Danger, Ranger

There’s really no need to rehash what has already been covered ad nauseam: Ford Motor Company’s number one problem involves product. Specifically, it involves the utter ambiguity of the company’s overall product line, such as products that are either already completely outdated (or are quickly becoming that way), products that are either totally irrelevant or will be soon, and products that are so close to being the same thing that they are set to cannibalize each other’s sales at an alarming rate.

Compounding this predicament is the fact that Ford’s competition is fiercer than ever, petroleum prices are still high and threaten to go higher, and the domestic business environment, still reeling from the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent pro-environmental decision, seems to have plopped Ford smack-dab in the middle of the trash compactor scene from the movie Star Wars.

Things are definitely looking bleak for our glass house heroes at the moment, but one bright spot still – for at least a little while longer – shines brightly.

It’s spelled T – R – U – C – K – S, and it’s one product area where Ford never fails to deliver the goods on a world-class level.



As any sophomore business major will tell you, one of the more pleasant components of a good SWOT analysis is the “Opportunities” part. An honest assessment of Ford’s present strengths, weaknesses, and threats may find it hard to focus on the opportunities hidden deep within the company’s current circumstance, but those opportunities do exist. It’s just a case of Ford seeing the proverbial forest for the trees. Time is of the essence, however, and the opportunities with the most immediate feasibility – and the ones that also have the greatest chance for success (profitability) – should be given priority…and soon.

When folks talk about a segment of the new vehicle market where a Ford product is the “sole survivor,” they’re usually talking about the company’s large, body-off-frame, rear-wheel drive “Panther” platform sedans (the Crown Vic, Grand Marquis, and Town Car).

But there is one other segment – one that’s almost just as seemingly irrelevant these days, according to the marketing wizards and bean counters – in which Ford Motor Company fields the sole surviving entrant: The (truly) compact pick-up market with the Ford Ranger.

The Ranger’s story is somewhat of a sad one…it’s essentially the little truck that the market left behind, but watch out! It’s also the little truck to which the market may soon return.

All new for ’83, the Ranger replaced the Mazda-outsourced Ford Courier shortly after the S-10 replaced the Toyota-outsourced Chevy LUV in the then-growing compact pick-up market. A perennial sales champ over its domestic and foreign competition, a host of updates kept the Ranger fresh until it’s sole redesign in 1993.

Minor updates have continued through today, but given the Ranger’s declining sales, its Twin Cities assembly plant scheduled for closure sometime next year, and Ford’s cryptic statement that “future product plans surrounding Ford compact pickups will be announced closer to the end of Ford Ranger production in Twin Cities in 2008,” it appears that either the company plans to abandon this segment altogether, or, more likely, they haven’t yet figured out what they will do.

That leaves the Ranger to flounder, with fire-sale fleet deals to exterminating companies and the occasional retail unit making the modest (sunk) production cost seem worth it for just a little while longer.

When the last Ranger rolls off the Twin Cities assembly line next year, all of Ford’s pick-up truck eggs will once again reside in the Full-Size basket, the mid-sized segment having been long-ago forfeited – like so many other segments Dearborn has given up over the years – to the company’s more ambitious (and now more financially capable) competition.



But what if Ford had a better idea for the Ranger, and for pickup trucks in general?

What if, instead of hatching risky schemes for three insufficiently-differentiated Ford CUVs (let’s call them “Cannibal Utility Vehicles” since that’s all they’ll do to each other, anyway) to occupy virtually the same niche within the each dealer’s showroom, Ford proactively reinvented the compact pick-up genre with an all-new appropriately priced and appropriately sized (though still compact) Ranger?

On the surface, such an idea seems even more risky than Ford’s present segment-crowding exploits. After all, the Ranger – again, the only real compact pickup still on the market – is selling so poorly that, without the benefit of its sunk-cost production and near-zero marketing expenditures, its manufacture would be halted tomorrow despite its segment monopoly. That’s right…conventional wisdom restricts such rolls of the dice only to corporations awash in venture-capital levels of cash and market share (corporations called “Toyota”).

Given the above, I’m sure that Ford has previously toyed with the much safer idea of jumping from the compact pickup segment to the now-crowded mid-sized pickup segment, perhaps even retaining the Ranger name. (Though what name could be better for a new, mid-sized Ford pickup than the legendary “F-100” moniker?)

Clearly, this would be a much less perilous strategy than replacing an existing truck that’s not selling with a much more costly-to-produce new one that probably wouldn’t sell that well, either.

But that’s not the point.

The point is this: Ford is an undisputed leader in trucks, and as such, it should, by virtue of that leadership – both in image and in numbers – provide its customers with nothing less than a full line of trucks – compact, mid-sized, and full-sized.

After all, Ford is America’s truck company, isn’t it? And isn’t expanding Ford’s truck franchise by offering a full line of significantly-differentiated pickups an opportunity for the company to exhibit some real market leadership, especially when this could be accomplished by merely a) not abandoning a product segment it still occupies (increasing fuel prices may well force competitors to return to compact trucks, after all), b) introducing a top-notch mid-sized truck (something every truck competitor but Ford currently offers), and c) continuing to aggressively refine its full-size trucks (as the competition is more brutal than ever before)?

There’s no reason for people like me to speculate about how Ford should do this. I’m not advocating an all-new Ranger, or even a vehicle wearing the Ranger name. But I am saying that the compact pickup market could very easily return in a big way, and that if any company should remain in that segment, it should be Ford, albeit with a worthy product (which, unfortunately, the aged Ranger is no longer).

And, in addition to this, a mid-sized Ford pickup truck should definitely be offered. In the 1980’s, Ford was content to let Chrysler own this then-fledgling part of the truck market with the Dodge Dakota. Though it would apparently never happen in today’s Ford Motor Company, product gurus of the day probably figured that a mid-sized truck would effectively rob more sales from the F-Series and Ranger than it would generate on its own. Maybe they were right, but that was then, and in the 25 years since, a lot of mid-sized truck shoppers – and their dollars – have left Ford showrooms for the competition after deciding that the F-150 was too big and that the Ranger was too small.

Though the current F-Series represents Ford Motor Company’s bread and butter like no other vehicle ever has or likely ever will, there’s a good chance that this year, for the first time in this writer’s life, the F-Series will not be the best-selling vehicle in the U.S. Competition is more vicous than ever before, and with the spectacular new products from GM and Toyota, Ford needs a heavily revamped and improved F-150 yesterday. In this case, Dearborn should definitely “Dance with the one that brung ‘em,” and do whatever it takes to keep the F-Series number one, as abandoning that legacy would rob Ford of yet another important-yet-intangible corporate asset that not even Toyota can replicate: the heritage of truck leadership.

But as much of an ally as Ford’s truck heritage is, the wrong product mix is capable of quickly undermining that advantage. Here’s an example:

When it comes to pickups, the name “Ford Trucks” represents a brand that is distinctly American, in legacy and in image. Like Weber grills, Coca-Cola soft drinks, or Smith & Wesson firearms, the perception of this brand in the mind of a target customer reflexively tends to illicit good feelings about the brand in general.

But when those customers actually walk into a Ford showroom, they need to find a “distinctly Ford” product that still meets their unique needs at least as well as the competition’s product does. If Coke only offered one soft drink – Coca-Cola Classic, for instance – then many diet- or caffeine-conscious soft drink buyers would walk out of the supermarket with a Diet- or Caffeine Free-Pepsi.

Ford has done the “full-line” thing extremely well with sport utility vehicles, and appears to be doing it too well with cross-over utility vehicles. Despite the success of the F-Series, this concept hasn’t been successfully employed with trucks, other than to keep the sadly obsolete Ranger on perpetual life support.

But doesn’t Ford’s passenger car line need just as much (and just as urgent) attention right now?

You bet it does.

Sadly, however, there are probably more customers to be lost on the truck side of the market at the present juncture. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met over the years who are loyal Ford Truck customers but would never consider buying a Ford passenger car.

That needs to change (and change quickly) if Ford is to survive. But a much quicker route to bankruptcy exists in allowing the legions of loyal Ford Truck buyers to jump ship in favor of the competition.

The world’s best pick-up trucks – a full line of them – are the solution, and the pitiful, little lame duck Ranger represents one of the best places for Ford to start.

Auto Maintenance Weekend & Reflections Dishonesty

Though Fridays or Saturdays are my usual choice for the most convenient blogging days of the week, my weekends are usually pretty busy, and it’s a wonder I get anything written at all.

Quite frankly, I’ve found that most of my weekends over the past few years have been typically filled with at least some of the following acitivites:

Gigs with my band

Birthday Parties

Family Get-togethers

Weddings (ones I'm playing and ones where I'm merely a guest)

Weekend road trips with the wife to visit friends

Church functions

Yard work

Auto Repair/Maintenance

This weekend is a car weekend, and seeing as how nothing's currently broken on either of our daily drivers, I had all the time I needed for much-needed routine maintenance; something I rather enjoy doing as long as parts/supplies don't get too expensive.

Other than changing the oil & oil filter, air filter, fuel filter, and PCV valve in both cars, I diagnosed a harmless-yet-irritating noise in my car, and de-carboned the throttle body and intake manifold in my wife's car (it idles MUCH smoother now).

I thought about performing several other maintenance-related jobs on the wife's car, however I took a look back through the service records the car's previous owner kept and discovered that I had another 10,000 miles before the various other things I was considering needed to be done.



As I thumbed through these service records (comprised exclusively of receipts from a Goodyear Service Center and a Jiffy Lube in Decatur, GA), an ugly pattern began to emerge. $500 here...$400 there...another $500 over here...and for what?

The more I studied the records, the more disgusted I became. It was crystal clear that the lady who owned the car before my wife had been tragically taken advantage of. She owned the car for just over 55,000 miles, and, while there were definitely some minor problems, nothing mechanically serious ever happened. Yet she had paid these two retailers over $3,200 for maintenance and minor repairs. It just made me sick.

Several times, she brought the car in complaining of something (as evidenced by the comments section on each of the invoices), the shop correctly diagnosed it, but promptly went on to "over-diagnosed" it (in my opinion); replacing components that couldn't have been related to the original minor problem.

Some of what I saw was simple ineptitude, however the majority of it was total dishonesty, and I wondered how much the lady's opinion of the car was negatively affected by how much she spent on it. It wasn't that the car was a lemon (it certainly wasn't) - it's that she was getting ripped off on a grand scale, and, as evidenced by the fact she kept taking it back to the same two shops, didn't even seem to notice.

A few minutes on the phone with Auto Zone pricing some of the parts that were replaced validated my opinion that if I had owned the car at the time (doing all of the work myself), the maintenance and repairs would have cost me around 25% of what this poor woman had paid.

I worked my way through college in the auto repair/maintenance business. I endeavored to treat every customer as if she was my own grandmother, and I never had problems sleeping at night because I knew that I was completely honest with everyone I ever served.

But I constantly had to put up with customers walking in my store expecting that I would try to sell them products and services they didn't need.

It's sad to say, but after seeing this, I can't say that I blame them.

NASCRAP Non-Stock Car Racertainment: All hail the “Car of Yesterday”

The HC Blogger Unloads on all things France

Okay, I’m getting’ real antsy, so it’s apparently time for me to do something I do once every 3-4 months and have done since, oh, around 1998: Declare, in some sort of public forum, my complete disillusionment and utter disdain for the absolute farce that used to be my favorite sport.

That’s right, it’s once again time for me to shout from the hilltops my complete hatred of the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing – NASCAR.



How do I hate NASCAR? Let me count the ways.

Here is my "Top Ten" list of the things that NASCAR, as an organization, has done to kill my love for my once-favorite sport:

1. They have become a "spec" racing series, meaning that cars on the track are no longer "stock" in any way, shape, or form. Ford, Chevy, Dodge, and now Toyota all share virtually the EXACT same body shells. Only the headlight decals and the front fascia (front bumper cover) are slightly reminiscent of the production vehicle the racer is supposed to be. It astounds me that car manufacturers continue to pour money into NASCAR because of this. "Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday" just doesn't work anymore, and hasn't for years.

2. NASCAR is not at all concerned with sanctioning fair races with consistent rules. Their rules change whenever they need them to, and caution flags (for "debris on the track") are thrown at any time during a race when close racing or a close finish is threatened. It's all about the money, and a good show ensures the money will keep coming. Fairness be damned!

3. Monopolistic and non-competitive corporate behavior permeates each move NASCAR makes. International Speedway Corporation, the largest company that owns racing facilities around the country, is owned by the France family. ISC has been slowly but surely purchasing every track they feel threatened by; the logic being that a competing stock car racing organization could never get off the ground if they have no suitable tracks on which to hold races. Basically, NASCAR just wants to control the whole game board, and this is one way they're doing it.

4. NASCAR abhors technology, and this is completely contrary to one of the main purposes of motorsports. Racing is supposed to fuel innovation, so that advances in technology made in the pursuit of better finishes on the track eventually yield a better, more efficient, more durable, or safer vehicle on the street. NASCAR's insistence on 50-year-old technology (re-circulating ball steering gear boxes, push-rod V8 engines fed by carburetors, the absence of electronic engine controls for everything other than ignition, etc.) only makes the competition easier for NASCAR to regulate and police so that no team, regardless of how creative they may be or what clever things they may discover, can gain much of an advantage over their competitors for very long.

5. Corporate (and now municipal!) shakedowns are de rigueur with NASCAR. Over the past ten years, the organization's ultimate goal has been to separate every large company that has something anything to market to the general public from as much of its money as is possible. Convincing board room after board room that there is no bigger bang for the buck than advertising in NASCAR-land, a disturbing percentage of corporate America is chugging this Kool-Aid by the gallon, and paying exorbitant sums of money to do it. This latest fiasco about which city was going to land the "NASCAR Hall of Fame" all came down to which municipality offered the sweetest deal. Charlotte won (or lost, depending on how you look at it), and you had better believe they had to pony up quite a sweetheart deal for the "privilege."

6. NASCAR's sanitization of its participants flies in the face of nearly every colorful personality who built the sport of stock car racing. It was in the mid-to-late 1960's when NASCAR began to shed its backward image of moon-shiners bringing their "whiskey cars" out on Saturday night to see whose machine was the fastest. Drivers like Curtis Turner and crew chiefs like Smokey Yunick were certainly not "ready-for-prime-time," but they were completely representative of the type of people Big Bill France founded NASCAR to appeal to average, everyday, working-class people who liked to see the same Ford or Chevy they drove to work each day do battle on the race track each weekend. Could you imagine someone like Jeff Gordon, a multi-millionaire who dates a supermodel, hanging out with the average, working-class NASCAR fan who wears a number 24 cap and cheers for him each weekend? Many of the drivers and crews back in the '60's and '70's hung out and partied with their fans before and after races each weekend. Today's polished and poised drivers sit on such a pedestal that they have little in common with the average fan who supports them. Don't even mention the fines NASCAR now levies for saying the wrong thing over the in-car radio or in a victory lane interview. Much like what has happened to pop music, appearance now trumps ability in professional stock car racing.

7. NASCAR has a blatant disregard for safety until it threatens their revenue stream. Then they only care about the "appearance" of safety. During the ultra-competitive "tire wars" (Goodyear vs. Hoosier) of the early 1990's, NASCAR did virtually nothing as the two archrival companies produced racing tires that were closer and closer to the edge of what was wholly unsafe. But then Neil Bonnett lost his life due to this nonsense and NASCAR's hasty, simple solution was to get rid of Hoosier so that the lack of competition would ensure that Goodyear produced safer, slower tires. A few years prior to that, Richard Petty's infamous spiral along the retaining fence between the grandstands and the track at Daytona certainly wasn't the first time a car had taken to the air at 200mph, but it was the first time that fans had been so clearly threatened by such a thing. More to the point, however, was that this was the first time that video images of such a threat were broadcast around the nation. NASCAR's answer was the restrictor plate. Rather than mandating smaller engines making less power to slow the cars down, NASCAR, terrified of technology as always, just decided to simply mandate that a thin metal plate be sandwiched between the carburetor and the intake manifold, cutting the amount of air entering the engine by over one-third and bringing a field of cars who's engine outputs varied from 600 to nearly 800 horsepower, all down to about 450 horsepower each. Ever since the restrictor plate's implementation at Daytona and Talladega, a train of cars, all bunched together, mindlessly circle the track, lap after lap, until someone makes a mistake and 40% of the field is eliminated in one giant wreck. All this NASCAR does in the name of "safety."

8. From a public relations point of view, NASCAR is the racing version of Big Brother, pure and simple. If you ever read George Orwell's book 1984, you'll recall that the central character, Winston Smith, worked in the Ministry of Truth; the division of the government that went back and changed each pervious edition of the newspaper so that Big Brother (the government) would appear to have always been right about everything. When this year's television or radio announcers refer to the late Dale Earnhardt's seven championships, they don't refer to them as his seven Winston Cup championships (which they were). They instead refer to them as his seven Nextel Cup championships, as if Nextel was always the series sponsor. When NASCAR fined Dale Earnhardt, Jr. for using profanity in a victory lane celebration at the July race in Daytona last year, he was referring to his late father's record at the track. In the question, the announcer interviewing Dale, Jr. referred to Dale, Sr.'s number of wins at the track. Dale, Jr.'s profane exclamation (made out of excitement more than anything) was followed by a correction to the number of wins his father had at the track. The reason the announcer's number was wrong (too low) was because he was only counting NASCAR-sanctioned races the elder Earnhardt had won at Daytona International Speedway (something that NASCAR undoubtedly told the announcer to do). Earnhardt, Jr. was (correctly) counting all of Sr.’s wins there - NASCAR and non-NASCAR races alike. It makes you wonder what the fine was really for.

9. NASCAR's "commitment to diversity," like those of many large corporations today, is nothing more than a payoff to the likes of Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition (who several years ago indicated that they were satisfied with NASCAR's "corrective actions" and would no longer threaten them with boycotts, etc.). Various teams in lower-echelon touring series are encouraged by NASCAR to promote minority drivers to higher-echelon series. This ends up being unwise and potentially unsafe, as drivers are given driving opportunities in faster cars in more competitive series before they're ready. If NASCAR really cared about minority participation in their sport, they would confront their ugly past with regard to Wendell Scott, the only black driver to win a NASCAR Cup-level race. Though a movie was made about it years ago, NASCAR doesn't want to talk about the fact that in the late '60's and early '70's, Scott would lose several laps during a race when he had to literally get out of his car and perform his own pit stop by himself at Talladega because no one was willing to serve on his pit crew for fear of reprisal by the angry racists that comprised the most vocal contingent of NASCAR fans in Eastern Alabama at the time. Wendell Scott was a true hero - he overcame amazing odds and with virtually no help from the NASCAR establishment, he enjoyed a moderate degree of success and set a landmark precedent with an eventual victory. Unfortunately, NASCAR doesn't like to mention his name when they talk about their current diversity initiatives. Perhaps they're a little too afraid of reminding advertisers about the "bad old days."

10. The mad desire for control over the participants in their sport borders on tyrannical. After winning races and championships in various other forms of racing throughout the '60's, '70's, and '80's, motorsports mogul Jack Roush got involved in NASCAR in 1988 with a single team backed by Ford and utilizing the talents of now-veteran driver Mark Martin. Within two years, Roush and Martin came within just a few points of winning the NASCAR Winston Cup championship. However, over the years, Jack Roush began to see a pattern that disturbed him. NASCAR began to limit the number of days each year teams could test their cars on tracks used for NASCAR races. At the same time, they also continued their annoying habit of changing rules constantly throughout the season. Frustrated but undaunted, Roush decided that he would make the most of what testing time he had, and at the same time more efficiently try out different engine and suspension combinations during actual races by fielding an eventual total of five different teams with five different drivers in every race. As soon as this strategy started bringing Roush success (back-to-back championships in 2003 & 2004), NASCAR again stepped in, floating the idea of limiting each owner to a maximum of three teams. Roush (and other large NASCAR teams) promptly threatened litigation, and while NASCAR appears to have (for once) backed down, the issue is certainly not dead. Utter paranoia often results in the desire for total control, and there is no better corporate example of this than NASCAR.

Entertaining a Pretender (well, lots of them, actually): My impression of the Atlanta “International” Auto Show

The GM Motorama it ain't

Okay, everybody knows it, so I’ll just come out and say it from the get-go. The Detroit Auto Show – er, I mean, the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) held each year at the Motor City’s rather lackluster Cobo Hall – is the big event in the automotive world. Yes, the Chicago and Los Angeles shows are good for a handful of new product introductions each year, but exactly no one is delusional enough to think that they’re in any way on the same level as the NAIAS.

That being said, one thing should be abundantly clear to all gear heads residing in metro Atlanta: The Atlanta show is a total poseur.

Atlanta's largest dealership showroom

More specifically, anyone who’s been a regular attendee over the past twenty years knows full well that it’s nothing more than the Metro Atlanta Auto Dealers Association’s number one method to try and drum up business for their typically-slimy members. That’s right, it’s less of a product exposition by the automakers, and more of a mega-showroom for area car dealers, packed with all the requisite info-babe turn-table models, microphone wielding “product specialists,” as well as the usual run-of-the-pond sales scum patrolling every display for any and all hapless show goers capable of being brow-beaten into “setting up an appointment” for a “test drive back at the dealership.”

Nonetheless, there are cars!

This is a shame, as a low-pressure product exhibition would likely provide a greater benefit everyone (the manufacturers, MAADA, the dealers, and the consumers). Regardless, it is what it is, and despite it’s shortcomings, there are still lots of cars there. Which means, of course, I’ll be there, too.

I spent nearly six hours at the show this year, and lots of things caught my attention; however I’ve waited a week to blog about them for a very specific reason: I wanted everything to “sink in” so I could concentrate on the aspects of the show that left the strongest impression on me. In no particular order, here they are:



1) As much as I hate to report this, I must: Once again, Honda and Toyota have proven that they really do “get it,” and Ford, GM, and (especially) Daimler Chrysler have proven that they absolutely don’t. Evidence? All the big concept cars Ford brought out at the NAIAS were absent at Atlanta. Taking their place was a gimmicky talking robot, and two concept vehicles from previous years’ shows (the Bronco concept from 2004 and the Cobra concept from 2003). Honda and Toyota brought almost everything they debuted at the NAIAS this year to Atlanta, and resorted to fewer goofy theatrics in the presentation. And show goers noticed.



2) Many of the automakers were successful in taking their marketing angles “to the floor of the show” by immersing their displays – and even their people – in the image they want to portray. As my wife and I sat in a total crap-box of a $14,000 Suzuki station wagon, we wondered how a company that produces the Ferrari of motorcycles could build cars like this. Then one of the Suzuki product specialists walked by, and it hit me – all of them were wearing black denim jeans, white t-shirts, leather jackets, and boots. In other words, motorcycle attire. The very same concept was represented by the crooked-baseball-cap-wearing teenage reprobate working the desk at Toyota’s Scion “youth brand." As off-putting as all this was to me, who knows? Maybe it works.



3) Toyota seems right on schedule for their upcoming-and-coolly-anticipated total world domination. Damn, I wish they were capable of doing something wrong! As my jaw dropped upon pulling the lever and reclining the seat in the back of the company’s luxurious large sedan (the Avalon), it occurred to me that they probably sat their interior design engineers down in the back of a $350,000 Rolls Royce and said, “Okay guys, do as much of this stuff as you can in a $34,000 car…we can’t use all the same materials, but get as close as possible with the budget we have.” How close did they get? For the money, they got damn close.



4) Given the above, you wonder the following: If they can get this close to Rolls Royce interior design standards in a $34,000 car, what could they do in a $80,000 car. Enter the Lexus LS600h. In this “Benz assassin” of a large luxury sedan, the interior effectively surpasses the opulence of the Rolls, especially in the back seat where the reclining seat lies 100% flat, an ottoman kicks up from below the seat, and the process is all electronically controlled. Oh yeah, the LS600h is also capable of parallel parking itself – just pull alongside the car next to you (and behind the space you want), put your foot on the brake, press a button, take your hands off the wheel, and gently let off the brake as the vehicle calculates the perfect angle and automatically drives itself into the tight parking space that you would have never attempted. Couple this with 430 horsepower, a reputation for reliability that would make the Maytag repairman join a union, and one of the greatest dealer networks in the nation, and you’ve got a sure-fire world beater. Did I mention that it’s a hybrid?



5) Finally, I must wax on for a moment about the hands-down star of the show (in my no-so-humble opinion, anyway). The extreme south end of the display floor encompassed a bevy of automotive accessory vendors. Everything from wheels, tires, car polish, car covers, fuzzy dice, fake chrome, fake wood, fake carbon fiber and fake people resided here, along with just about every hopped up car you could imagine. I’m an OEM (original equipment manufacture) kind of guy, so I walked quickly through this silly midway, but suddenly, something caught my eye. There, among the hawkers and flashing lights, buried behind stacks of custom rims and tires, and itself shod with garish 20-inch gold-plated wire spoke wheels, was the true definition of American automotive luxury – a car that in design and execution absolutely nailed all the aspects of this genre in a way that Lincoln, Cadillac, Buick and Chrysler absolutely have not done in years and probably won’t do for years to come. This is the car that, if properly redesigned for the 21st century, could steal back a generation of customers from Lexus, Mercedes, and BMW. This is the car that redefined what cars looked like for a quarter century after it was introduced. This is a 1961 Lincoln Continental. After seeing it, I was ready to go home.

“Muscle Cars” of the ‘80’s and ‘90’s I’d Like To Own

Why I shouldn't look at auto classified ads

For whatever reason, I found myself on AutoTrader.com today. Initially, I just wanted to see how much '95 Tauruses like my wife’s were selling for (her 165,000 mile example that we bought three years ago for $1,700 is running just fine, but I was just curious in case we wanted to sell it and get something else). It wasn't long, however, before I stumbled upon a low-mileage Taurus SHO; Ford's ultra-quick (for the era) version of it’s best-selling sedan.

Then I started thinking about other "muscle" cars of the period. Though the late '60's and early '70's were the definitive era of the "muscle car" as they're now known, there were some notable examples of this classic formula (an unassuming mid-sized coupe or sedan with an abnormally high-output engine) when I was a kid, too.

Here are a few examples I found on AutoTrader.com. I'd love to have just about any of them:

1994 FORD TAURUS SHO - 64,000 miles, $6,500 (this is a STEAL for such a clean, low-mileage example of this Yamaha-powered BMW 5-Series slayer - I'm sure it's already sold!)

1987 BUICK GRAND NATIONAL - 94,000 miles, $15,500 (a very good deal for this quickly-appreciating neo-classic)

1992 LINCOLN MARK VII LSC - 103,000 miles, $2,700 (a rough example with faded paint, worn interior, and transmission trouble, but still a classy T-Bird-based Lincoln coupe with the Mustang GT's 225-horsepower five-liter V8)

1990 PONTIAC MCCLAREN TURBO GRAND PRIX - 47,535 miles, $7,990 (though not the fastest of the front-wheel-drive Grand Prix's, the McClaren Turbo model was ahead of its time and will likely be the most collectible of the FWD breed)

1986 MERKUR XR4TI - 58,000 miles, $5,000 (not a bad price for this potential collectible; especially since Ford only imported them from Europe for four or five years)

1996 CHEVROLET IMPALA SS - 46,272 miles, $17,400 (typical market price for this ultra-fast, full-sized four-door sedan that Chevy transformed from "Caprice" to "Impala" by dropping the Corvette LT-1 V8 under the hood; the fact that it was only produced for three years, and that 1996 was the last and best model year for the vehicle makes this low-mileage example worth the hefty asking price)

1990 FORD THUNDERBIRD SUPER COUPE - 8,140 miles, $16,300 (a black '91 model was the fastest car I have ever owned; this 35th Anniversary Edition is well-priced given its low-mileage and sure-fire future collectibility potential - I wish I still had mine)

1987 CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO SS AERO COUPE - 6,272 miles, $19,900 (practically new; though steep, the price isn't all that unrealistic considering the ultra-low mileage and the fact that just over 6,000 of the NASCAR-style "Aero Coupe" Monte Carlos were produced)

1991 DODGE SPIRIT R/T - 136,200 miles, $5,200 (yes, it was built off the despised '80's K-car chassis, but this turbo-charged monster could accelerate quicker to 60 mph than its contemporary Mustang GT and Camaro Z-28 - it was nearly as quick to sixty as a standard '91 Corvette!)

Okay, some of them sound cheesy, I’ll admit. But compared to the anemic neutered-by-smog-equipment vehicles of the late ‘70’s, these machines were pure automotive adrenaline!

What are YOUR favorites?

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who remembers the performance cars from these years fondly, so come on, valued readers! Leave a comment about one of these Reagan-era rides that made your heart race “back in the day.” It’s just a matter of time before the gavel drops at the Barrett-Jackson auto auction on one of these babies for several hundred thousand!

Watching TV Re-Runs While Digesting Automotive Left-Overs

Okay, it's true. I only watch old re-runs to look at the cars.

Vegetating in front of the television this afternoon, I happened upon a 26-year-old episode of one of the seminal detective shows of my youth – Magnum, P.I.

Yeah, as cheesy as it may sound, I really thought Tom Selleck was cool back then, but of course, the real reason I tuned every Thursday night was the red, perpetually-on-loan Ferrari 308 GTS he drove.




So lying there in the recliner this afternoon, I quickly became sucked in into another wasteful hour of TV nostalgia by the gorgeous red Ferrari, the beauty of the show’s Hawaiian backdrop, and…let’s be honest here…a really hot girl in a bikini (with huge hair).

Anytime I watch an old re-run like this, I inevitably pay attention to the random cars that show up in most every scene shot on public streets.

This particular occasion was no different, as my mind continually tendered thoughts such as “wow, that Audi looks a million years old,” or “my God, how did an ’81 Mustang look that new,“ or even, “why was almost every car back then about as aerodynamic as my house?”

It wasn’t long before Thomas Magnum and his client were looking down on a ritzy country club parking lot filled with all the typical prestige iron of the day.

The classic lines and titanic size of a 1979 Lincoln Mark V was the first car to catch my attention, followed immediately by the ever-boring shape of a 1981 S-Class Benz. An early 3-series Bimmer was there, parked right next to Rolls (or probably just a Bentley, as hey…this wasn’t that nice of a country club). Further up was the “love-it-or-hate-it” back end of an ’81 Cadillac Seville, and beyond that, a white Jaguar XJ sedan.



When everything new is old again

“Hey…wait a minute,” I thought,” as the Jag quickly played a major time-warp trick on my eyes!

For a second, I forgot I was watching an old TV show. It was if this could have been made in 2007, or 2001, or 1991…rather than 1981.

You see, the body style of Jaguar’s “big cat” has, unfortunately, not changed much in the past 40 years. Yes, the car’s platform has changed and it’s engine options have changed…it’s size has changed a little…heck, even the type of metal the body is crafted from (formerly steel, now aluminum) has changed. It’s one hell of a lot more reliable than it used to be (somebody ought to thank Ford for that), and in a world of no hood ornaments, the Jag still dares to be different!

But the actual shape of the car is pretty much the same. Yes, it has evolved, but not much.

There are other cars whose shapes haven’t changed radically since 1981. The Porsche 911 is one. The…well…hmmm…uh…well, again, the Porsche 911 comes to mind.



What Jag calls "classic," the market calls "tired"

Look, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with preserving a classic shape. It has certainly worked for the 911 (though the word “evolved” is probably not quite strong enough to describe the changes this body style has undergone since 1963). However the Jaguar XJ is a different story. In September of 2006, the North American market (one of Jag’s largest) saw a total number of thirty-three cars delivered. That’s down 96% from the already-abysmally-low 2005 number.

The formation of Ford’s Premier Auto Group was a terrible idea from the get-go (thanks, Jac Nasser), but even worse was the strategy to go down market in search of sales volume with such laughable products as the Jaguar X-Type (remember the Ford Contour…yep, that’s where it came from) rather than spend the money required to provide real design leadership for the marque’s aged flagship model.

This is just sad, and in no time at all, Ford will either sell Jaguar to a company that cares about its proud heritage, or it will die an unceremonious death. Either way, a 40-year history of a good-but-not-that-good shape will forever tarnish the company’s reputation for otherwise impeccable style.

The Sad State of Chrysler: Quick, somebody shine the Iacocca Signal!

“If you can find a better car, buy it!”

That one cocky phrase, uttered by CEO Lee Iacocca in the quintessential domestic car commercial of the 1980’s (advertising the much-loathed Chrysler “K” cars) paved the way to industry canonization for one of the last great, hard-nosed, “my-way-or-the-highway” Detroit auto executives.

Iacocca himself, and not the car - and CERTAINLY not Chrysler - lent the only measure of credibility to this bold but now-laughable television spot.



This was the man who took on the staggering challenge of averting Chrysler’s impending bankruptcy after he was unceremoniously fired from the Ford Motor Company he helped save twenty years earlier, the man who introduced the least expensive new car sold in America (in years…the aforementioned K-Car), the man who paid back the U.S. government’s bail-out loans seven years early, and the man who transformed Chrysler into a modern, efficient car company which ultimately became irresistible to Germany’s Daimler-Benz.



And just like that, in 1992, he was gone. Retirement from four decades in the car business was surely deserved, and with the company in the capable hands of people like Robert Lutz, who could blame him?

“Merger of Equals”



Despite the PR campaign at the time, Daimler-Benz’s acquisition of Chrysler was not, in fact, any sort of a merger. More akin to a hostile takeover, the massive German conglomerate saw an immediate opportunity to go “mainstream” in North America via one large purchase rather than suffer the trials and tribulations of introducing an all-new vehicle line and developing a dealer network, or by expanding (and cheapening) their lauded (and profitable) Mercedes-Benz brand.

Most of the Chrysler executives were caught off-guard as the two companies worked out the details, and Chrysler’s only senior manager who could speak and understand German – the aforementioned Bob Lutz – was excluded entirely from the highest level meetings.

Before long, however, things started going well and some synergy was realized. As worldwide sales of Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz division hit all-time lows, the entire corporation (now called Daimler-Chrysler) survived on the North American sales success of the highly-profitable Chrysler 300 (profitable largely because of sunk-cost development made possible by the car’s previous-generation Mercedes E-Class underpinnings). By 2005, Chrysler had announced plans to produce a throwback muscle car (the Dodge Challenger) to compete with Ford’s retro-themed Mustang and GM’s revived Chevy Camaro.



Build them and they will…pile up on dealer’s lots???

Corporate blinders – the classic fashion faux pas of the Motor City – are always a sure-fire recipe for trouble in the car business, but they were apparently too tempting for Daimler-Chrysler executives not to wear in 2006.

As the winds of change blew in the North American new vehicle market, cooling the sales of the company’s lucrative LH cars (the Chrysler 300, and the Dodge Charger and Magnum), Chrysler’s decision makers ignored the situation and refused to cut production in fear of a shareholder backlash.

Spirited production levels always show corporate health, anyway, and who was Chrysler to bear the bad news of a slowing auto market to Wall Street?

In a move that wouldn’t have happened at Ford or GM since the 1970’s, Chrysler just kept building cars, filling up dealer lots and perplexing industry analysts to no end. And, of course, it wasn’t long before this house of cards came tumbling down:

Last Week’s Headline: “Daimler Considering Sale of Chrysler”

This Week’s Headline: “GM In Talks With Diamler – May Purchase Chrysler”

Today’s Headline: “Chinese Automakers May Be Interested In Chrysler”

Where have all the cowboys gone?

And now, as Chrysler flounders, its products sitting idly on showroom floors and its future uncertain, where is the leader – the executive – the man or the woman who will emerge, as Iacocca once did, to take decisive action and save this once-proud American company?

Alan Mulally is busy trying to make a few “bold moves” over at Ford. Ditto for Ford’s Mazda-saving Mark Fields. Nissan-savior and global-auto-industry-golden-boy Carlos Ghosn has probably lost interest in such big ideas (after his desires for a Nissan/Renault/Ford alliance were thwarted last year). The man who was once heir-apparent to Iacocca’s throne, “Maximum Bob” Lutz himself, seems content to spend the rest of his 7th decade on this planet working for his current employer, General Motors. And what of Chrysler division’s own Dr. Z (Dieter Zetsche), the German-accented, mustachioed executive who served as the company’s TV pitchman for exactly five minutes before being promoted to the position of parent-company CEO? Why he’s now the architect of Daimler’s presently-attempted divestiture of Chrysler!

There just aren’t that many Superstars left in the global auto industry these days. Ransom E. Olds is dead, and so are Henry Ford and William Durant. Hank the Deuce is gone, as is Ed Cole and John Z. DeLorean. Roger Smith and Donald Peterson may still be around, but who knows where? And Bill Ford, Jr. and Rick Wagoner seem more than happy to sit back and let others pilot their company’s turnarounds.

It looks as if Chrysler’s future may just depend on one man and one man only.



Quick, somebody shine the Iacocca Signal!