“Truth” vs. “Joy.” A tale of two car companies.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

(Posted 3/16, 2:00PM) Detroit. Automotive advertising themes run the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous, and everything in between. Some car companies not only get it – understanding who they are and where they want to go – while conducting themselves accordingly, but they also deliver what they’re promising and do so consistently over time. Others not only lose focus, but they lose sight of who they are and wander around in the desert searching for a way back. And others simply go through the motions, flailing about while trying to discover their raison d’etre, and failing miserably at it.

Let’s look at BMW. Here was a car company that ingrained into American consumers’ minds over time that they were on to the double-secret formula, one that led BMW to go about designing and engineering cars in a very specific way so that they oozed energy and purpose, delivering an unrivaled driving experience. And the moniker attached to these motorized creations - “The Ultimate Driving Machine” - summed it all up remarkably well. A perfect marriage of machine and ad theme that worked its magic with tremendous success.

And the consumer driving public ate it up, whether they were carving up mountain roads in West Virginia or were stuck crawling in 15 mph traffic on the 405 in L.A., they were True Believers in the BMW mission, and they spread the gospel of BMW throughout the land.

But then things got weird.

BMW executives became seriously afflicted with the “let’s be all things to all people” disease and actually thought that they could put a BMW in every garage in America – or at least in the America that mattered, in their estimation – if they just blanketed the market, leaving no niche unturned. Soon a series of bloated people movers that bore no resemblance to BMW’s original mission started showing up in BMW dealerships. Heavy, awkward designs, combined with almost shocking curb weight figures, totally warped the BMW lineup here in America. “Ultimate Driving Machines?” No, these were unrecognizable as such, and people began to notice that something was very, very wrong in BMW-Ville.

It backfired on them, big time, and they soon found themselves playing the incentive game with a vengeance, while trying to hang on to market share and volume.

So what does BMW do? At this point in the story I would like to say that a group of executives rose up to challenge the direction of the company and that a revolt ensued, with the result being that BMW was back on track, refocused and rededicated to its mission, with the offensive executives who led the company astray banished to obscurity.

But no, instead BMW unleashes a pathetic mishmash of an advertising campaign revolving around the word - “Joy” – complete with the obligatory shiny happy people with grins plastered on their faces experiencing the pleasures of BMWs in a series of shots that leave the viewer numb with… nothing. Because this is not only a campaign that could have been done by any other car company in the world, it smacks of a car company that’s simply going through the motions, smugly suggesting that they can get away with this abject advertising mediocrity because after all, they’re BMW.

The mistake BMW is making here is that they’ve talked themselves into believing that their reputation is such that they can walk away from one of the most memorable ad themes in automotive history - even though BMW insists that it’s only a temporary deviation - in the course of chasing wider appeal and a broader spectrum of buyers.

But BMW is forgetting one very pivotal thing here: People can attach “joy” to anything in life, even the simple, most mundane things. And that’s fine, man, as The Dude would say.

But at one point lusting after a BMW was something special. It was all about desire - a craving for the “ultimate” in mechanical art, at least as practiced by the zealots in Bavaria - and there was only one place you could quench that thirst.

Unfortunately for BMW that’s no longer true. Because they’ve lost their way trying to please everybody and because there’s a stronger, tougher competitor out there that’s capturing the hearts and minds of enthusiasts across the country. The same enthusiasts, as a matter of fact, who once lusted after BMW.

Audi is now making the most desirable German cars – and some of the most desirable machines, period – in the business. But it hasn’t always been that way. In fact Audi has had a long and difficult road here in the U.S. to get where they are today.

Initially praised as a coming brand that bristled with innovation and forward thinking – its Audi 5000 influenced the Detroit Three to completely rethink their idea of what a contemporary sedan should be when it made its debut - Audi was off to a tremendous start in this country. That is until the “unintended acceleration” fiasco began – which proved to be a completely false witch hunt blatantly orchestrated by CBS’ “60 Minutes” for ratings – and the brand suffered a dramatic drop in sale because of it, going from an annual rate of around 75-80,000 units to under 20,000 in less than 15 months, leaving its very existence in this market in question.

But Audi didn’t waver - instead they toughed it out through some very grim years, slowly but surely establishing their reputation as an engineering-oriented car company but one that marched to a different drummer – its insistence on “quattro” all-wheel-drive technology being the cornerstone of its car-building mantra - defying convention and going their own way at every turn. And by the late 90s things were starting to percolate for the brand.

Then, when Audi could have gone off the rails and eased back on the throttle, it instead decided to establish its engineering and technical chops in the one place that tallies winners and losers in the most unforgiving environment possible: Major League Motorsport.

Audi chose the most competitive arena available, one that pits the world’s most dominant automakers against each other in the harshest of environments – the historic and grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans – and they put it all on the line and went for it.

The result? Eight overall wins - including five consecutively – over a ten-year period, simply one of the most dominant performances in motorsports history.

And Audi used its unwavering commitment to its Le Mans-winning racing program as a beacon for its entire organization, urging designers and engineers to dig deeper and to leave no detail to chance and to execute with a clarity and a focused consistency in their pursuit of automotive greatness.

The result? Machines that speak with their bold designs, notable innovations, flawless detailing and a mechanical goodness that’s compelling to both enthusiasts with demanding standards and consumers who can just appreciate a job well done.

And there’s one more thing about Audi’s success that’s undeniable, too, and that is that the machines brim with passion and a distinct point of view (read Peter’s review of the sensational R8 in this week’s “On the Table” – Ed.).

No, they’re not for everyone and that’s exactly the point here. Despite its burgeoning success Audi still marches to a different drummer, and they’re not the least bit interested in being “all things to all people,” and I find that to be refreshing, especially given where BMW has landed with its “Joy” campaign.

As a matter of fact, in juxtaposition these two German car companies are shocking in their divergent paths.

On the one hand we have BMW. Repeatedly succumbing to the siren song of volume while chasing every niche imaginable, this company has not only lost its way, it has lost touch with its soul. Instead of reinvesting heavily in the idea behind and the belief in the machine – which is, after all, what made BMW great in the first place – BMW is smugly wrapping the word “Joy” around its image, because it lacks the fortitude and sheer force of will to say “enough” and firmly and decisively return to its roots.

And on the other we have Audi. Relentlessly focused and confident in its mission, it is building great cars – beautiful machines that bristle with passion and engineering ingenuity – finished off with precision and executed flawlessly down to the last detail.

Through its fundamental belief in how and why it’s done – its “Truth in Engineering” – Audi is now creating some of the most desirable automobiles in the world. The kinds of machines that people desire and crave, and the kinds of machines that set the pace for the entire industry.

It’s funny how it all works, isn’t it? Car companies that understand who they are and know exactly where they want to go – while staying true to their mission and never allowing themselves to lose focus – are the ones who are on an upward trajectory, attracting new customers by the day.

While the ones who are chasing rainbows - and niches they don’t belong in - are destined for a long, hot walk in the desert, lost in a swirling maelstrom of mediocrity.

That’s the High-Octane Truth for this week.

See another live episode of "Autoline After Hours" hosted by Autoline Detroit's John McElroy, with Peter De Lorenzo and friends this Thursday evening, at 7:00PM EDT at www.autolinedetroit.tv.

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Clueless in the Motor City.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

(Posted 3/8, 6:30PM) Detroit. No one could miss the headline screaming “Whitacre wants more sales – NOW!” on the top of the front page in this week’s Automotive News. And as the story attempted to flesh out Big Ed’s growing impatience with the whole “sluggish sales” quandary that continues to vex GM – and the reassignment and in some cases jettisoning of sales and marketing executives – and after observing the day-to-day chaos that seems to define GM of late, I’m getting the distinct impression that Whitacre still doesn’t have a clue as to what he’s dealing with here in the auto biz.

So I thought I’d give Big Ed a few pointed reminders...

Dear Ed:

I’m sure you’ve figured this out about now, but just in case you haven’t, this business isn’t about consolidating “Baby” Bells, or fixin’ to make deals, or playing phone and cable customers off against each other, either. And it’s not about packaging cable, phone and Internet service into tidy little bundles that people can deal with by the month, at the expense of a competitor you want to bury.

No, Ed, this business has been distilled down to the fundamental reality of trying to get people to forget 25 years of rampant mediocrity, when the Detroit automakers - and especially GM - squandered their rich, historical legacy of putting this nation on wheels, forging the arsenal of democracy, and becoming the shining beacon of American industrial might by unleashing a series of crappy vehicles that – except for a very few noteworthy instances – were not only stunning in their lack of imagination, originality and vision, but were equally stunning for their horrifying lack of quality.

It was during this time, Ed, that the American consumer became painfully aware that for the most part the Detroit automakers really didn’t give a shit about them, and when they went looking elsewhere – at the Toyotas, Hondas, BMWs and Nissans of the world, et al – in many cases they found excellent vehicles that were screwed together properly and offered good value. And for most of them that was more than enough and they never looked back.

As a matter of fact, they put the Detroit automakers entirely off of their radar screens for a generation and a half, only encountering domestic-made cars at the car rental lots at airports or in taxi cabs in big cities. It’s so bad, Ed, that there are households all across the land that have never had a domestic-sourced vehicle in their driveway. Ever.

And given the realities of this situation all you can bring to the table is your impatience? I know being an “outsider” can be terribly difficult, Ed. I’ve seen countless executives from other industries who got here before you, who not long after were either forced to leave or who left of their own volition, muttering under their breath as their planes lifted off the tarmac at Metro Airport never to return.

Much to most outsiders’ chagrin, this is the most complicated, relentlessly unforgiving, perilously difficult business on the face of the earth. I’m sure you like to point to other industries that you consider to be equally difficult but I would beg to differ. No business combines the depth and breadth of challenges that the auto business does. Why do you think so many outsiders flat-out fail and turn tail?

Not that I’m condemning all “outsiders” to this industry to a pile of hopeless irrelevance - after all, Alan Mulally gets it but then again we know now that he’s a once-in-a-lifetime executive who will go down in the 100+ year history of this business as truly one of the all-time greats.

But saying that, where does that leave you?

I’m afraid that leaves you in the corner of the “finger-snap” experts, Ed, the ones whom I have found to be the most loathsome over the years. The ones who show up with an attitude that suggests that this business can’t possibly be all that complicated, right? The ones who believe that if they were stars in their chosen avocations, then why not here and why not now? The ones who actually believe – at least for a fleeting moment in time – that all of this mess can be fixed with a finger snap. Just. Like. That.

For your information, Ed, two shining examples who bristled with that attitude almost ran GM right into the ground a decade earlier. And after John Smale and Ron Zarrella – and their hand-picked acolytes - got through unleashing their brand of P&G mumbo-jumbo on GM, the company was almost left for dead, a lifeless carcass festering by the side of the road

Not that I’m equating you with those two, Ed, but you must admit the tone and tempo are eerily similar. The impression that you know better than anyone about what needs to be done, discounting everyone who came before you and every painfully hard lesson learned. Believing that if you rearrange the deck chairs just so it will all come good overnight as if by magic. Or believing that the good times are just around the corner, just you wait and see.

And what if that doesn’t happen, Ed? Are you just going to stomp your feet until the sales trajectory starts pointing in an upward direction? In other words, you’re going to will it to happen, is that it?

Well, I can safely say at this point that it doesn’t work that way, Ed, and I’m getting the distinct impression that you clearly don’t have a clue at to what you’re talking about, no matter how many “aw shucks, I’m just a nice guy trying to help y’all out” platitudes you spread around.

At this point - and in case you don’t realize it, we’re talking desperation time here, Ed - this business is about recapturing the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands American consumers who got let down by the “bad old days” when Detroit was at its worst.

And you’re not going to do that overnight.

It’s going to take people being drawn into your showrooms by the pure excellence of your vehicles, a level of excellence that can no longer be ignored by your critics, the media or consumers on the street.

And then once you lure these consumers into your showrooms, they need to be pleasantly surprised by switched-on dealers who get it and who understand what this whole “putting the customer first” thing is all about.

And then should you be so fortunate as to have some of these consumers actually choose to drive out with an Equinox, an SRX Turbo, a Malibu, a LaCrosse or an Enclave, etc. - and over the entire time they own that vehicle absolutely nothing can go wrong with it. Not even a misaligned cupholder. Not even anything.

And during that time, if when asked by their friends and neighbors they say nothing but good things about their vehicles, that’s when the word-of-mouth “buzz” begins – still the most powerful form of advertising there is – and then you will begin to gain real traction in the market, the kind that has eluded GM for so long.

And finally, when that consumer has to consider getting a new vehicle three or four years down the road - and he or she comes back to get another GM vehicle - then you’ll really know, Ed. Then you can safely say that GM is reaching the customer again and that the ugly past is fading away.

Again, that’s not going to happen overnight, Ed. No, in fact it’s going to be a l-o-n-g drawn-out slog fraught with myriad opportunities for things to go horribly wrong.

So you can throw your tantrums and snap your fingers and demand results, but I hate to break it to you, it’s not going to make one damn bit of difference.

GM needs to exceed the competition in all respects to even get a place at the consideration table. Not gain market share mind you, Ed, but just to get a place at the consideration table. There’s a huge difference between the two, at least I hope you can see that by now.

That means it will come down to the people who know the business and understand what it takes to succeed. And that means people like Mark Reuss, Ed Welburn and Tom Stephens leading their troops into battle with a laser focus and unwavering purpose. And that means that the “new” GM must deliver extraordinarily compelling designs, boldly remarkable engineering, surgically precise manufacturing, top levels of quality (not among the best, but top), a flawlessly seamless dealer experience, and do so consistently day-in, day-out without hiccups, missteps, interruptions or horror stories.

Anything less, Ed, and it’s game over for you and GM.

In closing, I have a suggestion: Seeing as I don’t believe you’re bringing anything of value to the table other than the occasional exhortation of the troops for the “I’m large and in charge” window-dressing effect, I suggest you settle into a more suitable role as official company “greeter.” You know, the guy that GM PR can trot out to functions and photo opportunities and who can throw out the “aw shucks” platitudes about the “new” GM with vigor.

It’s not a bad assignment when you think about it, especially with your financial package keeping you comfy and cozy hard by the RenCen. (I mean we know it’s just play money and all to you but it’s nice to know you’re covered at least.)

Because the harsh reality of the situation, Ed, is that you clearly got nothin’ else to offer.

And being clueless in the Motor City has never been a good look.

That’s the High-Octane Truth for this week.

See another live episode of "Autoline After Hours" hosted by Autoline Detroit's John McElroy, with Peter De Lorenzo and friends this Thursday evening, at 7:00PM EDT at www.autolinedetroit.tv.

By the way, if you'd like to subscribe to the Autoline After Hours podcasts, click on the following links:

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Time keeps ticking, ticking away for America’s “forgotten” car company.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

AND SEE SPECIAL BOB LUTZ COMMENTARY BELOW...

(Posted 3/2, 8:00PM) Detroit. By now you’ve seen the sale results from February - with Ford up a stunning 43 percent - its fifth straight monthly sales increase and the first time since 1998 that it has eclipsed GM in a month of sales action. And Subaru was up a whopping 38 percent, Nissan up a strong 29 percent, BMW up 14 percent, Honda up 13 percent, GM up 11.5 percent, Jaguar Land Rover up 11 percent, Hyundai/KIA group up 10 percent and Toyota - in the midst of the recall crisis - down just 9 percent, an impressive performance given the fact that they’re the whipping boys du jour right now.

And the majority of those numbers are easy to explain. Ford’s momentum is growing by the month, and consumers who are turning away from Toyota are giving serious consideration to Ford first, and it shows. But Ford’s upward trajectory is not confined to disgruntled Toyota intenders, because its market reach is spreading wide across all spectrums. GM’s product offensive may be beginning to register with consumers too - although these numbers were heavily influenced by sales to fleet – but there’s room for a shred of optimism down at the RenCen. Subaru continues its meteoric performance, while the Hyundai/KIA group impresses again. And even Nissan showed signs of real life.

But then there’s Chrysler.

With sales flat-lining in February – Chrysler says its sales were up 1 percent, but for all intents and purposes they were flat even with a year ago - Chrysler is stalled in the market again. But then it has been mired in this perpetual state ever since it emerged from bankruptcy. Chrysler is in a holding pattern, treading water as it struggles to stay afloat in a sea of much more formidable competitors. Adding to its woes, Chrysler has sunk to the bottom in the Consumer Reports 2010 Automaker Report Cards rankings.

Even though I’ve applauded Chrysler for coming out swinging with cleverly-written ads for its Dodge Charger (the work even provoked a searing female-oriented rejoinder that’s a hit on YouTube), it’s clear that time is running short for the gang in Auburn Hills.

I’ve written repeatedly that despite Sergio Marchionne’s track record in rescuing Fiat, the Chrysler situation is dramatically different, and to assume that because he did it once he can do it again is wildly optimistic and woefully off-base, because it’s impossible to overcome years of product neglect with a finger snap and a curt “we know what we’re doing” dismissal of the facts.

And the facts are these...

1. We’re talking about a company desperately bereft of new product, thanks to the almost criminal malfeasance of Cerberus – the blood-sucking greed posse that gutted the company and left it for dead - and the previous Daimler-led regime, which pulled up stakes on their investment after they realized they had embarrassingly overpaid by a bunch, leaving Chrysler flat-busted and broke by the side of the road. Now Chrysler is on the outside looking in with an array of shockingly “yestertech” products in a market that even in these depressed times remains driven by the “buzz” about the latest and greatest new products available.

2. Chrysler cannot play in this new product “buzz” arena, at least not yet. Why? Because they’re busy running around tweaking and fixing products that never resonated with the consumer to begin with. Yes, the new Jeep Grand Cherokee with its all-new Pentastar V6 should be excellent, but we’re talking mid-summer for any sort of in-dealer stock. And the new Charger and Chrysler 300 makeovers should be worth considering, too, but they’re slated for the late fourth quarter, which means, in reality, next January at the earliest. But trying to resurrect the Sebring with new front and rear clips, some suspension tweaks and a new name? A new name? Really? You mean a change in zip code might help that rolling monument to mediocrity? Should we expect another Florida-themed name this time? Something like the “Tampa” or the “Boca” - ? Yeah, that should make a huge difference in the outcome of things.

And there’s more. Maybe I missed the memo somewhere along the way, but is there really a crying need for a large Dodge Durango crossover based on the new Cherokee? How about no? Or similar tweaks to the Dodge Avenger like what’s being done to the abomination formerly known as the Sebring? Ugh. There’s always the minivan franchise at least and we’re being promised dramatically different styling on the Chrysler Town & Country, to differentiate it from the Dodge Grand Caravan, so there’s that. And Ram Trucks, of course...

But the reality in this situation is that the huge gap in time between its “new” and “reinvigorated” products, combined with the dismal day-to-day sales performance – or lack of same - of the current products, is not working in Chrysler’s favor.

Product cadence is the new mantra in this business, and you either have it, or you don’t. And Chrysler doesn’t have a lick of it right now. A bunch of re-dos and a few serious product makeovers all crashing into the market by the first quarter of 2011 does not constitute product cadence. Not even close, as a matter of fact.

And to those who would suggest that it will all work out, that all of Chrysler’s frantic moves now will set the table nicely for the great Chrysler-Fiat product renaissance coming in 2012, I’m not buying it, because it looks to me more like a slow-motion train wreck that’s unfolding with one sickening thud after another.

3. On top of Chrysler’s myriad product program problems, the other ugly reality for Chrysler is that it has almost completely fallen off of the American consumer public’s radar screen. Of the two post-bankruptcy companies GM is just barely scratching the surface with its herky-jerky marketing efforts, but at least it can be argued that its products are finally gaining recognition for being at least in the game, whereas before only minimal consumer consideration would have been expected.

But Chrysler? Even with a few catchy ads popping up it’s barely moving the needle in this market. Serious consumer consideration? It’s nowhere to be found, certainly not with any momentum behind it. The only thing keeping the whole enterprise afloat for Chrysler - at least for now - is the deal. Rebates and incentives, and lots and lots of ‘em too. But that, of course, isn’t a marketing strategy; it’s only a desperation ploy to tread water. And the incentives aren’t going to make a damn bit of difference once Toyota cranks up its scorched earth sales push that began today, ironically enough.

No, right now Chrysler is America’s “forgotten” car company, with products too old and too stale to make a difference in its short-term future, and product promises that are way too far down the road to matter, especially with an economy that’s slowly, make that excruciatingly s-l-o-w-l-y getting back on its feet.

Time keeps ticking, ticking away for Chrysler, and at this point Sergio & Co. are going to need a miracle for a shot at survival.

That’s all I got for this week.

Editor's Note: With the announcement today that GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz is retiring May 1, we thought we'd re-run the column Peter wrote in February 2009 - when Lutz first announced his retirement. - WG

The End of an Era: The Ultimate Car Guy Takes His Leave.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

 Detroit. The news came over the Internet Monday morning like a bolt of lightning. Bob Lutz, GM’s vice chairman of global product development, is retiring at the end of the year. Lutz, who turns 77 on Feb. 12, was the “straw that stirred the drink” for GM and the man most responsible for GM’s product renaissance over the last seven plus years.

Lutz had dropped hints all along that the debut of the production Chevrolet Volt - due at the end of 2010 - would be his crowning achievement in this business, so the suddenness of the news reverberated around this town and throughout the industry, coming much sooner than anyone expected.

From the day he was hired by CEO Rick Wagoner back on Sept. 1, 2001, Lutz set GM on its ear and turned it back into a real car company again after it had languished in Brand Management Hell for years. Up until the Lutzian Era, GM had been at the mercy of an endless succession of so-called marketing "gurus" led by John Smale and his acolyte Ron Zarrella, two guys who contributed immeasurably to GM's product and market share slide, almost running the company right into the ground. But all that changed when “Maximum Bob” arrived. For the first time since Ed Cole retired in the early 70s, the Product was well and truly King again at General Motors.

Rick Wagoner deserves all the credit for having the smarts to know back then what GM needed. After decades of fumbling and floundering, after dealing with various "Messiahs" of The Week who turned out to be the Bums of the Year, after countless bad decisions on top of non-decisions, and after suffering from years upon years of non-car mercenaries running rampant over the corporation for their own personal gain, GM finally got one very big thing right when they brought Bob Lutz on board.

This is what I wrote back in 2001 upon the news that Lutz was coming to GM:

“For the True Believers at General Motors who thought this day would never come, the ‘Bob Lutz Effect’ will be nothing short of a miracle. Make no mistake about this fact: GM still has a lot of very talented men and women toiling away inside its halls. They're everywhere too - in every department and from every discipline. These are the kind of people who fight for every last inch of product integrity. These are the people who have had to watch in recent years while the good ideas got sidetracked or killed, and the mediocre or just plain bad ideas got into production. These are the same people who have had to stand by and watch as non-car people basically did everything in their power to run this once-proud corporation right into the ground. Yet these same people are the ones who still bring the fight with them every single day. The same ones who have done stunning design concepts and who have managed to get some pretty respectable cars and trucks to the street - against some unbelievable odds. You stumble upon these people every once in a while at a racetrack or at car shows or at press previews, and it shocks you, because when you continuously read about the problems that plague GM at the top, you forget that these people are out there, still fighting the good fight, still being True Believers. These are the people who will benefit most from the presence of Bob Lutz. These are Maximum Bob's people. These people can now look at the top of their company and see someone who 'gets it,' someone who has fought the battles and won the wars, someone who understands what they've been up against and someone who they can finally believe in - because he is one of them. When Bob Lutz hits the ground running, these are the people who will be required to burn the midnight oil and do everything in double and triple time, but they will relish every moment of it because for the first time in a very, very long time they have someone at the top whom they can respect.”

Bob Lutz’s first order of business when he hit the ground running at GM? To restore the swagger of the Design Staff. Working with Ed Welburn, GM’s gifted design chief, Lutz returned GM Design to its rightful place as the showpiece for the corporation. In GM’s heyday, GM Design (“Styling” back then) was the soul of the company and it rocked the automotive world with one design “hit” after another. But even with a rich design legacy powered by two of the most legendary figures in the business – Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell – GM Design had fallen on hard times, struggling mightily under the choke hold placed on it during the Brand Management Reign of Terror. And even though GM Design was showing signs of life a couple of years before Lutz arrived, Bob pulled the design function up by the lapels and gave them free rein to create, lead and inspire, the three ingredients that propelled GM Design – and GM – to such heights in its glory days.

And it worked magnificently. All of a sudden GM Design was the talk of the industry, dominating car shows with adventurous, exuberant designs bristling with swagger and passion. And Bob Lutz, along with Ed Welburn’s inspirational guidance, made it all happen.

The other crucial thing Lutz did for GM was undertake a massive reorganization of its moribund product development system, the “behind the curtain” dimension to this business that few outside it understand but one that is absolutely crucial to its success and profitability. Lutz cajoled, prodded, demanded results and kicked some ass when he had to, and the result was that the company was able to translate GM Design’s conceptual brilliance into a series of outstanding production vehicles - like the Buick Enclave, Chevrolet Malibu and HHR, Cadillac CTS and CTS-V, Saturn Aura, Pontiac Solstice, Pontiac G8, Saturn Sky, Corvette ZR1 and the briefly resurrected Pontiac GTO – while doing it on a global scale for the first time in the company’s history. Lutz turned GM’s old-school product development system into a global powerhouse brimming with impressive expertise and capabilities and it simply transformed the company, a historic achievement unto itself.

I can’t imagine what shape GM would be in right now if Rick Wagoner hadn’t brought Bob on board seven years ago. I would venture to guess that GM might not even have made it this far without him; he has been that instrumental to the company’s well being.

Was Lutz able to save GM all by himself? No. Market conditions and the worst economic calamity in this nation’s history conspired against him. But if GM does manage to survive it will be due in large part to the absolutely superb job Lutz did during his tenure and the rich legacy of achievement and excellence he left behind.

Bob’s impending exit is a serious blow to GM, make no mistake about it. He galvanized the entire company, got everyone on the same page, and forced them to aspire to greatness at times by the sheer force of his will and personality alone. His departure not only marks the end of an era for General Motors, it marks the end of an era for this business and frankly I hate to see it because Bob is truly one of a kind and we will not see the likes of him again, unfortunately.

Sadly, without Lutz this business will continue to be overrun by politically correct bean counters and slick corporate willies who have little or no feel for the product, no sense of automotive history, and even worse, no sense of humor. A giant bowl of Not Good in my book.

Bob Lutz’s accomplishments in this business are legendary, and even though there’s no need (or enough space) for me to recount all of them here, suffice to say he’s had one of the most glittering careers this industry has ever known.

In terms of his relentless vitality, his legendary wit, his unquestioned knowledge of the business, his passion for the product, his uncanny “gut” and his unerring feel for what the essence of the product is all about; Bob Lutz is simply second to none.

Having spent enough quality time with Bob over the years I can safely say that he is, in my estimation, the greatest product guru of the last 35 years and he will leave the stage as one of this industry’s all-time greats.

Thanks for listening.

See another live episode of "Autoline After Hours" hosted by Autoline Detroit's John McElroy, with Peter De Lorenzo and friends this Thursday evening, at 7:00PM EDT at www.autolinedetroit.tv.

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Oh, Toyota’s got trouble alright…Trouble with a capital “T.”

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

(Posted 2/23, 7:30PM) Detroit. It would be very easy to pile on Toyota at this point, because it has certainly brought most – if not all – of its current problems upon itself. Though I have been an ardent and vociferous critic of Toyota in the past because of its relentlessly bland transportation appliances; its borderline sick obsession with foisting itself off as an “American” car company while attempting to weasel its way into the American fabric at every opportunity; its smug air of superiority while coldly and calculatingly courting the “Green” intelligentsia - and their patron saint Tom Friedman - in order to be viewed as the environmental savior that will solve all of our problems if only we – as a nation – would just acquiesce and hand over the keys to the American market; the blatant manipulation of the Washington political establishment through a shrewd series of lobbying maneuvers that go well beyond the pale even by D.C. standards in terms of the depth and breadth of its efforts; and its home government’s willful manipulation of its currency to help Toyota exploit every advantage while competing in this market - just to name a few things that stick in my craw - it’s clear to me that the Washington ass-whipping this week is eerily similar to the one that took place in December 2008, when the top executives of the then Detroit Three were called on the carpet for a plethora of sins, both real and imagined...

And now that Toyota finds itself caught in this swirling maelstrom of out-of-control Washington D.C.-fueled hysteria - which admittedly has been compounded by its own hubris, bad or non-decisions and its failure to get out in front of this image-wrangling thing – I feel almost the same way I did back when the Detroit executives were hammered, pummeled, humiliated and generally dumped upon by a posse of wimps and twerps masquerading as our country’s Best and Brightest.

To say that Washington politicos thrive on the circus of it all above absolutely everything else - including objectivity, facts, etc., - is stating the obvious. When they comfortably operate, connive and cajole in the relative obscurity of their own friendly confines, I imagine it’s real nice to get out in front of “the people” and flex their muscles now and again. After all, when the majority of your waking hours are devoted to justifying your existence, how could you possibly let the intoxicating opportunity for some good old-fashioned self-righteous chest-thumping pass you by? Especially when it comes at the expense of corporate America, er, Japan?

The Washington political establishment is frighteningly aligned with the mentality that drives the geniuses down in Daytona Beach who rule over NASCAR, as in, it’s all about “The Show.” Start with some controversy, mix in some pathos, work the David (the “little people”) vs. Goliath (the “evil” corporate empire) angle, and voila! Ladies and gents, you’ve got yourself a show!

I am reminded of Robert Preston’s brilliant portrayal of Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man, when he exhorts the townsfolk of River City about the trouble that’s about to befall them if they let their young people hang out in a pool hall…

Ya got trouble,
Right here in River city!
With a capital "T"

And that rhymes with "P"
And that stands for Pool.
We've surely got trouble!
Right here in River City!
Remember the Maine, Plymouth Rock and the Golden Rule!
Oh, we've got trouble.
We're in terrible, terrible trouble.

Toyota has trouble alright, with a capital “T” and that means that a lot of ill-qualified hacks in Washington are going to step up to the microphone and expound on all the things they don’t know, or understand, or even have the faintest of clues as to what they’re talking about, for that matter.

But the grandstanding and public hand-wringing in Washington is not going to solve anything. Not even close. Oh, it will help our attention-starved politicians get their TV on, but that’s about it.

The harsh reality for Toyota is that it went too far overboard in striving to become the biggest, baddest car company on earth. And in the course of their quest they literally abandoned damn near everything that got them to the point of being a true corporate juggernaut to begin with.

The Toyota “Way”? It went right out the window as soon as they started planning new assembly facilities at the same time they were still finishing plants that weren’t even up and running yet. The “old” Toyota would never do that. The “old” Toyota would take their sweet time in making sure that a new facility was every bit as focused and dialed-in as their best facilities. If it wasn’t, it simply didn’t open until it was.

But the “new” Toyota started skipping steps and compressing timelines. And the details started slipping through the cracks. People – engineers, managers, manufacturing types – were schooled in the Toyota Way, but in the company’s breakneck, accelerated pace to eclipse GM as the world’s largest automaker it didn’t sink in. There simply wasn’t enough time to let it sink in either.

Communication broke down, both internally in Japan and externally to the troops in the U.S. The Toyota Way wasn’t the focus of the organization any longer. Classic Toyota descriptors such as “quality,” “reliability” and “durability” were replaced with words like “units,” “volume,” “production plan acceleration” and “domination” of markets.

Pretty soon the citizens of the “new” Toyota outnumbered the experienced and historically reverent “old” citizens of Toyota, and the whole thing veered off track in a horrendous train wreck now being picked over by our illustrious representatives in Washington.

Yes, Toyota brought this down upon itself. They made mistakes, and then they made more mistakes when they compounded their original mistakes by their calculated obfuscation, their corporate insularity - their utter lack of understanding and grasp of this image “thing” as it applies to the media-saturated U.S. market and how their stonewalling PR tactic wasn’t a tactic at all but a self-destructive act of dumping fuel on the fire - and finally their almost manic unwillingness to realize that the vacuum they are comfortable operating in isn’t necessarily one that will fly in the wider world.

Does Toyota have a problem with their electrical systems? I don’t even pretend to know. But it’s too bad that no one and I mean no one in Washington - whether they are senators, congress persons, self-proclaimed “expert” witnesses or anyone else for that matter - can admit that they don’t know either.

And all the table-pounding, strident “yes” or “no” questions, mealy-mouthed soliloquies, teary story-telling, blatant political pontificating and nonsensical mutterings aren’t going to get us any closer to finding out, either.

Oh, Toyota’s got trouble alright…Trouble with a capital “T.”

But a witch hunt is a witch hunt, in any language.

That’s all I got for this week.

See another live episode of "Autoline After Hours" hosted by Autoline Detroit's John McElroy, with Peter De Lorenzo and friends this Thursday evening, at 7:00PM EDT at www.autolinedetroit.tv.

By the way, if you'd like to subscribe to the Autoline After Hours podcasts, click on the following links:

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It’s official: The poseurs and in-house cynics are out to destroy BMW from within.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

(Posted 2/16, 3:00PM) Detroit. I’ve written about the crucial importance of managing a car company’s image in this column countless times. Crafting an image is – beyond making the actual products great, of course – the most difficult and harrowing endeavor a company can pursue. It is fraught with peril, progress can come in extremely minute bursts, setbacks can be devastating – witness Toyota’s current travails - and to get it right takes years and years of focused, unflinching consistency that starts with top management and runs rampant throughout the rest of the organization.

And it’s never easy, because every piece of corporate communication, every PR event, every bit of advertising, every executive interview, every quote to the press and every marketing initiative plays a role in creating that image.

Today we’re witnessing GM’s struggle as it tries to redefine an image that has been left in tatters by its swoon into bankruptcy, and of course after years of mediocrity and the accumulated bad consumer memories associated with it. GM desperately wants everyone to look at where they are now with their products and where they’re going, while many consumers are still reluctant to even give them the time of day. It’s a huge mountain to climb.

Chrysler is in even worse shape. Disengaged from the public conversation for too long now, Chrysler is frantically trying to get back on consumer radar screens with its current product lineup, while its new Fiat-enhanced offerings are still many months away. The brain trust at Chrysler is finding the going excruciatingly slow – if not just plain excruciating – and it will take years, not months, but years of grinding away to get out from under the cloud hanging over the company.

And while GM and Chrysler flail about, Ford keeps its blinders on and just keeps upping the ante with more excellent products, a clearly focused plan and a leadership that’s second to none. (And a leadership that is all too painfully aware that it could go south in a heartbeat if they veer off message or get off track, I might add.)

But today it’s about BMW.

For years BMW was the car company to emulate. With focused products that perfectly mirrored its etched-in-stone persona as the “Ultimate Driving Machine,” BMW was the envy of all other car companies - and from every angle too - product, marketing and image. Oh, BMW did have its missteps along the way, to be sure, but generally it strictly adhered to its carefully orchestrated persona as the most sought after and desirable German luxury-performance make.

Until the last few years, that is.

Concurrent with BMW’s perilous adventure while embracing designer Chris Bangle’s whims, the company embarked on a path of being more “approachable.” In doing so, BMW mimicked the wrong-headed Mercedes-Benz foray into becoming the dreaded “all things to all people” car company, and both companies took turns steering off the road and into the ditch with a series of product missteps and quality miscues while chasing volume that eroded their heretofore solid reputations.

For BMW it was the shockingly lame sports car that took the company a decade to get right (and some would argue that the current Z4 still isn’t what it should be). But that was the least of their transgressions, because they also unleashed a series of bloated SUVs - each more overwrought and overweight than the previous one – while expanding their product lineup into territories that rendered them all but unrecognizable as BMW. And other than the 3 Series - which they steadfastly refused to screw up - BMW continued down the path that was taking them away from their core strengths, resulting in such motorized atrocities as the 5GT and X6 crossovers.

It’s obvious that there is a massive internal struggle going on within BMW. On one side are the True Believers, the people who want BMW to get back to its roots building nimble, lightweight sedans with verve, personality, performance, efficiency and character. And on the other are the poseurs - the in-house cynics who believe that the blue-and-white propeller emblem can sell pretty much anything - and to them worrying about such quaint notions as the company’s roots is a recipe for disaster, because too much easy profit will be missed pursuing such folly.

Which brings me to the new BMW television campaign called “Joy,” which shows any number of Shiny Happy people enjoying their various BMWs in all kinds of sunny, enjoyable ways. The abridged copy unfolds like this…

We are a car company, but we just don’t make cars

We make time machines…and create works of art

We realized a long time ago that what you make people feel is just as important as what you make.

And at BMW we just don’t make cars, we make joy…

Perfectly fine on the surface, because there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the word “joy,” right? How could a genuine expression of happiness be bad? Especially when it’s brought to you by such a fine automobile?

Look below the surface, however, and we find that this commercial is trying to appease both internal camps. This is BMW straddling the fence, while trying to curry favor with the True Believers – who couldn’t possibly quibble with the idea of the “joy” of driving that BMW brings to the table, could they? – and the in-house cynics who want to see loads of shiny happy people driving many different BMWs, a cross section of which are now calculatedly designed for the more mundane vagaries of everyday life.

Besides the fact that this is BMW we’re talking about here, the problem with the “Joy” campaign isn’t the use of the word itself - no, it’s the fact that this commercial could have been done by any other brand. It could be a Kia spot. Or Hyundai. Or Volvo. Or Chevrolet. Or even Honda.

With this spot BMW is going all shiny-happy on us and abdicating its throne. You don’t just walk away from one of the most memorable and accurately descriptive advertising themes in automotive history “for a while” as BMW says, and expect to blissfully escape any lasting repercussions or long-term effects.

It just doesn’t work that way.

Ask Mercedes-Benz. They walked away from “Engineered like no other car in the World” - literally and spiritually - years and years ago, and they’ve been desperate to reclaim its power and imagery ever since. And short of adopting that theme again and living up to it in every respect, guess what? They’ll never get it back.

BMW insists this is just an expansion of their brand positioning to accommodate what people already know, that BMWs are a “joy” to drive.

I vehemently disagree. It’s not brand positioning, it’s bland positioning.

By selling something acceptably agreeable for all, it’s all but guaranteed that BMW will fail to elicit passion from anyone.

Which makes it official: The poseurs and in-house cynics are out to destroy BMW from within.

And with this new “Joy” campaign, they’re off to an excellent head start.

That’s all I got for this week.

See another live episode of "Autoline After Hours" hosted by Autoline Detroit's John McElroy, with Peter De Lorenzo and friends this Thursday evening, at 7:00PM EDT at www.autolinedetroit.tv.

By the way, if you'd like to subscribe to the Autoline After Hours podcasts, click on the following links:

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Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Toyota? Not anymore.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

(Posted 2/9, 10:30AM) Detroit. I really wasn’t going to write about Toyota again this week, figuring that I had said all that needed to be said last week about the situation (click on “Next Entry” at the bottom of the page to read last week’s column – ed.), but then again it’s obvious that the story of Toyota’s quality implosion and subsequent image freefall isn’t going away anytime soon.

Not when the vaunted Prius – the sainted darling of the Green intelligentsia - has now joined Toyota’s never-ending recall list. You could almost hear the Prius acolytes in California and across the country going face down in their bowls of edamame with the news that their glorious, supposedly guilt-free machines actually weren’t infallible after all. Oh, the horror.

No, this story – the classic tale of a company’s intransigent arrogance and unbridled hubris – is going to play out in the days, months and years to come.

First on the agenda are the hearings scheduled for today in Washington (NOTE: It was just announced that the hearings will move to February 24 due to weather conditions - ed) - where congressional committees stocked with lawmakers who have been courted, schmoozed and massaged by Toyota and its lobbying efforts over the last 25 years - will allegedly “get to the bottom” of the Toyota recall story.

Oh really? Let’s review, shall we?

In an absolutely devastating piece from the Associated Press released this past Monday and reported by Sharon Theimer (with contributions by Ted Bridis, Alan Fram and Ken Thomas) Toyota’s cozy relationship with Washington politicos was documented in riveting detail.

To wit: The Senate’s lead investigator is none other than West Virginia Democrat Jay Rockefeller, whose ties to the Toyota family go back to the 1960s and who was so personally involved with the site selection for Toyota's Buffalo, W.Va., factory that he, “slogged through cornfields with Toyota executives scouting locations and still mentions his role in the 1990s deal to this day,” according to the AP story.

Then there’s California Rep. Jane Harman, who represents the district of Toyota's Torrance, Calif., U.S. headquarters and who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is also investigating Toyota's recall.

It’s not so much that Harman and her husband, Sidney, held at least $115,000 in Toyota stock according to her most recent financial disclosure report. It’s the fact that the company to which the couple owes much of their multi-million-dollar fortune, Harman International Industries (Harman Kardon anyone?), founded by Sidney Harman, sells vehicle audio and entertainment systems to Toyota. The two companies even teamed up on a charitable education project in 2003, according to the AP, when Sidney Harman was Harman International's executive chairman. He retired from the Harman board in December 2008.

The AP also reported that, “When leading Toyota engineer David Hermance died in a 2006 plane crash in California, Rep. Harman took to the floor to pay tribute, calling Hermance the ‘Father of the American Prius.’ ‘It was David's passionate approach and commitment to the environment that helped persuade a skeptical industry and auto-buying public to appreciate the enormous potential of his work,’ Harman said at the time. ‘In fact, Madam Speaker, my family drives two hybrid vehicles -- one in California and the other in Washington, D.C.’ "

Then there’s always Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. You remember him, right? He was one of the leading bashers of the Detroit automobile company executives when they appeared before Congress seeking loans in December of 2008. He was the same sleazeball who appeared at the Detroit Athletic Club three years earlier with his hand out, asking GM, Ford and Chrysler for political contributions for his re-election campaign. And yes, he's the same guy who said, "Kentucky is still reaping the rewards of its 20-year partnership with Toyota, and we hope to continue to do so for years to come," when he spoke at the 2006 anniversary of a Toyota plant there, according to the AP. They don’t call him Mitch “Whichever Way the Wind’s Blowing” McConnell for nothing, I suppose.

No, political lobbying efforts are nothing new, but Toyota’s lobbying effort (estimated to cost $5 million annually) is led by a squadron of Washington politicos with deep ties to Senators and Representatives on both sides of the aisle, the same Senators and Representatives who will be asking questions of Toyota on Wednesday. The same lawmakers who also represent states with Toyota factories, including Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Texas and Kentucky.

Will our representatives directly and indirectly on the Toyota dole stand up and do the right thing on Wednesday? Or will they swiftly sweep all of this recall nastiness under the rug so as to minimize embarrassment to the company and so everyone can get back to the “business” at hand?

It will be very interesting to watch how this plays out.

The bottom line here is that Toyota’s American executives have calculatingly crafted a plan over the years that revolves around one unwavering premise, and that is to convince the American consumer public that Toyota is not only part of the American fabric but that Toyota is in fact an American company, and that to think otherwise is simply misguided and wrong. Never mind where the profits ultimately go - Toyota’s PR wranglers are quick to point out - instead focus on the fact that Toyota is inexorably involved in countless American charities, and employs thousands of American workers at factories, dealers and suppliers.

That’s all well and good, but as I’ve said before this image-wrangling business can be treacherous.

The blatant obfuscation of the seriousness and scope of the problem by Toyota’s Japan-based leadership only served to exacerbate the issues involved, which in turn prevented their American counterparts from getting out in front of the story, which in turn caused countless hand-wringing and negative stories in the media, which in turn exposed customers to a side of Toyota heretofore never imagined, which in turn caused a carefully cultivated image built up over the better part of three decades to blow up literally overnight.

And now every move Toyota makes, the new TV advertising, the public mea culpas, President Akio Toyoda’s announced visit to the U.S. in order to take the pulse of its employees, dealers and customers - to “genchi-genbutsu,” which is Japanese for “go and see” and is part of “The Toyota Way” business philosophy - seems forced, disingenuous and very, very late.

On this frigid February day in 2010 I can actually begin to see the media rhetoric shift away from the Toyota=Good, Detroit=Bad mantra that has dominated this market for years.

Now it’s Toyota=Incompetent, Toyota=Untrustworthy, Toyota=Unsafe, or worse, Toyota=Just Plain Bad.

And here Toyota was this close to having American consumers actually believing that it was as American as Baseball, Hot Dogs and Apple Pie.

Not so much. Not anymore.

That’s all I got for this week.

See another live episode of "Autoline After Hours" hosted by Autoline Detroit's John McElroy, with Peter De Lorenzo and friends this Thursday evening, at 7:00PM EDT at www.autolinedetroit.tv.

By the way, if you'd like to subscribe to the Autoline After Hours podcasts, click on the following links:

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The Toyota implosion…what it really means.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

(Posted 1/30/10, 6:30PM) Detroit. A corporate image for a company directly involved with consumers is a very fragile thing. A savvy company can carefully cultivate and nurture an image over a period of years. It can forge an identity by exploiting its nuances and crafting its effectiveness, and it can even create an aura for itself that may or may not be completely true, but if done expertly enough can convince legions of consumer/believers that you are who you say you are.

Over the past 35-plus years Toyota has burnished one overriding message into consumers’ minds in this country, and that message revolves around the idea that Toyota-built cars and trucks are the highest quality vehicles on the road, and that if consumers adhere to by-the-book maintenance schedules they just do not break. Ever.

And Toyota has enjoyed considerable success in this market by riding that reputation for all it was worth, as more and more consumers bought into the idea that - though bland transportation conveyances for the most part - Toyotas just wouldn’t let you down.

Until the events of last week, that is.

Actually, last week was the culmination of a series of negative events having to do with quality – or the lack of same – that has vexed Toyota for years now. There was the oiling-sludge problem in a brace of their engines. And there was the severe rust problem in Toyota pickup trucks, to the point that the spare tire carriers would simply fall out and on to the road it was so pronounced, just to name a few of the most noteworthy examples.

But Toyota skated through these “hiccups” as they quickly and for the most part quietly addressed consumers’ problems and moved on, escaping the harsh light of a frenzied media too busy holding the domestic manufacturers accountable for myriad transgressions, both real and imagined. For years and years if there was ever a Toyota recall the news of it would quickly come and go, while in comparison, if there was ever a recall from a domestic manufacturer it was the top story on Internet news sites and leading the evening television news for days.

As I wrote about it in The United States of Toyota, there was a blatant bias at work in the media that fueled the notion that Toyota=Good and Detroit=Bad – not that Detroit didn’t contribute to its atrocious quality reputation, because it emphatically did – and Toyota’s heretofore impenetrable and unimpeachable reputation for quality could never be sullied by a few rusted pickups here and there. After all, its cars and trucks – and its reputation – were bullet proof.

That attitude came across in spades when the executives of the Detroit Three ended up in Washington, D.C., begging for financial help at the end of ’08 too. In those disastrous hearings it became crystal clear by the intensity of the bile spewed against the Detroit executives that the “notion” of Toyota=Good, Detroit=Bad wasn’t a notion at all, but a fact that had not only burrowed into the American consumer consciousness, but into the gaping maw of the Washington political establishment as well.

Until the events of last week, that is.

Last week the automotive world as we know it became unequivocally and irrevocably altered when Toyota was forced to admit that not only did they have a severe problem with sticking accelerator pedals – or sudden unintentional acceleration incidents in their vehicles – but that they didn’t really have a grasp of the scope of the issue or just how they were going to fix it, either.

Toyota plants were idled and dealers were ordered to stop selling the vehicles in question immediately as the severity of the problem blew up into the American consumer consciousness. Rental car companies removed Toyotas from their fleets. Automotive auction houses ordered an immediate cessation of all activities involving the affected Toyota models. And the media of all stripes went absolutely crazy.

After all, this just wasn’t another auto company recall - no, it was the end of everything great and wonderfully righteous about a brand that had basically enjoyed a free pass with consumers and the media for years.

Don’t forget that as part of Toyota’s orchestrated image offensive its U.S. marketing and Public Relations arms had purposely gone after something that no import automaker had ever attempted to do – or even thought about doing for that matter – and that was to capture the hearts and minds of the American consumer public and convince them that Toyota was indeed an American company, by any measure.

Toyota absolutely believed that they could become part of the American fabric, and they were hell-bent on doing so.

Toyota sponsored everything from local ball teams to NCAA football, PGA Golf, Major League Baseball and NFL telecasts. As a matter of fact wherever there was a quintessentially American sporting event going on you could bet that Toyota was present and accounted for. But Toyota’s calculated largesse didn’t stop there. The company also promoted high-visibility educational scholarships and charitable initiatives, while its exceedingly slick lobbying efforts laid waste to any sense of objectivity left in the halls of Congress, and particularly in the states in which they built plants.

And its jolly green, Prius-driven, holier-than-thou persona as the Greenest Entity on Earth was just the icing on its proverbially self-righteous cake, as legions of consumers and legislators bought into the fact that that not only was Toyota an American company, it was, in fact, America’s Car Company in every possible way. (Except, of course, when it pertained to where Toyota’s profits went at the end of the day. Ah, those niggling little details.)

But now, with last week’s massive recall and the burgeoning fallout from it, Toyota has become something it had so desperately wanted to avoid over the last 35 years: just another car company.

Don’t believe it? Up until last week Toyota had managed to stay above the fray by operating as if it was in another solar system, one not subject to the vagaries of the business or such sordid, untidy, image-killing episodes as the kinds of recalls that other auto manufacturers had to deal with. Toyota believed – and had managed to convince a great number of others too – that it was immune from such nonsense. That it really was above all the rest.

But last week changed all of that.

In this media-intensive frenzy that we all live in today - fueled by the Internet and exponentially multiplied by the new social media outlets – Toyota’s one-word alter ego – “quality” – was eradicated. I was going to say it became something else, but what has really happened is that there’s now a void, as if the one-word descriptor that used to define Toyota has blown away with the prevailing media-driven firestorm.

This Toyota debacle isn’t just another car company recall, because the “Toyota Way” that used to perfectly encapsulate the mindset behind Toyota’s success has now become “Toyota Has Lost Its Way.” And other than the usual assortment of company apologies and platitudes, the company doesn’t have the first clue as to how it will get its mojo back.

A few years ago, when Toyota management embarked on its now disastrous (and now quaintly ludicrous) quest to become the world’s largest automaker, finally dethroning GM from the top spot, little did anyone know that - consumed by its mission - it would walk away from everything it had stood for up until that point in time.

The slow but ploddingly sure Toyota method of incremental sales increases year-over-year followed by a correspondingly gradual increase in capacity - while accounting for its usual high quality standards - gave way to a frenzy of plant building and a complete abdication of what it once stood for when it came to quality.

The Toyota implosion marks a definitive shift in the American automotive landscape. After dominating the hearts and minds of the American consumer public for the better part of three decades, we are now witnessing the end of Toyota’s reign over this market.

With Toyota unable to avoid the kind of national and now international scrutiny - and notoriety - that has humbled lesser companies, we will see Toyota eventually fall back from the top tier in this market, eclipsed by a host of savvy competitors led by a dramatically rejuvenated Ford and an increasingly aggressive Hyundai.

It took 35 years of intense focus for Toyota to get to the top of the industry in this market and around the world, but in just one week Toyota’s masterfully calculated image and hallowed reputation is now in tatters, decimated by a swirling maelstrom of its own hubris and unbridled greed.

It has been a devastatingly painful lesson for Toyota.

And it will be a worthwhile case study for the rest of this industry too - as in how even the best can get caught up in their own delusions and lose focus - for decades to come.

That’s all I got for this week.

See another live episode of "Autoline After Hours" hosted by Autoline Detroit's John McElroy, with Peter De Lorenzo and friends this Thursday evening, at 7:00PM EDT at www.autolinedetroit.tv.

By the way, if you'd like to subscribe to the Autoline After Hours podcasts, click on the following links:

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A disastrous move for General Motors.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

(Posted 1/25, 6:00PM) Detroit. The news that “Big Ed” Whitacre would shed his “interim” title and become GM’s new CEO was no surprise, or at least it shouldn’t have been for those in this town and this business who had been paying attention.

It was clear to me from the get-go that GM’s Board wasn’t exactly beating the bushes to find the “right” person for the job. Yes, GM’s recruiter contacted several potential candidates, but there was no real effort to go after the kind of game-changer that the company so desperately needed.  After all, there’s only one Alan Mulally walking around, and quickly realizing that they couldn’t duplicate his perfect combination of outstanding leadership ability and solid, engineering-based credentials – or lure him away from Ford – the search became internally-focused, as in, “Why don’t we just give ‘Big Ed’ a shot?”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - don’t allow yourself to be confused or fooled by “Big Ed” Whitacre, because if you’re looking for something substantive beneath the veneer of his “aw, shucks” demeanor and carefully managed “I’m just a nice guy trying to help this country out” earnestness - the kind of something that would warrant the CEO-level credibility and gravitas he instantly expects to be anointed with in this business – well, you’re going to be searching for a long, long time, because there’s simply no “there” there.

If running a car company hinged on being approachable and saying all of the right things, then just about anyone could do it. And if that truly was the extent of the credentials needed, then “Big Ed” would do just fine.

Oh, if it were that easy.

But when you have a company that was once one of the icons of America’s industrial fabric, one that has subsequently been forced - embarrassed and humiliated - into bankruptcy and is in the midst of clawing and scraping its way back to respectability and credibility, being approachable and a nice guy counts for exactly nothing and is the very last thing GM needs.

Carefully scroll through Whitacre’s tenure at AT&T, and it won’t take much to discover that he accomplished little. Sure, he went on an acquisition spree – “it’s all about scale and scope” as he used to say when acquiring baby bells and putting them together to build the “new” AT&T, but the net-net of all of his business meanderings was a company that delivered a very mediocre financial performance. (And mediocrity was indeed bliss in this case as Whitacre walked away from AT&T with an exit package worth around $160 million.)

Not that Whitacre’s career gives him the least bit of leg up on understanding anything about the automobile business, or GM’s place in it for that matter. And any analysts out there who are suggesting that there are similarities between Whitacre and Alan Mulally - because of Whitacre’s “outsider” credentials - and that he is exactly the kind of guy GM needs right now are simply delusional.

The differences between Mulally - an engineer who was intimately involved in the intricacies of leading a multifaceted team in the mass production of highly complex machines at Boeing - and Whitacre - a corporate bureaucrat enamored with the “art of the deal” - are so pronounced that any comparisons are simply misguided and wildly inappropriate.

Combine that with the fact that Whitacre is an arrogant know-it-all who has a difficult time listening and who doesn’t cotton to being corrected when wrong, and you have a recipe for disaster. After all, it is one thing for a Bob Lutz to give-off more than a hint of arrogance – because he’s probably forgotten more than the up-and-coming executives of the “new guard” will ever accumulate in their lifetimes – but for “Big Ed” to harbor those kinds of tendencies? Not Good.

GM’s present situation cries out for a true leader. Preferably an industry veteran who has - if not direct experience in the business of designing, engineering, and building cars and trucks – a background in heavy industry. Someone who has been directly involved in the business of manufacturing real, substantive things. Not air. And not “deals.” But making products that actually contribute to this country’s manufacturing base.

This leader has to eat, sleep and breathe the nuances of the business and understand where GM once was, how far it has fallen, and what’s needed in order to get it back on track.

And this leader would do well to display a take-no-prisoners attitude and a willingness to do anything and everything in order to slap GM out of its corporate slumber, blow-up all of the hoary constituencies, pull the perennially and notoriously weak marketing function up by its lapels, and finally force the rest of the organization to be worthy of representing the growing number of excellent products the company is bringing to market.

“Big Ed” Whitacre isn’t the guy. Not even close, in fact. Armed without an innate understanding of this business - or even the faintest of notions as to what it’s all about - Whitacre’s “go along to get along” life up until now as a corporate bureaucrat and deal maker is simply irrelevant to the task at hand.

“Big Ed” Whitacre is simply the wrong guy, at the wrong time at the wrong company. The True Believers at GM deserved better. The American taxpayers deserved better. And this business deserved better.

That’s all I got.

See another live episode of "Autoline After Hours" hosted by Autoline Detroit's John McElroy, with Peter De Lorenzo and friends this Thursday evening, at 7:00PM EDT at www.autolinedetroit.tv.

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Three Troubled Brands: Shocks Linger in the Aftermath of the Detroit Auto Show.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

Detroit. Having had time to reflect on what went on at Cobo Hall last week, it’s clear to me that some brands are in more trouble than even they might think. It was stunning to me that three brands in particular, Honda, Toyota and BMW, are reeling, so much so that their swoon - and the ascendance of certain rivals - could dramatically alter the North American automotive market permanently.

Japan Inc.’s star automakers - the same two car companies that consumed vast swaths of the U.S. market virtually unimpeded over the last three decades – are now struggling, and it’s almost hard to fathom just how quickly they’ve lost their way.

In Toyota’s case, their relentless obsession to be the biggest, baddest car company on the planet has cost them dearly. Too many plants were built, which led to the company having too much capacity on hand, and in the process of doing that they took their collective eyes off of the ball, which led to an undeniable slip in quality, heretofore their Holy Grail, and the principle raison d’etre for the company. And remember, all of this was undertaken in the quest to unseat General Motors as the world’s biggest automaker. Sounds wildly misguided and painfully irrelevant right about now, doesn’t it?

But there’s more to Toyota’s slide than the above-mentioned laundry list of reasons. The fact of the matter is that the company that thrived on being the quiet but strong and formidable No. 2 absolutely sucks at being No. 1. They’re so bad at it in fact that they’ve completely lost their mojo.

In the old days Toyota could get by with their blandtastic transportation devices because they smugly knew that their customers would go along to get along with that style of detached motoring, because their customers also knew that nothing went wrong with their vehicles, ever. And that was plenty good enough.

Now in the midst of a relentless series of recalls, that ol’ Toyota quality magic has been blown to smithereens, and their reputation is in tatters. And amazingly enough consumers have quickly gotten the message that there are other automakers out there delivering the kind of quality numbers that used to be exclusively associated with Toyota.

And now that this has happened, Toyota has begun questioning everything they do with the kind of public hand-wringing that is painful to watch, because it’s clear they don’t really get it, no matter how well-intentioned their public self-flagellation is.

Do they make bland vehicles? Absolutely. And that didn’t used to be a problem. But in today’s cutthroat market it is a huge problem for Toyota because to the consumer if the quality is comparable, then all things being equal they will naturally gravitate toward style and appealing design, and Toyota is nowhere when it comes to those factors. As in not even close.

But while Toyota is doing its corporate navel-gazing and trying to figure out how to become more “hip” in a world that has been basically turned upside down on top of them, the new Korean Hyundai-Kia juggernaut is threatening to blow right by them. The Koreans have discovered that great design and excellent driving dynamics are just as essential to success as quality and all-encompassing warranties, and they’re going to take that all the way to the bank with ever-increasing levels of market share and ever-growing conquest sales right out of Toyota’s - and Honda’s - hide.

And it’s not going to be pretty for Toyota, because now more than ever this business doesn’t take too kindly to car companies trying to play catch-up.

The FT-CH Concept that Toyota unveiled at Cobo Hall was really good, as I mentioned last week. But the deeper issues for Toyota are the kind that can’t be righted overnight. How does a company founded on the glories of assembly quality reinvent itself to be more? How does a company grown set in its ways take the road never traveled before and come out the other side more adventurous and bold? How does a company fundamentally opposed to risk-taking hang their collective asses out in the breeze and aspire to greatness, on all levels?

And what about Honda? Here is a company that was founded on risk-taking and pushing the envelope by a gifted engineer who believed in the enduring strengths of solid, reliable and good performing engines. It wasn’t the Honda Quality Company, or the Honda Transportation Company, it was the Honda Motor Company, a bold, competitive enterprise that reveled in innovation and proved its competence and technical acumen on racetracks the world over.

This was the Japanese automobile company that was crawling with enthusiasts - and the absolute antithesis of what Toyota stood for - the one that marched to a different drummer and awed its competitors and buyers alike with a series of vehicles that bristled with creativity, vision and an unbridled sense of how it was supposed to be.

But that wasn’t the car company on display at Cobo Hall last week. No, the Honda I witnessed at the Detroit Auto Show was barely recognizable, a lurid mash-up of reduced expectations, abominable design, paunchy, overweight and miserable excuses for “new” (the horrendous Honda Crosstour and Acura ZDX being egregious examples No. 1 & 2), the stunningly bad (the entire Acura lineup is a living and breathing class on how not to design cars), and a flat-out blown opportunity, the frighteningly mediocre and wildly underwhelming Honda CR-Z.

What happened? How can a car company with such a glorious history and pedigree drive it off into a ditch so convincingly? How can a company that was so out front of everyone else in terms of engineering-in responsiveness and “fun-to-drive” into their vehicles end-up with a product lineup that’s so relentlessly bland and un-Honda-like that it’s just flat-out shocking?

We all saw this coming, of course. When the brilliantly balanced and exquisitely executed S2000 sports car was put out to pasture with no replacement you just knew that there was an ill-wind blowing at Honda headquarters. In the “old” days that never would have been allowed to happen, and to me it signaled a fundamental lack of understanding, or worse, a growing chorus of “it doesn’t matter” from a car company that should damn well know better.

There are some signs of life at Honda with the recent regime change, but then again they’re going to have to prove to me – and to its legions of fans out there in Consumer Land – that they not only get it, but that they’re going to get back to what they do best, and that is to build some of the best and most desirable mainstream cars available in the world.

Until that time I guess we’re stuck with exactly one vehicle from Honda – the Fit – that at least reminds us somewhat of what they’re capable of doing. Not Good.

And then there’s BMW. Speaking of driving it off into a ditch, BMW is now two car companies diametrically opposed to each other. There’s the “old” BMW that graces us with the quintessential all-around enthusiast machine - the magnificent 3 Series - and, at least some of their “M” machines (only a few of which can be considered desirable), and then there’s the rest of the company, or, as I like to call it, “BMW Heavy” which specializes in overdone, overwrought land cruisers (X6, 5GT and other assorted crossover-SUVs) that are about as far away as you can get from the concept of the Ultimate Driving Machine.

In BMW’s case I don’t have to ask what happened. You could see this coming ten years ago, when I started this publication. It was right around then that the German automakers led by Mercedes and BMW launched a technological arms race that operated under the assumption that the more technology, the better, with vehicle mass and common sense be damned.

Combine that attitude with the fact that those two automakers felt compelled to chase every possible niche – both real and imagined – on the odd chance that they might actually get a leg up on their rival somehow, and the scenario grew exponentially. And then add in a huge dollop of hubris for good measure, oh, and then let the Bangle-led design era trundle along unfettered until it ran completely amuck and you have a recipe for complete disaster.

Now, we have “BMW Heavy” a purveyor of 5,000+ lb. people movers that have little rhyme or reason in the overall scheme of things. Add in “M” versions of some of those same vehicles, and you increase the hurl factor by about a 100.

Walking around the BMW display at Cobo was a little frightening, no, make that a lot frightening. All the accoutrements were there, the sleek display with cool graphics - the overall look and feel of a BMW display that you’d expect to see at an auto show - but it was as if a cruel plot had been unleashed overnight and the BMW vehicles – at least the vehicles you’d expect from BMW – were nowhere to be found, instead replaced by a posse of lumbering behemoths that could exist quite nicely as the “Official Vehicles of America’s Biggest Loser.”

It was a real eye-opener, to say the least.

In the Aftermath of the Detroit Auto Show what struck me the most was that three brands – BMW, Honda and Toyota – brands that had formerly had their proverbial shit together, had all gotten completely off track, displaying in varying degrees an ugly combination of delusional and wrong-headed thinking and utter cluelessness that left me with the stark realization that they had completely forgotten what they stood for, and had no idea what to do or where to go next..

Oh, what a world, what a world, as the Wicked Witch of the West so eloquently put it.

That’s all I got.

See another live episode of "Autoline After Hours" hosted by Autoline Detroit's John McElroy, with Peter De Lorenzo and friends this Thursday evening, at 7:00PM EDT at www.autolinedetroit.tv.

By the way, if you'd like to subscribe to the Autoline After Hours podcasts, click on the following links:

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Asleep at the Wheel: Welcome to the 2010 North American International Library Convention, er, Auto Show…

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

Detroit. Shhhhhhhh. There was an auto show down at Cobo Hall this week - at least I think there was. Although this one was quiet. Real quiet.  So quiet in fact that it was as if the organizers pumped something “soothing” through the ventilation system, which caused everyone to walk around in a zombie-like state of semi-agreeable bliss.

I was hoping to be wowed, or outraged at least – well, there was a little bit of that – but the net-net of the 2010 Detroit Auto Show was that the whole thing left me with an overwhelming sense of being asleep at the wheel (except that in my nightmare Nancy Pelosi was riding shotgun and yelling at me to wake up, and slow down).

Without further ado then, pack your pillows and fuzzy slippers, and let’s go for a semi-conscious lap around the Quietest Auto Show in Recent Memory. (btw, if you want to see photos from the show, check out  http://editorial.autos.msn.com/autoshow/detroit?icid=autos_0110084&GT1=22014 because we didn’t take any)

Darn tootin’ we’re back, at least Big Ed says we are. The car company formerly known as GM was hell-bent on letting everyone know – from Nancy and her minions to the assembled hordes in the media – that they were back, with renewed energy, renewed focus, renewed products and a revitalized spirit. And except for something called the Acadia Denali - which was nothing more than an Acadia crossover with Denali design cues and a complete yawner - for the most part, they succeeded.

The Chevrolet Aveo RS concept and the GMC Granite concept - which are both derived from GM’s Gamma architecture - were nicely rendered and executed and should prove to be formidable competitors to the Ford Focus and its derivatives, at least from the design perspective. The next-generation Aveo is such a dramatic departure from the current car, in fact, that it deserves a new name. The Granite - which is said to be 95 percent consistent with the production exterior shape and detailing - is an interesting “urban utility” vehicle in GMC’s words, but then again it re-opens that whole can of worms all over again, as in, what does GMC really stand for? Something tells me that question is a “developing situation” depending on the day and who you’re talking to. I get the fact that GMC is “premium” in whatever they do, but how long before the “new” GM starts running into itself in the market like the “old” GM did on a regular basis? I’m betting all of five minutes...

In other GM news the Buick Regal GS is too good of a sport package not to be ready at intro (doubtful), and of course the Cadillac CTS Coupe and CTS-V Coupe are simply first-rate entries into this market, with the sensational CTS-V being the production show-stopper in Detroit.

But even bigger headlines went to the beautiful Cadillac XTS Platinum concept, which will replace two entries in the Cadillac lineup - the long-in-the-tooth STS and DTS sedans – when it makes its showroom debut two-and-one-half years from now. The XTS is easily more elegant than the new A8 from Audi and the 7 Series from BMW in the flesh, and its interior is equal to if not better than any mainstream premium luxury car in the world today. It’s that good. GM is talking about a hybrid V6 all-wheel-drive powertrain for the XTS, but it doesn’t matter, because for the first time in a long time a beautiful full-size Cadillac is on the horizon. And that’s a very good thing.

(GM)

The Cluelessness lingers, however. But as exciting as GM’s products are there’s no getting around the fact that their design, engineering and product execution capabilities are so way out in front of the company’s ability to actually market what they have that GM will continue to flail and flounder about in search of a clue. And unless and until they figure out how to break through this perpetual marketing conundrum they will continue to spin their wheels in this market, no matter how glossy and high-falutin’ Big Ed’s pronouncements get.

Those specks fading in Ford’s rearview mirror? It just might be you. To say that Ford had a big Detroit Auto Show is the understatement of this New Year. Kicking off the show with the North American Car (Ford Fusion Hybrid) and Truck (Ford Transit Connect) of the Year, Ford then proceeded to make news with its production cars that will be rolling out over the next year. The 2011 Mustang has two exciting new engine choices (which we covered last week – ed.), the excellent Fiesta finally hits this market for real this summer, the freshened Lincoln MKX crossover turned up the wick even further and the all new global Focus – due here fifteen months from now - made its formal debut to the world’s automotive media. Even better news for Ford to me was the fact that the mood of the Ford executives at the show was upbeat but without any trace of smugness or complacency. Alan Mulally has his troops focused on the job at hand, and as long as they stay that way - and realize that they still have a long, long way to go - Ford is going to be a formidable competitor for years to come.

Uh, except there’s that one “speck” that’s not fading, now that you mention it. Speaking of production car heroics, the Hyundai display was fraught with scary stuff if you were a competitor. The new Sonata is really good, and the new premium luxury Equus sedan is more than for real, it’s clearly a signal that this Korean manufacturer is in relentless pursuit of greatness (well, except for that hokey hood ornament, however). But just in case you’re thinkin’ Hyundai is all that with no residual traces of bumbling stupidity leftover from the “dark” years, they went ahead and unveiled something called the Blue-Will Plug-in Hybrid Concept, a design train wreck of such monumental proportions that it suggests that Hyundai is perfectly capable of coming unglued at a moment’s notice. The fact that Hyundai willingly unloaded this atrocity in Detroit gives one pause, to say the least. So we’ll continue to file Hyundai under the “coming brand” category, certainly breathing down the necks of Toyota, Honda, Ford and VW, but a work in progress nonetheless.

From the “We Admittedly Sucked - Big-Time - But We’re Back On Our Game Now So Watch Out” File. Toyota had such a bad year in 2009 that the entire company threatened to implode under the weight of an embarrassing sequence of screw-ups, meltdowns and flat-out stupidities that sacked the previous regime and forced the company to look inward for the first time, discovering that they were indeed fallible in the process. Going from being invincible to vulnerable in a matter of months, Toyota threatened to squander decades of accumulated good will with a lethal combination of inactions and inappropriate reactions that inevitably went the wrong way. But the FT-CH Concept – a fluorescent green hybrid sports coupe with four doors – reminded everyone that Toyota isn’t going anywhere and that when they wanted to they could still crank it up with the best of ‘em. The fact that the FT-CH debuted at the same show where Honda took the wraps off of its production CR-Z was not lost on anyone either. Toyota was short on details about the FT-CH, but it was a very impressive effort from the soul-searching Japanese giant.

It used to be a pretty cool car company, but then things got weird, Part I. Speaking of Honda, they finally took the wraps off their production CR-Z Hybrid sports coupe to the sound of one hand clapping. Although quite interesting from the middle of the roof back, it was as if the Honda designers put the front end through a vanilla neutralizer to meet crash standards and utterly destroyed the face of the original concept - which was pretty damn good by the way - to the point that the thing was unrecognizable. I’ve got one simple question for Honda: Why? Or better yet, WTF? Then you stroll around the Honda and Acura stands and see the absolute horror show of egregious design miscues, missteps and flat-out mistakes (Crosstour, ZDX), there’s no need to ask “why?” anymore. The people involved need to be run out of town on a rail and then Honda needs to start over. It’s that simple. Memo to Honda: Shiny Happy Smiley efficiency isn’t nearly enough. You better get your shit together, or it’s going to be Toyota, Ford, Hyundai and VW leading the charge over the next decade, and you’re going to end up being an also-ran, and an after thought.

The short story on Chrysler at the Detroit Auto Show? Three Words: A frickin’ disaster. About six weeks ago the George P. Johnson Company – a veteran industry display company, er “experience marketing” company – got the call from the folks in Auburn Hills and the message was “help.” Chrysler had nothing planned of any consequence for Cobo Hall and they needed to do something, like quick. So what they came up with for Chrysler on short notice allowed the car company to be present and accounted for in Detroit, and that’s about it. Chrysler showed some embarrassing new option packages on a couple of Jeep models and crossovers (ahem, the Dodge Nitro “Detonator”???) and even threw some Chrysler design cues on a Lancia hatchback as if to say “this is kinda-sorta what we’re thinkin’ if you get our drift.” But other than that - and a huge Ram HD truck display - there was absolutely zero to it. Oh, they managed to squeeze a Ferrari, a couple of Fiat 500s and a Maserati into the display too (more on that in this week’s “On The Table”), but really, why bother?

It used to be a pretty cool car company, but then things got weird, Part II. Not to be outdone in the schlock department, BMW brought the 5 Series GT to Cobo Hall, and it was even worse in person than I expected. How BMW managed to arrive at the notion that a 5,000-lb. “luxury” hatchback was a good idea has been well-documented, but it’s still beyond me. When you operate under the guiding principle of “we know what’s best for people and they will not only get used to it but they will like it” it’s easy to see how these guys run amuck. Combine that with the fact that they are absolutely incapable of walking away from a niche – both real and imagined – if they think they can make a couple of bucks on it and you end up with an outrage called the 5 Series GT. That this unmitigated design disaster will contribute immeasurably to the overall degradation of the original essence of BMW matters not one iota to the powers that be at BMW, because their arrogance is blindingly all-encompassing, and they truly believe that their actions will have no undue consequences other than to add more glory and more kudos and more money to the corporate coffers at the end of the day. How bad is the 5 Series GT? It’s so bad that it starts to make the X6 look acceptable. Oh the horror, the horror…

Not only is it a very cool car company, it’s getting cooler by the minute. To say that Audi is dialed in is to state the obvious. This car company is so switched on right now that it’s like they’re operating in a different dimension of excellence. Ford may be on a roll, but they can’t even begin to pretend to be in Audi’s solar system. Excellence was everywhere you looked in the Audi display, from the exquisite R8 Spyder to the S5 Coupe all the way to the new A8 sedan. But the stunner was the eTron concept with its taut muscular surfaces and overall compact dimensions. The eTron - glistening in its silvery blue metallic – is the second-generation of Audi’s full-electric vehicle exploration, and it provided the exclamation point to the Audi display. (One cautionary note about Audi? Though impressive on the inside the new A8 is decidedly unimpressive on the outside - especially when compared to the Cadillac XTS – which just goes to show you that there’s a very fine line between being all-world and just merely excellent.)

The rest of the rest. VW unveiled the painfully ordinary New Compact Coupe Hybrid Concept, which was supposed to demonstrate that they have their green act together, too, along with everybody else. Except that all it demonstrated to me was that VW designers really liked the previous generation Honda Civic, a lot. The “NCC” was a complete snoozer. MINI showed its Beachcomber Concept, which clearly signaled the shape and overall dimensions of its upcoming crossover. We couldn’t muster the energy to give a shit about it, but whatever. And that goes for the new Subaru Forester too. The new Jaguar XJ sedan is pretty damn cool despite that painfully weird C-pillar, but just order yours in black and it won’t matter. The Lotus Evora was better in-person than in the pictures, but almost $80,000? Uh, you’ve got to be kidding. The Bentley Mulsanne sedan was simply gorgeous (see more on it in “On The Table” – ed.). And Mercedes-Benz? The fact that this once superstar German auto company ends up in our “rest of the rest” section says it all. The new E-Class cabrio was just okay, the Maybach Zeppelin had all the charm of a Brinks truck (actually a Brinks truck is more handsome from certain angles), the SLS supercar is flat-out ugly – and from multiple angles too - and the rest of the Mercedes display was eminently forgettable (okay, the CL Coupes are good, but that’s it). It used to be that BMW and Mercedes made up the German luxury car hierarchy with Audi perennially mired in third position. Now it’s Audi… and everybody else.

And last but not least, our Autoextremist Awards for the 2010 Detroit Auto Show…

The Much Ado About Absolutely Nothing Award: The much ballyhooed “Electric Avenue” display was a monumental joke. I predict you’ll be able to shoot a gun off there during the entire run of public days at the show and never hit a soul. It might have sounded like a good idea for the politicos in Washington, but it’s a monumental waste of time and space.

The Most Beautiful Production Car: The 2011 Cadillac CTS-V Coupe (along with its less powerful sibling, the CTS Coupe) is a glittering reminder of how compelling and emotionally appealing great automotive design can be. These cars will be highly regarded and sought after for years to come.

The Most Significant Production Car: Actually, cars in this case. With visionary design presence, athletic driving dynamics, remarkable efficiency and connectivity – while placing the emphasis on actually being fun-to-drive, yeah, now there’s a concept – the Ford Fiesta and Ford Focus represent nothing less than the reinvention of the mainstream American automobile.

The Most Beautiful Alternative Propulsion Concept: The Audi eTron is simply superb from every angle. Taut, muscular, yet surprisingly compact, the eTron is convincing evidence that in order to draw people into the future of alternative automotive transportation, you’ll still have to go through their hearts and minds to get them there.

The Autoextremist Best in Show: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but Ed Welburn’s troops at GM Design have been on a roll for several years now, and they’ve done it yet again with the sensational Cadillac XTS Platinum Concept. Wonderfully proportioned and craftily rendered, the surface detailing alone on this machine is nothing short of a clinic on how it’s done. Combine that with an interior design and execution that’s simply second to none, and the XTS Platinum has everything a car worthy of “best in show” accolades must have from where we sit. The Cadillac XTS Platinum not only has a majestic presence, it’s clearly the direct spiritual successor to the magnificent Sixteen concept from several years ago. The XTS Platinum will allow Cadillac to take its rightful place again as the ultimate expression of American luxury, and the new Standard of the World.

Thanks for listening.

(Photos courtesy of GM)

See another live episode of "Autoline After Hours" hosted by Autoline Detroit's John McElroy, with Peter De Lorenzo and friends this Thursday evening, at 7:00PM EDT at www.autolinedetroit.tv.

By the way, if you'd like to subscribe to the Autoline After Hours podcasts, click on the following links:

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