The Cars America Wants to Pay For?

Detroit is on the ropes, Toyota posts first loss in 70 years, GM is idling plants for weeks.  We've all heard of the bad news.  But how did we get here?  Consumer confidence is gone and no one is buying cars.  And how do we get out?  America and its government is pinning its hopes on new green-energy solutions and new technology.  America will support its car industry with bailouts, but they're going to have make the kinds of cars that America needs to be energy independent. The directive is to build energy efficient cars, hybrids, plug-ins, electric powered, hydrogen fueled, E85 compatibles.  These are all noble goals, but someone must bear the cost of bringing these new technologies to market.  You don't get the equivalent of an Apollo Program for free.  Not only are we talking about pure invention and discovery that must occur to deliver cars that are affordable and meet the needs of consumers, but the entire fueling infrastructure must be reinvented and redeveloped.  The money that the government is now spending to bailout Detroit is paying salaries and suppliers.  Its not going to research and development.  So how do we expect it to happen, when these companies are struggling to make the monthly payroll?

A large government backed initiative on alternate fuels, batteries, fuel cells, light weight structures and electronic powertrains is critical to success.  There was a feeble attempt at this in the 1990's, the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV), but it was severely underfunded and as a result overly ambitious.  Next, in 2003 the Bush administration created the much criticized FreedomCar program that seemed to push these goals out to a future we'd never see.  What we need now is a real "space program" for cars, massive investment and real near-term goals.  China is doing it, and if we don't, we'll be left behind.

You might think that companies like Fisker and Tesla are doing it on their own, so why a government initiative to help Detroit?  The fact is these companies are not making the transition to high volume affordable cars without government help.  Tesla is waiting to receive government bailout dollars before developing their high-volume Model S sedan.  Fisker, while not seeking money directly, is relying on powertrains developed by General Motors.

But even before a serious space-effort type program, the most important thing to do is actually create demand for these vehicles through market driven methods.  Small cars with huge development costs that lose money on every sale are not going to get the job done.  As long as gasoline is cheap, demand will be largely skewed toward large, inefficient vehicles.  We must as a nation accept a huge tax increase on gasoline.  But we must not only accept it, we must ask for it.  Most of our politicians regard a tax on gas as political suicide and until they hear that we want it, it won't happen.  The unfair-burden-on-the-poor arguments against a gas tax can easily be overcome with tax credits.  The only way to create a disincentive to driving inefficient vehicles is high prices at the gas pump everyday.

So what kinds of cars do Americans want to pay for?  Its up to you to decide.

Ford's Success is in the Showrooms

Ford is currently seen as the best bet for success of the Detroit Three.  Ford has avoided taking government bailout money because it secured enough loans to keep it going prior to the financial collapse.  But this money wasn't borrowed to make the payroll, it was intended to restructure the company and invest in new products.  Ford understands that survival in today's automotive climate demands product leadership.  But when it comes down to it, Ford is afraid to lead.

There are hints of leadership in the refreshing of existing products, the F150, and the class leading but certainly-not-a-new-idea Fusion hybrid.  But these are examples of Ford doing the only thing it has the guts to do: follow the trends and hope to get a product out the door that is marginally better than the competition.

The evidence of the failing of Ford is in its new products.  Take the new Ford Flex.  My father walked into a large Ford dealership in Virginia a month or so ago, showing interest in this new Vehicle. He asked the salesman what "Flex" meant, and the salesman just shrugged his shoulders and said "I don't know."  My father walked away without a test drive.  This shows a company unable to execute; unable to create a product and craft a consistent message throughout its development and marketing and deliver it to the customer.  I cringe to even call the Flex by its name, because that name signifies how entirely out of touch Ford is with its own products, its own creativity, its own product leadership.

The Flex is a product that has the potential to be the next big thing.  Its the holy grail that all product planners look for, the people hauler that isn't a smells-like-diapers minivan, that isn't a been-there-done-that SUV.  Its a product that oozes sophistication, luxury, practicality, functionality and smartness all at once.  And what does Ford do?  Gives it a name that anyone I can think of would be embarrassed to utter at a dinner party.  A name that fades into the background, signifies yet another attempt to market yet another cross-over SUV.  What is a cross over, a cross between a sedan and an SUV.  The flex is neither of these.  The Flex is a great American station wagon, reinvented for the 21st century.  Let it be real, authentic and proud, not hiding behind the latest quickly fading marketing trend.

The name and marketing campaign attached to the Flex is Ford refusing to take risks. Refusing to be first. Refusing to take a gamble, create something new and stand behind it.  Ford is afraid that consumers won't get what the best and brightest at the company are creating.  Afraid to believe in itself.

There are many more examples of the stumbling of Ford.  There is the Ford Five Hundred that should have been called Taurus from the get go.  The Five Hundred was an innovative car (granted, with bland styling) with an interior perfect for aging boomers, bigger and more usable than you'd expect for your next Taurus.  Ford attempted to sell it an alternative to the low and swanky Chrysler 300.  The Five Hundred is now years later called the Taurus, a leadership opportunity lost.  Then there is the Lincoln Zephyr that becomes the Mark Z, now restyled for the second time.  Lincoln's tagline "American Luxury" becomes "Travel Well" and now "Reach Higher."  Higher indeed.  Ford is currently bringing the small European commercial hauler TransitConnect to the US market.  They are hinting at selling it as a family hauler.  If they don't jump into this head first, another opportunity will be lost.

Ford needs to believe in itself.  It has the talent, it has the products.  It needs to empower those in the company that have the vision, and make the rest of the company march to their orders.  Ford needs to streamline its operations, cut out the politics, and make sure the left hand knows what the right hand is doing.  Ford's success is sitting in its showrooms, but they don't even know it.

Wall Street Mentality Poisons Detroit

Certainly the mess on Wall Street is causing the current crisis for Detroit.  As banks failed, credit dried up, consumer confidence plummeted, and people stopped buying cars.  But the Wall Street influence on Detroit has been bringing it down for years.  Ford and Chrysler in particular have tried to become Wall Street Darlings.  In the years of the dot com boom, these companies tried to become light and fast moving.  The auto CEO's tried to transform their business into the model so loved by investors; five guys sitting around a rented, converted-loft office space on Aeron chairs, making a website that sold goods designed by someone else, manufactured by a third party, and packed and shipped by a fourth.  Brick and mortar was dead.  And what were the car guys to do?   They were, and are, the definition of brick and mortar.  The idea of transforming nearly 100 year old vertically integrated companies into fly-by-night, change direction on a dime businesses was absurd.  But they tried. 

Ford made a finance man, Jac Nasser its CEO in 1999. He sold off or spun off every piece of the company he could.  Plastics molding, transmission manufacturing, all of the small components that make up a car.  He probably would have sold the vehicle assembly plants if he could have.  The idea was Ford as a brand, not a manufacturer.  He expanded that notion of the brand, creating a brand portfolio by adding Volvo, Land Rover, Aston Martin and the likes to the Ford line-up.  Imagine the website, with all of those brands tabbed across the top.  Just make your pick and order one up online.   It wouldn't have been so bad had Ford not lost their focus on the product.  I used to shake my head listening to Nasser's motivational speeches to the company.  He would never use the words like car, vehicle, automobile;  the actual product was never mentioned.  It was all share holder value, profit, loss, earnings and business initiatives.

This attempt at transformation didn't work for Ford.  Trying to run a company to please the quarterly report analysts on Wall Street just doesn't work for a company with three year product development cycles and product lives of 10 or more years. Not to mention infrastructure, capital investments, union contracts, and hundreds of thousands of employees.  Jac was ousted in 2001, Bill Ford Jr. put in charge, indicating that Ford, the company, wanted to get back to the values of Ford, the family.  The damage had been done, and it's taking a real product guy and engineer, current CEO Alan Mulally,  to get Ford back on track.

Chrysler took a different path, falling victim to Wall Street's merger mania.  They trimmed the company down, propped it up , made it enticing as possible and in 1998 sold it off to Daimler-Benz.  The "merger of equals" as is was called was no merger, the Germans were in control, and Chrysler, at least as an American car company, one of the Big Three, ceased to exist.  Still suffering from its role as a merger tool, Chrysler's current owner, private equity investment firm Cerberus, had hoped to turn them for a profit, and now just wants to get out of the car business.

In trying to please Wall Street, Detroit took its focus off the product.  It was more concerned with quarterly financial improvements, share holder value, stock price and P/E ratios than the cars in its showrooms.   It forgot that its reason for being is designing, building and selling cars.  The passion was for results on Wall Street, not for rubber and steel.