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How about giving us what we really want?

I noticed a press release from Chrysler yesterday. In the US, the company is launching a campaign with the tag line of If you can dream it, we can build it.

Let's see what the release says people are dreaming about:

As a chassis rolls out of the plant and down the road, all kinds of people in all kinds of places start adding what they want on a vehicle including MyGig™ with navigation, dual DVD system and Swivel ‘n Go™ seating system.

Now, maybe there are a few people who are dreaming about twin movie screens and minivan seats that face backwards. But I suspect that even more people want things that are even simpler. Things like better interiors, with more care spent on fit-and-finish, and less cheap-looking plastic. Better fuel economy, especially in excessively thirsty vehicles like the Dakota and Durango. Less-expensive versions of utility machines, such as pickup trucks. And possibly most important of all, a good-quality, inexpensive subcompact that can compete with vehicles like the Toyota Yaris and Chevrolet Aveo -- a segment Chrysler has promised us (with a Chinese-built car) but has yet to enter.

I want to see Chrysler do well, because a strong, mostly-domestic automaker is good for our economy. But strong companies start with strong foundations. It's fine to have the odd gimmick, but only when it's added on to a well-built, good-looking, fuel-efficient, realistically-priced vehicle with a reputation for bulletproof quality and reliability. That's my dream, Chrysler. Now build it.

News from Nissan ...

That's a Nissan, and it's coming soon to an intersection near you.

Well, maybe not that exact one, but the news is out: Nissan is entering the light commercial vehicle market in North America. It's planning on building three new vehicles that will enter the market in the first half of 2010, and while there's not been anything concrete yet, the company has confirmed that they'll be under the eight-ton GVW range. It's also forming a partnership with Cummins to supply the engines.

Most importantly, they'll be built in Canton, Mississippi for use in North America, thanks to an investment of $118 million, on top of the tooling for the trucks. There's no word yet on where the ousted Quest minivan and QX56 will go once the plant gears up for the trucks, although I'm wondering if the company will abandon them entirely. In any case, kudos to Canton, and here's hoping it makes for a lot more jobs in an area that can probably use them.

Simple is good

This is the dash of the Mercedes-Benz GL-Class, which begins my rant for the day: why does expensive need to mean complicated?

I'm not singling Mercedes out here, not by any means -- it was just the picture that was handy. I could have selected a vehicle by almost every automaker out there, because almost all of them are guilty.

I remember the days when an expensive car had pretty much the same controls as a cheaper car; they were just better quality. Now, an expensive car practically guarantees that you've got to memorize a manual the size of an encyclopedia, and chances are good that there will be a few controls you'll eventually forget how to use.

In many cars, if you want to change the heater vent mode, or switch your stereo, you've got to page through a series of computer screens to get to the one you want. On many cars, there are rows upon rows of identical buttons. On one truck I drove, I counted all the buttons, starting at the driver's armrest and going over to the passenger's door. There were 83 of them. That's not a misprint: eighty-three buttons. On a vehicle that many people drive at 120 km/h.

And on top of that, so many of these systems are absolutely non-intuitive. Why is it that one manufacturer's navigation system is simple enough that I can use it without a manual, and others require me to all but take a course in how to work it? Why can't the engineers grab someone from the front office, sit them down cold in front of it, and then, if they can't work it right off the bat, make it easy?

The funny thing is that I've driven a few high-end sports cars, the type that'll do 300 km/h without breaking a sweat. And it seems that the faster they can go, the simpler their controls. So why is it that a car that's meant to be driven on a racetrack, alongside other trained drivers who are concentrating equally on the task, is simple to use, and one that's meant to be driven in rush-hour traffic looks like an airplane cockpit?

Here's the deal: if it's something I do infrequently, such as setting the rolling locks, then hide it away in a vehicle information centre (that is, in turn, easy to figure out). If it's something I'm going to be changing regularly while I'm driving, like the heater mode or the stereo volume, make it a honkin' big dial in the middle of the dash. A safe car isn't just the one with sixteen airbags. It's the one that lets me work the controls while keeping my eyes on the road.

A topsy-turvy world ...

Twenty years ago, if you'd told me this was going to happen, I would have laughed out loud. This is a ribbon-cutting ceremony that took place in Georgia yesterday. It's the beginning of a Kia assembly plant.

It's an upside-down auto world in which we're living these days. Ford, GM and Chrysler are cutting back shifts and closing plants in North America, and at the same time, they're opening facilities in China, in Thailand, in India, in Korea, in Romania, and in yesterday's news, in Uzbekistan (I'll admit, I had to look that one up on a map).

And while the domestics are moving overseas, here at home we've got Toyota and Honda expanding in Ontario, Hyundai in Alabama, BMW in North Carolina, Nissan in Tennessee, and Mitsubishi in the improbably-named town of Normal, Illinois.

You really have to sit back and wonder where everything's going, and where it's going to end. It's obvious that labor costs are playing a part in this, although I'd imagine even the poorer workers in the South (because no one's building these plants in rich cities) are making more than workers at plants in Thailand and India, which tells me tariffs are part of this too. And I would expect that eventually these plants will start to outsource some of their production materials, just as the Big Three have done. The domestic auto plant in the city where I live used to build its cars almost from scratch. Now many components are coming in already built up, from independent companies that make the parts for the price the automaker's willing to pay.

And while we all want a car that doesn't cost much, there's a flip side to all of this. Maybe unionized auto workers do make too much. But at the same time, many of them pay as much in taxes as someone greeting customers at the local big-box store takes home in a year. When it comes to the quality of municipal services, I'd rather have a tax base of overpaid auto workers than a tax base made up solely of "would you like fries with that?". Think about who pays for your police, fire, schools, health care and social programs next time you complain about wages.

These days, I don't know what to think. Every new ground-breaking ceremony gives me hope, and every idled plant and reduced shift makes me worry. I'm guessing that a few decades ago, the people who made television sets in Canada and the U.S. wondered what was going to happen to their industry. I don't think I have to tell you how that went.

Something new: glossaries

I'm slowly compiling glossaries that will help explain some of the terms related to new and old cars. Bear with me, as it's an ongoing process, but you can find them through the new links to the right. I've tried to keep the definitions as simple as possible -- cars are complex and the last thing you need is an equally confusing description!

Time Marches On

This is my pride and joy, my 1947 Cadillac known affectionately as Lucille. She's one of a few older vehicles I've owned, along with the 1949 Studebaker I still have, and long-departed models including a 1948 Chevrolet and 1962 Pontiac Acadian. I learned to drive on a 1972 Plymouth Scamp, and there was one at the Antique Automobile Club of America's show last year, so I guess that qualifies these days, too.

I love old cars dearly, but I'll say this: I'm realistic, too. Whenever I take Lucille out and park her somewhere, I'm guaranteed that someone will come up and say, "They don't make 'em like that anymore."

And my immediate reply is, "That's not a bad thing."

I don't know what it is about old cars, but they sure bring out the rose-colored glasses in a lot of people. Save for the odd Amish wannabe, I can't think of too many people who would prefer shovelling coal into the furnace over tapping the thermostat, or hauling ice to the icebox instead of opening the refrigerator, or biting on a bullet as opposed to surgery in a modern hospital. But mention automobiles, and as far as these people are concerned, there hasn't been a single improvement in the industry since Henry Ford brought out the Model T.

Too many people in the old-car hobby are blinded by nostalgia. Sure, I make my living with new cars, but that's not the reason why I think they're so much better. It's because they are.

People rap on Lucille's thick fenders and say, "These new cars just crumple up when you hit them." Well, that's because they're supposed to; they absorb the crash energy instead of passing it through to the occupants, unlike the the old cars where you hosed the blood off the dash and sold 'em to the next guy. People say you can't fix a new car in your garage anymore, and that's true, but you're also not doing the numerous repairs that older cars needed, like tune-ups twice a year. And as for their longevity, well, most old cars had a three-month warranty. Some manufacturers now guarantee their vehicles for ten years. 

And as for the hobbyists who say all new cars look the same ... if you've gone to the trouble of learning that a groove in the bumper differentiates a 1946 Olds from a 1947, but you'll proudly proclaim that you can't tell a 2008 Buick from a BMW, that's just wilful ignorance.

Don't get me wrong -- there's nothing fundamentally wrong with nostalgia. When the time machine's invented, you can put a martini in my hand and ship me back to the Las Vegas strip, circa 1960, with a ticket for a Rat Pack show. It'll be great fun, and yes, pick me up at the door in whatever land yacht is available. But when I finally come back home in the middle of winter, you can leave that lovely model's vacuum wipers, manual choke, four-wheel drum brakes, single-chamber master cylinder and bias-ply tires back in the garage where they belong.

Chrysler's leaving California

Chrysler has announced that it's closing its Pacifica Advance Product Design Center in Carlsbad, California and will consolidate the Advance Design function at its headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan.

Now, news from the automakers is usually made available to journalists on media-specific Web sites during business hours, with lots of quotes that we can use to beef up the story, and photos if they're available. This little tidbit came as a very low-key email, and with the same terse message posted not on Chrysler's media Web site, but on a blog that it reserves as a chattier version for the press. No quotes, no photos, not even an attribution -- just "by Editor". And it arrived late on a Friday night.

Methinks they don't want us to say too much about it.

The email said that the function will be consolidated with Michigan, but the last paragraph reads, These changes set the stage for Chrysler's future global growth efforts, which also include our intent to establish global expertise in design, engineering and sourcing through centers of excellence. These actions will help the Company meet its long-term globlization goals.

Translation: we're going to find a place that'll make the cars for cheap.

It's not new, of course. GM's been doing it for a long time -- you want to get a deer in the headlights look, go up to half the people driving Chevrolet Aveos (bonus points if they've got a "Buy Domestic" license plate frame) and ask them if they know their cars are built in Korea. Rather tellingly, GM built three new subcompact concepts and had the public vote on which one it should build. One was designed in the U.S. The winner, announced at last year's Los Angeles Auto Show, was designed in India. Hmmm. I wonder where the actual car will be built, and if that has any bearing on how that particular design was chosen.

Y'know, in the grand scheme of things, I do have a bit of a handle on how corporations work. Even if I don't like it, I understand why companies move production offshore, whether it's cars or clothes or call centres.

I just wish everyone would be honest, instead of coating it all in bafflegab. Come clean with us: it costs too much money to design a car in California, so we're closing that office and we'll be contracting the work overseas. Will the public like it? Of course not. But I think John Q. Public would have more respect for a company that tells him up front what it's doing, instead of sneaking out the back door in the middle of the night.

Well, that was quick ...

The federal government has decided to get rid of the ecoAUTO rebate program, only a year after it put the scheme in place. Hang on, let me open my wallet a bit wider. It cost money going in, and it'll undoubtedly cost money going out.

I'd like to say it was a good idea in theory, but it never really was. The plan was that the government kicked back rebates, ranging from $1,000 to $2,000, to people who bought brand-new vehicles that met specific fuel economy standards.

There were the usual problems that spring up when ideas are conceived in haste and implemented at leisure. Apparently, it took more than six months from the time the program got underway until the application forms were ready, and even when buyers could finally apply, there were long waits. According to an article by Carol Goar of the Toronto Star, only 30,000 of the 50,000 people who sent in their applications had received their money as of mid-February.

Much of my objection to the program was in the discrepancies. The Dodge Caliber, for example, doesn't meet the fuel economy requirements for passenger cars, and so there's no refund. But the similarly-sized Jeep Compass, which is mechanically identical and gets the same fuel mileage, is classified as an SUV, and so you get $1,000 back.

And there's a rebate for some flexible-fuel vehicles, which can run on E85, a fuel made of 85% grain-based ethanol and 15% petroleum gasoline. Sounds good, except that at last count, two gas stations in Ottawa appear to be the only ones from St. John's to Victoria that sell it. So you get $1,000 back because your vehicle could potentially save the planet, if you could only fill it with the right juice.

In her article, Goar also notes that while the government will no longer be handing you money back for buying a fuel sipper, it will still be collecting the "green levy" on gas guzzlers, which Goar says generates some $110 million per year. Hey, maybe the feds will spend that cash on improved public transit, bicycle lanes, incentives for car companies to build more fuel-efficient vehicles, and better urban planning to eliminate housing developments that make car ownership necessary in the first place. Yes, I think that's exactly what they'll do.

My big brother's watching

This is SmartAlert. It's a new system that Ford and Lincoln dealers in the U.S. will be selling to customers, at a cost of about $1,000 plus a monthly subscription fee. Ford calls it an "onboard, intelligent communication service that connects (customers) with their car or truck." I call it the end of the old-fashioned private eye.

SmartAlert knows where the vehicle is. That's no big deal; systems like GM's OnStar have been around for years. What SmartAlert does is tell you what it knows. It'll send email, phone and text messages to warn you if your car's being moved without authorization (a good thing, granted), if someone's driving it faster than a pre-set speed limit (also a good thing), where a thief has taken it (ditto), and a report of exactly where it was, when it was there, and how long it stayed.

That sound you just heard was Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade crying in their beer. Who needs the guy in the fedora slouched in his car, camera at the ready, to catch one's husband meeting up with his mistress?

Frankly, I sometimes wonder at the things people find intrusive. A police camera on a crime-ridden corner that might film a shooting or a drug deal? We can't have that -- it's an invasion of privacy. A red-light camera at the intersection that could photograph dangerous drivers? We can't have that -- you have no right to send a ticket to the car's owner after the fact. An onboard system that'll track your every movement, send email reports, and file a monthly statement telling you exactly where your car was every minute of the day? Hey, that's technology! Here's my thousand bucks -- sign me up!

A grain of salt

One of my all-time favourite movies is The Blues Brothers. I've probably seen it twenty times and could watch it twenty more, and yet, when it came out, most of the critics savaged it. It was the wrong film for them, but it was the right film for me.

The moral of the story? Be critical when you read criticism.

I make most of my living reviewing cars, but I'll be the first to tell you that my reviews, and the reviews of all my colleagues, are only guidelines. A smart buyer uses them to help make a buying decision, but never depends on them.

For the most part, here's how car reviewing works. Each manufacturer puts specific vehicles into its "press fleet". They're usually introductory models, which is why you don't see up-to-date reviews of cars that have been around and unchanged for several years. The option packages vary with each company, but I'm more likely to get a moderate- to fully-loaded vehicle than I am a base model, especially with trucks and SUVs. These come to me from the automaker -- I don't go to a dealer and get a car out of their stock -- and I drive them for a week. They're not specially-prepped for the journalists, as some people suspect; it's not unheard-of for me to pick up a car that's dirty or out of gas, or with obvious problems.

I like to look for things that most people don't find on a test-drive and might later become an issue. When you see these things mentioned in a review, you need to decide if you can live with them. If you never drink coffee in your car, for example, a poorly-placed cupholder isn't an issue. I also like to look at how a car will be used. It's my pet theory that a lot of inexpensive cars get a bad rap from journalists who just got out of sportscars, and who forget that there's a huge market for people who don't need road feel and brilliant acceleration -- or a big price tag -- to get to the office and the grocery store.

Keep in mind, too, that most of us get low-mileage cars and drive them for seven days. We seldom know what a new model's long-term reliability will be.

All of those are reasons why reviews can be an important buying tool, but they shouldn't be your only one. Use them to make a list of the cars you want to try -- and then put your butt in the seat and drive them all for yourself.

It's easy looking green

The writer's strike is over, the Oscars will go on, and of course the celebrities need wheels to get them to the red carpet. General Motors is obliging with a fleet of "fuel-friendly" vehicles, including gasoline-electric hybrids, fuel cell vehicles and those that can run on ethanol, when it can be found.

Celebrities love hybrids as much as they love winning Oscars. They arrive at events in Priuses, they pay cubic dollars for electric sportscars, and a few of them are even driving BMW Hydrogen 7 cars around California. They're greener than Kermit, and admittedly, a celebrity in a Prius is probably chewing up fewer resources overall than a celebrity in a Hummer H2.

But have you seen their houses?

Have a look sometime, when Vanity Fair or Entertainment Tonight gets a camera inside the gates. The average big-name movie star drives that Prius home to a 10,000-square-foot climate-controlled house, with a pool, and with acres of irrigated grass and gardens, many of them in the desert.

I drive a full-size, eight-cylinder truck. But my house is about 900 square feet. I have no air conditioning, I don't water my lawn, I don't use pesticides, I compost every scrap of even faintly organic material right in my back yard, I get my water out of a well and I don't have a pool.

No, I don't own a hybrid.

But I think that in the grand scheme of things, we're just about even.

Sometimes it's the little things

When you walk around a new-car show, it's the big stuff that draws your attention: flashy paint, big wheels, all-new models.

But sometimes, the tiniest thing there could be the next wave of the future.

Case in point: this is the Hummer HX concept, which I saw at the Detroit Auto Show in January. It's a throwback to the Volkswagen Thing, with removable doors, roof and fender flares, and it's the work of three designers young enough to get carded when they go for a beer.

It might be the basis of an open-air, entry-level model to compete with the Jeep Wrangler, but that won't be its legacy. Instead, these designers might have changed the whole way we look at car stereos. In short, the HX doesn't have one.

It's got a full speaker system, though, and a jack to accept your iPod or other music player, and it's absolutely bloody brilliant. The CD player is going the way of the eight-track; who wants to carry a stack of slippery jewel cases when you can tote thousands of songs on something the size of a pack of gum? A great many people, me included, use the stereo as little more than a means to connect a digital player to the speakers.

Looking into my crystal ball, I see a world where this configuration will be the default, and a stereo -- with AM, FM, satellite, CD or whatever -- is an add-on option. Out of everything unveiled at Detroit in 2008, I'm betting that this is the one that counts.

Car of the Year: Does it matter?

The Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC), of which I am a member, is in a bit of an uproar over the story behind this photo. That's the Audi R8, a car that costs $139,000 and will sell about 100 copies in Canada. The award that Audi president Diego Ramos is holding is AJAC's 2008 Canadian Car of the Year.

The flap is that a car so exclusive should not be Car of the Year. It should go to something that the average person might have a chance of owning. Ithought it should have come down to a run between the Chevrolet Malibu, Honda Accord and Kia Rondo, but that's not how a democracy works. (And I will also add that, due to a scheduling conflict, I wasn't at the three-day back-to-back testing where the winners are chosen; I guess if you don't vote, you can't really complain.)

But all of that aside, it brings me to another question: are Car of the Year awards now so common that they really don't mean much anyway?

Car of the Year awards effectively began in 1949, when Motor Trend magazine gave its inaugural one to Cadillac in recognition of its new high-compression, overhead-valve V8 engine. During the early years, it went to a manufacturer, not a car, and for three years it wasn't awarded at all.

Now, every publication and every association names its annual winners. Car and Driver, Green Car Journal, Road & Track, Top Gear, What Car, MSN, and even Mother Proof name theirs, and there are many more. There's a North American Car of the Year, a European Car of the Year, a World Car of the Year, an International Car of the Year, Japan Car of the Year, and even a Lithuanian Car of the Year. 

AJAC says that surveys indicate more than half of new-car buyers are influenced by its award. Perhaps in Canada that's very true, since we have fewer "best of the best" handouts across the country, and the AJAC award is the biggest. Even so, when thousands of pieces of hardware get handed out each year, it does tend to water it down.

The smartest buyers will look at awards specific to their needs. You want the best van to haul your children, you go to Mother Proof, because they aren't wowed by 420 horses. Their testers look at stuff that matters to buyers with $25,000 to spend. Or buyers should look past AJAC's single Car of the Year, and look at each of the category winners. Someone with $139,000 and a hankering for an R8 doesn't care if it took Car of the Year or it ended up at the bottom of the pile. It's the folks who work hard for their money and can't afford to spend a lot of it who should be the focus of Car of the Year awards. Look at the cars, but look at the audience, too. Maybe then these awards will be relevant again.

Presenting the ChryWagen

This is a Routan.

Now, you probably haven't heard of it before, although you're thinking it looks familiar. It's from Volkswagen, sort of, and it's pronounced ROO-tan. Yes, the same folks who gave us Tiguan and Touareg, and could use some new staff in the naming department. Routan -- now available without a prescription! But I digress ...

Anyway, I just got back from the Toronto Auto Show press preview, where VW took the wraps off the stunning Passat CC (think Mercedes-Benz CL-Class, but hopefully with a lower price tag) and the Routan. If that one looks familiar, that's because Chrysler builds it alongside the Dodge Caravan and Chrysler Town & Country on behalf of VW. (Instead of Routan, maybe they could have called it a Vodge. Or a ChryWagen.)

I wish VW all the luck in the world with it, but really, what were they thinking? The traditional minivan market used to be a license to print money, but that's all changed. You want to do well in this shrinking segment, you make something really inexpensive, like a base Caravan, or a Hyundai Entourage, or a Kia Sedona, because people know it's just going to end up covered in kidspit and dog hair. Sure, the pricier Honda Odyssey and Toyota Sienna are great pieces of engineering, but those two combined sold just under 22,000 copies last year in Canada, compared to 56,572 Dodge and Chrysler vans.

VW should have learned a lesson with the Phaeton, which they wouldn't have been able to keep in stock if they'd released it as an Audi: it's damn tough to sell a $100,000 car that has the same badge as a $16,000 Golf. While pricing hasn't been released, I'm betting the bank that this minivan is going to have a higher sticker than its Caravan twin. Sure, it'll have a nicer interior and "sport-tuned suspension" (be careful you don't tip the groceries when carving corners), but it's a Dodge with a VW badge. Call me crazy, but I think buyers just might figure that out.