Cars No One Wants: A Few More

There are three more vehicles that didn’t fit into my earlier entries of cars that no one wants. The first two are competing vans from GM and Ford, while the third is the only off-road vehicle to buy if you are serious about off-roading.

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Ford E-Series
Ford makes a full-size van that can move a lot of gear or a lot of people. Whether you are in a band and need to take you equipment with you, or you are a church and need to take your congregation with you, Only Americans know how to make a bus you don’t need a special license to drive.



Chevy Express/GMC Savana
GM’s version of the aforementioned van can move the same number of passengers (15 adults!), and has respectable towing capabilities.



Jeep Wrangler
There’s really only one vehicle the Americans make in the off-road category that is not available in any other format. Sure, GM has their Hummer... but no one buys over $50,000 for a vehicle and then beats it senseless.

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Cars No One Wants: The Truck Edition

People in the U.S. have stuff. We have horses, machinery, waverunners and boats, dune buggies and dirt bikes, fifth-wheel trailers, toy haulers. No company outside our borders offers a vehicle ready to contend with all of our stuff.

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Chevrolet Avalanche / Cadillac Escalade EXT
The lightweight of this group, GM is the only company in the world to offer a real “transformer”. The Avalanche/Escalade EXT can convert from a four-door, short bed truck, into a full bed pickup.



Dodge Ram 3500
Dodge makes the best diesel trucks in America, and the best looking full-size trucks anywhere. The 3500 offers 16,500 pounds of towing, and a 12,200 pound payload capacity.



Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD
Chevy’s latest heavy duty truck pulls 16,000 pounds... and did I mention that it seats six?



Ford Super Duty
The Ford Super Duty offers the only factory-installed, fully integrated Trailer Brake Controller. This beast is capable of towing 24,600 pounds!

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Cars No One Wants: The Dreaded SUV Edition

No one will win any arguments trying to say the SUV isn’t an inefficient over-sized vehicle. But the argument isn’t about American car companies making over-sized land yachts. The argument is that no one wants them... which is simply not true. If you have a lot of people you need to move, and you have some heavy equipment that needs to come along... you’re not doing this using a Honda Odyssey.

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Ford Expedition EL / GMC Yukon XL
Let’s say you have four kids (with friends), a dog or two, and a boat. And let’s say you want to make a trip to the river for the holiday weekend without burning out the transmission on the mini-van trying to pull all that up the slightest hill. Only American companies make a vehicle capable of moving toys, gear, and people. Both the Expedition EL and the Yukon XL seat nine, and are capable of towing 9,000 pounds.



Cadillac Escalade
Repeat all of the above... but add all the refinements of a Cadillac. Say what you will about failed business models, but Cadillac is one of GM’s most profitable brands.



Ford Escape Hybrid
The hybrid no one seems to know about... Ford offers a 34 MPG hybrid that happens to fit more than one full-sized adult. The Escape Hybrid seats five, offers up to 66 cubic feet of storage space (compared to 14.4 in the Prius), and has four-wheel drive.

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Cars No One Wants: Muscle Car Edition

The talking points memo went out last week, and apparently all reporters and talking heads are suppose to mention that the American car companies make cars people don’t want, and no cars people do want. All three companies make cars that not only do people want, but no foreign company offers. Today I am exploring a few that may seem like unpopular offerings (though sales do not support that theory)... the American Muscle Car.

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One of the best descriptions of American muscle is “bang for the buck”. And each of these cars have it. No Japanese car company makes anything close to good old muscle cars. And no matter what our gas prices look like – and no matter what our economy looks like – Americans like big, powerful, raw machines.

Ford Mustang
Considered the first Pony car, Ford offers something that you can’t come close to from any foreign car company. Powerful, fun to drive, and affordable. Car and Driver listed the Mustang as the quickest car of 2007 under $20,000. Not only do people want this car... look around, people are buying this car.



Dodge Challenger
A throwback to the 70’s (something the Japanese can’t even do), Dodge recently introduced the Challenger. High-dollar auctions simply for the rights to buy one shows serious consumer interest.



Chrysler 300/Dodge Charger
A muscle car for the family man, Chrysler offers the luxurious Chrysler 300 or the sporty Dodge Charger. Roomy, powerful, and affordable. Good luck finding a decent sized, rear-wheel drive family car from any of the imports.



Dodge Viper
I suppose you could go to a German or Italian automaker if you’re in the mood for a supercar. But the Dodge Viper can turn more heads than most cars on the road.



Chevy Corvette
And speaking of supercars, America’s first sports car out-performs most competitors and costs a mere fraction of the price. Japan’s closest competitor to the Corvette disappeared in 2005.

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Sliver of Time

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Miska Knapek creates amazing photos which display a full 24-hours of time in one single photograph.

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The Auto Giant Mess

There’s a lot of opinion being tossed out this weekend and today about the auto-giants and the possibility of a bail-out. Questions like, “What is special about G.M. that they should be able to live as though 2008 never happened?” Statements like, “They can be replaced by car companies that can design, build, and market cars that people actually want,” or, “The simple truth is that Ford and G.M. make ugly, inefficient cars that few people want to buy.” Ignorance repeated like, “They deserve to go under for killing the electric car.” There are so many points that are wrong in these questions, statements, and suggestions.

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First, they are so special that they do need to be bailed out. Why? Because it’s not just the blue-collar jobs they provide, though there are a lot of those. It’s not just the white-collar jobs they provide, and they provide plenty of those as well. But what about the literally millions of jobs that are related to what GM, Ford, and Chrysler do?

The automotive companies are the leading buyers of IT equipment... GM having more work-stations than any company in the country. They purchase cutting-edge virtual reality displays, advanced electronics, and the latest simulation software. The auto companies push the development of all sort of new technologies from batteries to fuel cells to new polymers.

This purchasing, this innovation, is here in America. Toyota and Honda do the same thing... in Japan. If GM, Ford, or Chrysler are gone, Toyota will fill the void and sell their cars. Toyota will make a few models here, but the manufacturing and the innovation gap will not be filled. They will keep that innovation... and the high-tech jobs... and the money... over in Japan.

In addition, the cost to the government (i.e. all of us) would be far greater than the cost of a bail-out. The retirements of over 800,000 people would suddenly fall on the shoulders of the U.S. Government. Unemployment compensation would be out of control, instantly tripling what it is right now. Not to mention all of the local governments that rely heavily on the taxes provided by auto industry plants and businesses.

Second, I am sick and tired of hearing how GM killed the electric vehicle, and how they don’t make cars people want to buy.

In 1990, GM started a long journey to make an all electric car. GM made 1,000 cars and was only able to lease around 800... at a hugely subsidized price. They didn’t kill the electric vehicle, consumer’s lack of interest killed it.

Ford and GM do not make ugly, inefficient cars that few people want to buy. Their current problem is that they made exactly the cars people wanted to buy. They made SUVs with seating for nine, draped with leather, dripping with chrome, quadruple climate zones, and a TV screen for every passenger. They weigh in at 8,000 pounds and have to go 0-60 in under 10 seconds (to meet the expectations of the consumer)... and then are listed as “inefficient”. All things considered, these SUVs are pretty damned efficient.

It just so happened that four years into the five year development time that a car takes to be produced, the gas jumped unexpectedly and out of control. Suddenly the price to fuel the SUVs that the consumers demanded was way more than filling up a Mini. Suddenly GM was no longer making the cars people want... even though a month ago GM couldn’t make the same SUVs fast enough.

GM, Ford, and Chrysler have been doing the same thing that every company in the world does. They make what people are buying, not something people might buy if all conditions fall a certain way. That’s not poor management, that’s business as usual.

Interestingly enough, none of the opponents to the auto industry bail-out have clearly expressed why AIG deserves it, but GM does not.

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No More Excuses

The way that I was raised was, “Nobody’s better than you, and anything that you want, you set your mind to it and you go get it. Period.” I believed that it was possible, but I didn’t know if I really believed. The history of African-Americans is such that you want to be a part of America, but we’ve been rejected so much it’s hard to take the ownership and take responsibility for ourselves and this country. It was like, at that second, at that moment, all of our excuses were gone. – Will Smith on the election of Barack Obama.

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Pantone Clock

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I am a design geek, and a fan of unique clocks. This is perfection.

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Apple Tops Smartphone Study

There’s a lot of comparing the iPhone to other smartphones, and typically those comparisons are non-users looking at the features. What a person who does not own the iPhone does not get about the iPhone is that it’s not just a simple feature set that makes you fall in love. It’s the overall experience... which cannot be described in a bulleted list of features.

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JD Power released their 2008 Business Wireless Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Study yesterday. Apple’s iPhone was considerably higher on the list than any other smartphone. The iPhone was 75 points higher than the BlackBerry... which was only 22 points above average, and only 59 points above the worst in the group.


The scores were derived from survey answers in five categories: ease of operation, operating system, physical design, handset features, and battery aspects.

Perhaps the feature comparisons should add “customer satisfaction” as a bullet.

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Some interesting notes in JD Power’s chart...

Samsung gets listed as “better than most” by being 20 points above average. However, Motorola is “about average” while being more than 20 points below the average.

Apple gets listed as “among the best” despite being alone at the top. Doesn’t the word, “among” imply there is more than one?

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What We Learned in 2008

In case you missed it, there was an historic election on Tuesday. By 8:00 PST, we had a new president. And in the moments that followed, we learned some interesting things about our country.

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America is not racist.
I’ve been arguing this for quite some time now. I remember several years ago I was sitting in a parking lot waiting for the wife to come out of a store. I saw a well dressed black man step out of a $100,000 Mercedes. I thought to myself, in a racist country, that would not be possible. The top two of the richest entertainers in the world are black Americans. This would not be possible in a racist country. Sure there are some people who are racist... there always will be. But it is obvious now that those people do not come close to representing the whole.

America is purple.
Mark Newman, from the Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan, created some interesting maps of the country based on how we voted. What Mark did was display the country, each county by color based on how they voted. He didn’t just use red and blue, he used shades of red and blue based on percentages. Then to make the map even more accurate, he created a cartogram, which stretches and shrinks areas of the map according to the population. In the end you end up with a swirls of red and pockets blue mixed in with a lot of purple.

Pundits like to say this country is sharply divided. Some even went as far as saying that Obama is going to have to work to unify this divided nation. This country is not divided. This country is full of people who have opinions. And frankly, I do not want to live in a country where everyone feels exactly the same way.

Republicans got fired for spending, not social conservatism.
Liberals like to declare that victory for them means a defeat for social conservatism. However, if you look at the other items that were voted on in this country, social conservatism is still high in the minds of voters. Democrats won major victories over the Republicans, but at the same time three states passed gay marriage bans... one of those states being the hugely liberal state of California. Americans still believe in values. The Republicans got fired, not for having values, but rather not following their own motto of lower government spending.

George W. Bush is a better man than Bill Clinton will ever be.
After the announcement of Obama’s victory, George W. Bush extended his hand to the man who spent the last two years railing against everything Bush has stood for and done. When Bush won in 2000, Clinton only extended a finger.

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The Parents Get Interwebs

So it finally happened... this weekend my parents got the Internet. First off, I have to say that it’s not fair that they did not go through the days of per-minute fees and slow dial-up, not to mention that awful noise upon connecting. No evolution for them. They went to bed in 1988 and woke up in 2008.

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While it’s good to see the parents finally see what the fuss has been about for the past 15 years (though I doubt they will get it), I have one small concern. The parents are better blog fodder than even the wife. How can I blog about them not that I know they might be reading this?

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