Posts By: Satish Kondapavulur
If you’ve ever read a book on the automotive industry, you’ll note that many of them provide you with narratives behind the scenes of some of the industry’s most important moments. Once Upon a Car tells of the US government’s decision to bail out General Motors and Chrysler in 2008 and the steps taken by those companies to rebuild themselves. Go Like Hell covers the challenges faced by the Ford Motor Company in its quest to beat Ferrari at the 24 Hours of LeMans, describing how $1 billion could be spent on a racing program in the 1960s. Though these books provide the readers with some interesting subjects to think about, only a few of the automotive industry books that document the background behind important corporate decisions will actually make their audience laugh.
Society likes stories about failure. Who knows how many people have bought books about the fall of financial institutions, tech companies, sports teams, organized crime families, and politicians? People interested in the automotive industry are no exception when it comes to stories of failure. Bob Lutz never wastes any time discussing the sales flop that was the Pontiac Aztek. A movie was made about the failure of the Tucker Car Corporation. And society as a whole loves to tell jokes about the Yugo, widely thought of as among the worst cars of recent history.
If you’ve been around the automotive journalism long enough (and by long enough, I mean like three months in total), you’ll begin to realize that a lot of press vehicles you drive aren’t indicative of what most people actually buy. Most test vehicles have five figures worth of options, with features that at most, an […]
When I went to the NADA Convention and Expo last week, the opening general session was something I didn’t want to miss, largely since Jeb Bush, brother of George W. Bush, son of George H.W. Bush, and a former governor of Florida, was giving the keynote address. Mainstream news outlets interpreted his speech in front of NADA as a signal that he was possibly planning a run for president. Consequently, I wanted to hear his (partial-politicking? semi-stump? kind of-campaign?) speech and the subjects it would concentrate on. However, I would have to sit through a lot more before I learned that Jeb Bush was “seriously considering the possibility of running.”
You never know what car you’re going to get at the rental counter. Whether you’re at an airport in Anchorage, a Milwaukee suburb, or in Tahiti, you won’t know how you’ll get from Point A to Point B, or if you’ve ever vacationed in Tahiti, Point A to Point A. It could better than your […]
Last week, I snagged a press pass to the 2015 National Automobile Dealers Association Convention and Expo in San Francisco. That’s right, San Francisco, one of the least car-friendly places in the country, if not the world. Dealers would have to rely on buses to get to their hotels and a few landmarks. They would have to use public transport to go shopping. And they would have to contend with an area of the country trying to “disrupt” their business model with the likes of Tred and Tesla, both of whom didn’t have exhibits at the event.
Over the past weekend, you’ve probably seen the summaries of press releases interspersed with some topical discussion reports of an MTV study on millennials’ attitudes towards cars on outlets from USA Today to Jalopnik to even MTV’s own website. Well, I was present at the press conference where MTV executives presented the results and was left with much more to write about, from how the survey was conducted to the recommendations that were presented to both manufacturers and dealers about how to court millennial customers.
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