breath.  Especially his next one.    

Go Further?

The Ford Motor Company has gone batsh--.

Ford just announced that it will no longer make and sell passenger cars in the United States and Canada, except for the Mustang.  Even though the company made a profit in the first quarter of 2018, the profits have mostly come from SUVs and crossovers.  Ford hatchbacks and sedans have lost so much market share in their respective segments that the company has decided to kill off all of them rather than discontinue some of them and replace others.  Ford doesn't want to keep any of these cars as loss leaders while the SUVs and crossovers make money because the profit margins wouldn't be as big.

Ford didn't so much kill these cars as let them wither on the vine.  Once these models went on sale, Ford didn't bother to freshen or improve them.  The Fusion is a competent car but is regarded as somewhat bland, and despite the popularity of the Focus in Europe, it's not as good or as competitive against Japanese makes and the Chevrolet Cruze. The Fiesta (shown above)?  If there's anyone left who buys subcompacts in These States or the Great White North, they're more likely to go to their Honda dealer for a Fit.  My mother's Fit, which I occasionally drive, is dull, but it's extremely versatile and incredibly efficient.  The Fiesta simply couldn't give the same value for money, even though I've been told that the Fiesta ST is a blast to drive.      

If traditional cars had a bigger share of the North American market, Ford might have considered re-investing in its car line, but with cars accounting for less than a third of the vehicles sold in the New World, Ford saw no incentive.  I still say that this is an insane move and one that will come back to bite the company in its proverbial rear end.  Not everyone wants an SUV, a crossover, or a pickup truck.  The only reason SUVs are so popular in the first place is because advertising agencies have suckered impressionable consumers into thinking that they're chic, powerful, and formidable vehicles, fortresses on wheels. They're really pretentious station wagons, supported by crude platforms and notoriously uneconomical when it comes to fuel consumption.  And to respond to the inevitable counterpoint that SUVs are more fuel-efficient these days and come in a variety of sizes - some of them based on traditional car platforms - to cater to customers who may not like a traditional SUV on a light-truck chassis, I would point out that all SUVs and crossovers, no matter their engines and dimensions, have higher ground clearances that offer degraded handling and make them difficult to drive, and many of them are so bulky they're subject to heavy cross winds that are hard to drive through.

And, they're ugly.

I don't want only big ugly wagons to choose from when I have to buy a new car.

And face it, the bigger the SUV, the better in the eyes of SUV customers.  They love the sense of superiority they get from driving at a high perch in such monstrous vehicles, made possible by a loophole in the corporate average fuel economy requirements that exempted light-truck platforms from higher standards, a loophole Detroit exploited after it tried to compete against the Japanese in the traditional-car market segments in the 1980s and demonstrated its inability to do so.  All we need is one big oil crisis - which could happen as soon as John Bolton makes Iran glow in the dark - to kill the SUV market (and Ford) overnight.

Incidentally, that wouldn't be the first time that Ford got screwed by spiking oil prices.  When the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 caused the first big oil crisis, Henry Ford II, who was then chairman of his family's company, refused to follow GM's lead and make smaller cars, ignoring the advice of his company president, a guy named Lee Iaccoca, who would later become CEO of Chrysler and save the company by banking on - you guessed it - smaller cars.  (Iaccoca would later make mistakes that again put the company on the edge of going the way of Studebaker, but that's another story.)  Ford eventually had to catch up with GM and was still trying to do so when the Shah of Iran was overthrown and another oil crisis resulted.       

Fortunately, GM isn't so foolish this time, either.  Mary Barra, GM's current CEO, says her company still recognizes the value of the traditional-car market segment, and she has made it clear that sedans and hatchbacks will still be available even as GM continues to compete aggressively in the SUV/crossover market.  Volkswagen, meanwhile, has recommitted itself to the North American car market with its new Jetta even as it pushes its new Tiguan and Atlas SUVs.  And Toyota has brought a hatchback back to its long-running Corolla lineup in the States.  But I can't help but wonder if GM, Volkswagen and Toyota are merely offering a temporary reprieve for us fans of traditional cars.  Because a fear I voiced awhile ago on this blog seems to be coming true - either we drive around in big ugly wagons or we take the bus.

When America needs a bad idea like that, Ford will put it on wheels.