MOTOR MOUTH
David Booth reflects on this year’s Detroit auto show,
Detroit still hosts the most important auto show in the world. Oh, Los Angeles is more glamorous, Frankfurt’s motor show is bigger and the Geneva exhibition has more supercars per square foot than the Beverly Hills Hilton on Oscar night. But Detroit matters. Things happen in Detroit. Decisions are made, CEOs pontificate and, perhaps most importantly, trends that were previously merely nascent, come out in their full glory. Here are a few reflections from this year’s show.
The future of mobility is now. Like right now. Much has been made of the radical change in the automotive industry’s business model — going from selling cars to selling “mobility solutions.” Uber has disrupted the taxi business, autonomous driving is threatening the way we drive and electric vehicles are changing how we refuel. But, despite various toes in the water — such as General Motors investing US$ 500- million in the Lyft ride- sharing platform — no major automaker had really bought into the concept that the future of how we own cars is dramatically changing.
That changed at Detroit. Ford’s “Pass” app includes a pilot program that lets friends and family members share ownership of one car. Like the fractional ownership programs that allow cost- effective “ownership” of high- priced personal jets, Ford is beta testing — “We’re going to disrupt ourselves,” said CEO Mark Fields — a pilot project at three Austin, Texas, dealerships that will allow up to six people to co-
lease their Fords and manage their “drive time” via an app. “People are already sharing everything,” said an optimistic David McClelland, Ford Credit executive vice- president of marketing and sales, though I suspect he’s failing to account for the difficulty of getting six family members to agree on what colour said shared car should be, let alone the make and model.
Could cheap crude cause governments to “force” us to buy electric vehicles? Oh, sure, cheap gas (and the low interest rates that are part and parcel of our economic stagnation) has propped up car sales in North America ( record numbers were recorded both in Canada and the United States in 2015). But cheap gas — less than a loonie a litre here and below two bucks a gallon in the U.S. — is putting a huge damper on automakers’ electric vehicle plans. While still believing that EVs like his Leaf are “the only way to meet f uture carbon emissions limits that will help prevent global warming,” even Carlos Ghosn, Nissan’s CEO, admits EVs are not catching on with the average motorist. “They may be interested enough to Google EVs,” says the industry’s most ardent prognosticator for battery-powered vehicles not named Elon Musk, but when they head to the showroom, they’re buying cheaper, and more practical, conventionally powered cars.
Indeed, Ghosn sees widespread adoption of emissions- free electric motoring as dependent on governmental regulations, severe arm- twisting needed if we are to have a true electric car revolution. Citing a number of cities in Europe and the Far East that have begun banning cars — especially diesels — from their core, he more than implied that EV sales may require draconian regulations to become viable
alternatives to internal combustion.
The problem is that, while there is widespread support from the general populace in Europe — European automakers, with product more than 50 per cent diesel-powered, are the ones dragging their feet — Bubba from Lubbock loves his F-150 almost as much as his AR-15. And cheap gasoline — some prognosticators are predicting U.S. pricing togo as low as $1.20 a gallon — is not going to make it any easier to pry his pickup from his “cold, dead hands.”
The sexiest cars on the show floor were from Buick
and Lexus. Yes, Buick and Lexus. With 2016’s NAIAS lacking a Ford GT “show stealer,” they were the talk of Detroit. Indeed, I had a semi- heated argument with Driving. ca’s online editor, Nick Tragianis, about which — Lexus’s futuristic LC 500 or Buick’s Maserati- cumBentley Avista — was the star of the show. Never mind which 2+2 sportster was sexier, when was the last time a 23- year- old car buff defended the stylistic musings of Buick? Hell has indeed frozen over.
Meanwhile, the emptiest booth in Detroit’s Cobo Hall was Alfa Romeo, the assembled press and industry insiders ignoring the company’s new Giulia like it was, well, a Buick. Considering how much I love Alfa Romeo, that makes me sad.
Haven’t we been down
this road before? In 2002, Chrysler introduced a Pacifica crossover utility vehicle, which, it said, was going to revolutionize — even take over — the minivan market. The Town & Country and Dodge’s everpopular Caravan would go the way of the dodo bird said the company’s marketing mavens. Plagued by lack of focus and significantly-higher- than- Caravan pricing, the Pacifica was extremely
unpopular and died an ignominious death in 2008.
Fast- forward a decade and Chrysler — now Fiat Chrysler — is trumpeting pretty much the same message, namely that crossover styling will trump minivan practicality, rendering the Town & Country and Caravan obsolete. They even called it the Pacifica.
It didn’t work a decade ago. It isn’t going to work today. People who buy minivans don’t need sexy; they need to haul families.
More cars not worth reviv
ing. Ford keeps claiming it’s committed to the Lincoln brand. You wouldn’t know it by the new Continental introduction. After wowing the public and press alike as far back as 2002 with its stunning Continental concepts, the production version looks like a Chrysler 300 redesigned by Liberace. Oh, there’s lots of frills and such inside, but its exterior is somnolence incarnate. Bentley joked about suing Ford, claiming Lincoln’s 2015 concept copied its Flying Spur — “Do you want us to send the product tooling?” quipped Bentley design chief, Luc Donckerwolke — just a little too assiduously. Methinks Bentley’s legal department can stand down.
Meanwhile, in other news
in futility, the steel industry had a huge display at the auto show, detailing how building cars from high- strength steel actually reduces greenhouse gas emissions compared with aluminum construction — because it takes less effort to produce and recycle.
Unfortunately for #steelmatters, that ship has appeared to have sailed, with Ford and Jaguar leading the charge in weight reduction. After all, the automakers are not on the hook to reduce their overall CO2 emissions footprint, only to improve the fuel efficiency of their cars. And reducing weight with relatively cheap aluminum is the easiest way to do that.