Update: To see all of TTAC’s related articles on the subject of Toyota gas pedals, go here:

In yesterday’s post , we offered a bounty for anyone to open up both the CTS (bottom) and Denso (top) Toyota gas pedal assemblies. No one took us up, and no one anywhere else has done it, so we took it upon ourselves . Here they are, both e-pedal assemblies taken apart and examined, in our quest to understand if and what the significant differences are, and how Toyota’s possible “shim” fix would work.  On initial observation, it appears that the CTS may be perceived as being the more solidly engineered/built unit, in that the pedal pivots on a traditional and solid steel axle whose bearings are brass or bronze sleeves. The Denso’s whole pivot and bearing surfaces are relatively flimsy-feeling plastic. But that can be deceptive, and we’re not qualified to judge properly if it is indeed inferior or superior.  So the question that goes beyond the analysis of these e-pedals is this: are these units really the full source of the problem, or are they scape goats for an electronics and/or software glitch? Pictures and tear down examination and analysis follows:

Update #2: It’s clear to me now that the CTS unit I took apart already had the side cover plates (sheet metal) removed before I examined it. One can see where they fit, and are obviously intended to protect the exposed axle pivot and bushing seen above and below:

(Update #3: Also see our follow-up stories on Toyota’s fix and our replication of the fix and its results)

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The ongoing kerfluffle over Toyota’s recall of over 2m vehicles for a gas pedal defect which (allegedly) caused unintended acceleration has caught much of the automotive media flat-footed. How could it be, many have wondered, that the automaker most associated in the US market with the concept of quality has slipped so badly? As TTAC’s Steve Lang recently discussed, Toyota has been on a decontenting binge since the mid-to-late-1990s, putting profit above the quality obsession that had defined its operations up to that point. As a result, the current generation of decontented Toyotas and accompanying quality issues and recalls can be seen as the culmination of a long-term trend. But why did that transition take place? Though it’s easy to blame greed and mismanagement for the decline in Toyota’s quality, the decline in standards was actually a natural progression of Toyota’s constantly-evolving, efficiency-obsessed production system.

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There has been a lot of, well, criticism, of Honda on these pages lately, including allegations that Honda had lost it. So far, more that fifty of the Best & Brightest offered advice on how to save the company from certain annihilation.

Today’s Nikkei says “domo arigato gozaimashita” for all the support, and runs a different story: “Honda Motor Co. has emerged from the economic turmoil at the head of the pack, thanks in good part to a nimble production network that can meet the latest consumer preferences at relatively low cost.” Here is why. Read More >

Car guys know exactly what’s wrong with GM: car guys like them aren’t running the show. Otherwise, every Chevrolet, GMC, Buick, and Cadillac would look “great” (no need to be more specific) and dust the competition. Hence Bill Ford’s decision to hire Alan Mulally to take over as CEO came as a real disappointment. Obviously, he would have done better hiring anyone who truly knows and loves cars better than a Lexus-driving Boeing executive.
Sorry, CarNut4CEO. It just wasn’t so in Ford’s case. And it’s just not so in GM’s case, either.
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Think everything will be hunky-dory by, well, 2012? (Watch the  movie.) Fitch Ratings thinks the U.S. auto industry won’t get back on its feet anytime soon. Worse, the industry may be caught in an “airline-style” cycle of repetitive bankruptcies because of weak sales and a glut of production capacity. It is unusual for a U.S. airline (and many elsewhere) to not be in bankruptcy or not have been at some point.

Amongst the rating agencies, Fitch is the only halfway good one. They were the lone voice that had warned against the dangers of the collateralized debt obligations that brought the world to the brink of disaster.

In a report cited by Reuters, Fitch says that high fixed costs, the lengthy periods required to develop new products and chronic overcapacity will leave the industry “littered with failures—plants, product lines, brands and companies.”
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Not long after Fortune’s long time auto writer Alex Taylor III finished his apology to Ford he went on to write a love letter to Sergio Marchionne. Taylor starts with parallels to Ghosn’s myth making success at Nissan, then ups the ante: “The other day in Auburn Hills, Mich., Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne took a page out of the Ghosn playbook — and then improved upon it.” The impetus for Taylor’s piece was the legendary Power Point Rumble in the Detroit Jungle TTAC’s Edward Niedermeyer reported on with, um, slightly less enthusiasm last week .

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On Tuesday, twenty years after the fall of the wall that separated the two Germanies, German Chancellor Angela Merkel went to Washington. For the first time since Germany’s Chancellor Adenauer in 1957, the topmost German addressed Congress—to roaring applause.

There was another wall. A wall of silence. Nobody in the US government—owner of General Motors—supposedly had heard a whisper that their most expensive ward of the state had changed their mind, decided to keep Opel, and go home alone. Before the speech, Angela chatted with Barack about high finance and the crock of shit also known as global warming. Not a peep about Opel.
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We’ve seen the signs coming for some time: rumors from Japan, declining car sales at home, advertisments selling cars as “the ultimate mobile device.” And the picture that’s beginning to reveal itself is a challenging one for fans of four-wheeled transport. Young people, once a deep well of enthusiasm and sales growth for the car industry, are no longer as auto-obsessed as they once were. And their vibrant presence in the automotive world does not seem likely to return any time soon, either. How do I know? Because, like an increasing number of people in their twenties, I don’t own a car.

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So exactly how did Ford achieve quality equal to Toyota? Or are their TV ads misleading, as the ads from decades ago which proclaimed “At Ford Quality Is Job One”? This was the question in my mind as I returned to the Sharonville Transmission Plant after exactly 30 years. A long term friend, who did not jump ship in 1979 as I had done, when it looked like Ford was going to self destruct, got me past the guard post for a tour of the plant. Jerry had seen what he called “a compete transformation of Ford Motor Company” during his 37 years. He said I would not recognize the place.

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Your car is made up of thousands of components, manufactured all over the world and assembled in many places by humans and robots. There is simply no such thing as a 100% “domestic” car anywhere in the world. When (not if) artificial barriers are placed on the manufacture, sale and movement of parts and the eventual manufacture, sale and movement of the resulting vehicle, there are two common outcomes. The best-case scenario is you’re going to pay more—effectively stealing from you and everyone in the global economy. Unfortunately, the typical result is that you cannot buy most of the cars made on this planet in your local market.

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Thanks to Uncle Sam’s Cash for Clunkers program, even the weakest of America’s mainstream automakers will live to die another day. Meanwhile, the so-called “mass luxury” brands are hurtin’ for certain. The falling tide of the global economic meltdown has left Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Lexus and Mercedes stranded, flopping around on the metaphorical beach, gasping for the oxygen of financial lubricity. It’s hard to feel sorry for any of them. The upmarket marques marked the last ten years or so by chasing volume sales with “entry level” models that cheapened and weakened their brands. Is it any surprise that the very customers that fueled their expansive profits have abandoned them in droves, as badge snobbery has kept pace with financial security (or lack thereof)? In other words, the fact that these “luxury” brands are “suddenly” in worse trouble than everyone else is their own damn fault.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) highlighted the fact that American luxury car sales fell “almost 21% last year — double the decline in overall car sales — and continue to slide this year.” It’s a bit odd that: tagging the tanking trend with last year’s annual stat and declaring that, in general, sales still suck. A snapshot of the last seven months via Automotive News shows that luxury car sales have gone from bad to hideous—keeping in mind (as we must) that the numbers are relative to last year’s fall from grace.

So far, Audi’s sales are down 18.9 percent. BMW’s are off by 27.6 percent. Cadillac clocks-in with a 45.4 percent tumble. Lexus is 41.9 percent off of last year’s pace. And Mercedes’ cha-chingery dropped by 33.6 percent.

And what of margins? It’s no secret that moving even this ever-declining number of units has required radical price reductions. “Take it or leave it” has become “make me an offer and I won’t refuse” (e.g., my kid’s doc got $25K off a brand new Audi S4). While new car inventories don’t appear disastrously high, turnover has slowed to a trickle. Meanwhile, pre-unloved 2010 models are heading for palatial, tumbleweed-strewn showrooms.

Bottom line: luxury car prices are about as firm about as a bowl of Jello in a Turkish steam bath. And the difference between MSRP and actual money tendered is coming out of the manufacturers’ hides.

Mass luxury automakers have painted themselves into a coroner [sic]. By expanding their model range into the mainstream, they’ve become addicted to volume. Their entire business model—from manufacturing through to the size of their dealer network—depends on moving a large amount of metal. But buyers at the lower, larger end of the spectrum are the first to abandon luxury makes when money’s too tight to mention. Ipso facto.

So what’s a luxury automaker to do? According to the WSJ, “Car companies aren’t taking chances. Some are preparing smaller, cheaper versions of their high-end nameplates. Others are tweaking their messages, emphasizing ‘sustainability’ and fuel economy in a market segment that for years competed on who had the highest horsepower and richest leather.” Yeah, that’s the ticket. When sales crater, accelerate the move downmarket, or sacrifice decades of upscale branding on the altar PC fashion.

To wit: Cadillac still swears it’s going to introduce a sub-CTS model called the ATS. Lexus is pushing ahead with plans to offer a luxury compact based on the hybrid Prius. Despite generating just 335 A3 sales in July, Audi’s introducing a diesel variant, reflecting the German brand’s re-branding as makers of oil import-reducing diesels.

Along the same lines, BMW’s US website leads off with a $4500 “Eco-Credit” (discount?) for their drug-on-the-market 3-Series and X-Series oil burners. “Responsibility” may have “never been so exhilarating,” but with three out of the five videos emphasizing fuel economy, the change in Bimmer’s brand emphasis is obvious. Meanwhile, Mercedes has introduced the sub-ML GLK.

There is an alternative: retrench. Reinvigorate the ailing luxury car brand by returning it to the stratosphere. Pare the number of models, adhere to the core brand promise and build a limited number of best-in-class vehicles. Earn a price premium through excellence and exclusivity, and charge the consumer full whack for the privilege of owning same.

It’s the slowest, most expensive, most painful, least likely, most difficult and most dangerous option. But it would work.

The economy will recover, eventually. Car buyers will be back. Some day, again, still, they’ll be an excellent market for exclusive automobiles. The best cars, the most desirable cars, will generate fabulous margins. Meanwhile, someone should remind these misguided automakers that Lincoln and Jaguar already died for their sins.

I know: BMW was down market before it went up market. Mercedes builds taxis in Europe. Audi’s already moving in the right direction. Lexus didn’t get where it is today by ignoring the value-for-money equation. And Cadillac doesn’t have a clue, really. But all of these brands lost their halo/mojo in the headlong pursuit of profit. They must either begin the long trek back to genuine brand cachet or continue their inexorable slide into mundane mass market mediocrity and correspondingly slim margins.

The thing of it is, as we’ve pointed out before the economy went south, these luxury brands should have never dallied down market in the first place. If they’d stayed small and tightly focused, they could have hunkered down and weathered the storm, ready for the recovery. As it is, there’s no guarantee that any of them will emerge from the current downturn with their brand untainted by the stench of massive discounts and how-low-can-you-go financing. And when it comes to the long term future of any luxury product, branding isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.

While driving the Buick LaCrosse, I asked Line Director Jeanne Merchant a question: what could she tell me about reliability that would persuade me, a satisfied Toyota owner, to jump ship? Merchant gave a pretty good answer, but I was busy trying not to run over traffic cones. In a subsequent phone interview, Merchant said reliability starts early in the process. From design to component testing, from durability tests to audits and feedback, from computer modeling to real world testing, they make sure every part of the car and all its systems are built right and performing to specification. And they take it very, very seriously. “The LaCrosse is very personal to me,” Merchant said. “I’ve worked with it for years. Everybody else involved feels the same way. And the same goes for the other product lines.” Process and passion. Is it enough?

After hanging-out with the front line troops, I believe GM’s employees are fully committed to product excellence. But the product, manufacturing and service providers all depend on GM’s top management for critical support in delivering customer satisfaction and value. They’ve got to have top management support to make the hard decisions to put customer satisfaction and value first—even if it’s going to cost GM some money.

I asked two of the product managers, “Does Bob Lutz help you build better cars?” The first one I asked was taken aback. There was a moment of silence. He swallowed, started to speak, stopped and then, slowly, said, “Y-e-s.” I waited a minute. He didn’t elaborate.

The second manager I asked leaned back in his seat, tipped his head to the side, looked thoughtfully at me for a moment and then said, “Yes and no.” Apparently, there are things the troops want and don’t want in the vehicle. And then there are things top management wants and doesn’t want. Two guesses who wins that debate.

Lutz is just the most visible and outspoken GM executive. But he’s symbolic of GM’s top down management style. CEO Fritz Henderson told us the New GM would put the customer first. But the morning’s events left me with the overwhelming impression that nothing has changed at GM, and nothing is likely to change. The good people at the sharp end must still bend their will to executives; heavy hitters with a tin ear for the advice given by the people who really know how to make great cars.

Did GM Win Me Over?

To get an actual sale from me would be tough. I want a very quiet car with exceptional fuel economy and good interior room at a good price. I want a decade of reliable, trouble-free motoring, because that’s what I have now and it’s worth a lot of money to me to keep it. Dave wants the same things, too.

GM employees were only happy to address these issues. But finding a way to reassure me that GM is on track for Prius-beating answers was not an official part of the days’ events.

Dave is a very focused guy. His benchmark is Hyundai’s 10/100 warranty. He won’t have to worry about his two cars for quite some years after they’re paid off and he likes it that way. He mentioned this requirement to GM people at the track or whenever the opportunity presented itself.

He sat beside me through Lutz’ talk and heard Lutz say, “I get letters telling me, ‘you should offer a 100 thousand mile warranty.’ I tell them, ‘We have a [five year] 100 thousand mile warranty!’” I actually heard Dave snort. Maybe I don’t know Dave as well as I think I do, but I’d bet his decision didn’t take very long. “No 10/100? Well, thanks for the rides. Be seein’ ya.”

GM didn’t win Dave over.

The people I talked to at the Proving Ground made a very favorable impression on me. Most of the cars made a very favorable impression on me. I liked the LaCrosse quite a bit. I liked the Cruze interior very much, and I’m sorry the car couldn’t be driven. In a world without a Prius, I would be the target market for that car. Yes, I’d rate the Malibu “not as good” as the Camry, but it’s still pretty good. There are cars in the GM lineup that appeal to me.

If GM had flown me from the Twin Cities to Detroit at lunchtime, brought me straight to the Proving Ground and walked me right out to the cars, GM would have won. But GM brought me to Detroit twenty-one hours early and exposed me to GM’s top management.

Lutz seemed convinced that five years coverage is as good as 10. He wanted me believe that GM is a victim of a “perception gap”— when we know that GM is actually a victim of its own reputation and many years of failing to put the customer first. The party line is that GM quality is right up there with the leaders, but GM won’t back the cars as though they believe it. Henderson didn’t add anything concrete.

GM failed to provide a compelling reason to believe that GM products will deliver the 10 year reliability that I, and millions of other motorists, expect. They could have shown me some engineering excellence up close and personal. See? This is where we beat the competition. This is the difference between us and them. They didn’t.

The message I received from my junket: GM’s top management doesn’t think they have to deliver the goods on customer satisfaction. They believe I can be manipulated into believing whatever they want me to believe about GM, and that the appearance of caring for the customer is more important than the care the customer actually receives.

GM didn’t win me over, and, frankly, I feel pretty bad about it.

While I was on the phone with Jeanne Merchant and Randy Fox, Randy asked a couple of leading questions. I told them how the story was going to end. I explained my lack of confidence in GM’s top management. I didn’t feel that they would leap on an opportunity to fully resolve—and learn from—a customer satisfaction problem. I asked Merchant what she thought about that.

What’s most painful to me is the feeling that we’ve let the customers down. I’ve been involved in recalls and they’re painful but we do the right thing. I keep pushing until we do the right thing.

No wonder the real journalists drink. You meet some great people on these junkets, but if you pay attention, the story just doesn’t go their way. Maybe GM will call in a crack re-write team. Meanwhile, no sale.

A few weeks ago, I received this from GM Communications: “I’ve noticed some of your comments on our Fastlane blog. We are looking for passionate and influential consumers to participate in an upcoming showcase on August 10, 2010 [sic], in Detroit, MI. Would you be interested in a GM-hosted opportunity like this to learn more about our future vehicles and company?” I was more than a little surprised; my FastLane posts are generally uncomplimentary regarding GM’s products and business decisions. “Do they know we own three Toyotas?” my wife asked. “And we gave a fourth to our daughter, who’s happily driving it at 150 thousand miles?” “I think that’s part of it; they want to know what it will take to win me over.” “They could try building cars that are as reliable as Toyotas.” “I’ve suggested that.” “Don’t you dare bring home a GM car,” she warned.

I asked my long-time Scouting buddy Dave to come along. Dave recently bought his second Hyundai; he’s as pleased as punch with it. He looked at me warily. “They’re not going to expect us to buy a car, are they?” “Oh, no, certainly not. They’re probably interested in what they can do to win you over, though.” “They could offer a ten year, 100 thousand mile warranty, like Hyundai,” Dave suggested. “Until then, no sale.”

We flew to Detroit on August 9th, courtesy of GM. A company rep met us at the airport and whisked us to the GM Heritage Center via Cadillac CTS. This was also my first ride ever in a CTS—possibly my first ride in any Cadillac since I’d driven my grandfather’s ’68 Sedan de Ville back in 1971 or so. I remember taking a girl on a date in the de Ville. When I pulled up in front of her house she actually said, “Oh my, a Cadillac!”

The CTS’ rear seat didn’t have enough legroom. A fairly short writer named Sean Kennedy occupied the passenger seat in front of me. When I asked him to move his seat up, he fumbled around for power-controls on the right of the seat for a few minutes. He eventually discovered the standard, manual lever under the front lip of the seat, and moved his chair forward enough for me to be comfortable.

When I got home, I looked at the Lexus web site; power seats appear to be standard on an ES350. It also looks like they come standard on a Camry XLE. Is manual seat adjustment a problem for Caddy’s supposed BMW beater? The CTS’ rear-seat passengers get cup holders in the flip-down armrest. Dave and I placed a pair of water bottles inside. They kept threatening to fall over and out of the cup holder. Again, no biggie?

The CTS rides smoothly (if illegally) at 80. I guess Cadillac thinks stiff leather is somehow sporting; I prefer soft skins. The CTS roofline was a bit of an issue: I couldn’t see out of the windows without craning my neck (I’m just over 6′3″). The next day, I asked a GM’er who works in interior design about passenger visibility. He acknowledged the tradeoff between ergonomics and style. Anyway, the more important question: would someone say, “Oh, my! A Cadillac!” I’m not so sure.

Heritage

From an architectural point of view, GM Heritage Center is slightly above warehouse grade. But the cars put Dave and me in Car Guy Heaven. The selection seems geared towards the Boomer demographic and just a tad later. The collection showcased a number of GM concept cars, including some of those early fighter-aircraft inspired Firebird concepts—the type of machines I ogled in Popular Science convinced they’d one day hit the road.

Dave and I wandered around, identifying cars from our personal history. “My aunt had one of those. My Dad had one of those.” “I had one of those, it died at 20K miles.” That too.

I located a couple of Cadillacs similar to my grandfather’s ’68, and Oldsmobiles similar to his and my parents’ ’64. We admired the 442s and Goats of various vintages. Yes! A Judge! In orange! Note: I was fourteen when that car was unleashed, and I loved the look. And I’m still buying a Prius when we need a new car. Times have changed, and so have I.

Tweet This

After a time, we ceased wandering and started scarfing. GM had scattered the space with buffet tables. As we refilled our tanks, I tried to get a feel for my fellow junketers.

On the ride over, Kennedy told me he’d tested the CTS-V at GM’s invitation in upstate New York. The Brooklynite claimed to have written for Elle and New York magazines. Aside from Dave and me, our feeding table was populated exclusively by women, who didn’t seem to be “into” cars. The most automotive-engaged of the bunch had recently purchased a CTS, replacing a MINI Cooper. She advised Christine Somebody from GM to “spread some of that CTS mojo to the rest of your cars.”

In fact, we were surrounding by Social Media types: Tweeters and Facebookers charged with spreading the GM message “virally.” I’m no stranger to computers and networks. I’ve worked in Information Technology for quite a long time. I can manage servers, set up a LAN, repair PCs, do anything you like with SQL databases, write useful programs in several different languages, etc. But I don’t bother to keep up with what the kids are doing. So I checked out some of the Twittering that resulted from this event.

None of what I discovered was “Tweeted” by children, but you wouldn’t know it from reading it. Self-editing doesn’t really figure; the group tends to communicate without inhibition, without any idea of sentence structure or coherent composition (call it “puddle of consciousness”). So it’s no surprise that some of the Tweeters in attendance didn’t have a lot of inhibitions about the things they said in person, either.

Social Media may be “hip,” but I doubt it’s as influential as GM and other large corporations believe. The effective lifespan of a Tweet or Facebook entry—should we admit that it contains editorial value—is measured in minutes. The lifetime of information on social media matches the lifetime of fads, not the lifetime of most of the things we need in our lives. And certainly not cars.

Anyway, Tom Pyden welcomed us. I made some illegible notes, something about “Proud Past/Bright Future.” And then it was off to bed.

At breakfast, I met a fellow FastLane commentator: “edvard.” His daily driver is a 14-year-old Toyota Tacoma. Although he likes the idea of the Chevy Volt, I think he’s going to be a tough sell for New GM.

Our first stop: GM’s Design Center, close to the Marriott. We started in the auditorium. Chris Preuss, due to replace Steve Harris as GM VP of Communications, told us who we were and why we were there. Yep, there was a lot of mutual love between GM and the new Social Media.

It’s the Perception Gap, Stupid

Then, to my delight, Bob Lutz appeared, introduced as GM’s “Chief Creative Officer.”

Lutz launched into an attack on the “perception gap,” identifying the “crappy state of journalism” as one of its causes. The room ate it up. Lutz also played the humility card, stating that the New GM had many people to thank, starting with the U.S. and Canadian taxpayers.

At about that time, I began to wonder when, exactly, GM was going to start to try to win me over. I consider GM’s insistent talk of the “perception gap” an insult to my intelligence. I know what value I’m getting from my Toyotas. I know what value my friends and neighbors did not get from their GM cars. My experience, my neighbor’s experience, Consumer Report’s evaluations and resale values all point one way: GM’s cars, for quite some time, have not been as anywhere near as good as the competition.

GM’s 2009’s may be just as good as the competition, or better, but we won’t know for ten years. Meanwhile, all this “perception gap” talk just digs the hole deeper. It makes me wonder if GM is still thinking they can win me over with tailfins, by blowing smoke.

At least Lutz admitted that “earlier models” had interiors that looked like they were made from “solidified lava.” But that’s all changed! “Why?” I wondered silently, “Is there a shortage of lava?” Lutz also revealed that he’s as happy as a clam about the New GM and its nice tidy balance sheet and its consequent new ability to compete and un-retired because the opportunities were now so much better for GM.

Amongst other things, Lutz failed to mention the fact that New GM’s nice tidy balance sheet came courtesy of a whole lot of people who got thrown under the bus. And he was one of the drivers.

We still don’t know the full extent of the collateral damage. TTAC recently reported that GM has abandoned its obligations to Olds dealers, who were receiving annual payments as compensation for closing down. New GM has also shifted its environmental cleanup obligations to Old GM.

Lutz addressed the “Government Motors” meme. According to Lutz, the Presidential Task Force on Automobiles (PTFOA) is letting GM run the business to make money so that the taxpayer can get the taxpayer’s money back. This makes quite a bit of sense and, frankly, I believe it.

Lutz implied that the PTFOA and the new Board of Directors were at least partially ignorant about what GM was really like. According to Lutz, the new Board was completely unaware that GM absolutely rocks on fuel economy. The Cobalt XFE (available only with a manual transmission) beats the rest of the class on the EPA tests.

Just don’t look too closely at the EPA web site because you’ll find that the XFE actual fuel economy reports don’t measure up to its EPA test scores. And at least some of the competition routinely beats their EPA test scores. And never mind the Prius or Yaris or any of those profitable small Toyotas against which GM doesn’t even compete.

Naturally, someone asked Lutz about global warming. Lutz was delighted to have the opportunity to call it a “crock of shit” without actually using the word “shit.” Happily enough, he’d just told a joke about “shit” that involved a clueless politician giving a speech and Native Americans whose word for “shit” was “hoya.” The audience had laughed at this joke, which I found astonishing; the joke is as old as elected office itself.

Lutz’ calling global warming a “crock of hoya” would be somewhat more credible if his lengthy answer hadn’t involved several “facts” which I know to be wrong. Why he bothers defending himself on this topic, or even discusses it, is an open question.

Someone (not a Tweeter) asked Lutz if GM was generating the necessary cash flow to survive at the current U.S. annual new car selling rate (SAAR). Bearing in mind that the Old Guard at GM claimed they were OK right to the bitter end, I’m taking Lutz’ “at 10 million, we’d like to break even” with a grain of salt. He also proffered that, at an 11 – 11.5 million SAAR and a consistent market share, New GM would be “comfortably profitable.”

New GM’s first income statement should be interesting.

Ed Welburn Lifts the Skirt

After Lutz rallied the troops, we visited the “Design Salons” for GM’s four remaining brands, starting with Cadillac.

I’ve gotten used to Cadillac’s “Art & Science” design language. While I’m not its biggest fan, I admire the way that the designers are applying it across Cadillac’s product line. Cadillacs look distinctive and resemble each other in key ways. I think this is important for a brand, and I think Cadillac is getting it right.

There were no particular surprises in the design salon, but we did get a chance to admire the cars and a couple of clay models. Dave burst out, “Those are made of clay?” I’d never seen clay models either; they are amazingly lifelike. Just don’t grab the door handles . . . they come right off.

Our next stop: GMC. For the most part, I am not a big fan of GMC. The new Terrain is, in my opinion, ugly. I know this sort of thing is highly subjective, but GMC’s adding design cues to an Equinox-sized vehicle to give it Yukon-sized visual dominance. The end result is grotesque. GM had better hope the Terrain sells on the surprisingly good fuel economy it shares with the Equinox.

GMC also showed us a clay model of a possible smaller GMC CUV, which was much more attractive than the Terrain (no pointless bulges over the wheel wells, for example). There was no mention of the vehicle’s proposed drivetrain. One of the GMC reps said they could squeeze 40 mpg out a [presumably four-cylinder] direct injection engine. In theory, that’s significantly better than a Toyota RAV4.

I had a question about the CUV’s doors. “Why bother if these won’t last past the concept stage? You never do suicide doors.” The GM rep patiently pointed out that GM has occasionally delivered rearward-opening doors on certain vehicles, like the Saturn 3-door coupe and some extended-cab trucks. Which is true but . . . I can’t recall any vehicle since the ’60’s Lincolns that had full-size suicide doors intended to be operated independently of the fronts.

Although I am not a big fan of the bulbous Buick Enclave, I generally like the brand’s design. The new LaCrosse’s v-curve body line reminds me of our ’57 Buick; an evocative touch. Buick had two extremely attractive clay models: another, smaller CUV and a new smaller sedan. The latter will most likely sit on GM’s Global Midsize Platform (they no longer call platforms by the Greek letters).

The Chevy Salon was set apart in a small, domed building. The Bow-Tie brand says they’ll offer a new Corvette Grand Sport (more than a regular Corvette, less than a Z06), a convertible Camaro (which looks far better than the hardtop, at least when the roof is stowed), Spark, Orlando, Cruze and new Malibu.

We saw a clay model likely to become the 2012 Malibu. It was an improvement in some ways, but the front-end profile looks more Camry than ever. You can’t win over airflow, I guess. Some described the new ’Bu as beautiful; it didn’t do that much for me. As the current Malibu was introduced in 2008, perhaps drivetrain changes are driving the redesign.

Ed Welburn spoke briefly about “The Lab”: GM’s interactive method for revealing design ideas to customers. I wonder if it’s practical and whether web-based customer data will lead to better cars. There’s often a lot of vocal web or enthusiast support for vehicle proposals, that may or may not survive and thrive in the marketplace. I’d be concerned that “The Lab” will get a lot of intense feedback from a skewed segment of the market: un- or under-employed people with nothing better to do.

Ed then revealed three new Cadillac designs: a midsize sedan, a new, small coupe and the fullsize XTS, the replacement for the DTS and STS.

The XTS was a disappointment. At the Heritage Center, I’d encountered a ’68 Fleetwood Brougham limousine in shiny black. That was an imposing car. When it rolled by, you knew somebody filthy rich or very important was in it. The XTS didn’t hit me that way, partly due to the graphite paint job.

Sure, it’s attractive. Yes, it’s an extension of Art & Science. Anyone who likes the current Cadillac look will not be disappointed. But there’s not enough “oomph.” Perhaps it doesn’t matter; I’m never likely to be wealthy enough to buy the modern-day equivalent of a Fleetwood Brougham limousine. In fact, few will ever be. Or should be.

When I returned to the Twin Cities, I found a DTS in taxi service in a garish paint job. How far the mighty have fallen! The XTS can hardly do worse. Memo to GM: Please ensure I can see out the back windows.

Chevy Volt

We headed over to Pre Production Operations (PPO), where GM’s assembling Volts in small batches to test the build processes, components, etc. One of the managers and one of the union reps (Local 160) greeted us at the door. They exuded an air of real cooperation, and I was glad of it.

I like unions. I think they add necessary balance to the workplace. But union organization and the management reaction to it often leads to contention, strife, poor relationships and, for lack of a better phrase, gross inefficiency. If they have that at the Volt PPO facility, they keep it capped. Maybe the shock of bankruptcy has brought about a new era of cooperation. Maybe this plant has always been different. Or maybe the old relationships between GM and the union were never as bad as we thought. In any event, I liked the atmosphere in this building.

There were quite a few Volts in various stages of assembly, all in primer gray metal and black plastic. The dark gray interior stack was attractive. The engine compartment looked fairly normal. Where the car and battery came together, it was obvious the car is different. Otherwise, the Chevy Volt looked like a fairly normal compact car.

Many attendees wanted to know the Volt’s fuel economy after the battery goes flat, how much gas it holds, total range, etc. GM was very evasive. There didn’t seem to be any fuel tanks in view, so I couldn’t make my own estimate.

During the walk-around, we met both Andrew Farah and Frank Weber. I could have sworn I heard Farah mention “400 miles range.” But Weber recently answered the question, “Can I go from Detroit to Chicago on one tank of gas?” with “I don’t know the precise distance but it it’s 300 miles, you should be OK.”  So the Volt’s range is still anybody’s guess.

If the Volt has, as the Detroit News recently reported, an eight gallon tank, if the car goes 350 miles, the “charge sustaining mode” fuel economy is going to be a disappointing 39 mpg.

I started asking Weber questions about the differential and the tradeoff between that and two motors, but the group was moving on and our guide encouraged me to keep up. I moved along, thinking GM wasn’t real keen on tough questions about the Volt.

The Culture Worriers

We headed for the proving ground. Time to drive! Well . . . Not quite. Our handlers herded us into the building, where we cooled our heels until Chris Preuss and GM CEO Fritz Henderson spoke. I took very few notes, but I know that Fritz said that “since bankruptcy, we must think every day about our customers.” And “It’s all about the cars.” They’ve cracked the code!

Henderson repeated an early pronouncement on the Volt: “The biggest problem with the Volt is what to do with old gas in the gas tank.” I suppose if you’re CEO of a giant company, the idea of $40K for a compact car may not be a problem for you. But, trust me: price is the Volt’s biggest problem.

Henderson also promised that “We’re changing the culture of the company”—as if saying it enough times will makes it come true.

The CAR Allowance Rebate System—C.A.R.S—sounds like a ’70s Saturday morning cartoon about guys in striped jackets using trick vehicles to save the world. In fact, that would actually be preferable to the program currently airing, at cost of three billion and counting. Cash for Clunkers may be popular with a healthy segment of the population, but that group doesn’t include a lot of economists. In terms of economic policy, C4C would benefit from a little C4, if you know what I’m sayin’.

Warning. The following is not a right-wing diatribe. While there is very little in the public realm that can be cleansed of politics, attempting to look at the C.A.R.S plan unaligned does give one a different view. There are a few things about C4C that are not right. They’re not left, either. They’re wrong.

The most obvious case against the program is ideological: Keep government out of markets. Laissez-faire. Fair enough, except Uncle Sam sticks his fingers in many markets, frequently to the good of the nation. I like clean water, apples that don’t put me to sleep for 100 years and Amoxicillin that does what it reports to do (fix me up if the water or apples are bad). There are times when the federal government needs to intervene. Any point in the last 18 months can be considered one of those times. So, the laissez-faire agreement is weak.

My first real problem with C.A.R.S.: its effect on market timing. Putting a couple billion dollars on the barrel moves the market to act. The value added to older vehicles made some people move prematurely into the car market; people who might have considered dumping their POS before winter, or next spring. Extra sales made now will not be made later.

The announcement of the plan may very well have had a similar effect on potential customers in May and June. They waited for the C4C money to become available, putting their purchases off. The program creates an artificial buying season for no real reason. Other than to make this year’s data harder to use for predicting next year’s.

At the moment, there is no hard evidence that cash for clunkers increased the overall net business any car company was going to see this fiscal year. July numbers ticked upward, but that doesn’t mean sales came from customers who were otherwise out of the market.

Then there are the clunkers themselves. Once turned in the engines are filled with goo and run until useless. The destruction of a useable asset is waste. While some of the natural resources that went into that car can be reclaimed, the labor hours extinguish. It makes perfect sense for someone to turn in their Ford Explorer worth three large and take the Fed’s $4,500. The $3,000 in value the vehicle had is lost. The economy as a whole suffers.

Getting less fuel-efficient engines off the road has an environmental benefit. There’s also a huge environmental benefit in driving old cars into the ground. It takes a lot of fossil fuels to build cars in the first place, from the mining of the ore to assembly to shipping. Fouling the engine means these hulks need to shipped and processed again, using more energy. To the economy, waste is waste.

In terms of stimulus, three billion wouldn’t do a hell of a lot were it injected directly into people’s bank accounts. Current dollar gross domestic product last quarter was $14,149.8 billion, making C4C kind of a drop in the hot tub.

There is value in the perception that C4C generates. It is an understandable, and to many useful, stimulus package regardless of the final numbers. Its utility has been amplified by car dealers across the country. The recent meme that the program had run dry stoked the message even more.

In the end, though, C.A.R.S has interfered with a market finding a new equilibrium, one in which American’s buy 10 or 15 percent fewer vehicles per year. That’s actually better for the environment than the amount of hybrids sold in the next ten years. It can be painful to adjust to such market contractions, but that’s where government programs really do come in handy. Combating market forces is rarely the best use of public funds. If people want fewer cars, or want to get more life out of the ones they’ve already got, its tough to say that’s bad for America.

Fostering the growth of new markets—like renewable energy sources—and retraining a work force to fill needs in those new markets are constructive uses of tax dollars. They add to the GDP in a way junking a ’98 F-150 never will. This ain’t Saturday morning. C.A.R.S are not going to save the world.

I set out to write a book not so much about the varieties and comparative deficiencies of cars in the Soviet Union as what these objects meant to Soviet citizens. The structure and organizing principles of the book were among the first things to become clear. There would be three chapters on the “Soviet Detroits”—the places where automobiles were built, the people who built them, and how the cars and trucks they produced both embodied the state’s agendas and inspired popular identification.

I settled on Moscow’s AMO factory (later known as ZIS and still later ZIL) from where the first Soviet-made motor vehicles emanated in 1924; the Gor’kii Automobile Factory (GAZ) that began turning out Model A cars and trucks in the 1930s and later the Pobeda, Volga, and Chaika; and AvtoVAZ, the giant factory built on the banks of the Volga in the late 1960s and early 1970s to produce the Zhiguli, or as it became known abroad, the Lada.

These chapters would be followed by one on roads and their construction, the forms of labor relied upon to build and maintain them, and other dimensions of the struggle against “roadlessness.” The final two chapters would tell the story of how Soviet citizens experienced trucks and cars in their daily lives, how Communist ideology eventually accommodated the private automobile, but why cars required a lot of semi-legal or illegal activity to keep them on the road.

The book is structured around three axes: foreign and domestic, public and private, and continuity and change.

Contrary to Cold War-era assertions, the Soviet automobile industry was neither entirely dependent on nor completely autonomous from western technological developments. It did a lot of copying, mixing and matching, and innovating on the fly. In the 1930s, Soviet highway design and construction emulated Fascist Italy’s autostradas and Nazi Germany’s autobahns but for better or for worse otherwise depended on indigenous inspiration and approaches.

Foreign trucks and cars—the pre-revolutionary playthings of the aristocracy, the “Renochka” that the revolutionary poet Vladimir Maiakovskii bought as a gift for his mistress, the legendary Lend Lease Studebakers, the trophy cars that Red Army officers brought back from defeated Germany, Detroit’s finest on display at the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow—were icons of a world few Soviet citizens had seen. Yet, Soviet citizens took pride in “their own” luxury models (ZIS and ZIL limousines, Chaikas, etc.), thrilled to accounts of auto races and rallies in which Soviet drivers heroically overcame obstacles, and for the most part leapt at the opportunity to acquire even the most modest of Soviet models.

Actually, even the state’s property—trucks and, until the 1970s, the vast majority of cars—often was appropriated for private or personal purposes by drivers and officials in need of wheels. With the proliferation of privately owned cars in the 1970s and 80s, owners appropriated state supplies of parts and gasoline too. The mutuality of such relationships and the hybridity of forms they produced meant that occasional ruptures in the life of the Soviet automobile did not prevent the emergence over the long haul of a Soviet “automobility.” Many of its features survived the collapse of the USSR itself.

The book’s main argument is that the Soviet automobile had to adapt to Soviet circumstances as much as it provoked adaptation. If the particularities of Soviet socialism can better inform us about the history of cars and trucks, then the Soviet automobile can help teach us about Soviet socialism.

THE WIDE ANGLE

No contextual landscape for the book existed in the sense of a previous body of historical scholarship devoted to the subject. The Soviet automobile did figure in Cold War-era economists’ reckonings of the so-called “second economy.” And sociologists, anthropologists and historians have been producing an impressive number of articles and books on car and truck cultures in many parts of the world (although not the USSR or other former Soviet-bloc countries). But the twin inspirations for the writing the book came from elsewhere.

Visiting Moscow and other ex-Soviet cities during the 1990s, I could not help noticing the tremendous increase in the number of cars and the difficulties urban infrastructures had in accommodating their growth. This observation made me reflect on the intricate relationships among cars, cities, political systems and the choices they offered and constrained with respect to human mobility. It also made me start to notice the presence of cars and trucks in a lot of places previously hidden in full view—in Soviet novels, poetry, films, photographs, and songs, in the speeches by Soviet leaders, in memoirs and elsewhere. Soon my project was awash with material.

The other source of inspiration was my own weariness with the narrative of Soviet history that emphasized tears, state oppression, and violence—a narrative especially prominent in and appropriate to accounts of the Stalin era. This was the period in which most of my previous scholarship was situated. I longed for a subject that was more capacious, that would enable me to trace its arc through the entirety of the Soviet Union’s existence, and found it in the odd coupling of the automobile and Soviet communism.

Of course I encountered tears and shed a few of my own as I struggled to master the vocabulary of auto mechanics. But among the unexpected pleasures of writing this book were several discoveries among the myriad of sources: film comedies from the Soviet 1950s and 60s about a driver and his boss in a case of mistaken identity, about a would-be ice skating princess who settles for becoming the best gas station attendant by filling up the tanks on roller skates; a Stalin-prize winning novel from 1950 in which a truck driver rhapsodizes about the joy of the open road; and Ilya Ehrenburg’s 1929 dystopic novel about the devastating effects of the automobile on labor, the environment and pedestrians. From the latter, I derived the subtitle for my book.

A CLOSE-UP

The spatial requirements and landscape consequences of the automobile age—the roads, oil and gas refineries and stations, garages, tire and parts stores and junk yards, billboards and flashing neon signs, suburban tracts and shopping malls—hardly made their presence felt in the USSR. “Consequently,” wrote a Dutch-born writer in the late 1960s “the Westerner in his own car …moves in an odd way back through time” to “how [our world] once looked, how it was supposed to look.”

Still, already in 1960, Krokodil, the Soviet humor magazine, could print a cartoon of makeshift sheds disfiguring the courtyard of a new apartment bloc, and residents in Leningrad soon were lodging complaints about garages getting “in the way of people’s everyday lives.” The proliferation of private automobiles also had temporal consequences as car owners required considerable amounts of time to maintain and repair their vehicles.

Hence, car owners and car parts suppliers (both of whom were overwhelmingly male) appropriated courtyards, alleys, roadsides and fields for the predominantly masculine activities of car work and car talk. Garages, furnished with old chairs and perhaps a heater and a cot became sites of celebration—places to drink vodka and consume sausage and pickles. They and the interiors of the cars themselves served as alternative living rooms for men seeking privacy and male companionship. The essentially private activities in which they engaged thanks to the car and the infrastructural inadequacies of the centrally planned economy were beyond the surveillance not only of their wives but of the state that inadvertently had fostered them.

All of this was a long way from the vision of Valerian Osinskii, a prominent Bolshevik who did more to give life to the Soviet automobile than anyone else. In a series of articles that Pravda published in 1927, Osinskii called upon his comrades to adopt the “American automobile” instead of the “Russian cart” and thereby put “every worker and peasant in a car within not more than ten to fifteen years.” Osinskii also dreamed of a future in which a car trip from Moscow to the provincial town of Voronezh would mean traveling on an asphalt highway so smooth that the only sound heard would be the swish of tires. Only since the collapse of the USSR have such journeys become possible, but at the same time, the post-Soviet landscape is now littered with the detritus of the automobile age.

LASTLY

In the late 1950s, Nikita Khrushchev, who never had been a fan of the private car, proposed a rental system as an alternative route to automotive modernity. “We will use cars more rationally than the Americans,” he assured an audience in Vladivostok. But even before his ouster in 1964, the system that had lacked funding and provoked innumerable complaints was phased out. With it went the chance for the USSR to take advantage of its relatively late entry into the automobile age and improve on the record of its predecessors.

Cars for Comrades is about more than cars. It is about the chimera of overcoming the gap in technology between the capitalist (First) and socialist (Second) world. Even as Soviet and American engineers were installing an assembly line to turn out Model A trucks and cars in the late 1920s, Soviet journalists were conjuring up visions of a technological utopia, not just a factory out of which would rumble identical machines one after the other, but an entire city, the “City of Socialism” lit by electricity, heated by steam, and with rectangles everywhere. But the capitalist world’s technology was a moving target. By the time the techno-utopian “Soviet Detroit” of the future was actually built—in the early 1970s in Togliatti to complement the AvtoVAZ factory—the real Detroit was definitely showing signs of stress and decay from which it would not recover.

The book’s larger significance is about the intersection of technology, ideology, and material culture. I argue that Soviet socialism exchanged the possibility of an alternative modernity for one much more entangled with the material culture of the western world.

This process was difficult to predict. For much of its existence, the Soviet Union was defined by its leaders as a more rationally organized and socially just polity than any in the capitalist world. The preponderance of trucks—those workhorses among motor vehicles—and the rare privately owned car was consistent with such difference. But eventually the comrades and other middle-echelon personnel wanted to enhance their personal mobility, flexibility, and status. They wanted the wealth within what had become a vast empire to be shared with them not only in the form of access to first-rate educational institutions, vacations abroad, family apartments, and domestic appliances but that most representative of twentieth-century material objects—the car.

In the end, they got their way, sort of.