Ever since Apple hammered their way to advertising glory with their Big Brother Superbowl spot, and probably before, advertisers have saved their biggest guns for the big game. We've got no problem with that. And we can understand why the people signing the checks for these big budget productions get all excited about their multi-million dollar 60-second contributions to America's popular culture (and the TV network's bottom line). But excuse us for not sharing in the excitement to the same extent, and wondering why Audi would think we would. In fact, their pre-game Superbowl ad hype has gone from feverish to dangerously manic to fully-fledged monomaniacal madness. We've just received an email declaring "Soon, a bold challenge to the tired old myths of luxury will be hitting millions of TV screens across the land. A new viewpoint. A new way of thinking. A new era." Yes folks, "You will have a chance to witness the moment that will set the nation talking. The countdown has started." A follow-up missive declares that this new era will be issued in by none other than actor Alex Rocco, who portrayed Moe Greene in the first “Godfather” movie (also "Man with Ice Cream" in the 1973 James Caan comedy "Slither"). One piece of Audi advice we agree with: "Don't miss the moment of truth."

TTAC is often accused of being overly-harsh on cars and the causes of cars. But we've never violated the number one rule in the info biz: don't insult the customer. In Jeremy Clarkson's latest diatribe in The Sunday Times, the British car critic catapults himself across that editorial line with his usual acerbic style and boot-in-the-ass subtlety. To wit: "There are many ways to tell if someone is a bit thick. You can sit them in a room and ask them to push various bits of plastic into a wooden box… [or you can] ask them this simple question: 'Are you wearing a Subaru rally jacket?' Because if they are, you will need to speak more slowly." And so begins his opening salvo against Subie fans. Jezza pisses on Subaru drivers ("for the majority of them, there are only eight letters in the alphabet. WRX STIR and B."), rally enthusiasts ("a sport for the terminally gormless") and their four-wheeled object of veneration ("a £25,000 car that comes with fewer toys than an Ethiopian birthday boy."). In case Subaru lovers really are stupid (which is a ridiculous slur), Clarkson's conclusion spells out his message in no uncertain terms. "I think therefore you may have to be a bit dim to buy one." 

Would Rosa Parks have been able to hop a bus and escape New Orleans ahead of Hurricane Katrina if she'd been in town in 2005? It’s a pretty convoluted way to start a rant, but The Black Commentator guest columnist Meizhu Lui says Hurricane Katrina exposed the "internal combustion engine" divide. Forgetting the fact that Amtrak was deadheading [empty] trains out of town and that New Orleans had lots full of [empty] school buses, Lui flags the “alarming disparity in car ownership that literally was the difference between life and death for many Gulf Coast residents." The author then cites a “recent report” claiming that 24 percent of black households don’t own a car– as opposed to seven percent of white and 17 percent of Latino households. Rather than calling for expanded car ownership, Lui says there’s a better alternative. “Hurricane Katrina not only dramatically revealed the grotesque racial and class divisions in our country, but also pointed to some obvious causes, such as our car dependent economy. An inclusive and dependable public transportation system should be at the top of the list.”

Leave it to Gaywheels to make the Detroit Auto Show sound so… well… gay. They've chosen their "Top Ten Moments" from the show, starting with the bull-on-bull action during the roll-out of the new Ram. That's where "the daddy bulls started mounting the boy bulls in a bovine version of '70s porn, complete with mustachioed cowboys." Moving right along… another fav was the Mercedes' GLK intro when Kim Cattrall "smiled coyly, touched Dieter's shoulder, and cooed about 'assertiveness, bulges in the right places… [and a] tight little package.'" They describe the CTS-V as having "a well-bulging hood that Kim Cattrall would love" and liken the BMW 1-series convertible to "any guy packing six-pack abs on South Beach, [who] sheds its top in 22 seconds. And like that same guy after a day of sun and proximity to half-naked men, the 1-Series is raring to go." And just in case the American Family Association isn't pissed-off enough at Ford, gaywheels says "if Ford could just stream the video from the F-150's optional backup cam down from Brokeback Mountain, they'd have a major new source of badly needed revenue." At this point, it's gotta be worth a try.

As Motown's chief cheerleader, The Detroit News is all about the spin. But every now and then, the paper kicks it up a notch to kick Toyota in the teeth. Columnist Daniel Howes recounts ToMoCo's '07 "challenges." For those of you who aren't regular readers of the DTN or TTAC (or any other automotive publication), Toyota stands accused of hypocrisy for perpetuating their green rep whilst selling gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs and lobbying against an increase in federal fuel economy standards (unlike…?). "Yes, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger had it right up on Mackinac Island last May: Toyota is not a division of Greenpeace — and it never was." Howes then rounds on Toyota for its Consumer Reports downgrade and product recalls, and shares an unsubstantiated anecdote. "On a separate press event to unveil the car, two Camrys were knocked out with transmission problems. In contacting Japan, they were told Toyota engineers there knew of a problem with a coupler in the transmission but failed to notify their colleagues in the States." In sum, "One of the lessons of this year's auto show is that for the first time in what seems like forever, a fair amount of Detroit's metal is reaching (if not exceeding) parity with its chief rival Toyota. That means a whole new kind of competition is about to begin and Detroit is back in the game." Fair enough?

There's not much new in the [UK] Times analysis of Detroit's troubles, save the above paranoid, defeatist, defensive, sour grapes quote from GM Car Czar Maximum Bob Lutz. (We're no longer number the world's largest automaker? What a RELIEF!) Oh, that and the headline, an extremely non-Detroit News-like "US carmakers still on the wrong road." The gist of the matter: longtime auto industry observer Ray Hutton reckons The Big 2.8 got caught with their small car pants down. And he's not buying the idea that ANY of Motown's former maestros can pull themselves back from the brink– at least in the U.S. In fact, Ray reckons "Nobody expects a big turn-round in America, where the market for cars and light trucks is at best static, at about 16.5m a year, although some analysts predict a steep decline in 2008." And that's about it, except for the fact that Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli is either developing a penchant for Zen koans or developing new ways to tell the press to f-off. "The advantage of being private is that we can be private."

Whenever TTAC publishes a less than flattering review of a domestic nameplate, fans of the brand (or model) accuse us of being "import bigots" or "biased." So I went through our rated reviews and broke them down by nameplate (regardless of country of origin). The average rating (rounded to two decimals) for domestic brands: 3.17 stars. So-called imports: 3.43 stars. Three five-star imports are out of the reach of mere mortals (Gallardo, 911 Turbo and AMG CL63), so I took those out and re-calculated the import score; it dropped to 3.35. If you round any of these scores to star ratings, domestics average three stars and imports average, you guessed it, three stars. Taking it one step further (I gotta get a life!), 23 percent of the imports reviewed received ratings lower than three stars; only 17 percent of the domestics fell into that category.

I didn't crunch the numbers for editorials. Suffice it to say, TTAC's been critical of The Big 2.8, Toyota, Lexus, Porsche, Jaguar and the entire Chinese auto industry. If someone in this industry is doing something dumb, we're going to point it out. Period. As for our Detroit Death Watches, they cover the most important automotive story of our time; a story that's been largely ignored or improperly analyzed by the majority of the mainstream media. If that makes us "import bigots" or "anti-whatever," then so be it. TTAC's going to continue exposing the truth, wherever we find it. [NB: you are free to discuss TTAC's editorial stance or style in this post without restriction, within reason. If you know what I mean…] 

Website analysts compete.com have compiled a chart of '07's biggest winners and losers. The stats reveal that three automotive websites have the dubious distinction of sharing the title of biggest loser, site traffic-wise. Autobytel clocks-in at number eight, with website traffic falling 82 percent to 556,938 uniques per month (UPM). Motor Trend sits in fourteenth place; its visitorship cratered by 71 percent, to 902,684 UPM. Carsdirect's traffic fell down 69 percent to 3,396,388 UPM. Not surprisingly for a company competing with Google to provide site stats, compete ain't got nothin' to say about the losers. But its commentators are asking a whole lot of questions about the data's integrity. Meanwhile, Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed blog reckons the numbers may reflect a scary equation. "Fewer new cars purchased = less traffic required to car purchasing sites, right? Possibly, but there is no way that you'd see, say, a 5% drop in car purchasing turn into a 90% traffic drop." One might also conclude the drop simply reflects the quality of the sites involved, but I couldn't possibly comment. Oh, and TTAC has just crested 1.4m page views for the first time, racking up 477,783 uniques per month. Just in case you were wondering… [thanks to deanst for the tip]

GM's come-up with a new use for OnStar: collecting data on test mules. The Detroit News reports that The General racked up 1m miles testing the Lambda CUVS and collected the test data via telemetrics. Since OnStar can't tell them when a body panel's buzzing or note that a radio knob just fell off, they also collect data from dealers. That's how they found out the Malibu's hazard light switch wouldn't pop out like it was supposed to; which resulted in an "engineering analysis" of the problem and an "engineering tool change." Perhaps they should do an engineering analysis of their PR department too. In the same article, the DetN also reports GM "has added a shift at its Lake Orion plant to build more" Malibus to meet demand. And this right after they attributed the shortage of Malibus to problems with their part supply chain. Looks like someone needs to get their story straight.

If you write for WardsAuto, you know the vast majority of the people reading your bon mots are car dealers. So you can't come out and say "you greedy bunch of bastards are responsible for getting people into cars they can't afford, which is about to turn around and bite you in the ass big time." On the other hand, you can't come out and say "consumers are stupid morons who deserve what they get when they get in over their heads on a new car and can't get the Hell out." Consumers are customers, after all. For an example of how to play it straight down the middle, alienating both camps, I recommend you click on Steve Finaly's latest editorial "The Dealer Made Me Do It," riffing on the LA Times article “New Cars That Are Fully Loaded – With Debt” (blogged on TTAC here). "First off, I’m not excusing auto dealers. Or lenders. They have a moral and business responsibility to try to stop their customers from doing something stupid, such as buying a vehicle with a sticker price that will stick them with an oppressive debt… But so many consumers today buy too much vehicle. Then, when the financial squeeze becomes eye-popping, they look for someone to blame. The dealership and lender make nice targets. Seldom do the debt-ridden blame themselves." Well, why would they? 

“In a nutshell we would disagree with the assessment that Acura would fall that low in any survey,” an unnamed Acura company spokesman told Ward’s Automotive re: Consumer Reports recent brand perception survey. “Our research shows Acura is ranking high in technology aspects and brand awareness and those types of things.” Those type of things? Ed Farrell, associate director for Consumer Reports' survey team, defended the mag's methodology. He told Ward's that they interrupted 1,720 U.S. adults' family dinner to ask brand-related questions, like “When you think of performance, what car best typifies to you performance?” Typifies to you? On an aggregate basis, top place finishers Toyota and Honda earned scores of 189 and 146. Acura garnered just eight points, finishing below Audi (14 points), Mitsubishi (21 points) and Mercury (22 points). According to the unnamed Acura spokesman, "That may be one of those snapshots that’s blurry when it comes to Acura’s real image.” May? Looks like Acura joins another well-known automotive brand at the top of the charts for obfuscation, petulance, arrogance and denial.

Buick's communication manager, Dave Darovitz, takes exception with TTAC's blog about the Enclave's sucky sales. We received the following message from Mr. D.:

Just so our buddy Frank has the correct information – that is your outlet claims to be about the "truth" – let me give you and Frankie a dose of it. The Enclave IS the hottest selling crossover in the industry. We've sold more Buick Enclaves in half a year of production than Mazda CX-9 sold in one full year. And, 90 percent of our Enclave sales are of the uplevel CXL model – the highest contented, richest model we offer. Nearly half of our Enclave customers are new to GM, and we've had a waiting list of paid customers since we started producing the crossover. Finally, customer and dealer demand for this standout Buick far exceeds what the plant can physically produce. So, if this "sucks", what's Frank's definition of success?

Well Davie, I'd like to know how you define "hottest selling." Even the Enclave's corporate-cousin Acadia far outsells it month after month, as do the Lexus RX and any number of other CUVs. The CX-9 hasn't been on the market for "one full year" — it went on sale in February. And with all the awards the CX-9 has gotten over the Enclave, they're getting a lot of free press which will drive sales up. Incidentally, you only sold about 4K more Enclaves than Mazda sold CX-9s. Can you sustain this, or will Enclave be like other GM models that tank once you satisfy the initial demand?

So what if the CXL model is the best-selling trim level? I don't know anyone who tracks sales by trim level. It's good you can pull some new buyers from outside GM, as Buick's traditional customer base is dying off with alarming regularity. How long do you think your "paid customers" will wait when they see other comparable vehicles readily available?

Finally, if demand is that high, why aren't you diverting production at this overtaxed plant (where they recently shut down the third shift) from the Outlook (which is busy gathering snow on dealer lots) to the Enclave and 1) bolster dealer morale and let them average more than five sales per month, 2) satisfy all these customers who are lined up money in hand, 3) help Saturn deal with their almost 100-day supply of Outlook and 4) drive up Buick's overall sales numbers and bottom line (which is never a bad thing)?

My definition of success? A car that sells well without artificially manipulating supply against demand and keeps on selling well even after the initial demand has been satisfied. So far Enclave has yet to satisfy either of these expectations.

Your serve.

Our men on the scene have been duly chastened for not bringing us immediate news of yet another award given at the NAIAS by the over-capitalized ROAD & TRAVEL magazine: the equally over-capitalized HEART STRING award. This award attempts "to recognize how well automakers connect cars and consumers based on lifestyle and the emotional experience during ownership." "Rooms," a spot for the Dodge Caravan, scored this year's nod for being "the most emotionally compelling car commercial to appear on national television in 2007." I couldn't find the 30-second clip ROAD & TRAVEL judged worthy of such an honor (a 15-second excerpt on Youtube was as good as it got). As soon as I find the video, I'll post a link to it so we all can warm the cockles of our hearts. Or throw up.

Although the odds were stacked in their favor, GM didn't sweep the North American Car and Truck of the Year Awards as many expected. Of the six finalists (Cadillac CTS, the Chevrolet Malibu, Honda Accord, Buick Enclave, Mazda CX-9 and Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid) four were from The General's stable. But a dark horse stole one event. Oh right, sorry. I know the tension's killing you. Right. The North American Car of the Year is the car you can't buy: the Chevrolet Malibu. The NA Truck of the Year is the crossover that thinks it's a truck the Mazda CX-9. There was a bit of murmuring about Malibu getting the award over the CTS, since the Malibu is essentially a reskinned Aura and the Aura won last year. But the judges seemed to think the new Malibu was such an improvement over the previous dismal piece of shit that it deserved recognition. (Apparently the CTS wasn't that much of an improvement.) How the CX-9 made it over the media darling Tahoe Hybrid is still a mystery– although it pays to keep in mind (so to speak) that Mazda is a Ford brand. Meanwhile, the event planners spent most of the opening ceremonies this morning patting themselves on the back, congratulating themselves on what a fine job they think they did this year. Fair enough?

[Reporters: Sajeev Mehta and William C. Montgomery]

Ironically enough, Jung observed "there is no scientific test that would prove the discrepancy between perception and reality." Scanning the results of Consumer Reports (CR) automotive brand perception survey, Toyota execs must be muttering "thank God for that," while GM shouts "See? Told ya!" The CR survey evaluates how American consumers perceive car companies in seven key areas: safety, quality, value, performance, environmental friendliness, design and innovation. Toyota ranked first in overall brand perception, racking-up a score of 189. Honda snagged second place, scoring 146. Ford was the highest ranked American brand, placing third with 112 points. While Chevrolet and GMC made the "best" list, Buick was amongst Audi (!) and Acura at the bottom of the league table. Here are the winning brands in the seven categories (listed in order of importance according to respondents):

Safety – Volvo
Quality – Toyota
Value – Honda
Performance – BMW
Green – Toyota
Design/Style – Mercedes
Technology Innovation – Toyota

(For an explanation of CR's methodology, see the bottom of the linked page below.)