Classic Car Club Manhattan recently invited legendary executive Bob Lutz to have a chat over dinner with old pal and Autopian contributor Bob Sorokanich. As you might expect, with an automotive career stretching over half a century, he’s got some quality stories to tell.
If you’re not familiar with Lutz’s career, just know that it was (mostly) a glittering one. He also didn’t discriminate, working in top executive roles at all of the Big Three automakers in the US. He was executive vice president of Ford, later moving on to become the president and vice chairman of Chrysler Corporation. He later wound up as the vice chairman at General Motors to complete the trio.
As seen on YouTube, Lutz used the chat as a chance to talk about some of his favorite projects over the years, as well as his insights into the auto business. He celebrates unique and standout products in the auto space, and decries the dire lack of real car enthusiasts in the industry.
One of the biggest standouts in Lutz’s career was the Dodge Viper. The V10-powered roadster was an unlikely project that promised to be the first American car with 400 horsepower. Some might have called it a distraction for Chrysler amidst a difficult period, but Lutz doesn’t see it that way at all. In fact, he credits the Viper with revitalizing the broader Chrysler brand. The company was seen as troubled, and barely able to produce more than its humble front-wheel-drive K-Car. The Viper was key to flipping the script, proving to the media and the public that the company could do so much more.
He explains how this affected Chrysler’s dealings with banks at the time. The company was facing possible bankruptcy, with banks looking dimly on the company’s future prospects. Lutz was meeting with the banks to try and shore up the finances, and the Viper became a hot topic. “I was in a German bank which was reacting with difficulty, and they said our chairman would like to speak with you in private,” explains Lutz. “The Chairman said, uh, Mr Lutz… this red sports car, what do you call it?” says Lutz. “I said the Dodge Viper.” The hot new roadster proved crucial. “[He says] ‘Mr Lutz, would you make sure I can buy one, please?’ and that secured the revolving credit agreement with them,” laughs Lutz.
Another bank was already impressed with the future prospects for Chrysler, but they had a tough question. They wanted to know what Lutz would cut if profitability didn’t meet expectations in the next few years. “I thought, well, I’m dealing with bankers here, so I’m going to give the bean counter’s answer,” he says. “I said, sir, without question, the most frivolous product in our portfolio is the Dodge Viper and that’s what we’d cut.” And yet! “The banker says, wrong answer! Wrong answer! That’s the one that’s driving investor enthusiasm!” laughs Lutz.
Making a car like the Viper is hard enough, but succeeding on a barebones budget requires making the right moves. “You gotta collect the right people,” says Lutz. “Many engineers in automobile companies could be working for Hotpoint or Shark vacuum, they wouldn’t care—they put in their day behind the work station, they go home.” He found that the real car enthusiasts in the company were more valuable to a project. “That difference in productivity, it’s three-to-one,” he says. “The whole Viper team, we actually interviewed them to make sure we had the right guys.” Out of 1,000 volunteers, interviews whittled the Viper team down to just 80 people. “They got the job done in a little over two years,” he says.
It was a recurring theme throughout Lutz’s career. “One of my biggest shocks when I joined a car company was there are almost no car guys in car companies,” says Lutz. “These guys could be making washing machines or vacuum cleaners, it’s all the same to them. It’s units, units.” For many, the automotive business really is just a business. “But in every car company, there is a secret network of true car guys,” he explains. “You find out who those guys are, you work with them, and you can create breakthrough products.”
He puts this down as a root cause of the problems faced by many contemporary automakers. “They tend to go by momentum, and they go with the decision that is close to okay and consumes the least capital, and that’s everybody’s favorite decision,” he explains. “Nobody starts at the other end and says what is it that’s really going to excite the customers, what is it that’s going to make us best in class?” He finds this methodology key to making products that aren’t just good, but are exceptional. “Once you’ve defined that, then you work backwards, and you try to trim the investment, and try to massage it a little bit to make it financially feasible.”
“The trouble is most automobile companies start the other way,” says Lutz. “They say, what is conveniently affordable, and now let’s make it as good as we can?” He preferred to follow his own process during his long career. “My way has always turned out to be a little bit more expensive than the momentum way, but I have a track record of producing vehicles that are infinitely more profitable than the momentum theory. ”
He puts much of it down to who’s in charge. “Good finance guys are a dime a dozen, but good car guys that are capable of running [a car company] are rare,” he says. “You give me a car company that’s run by a car guy, and one that’s run by finance, the car-guy company is gonna win every time.”
Naturally, the Plymouth Prowler came up for conversation, the brainchild of storied designer Tom Gale. “He was a hot rodder at heart,” says Lutz. “He was convinced it was going to be second only to the Viper.” In a similar way, the Prowler was also developed as a fast, low-cost program, and the team raided the parts bin to make it happen on budget. The Prowler got a modified version of the company’s front-wheel-drive transaxle, converted to work for a rear-wheel-drive layout. “That’s what dictated the maximum engine size being a V6,” says Lutz. “It couldn’t take the torque of the V8, which was a shame, because that car really needed a V8.”
While the Prowler didn’t go on to do big numbers, Lutz nevertheless believes it had an important role to play. “It was another one of those halo vehicles that caused the media and the public to say, ‘who are those guys?'”
Lutz also discussed differing management styles across the industry, contrasting his approach to that of former Volkswagen CEO Ferdinand Piech. In the 1990s, Piech had apparently told Lutz that he secured excellent panel gaps on VW product by simply threatening to fire those below him if it wasn’t sorted. Lutz tells the story with a laugh, noting that the American management was typically a touch less dictatorial. “The best car guy I’ve ever met in my life,” says Lutz. “But I wouldn’t have wanted to work for him. He was a despot.”
Lutz’s approach at GM was more collaborative. An initial investigation suggested achieving 4 mm panel gaps would cost the company $200 million, which wasn’t in the budget. GM couldn’t spend that, yet weeks later, the panel gaps had drastically improved. “I said, how the hell did this happen?” says Lutz. It turned out that a casual conversation with the workers on the hemming and stamping lines made all the difference. “They said, oh, you want four millimeter gaps?” laughs Lutz. “We know how to do that, it’s just nobody’s ever asked for it before!”
Lutz doesn’t just focus on the high-performance stories, either. He notes that his favorite program was something altogether more sedate. “The [Chevy] Volt was my favorite program, because it stretched the limits of what GM was capable of,” he says. “Doing new gas engines is easy … but doing a series hybrid where you’re on electric propulsion all the time … nobody had ever done that before.” He also notes the public perception issue the brand had around lithium-ion batteries, which he says Toyota was more than happy to talk down in those days. In an argument between GM and Toyota, he notes it was difficult for the American brand to sound like it was making the right reliable choice given the Japanese brand’s reputation.
Ultimately, an hour only barely scratches the surface of Lutz’s broad experience in the industry. Having started his automotive career all the way back in 1963, he saw the rise and fall of giants. It’s always amazing to get insights on what goes on in the sprawling campuses of major automakers, and how that translates into the cars we see on the road every day.
Image credits: Dodge, Chrysler, GM, Plymouth, Classic Car Club Manhattan via YouTube screenshot
This is both right and wrong and as a engineer in the auto industry and an enthusiast is one I have a lot of thoughts on. At least at the company I work for there are definitely roles/groups that attract car people. At some level the company supports this but it would probably not be wise to have all the people be car people. Someone who came to the industry because of a passion in cars would be crushed by being a fastener engineer for years, or by designing door latches. Areas such as vehicle dynamics and chassis development are indeed littered with enthusiasts who spend their workdays working on cars then go home and keep working on their own automotive projects.
The topic of getting interesting products in the portfolio is another one. There seems to be plenty of low hanging fruit which would sell decent at high margins that is ignored. Like why won’t they put certain powertrains in certain vehicles, not enough of a business case they claim, or it won’t fit, yet development vehicles for these things continue to be build mostly as what if science projects. It’s also disheartening that anything that I would be remotely interested in from an enthusiast standpoint is priced far too high, the lower part has been abandoned because the vehicle chiefs and VPs that might support these projects can’t understand that at the affordable end they have to work as an only car and not just be a toy, so the entries end up being too compromised and don’t sell well and they wonder why, so they just stop trying. All of this to say I’d like more to work on that genuinely gets me excited, something that I would think once this comes out I might buy one, but I’ll just continue to tinker on my own projects.
I 100% agree with this. I’ve seen the spectrum of the roles you’re describing, and yes some attract those individuals more than others. I know many people who moved to Michigan expecting the industry to be full of enthusiasts, and instead meet Frank who’s father worked at GM and grandfather worked at GM and only wants a stable job to support his family and pay for his lake house up north. I would argue that even if you are an enthusiast within the auto industry, these large, cumbersome, bureaucratic, corporate entities are structured in a way that systematically squeezes out any enthusiasm you once had about the industry. Yes, there are some people that maintain this enthusiasm and enjoy the environment, but I’ve seen many others choose to leave the industry despite their initial excitement. It’s really unfortunate.
Exactly and even if you are in a role which might appeal to enthusiasts, without compelling and attainable products it’s hard to get excited about working on an endless parade of crossovers.
Not to mention, if you do get to work on an enthusiast project your reward is the expectation that you will work untold unpaid hours for the privilege of working on a project you care about.
This is both right and wrong and as a engineer in the auto industry and an enthusiast is one I have a lot of thoughts on. At least at the company I work for there are definitely roles/groups that attract car people. At some level the company supports this but it would probably not be wise to have all the people be car people. Someone who came to the industry because of a passion in cars would be crushed by being a fastener engineer for years, or by designing door latches. Areas such as vehicle dynamics and chassis development are indeed littered with enthusiasts who spend their workdays working on cars then go home and keep working on their own automotive projects.
The topic of getting interesting products in the portfolio is another one. There seems to be plenty of low hanging fruit which would sell decent at high margins that is ignored. Like why won’t they put certain powertrains in certain vehicles, not enough of a business case they claim, or it won’t fit, yet development vehicles for these things continue to be build mostly as what if science projects. It’s also disheartening that anything that I would be remotely interested in from an enthusiast standpoint is priced far too high, the lower part has been abandoned because the vehicle chiefs and VPs that might support these projects can’t understand that at the affordable end they have to work as an only car and not just be a toy, so the entries end up being too compromised and don’t sell well and they wonder why, so they just stop trying. All of this to say I’d like more to work on that genuinely gets me excited, something that I would think once this comes out I might buy one, but I’ll just continue to tinker on my own projects.
I 100% agree with this. I’ve seen the spectrum of the roles you’re describing, and yes some attract those individuals more than others. I know many people who moved to Michigan expecting the industry to be full of enthusiasts, and instead meet Frank who’s father worked at GM and grandfather worked at GM and only wants a stable job to support his family and pay for his lake house up north. I would argue that even if you are an enthusiast within the auto industry, these large, cumbersome, bureaucratic, corporate entities are structured in a way that systematically squeezes out any enthusiasm you once had about the industry. Yes, there are some people that maintain this enthusiasm and enjoy the environment, but I’ve seen many others choose to leave the industry despite their initial excitement. It’s really unfortunate.
Exactly and even if you are in a role which might appeal to enthusiasts, without compelling and attainable products it’s hard to get excited about working on an endless parade of crossovers.
Not to mention, if you do get to work on an enthusiast project your reward is the expectation that you will work untold unpaid hours for the privilege of working on a project you care about.
One of the problems with being a modern day “enthusiast” is that the vast majority of new cars are inaccessible to beginner gearheads. I remember by first job on a car being a thermostat on an 1983 Chevy Caprice Classic Wagon (mmmmmmmm….). The level of pride and joy I had of replacing the $5 part that would have cost me $100 at the mechanic was palpable. Granted, this is many, many, many….many years ago.
Now, simply changing oil is a challenge. Part of this is government regulation, but that same Chevy got 12.5 MPG and pumped out more smog than horsepower, so that…you know…makes sense. At the same time, where are the simple 100 HP hatchbacks that you can bolt a cool aftermarket turbo on to make a commuter into a comet? That’s what gets people to come to your brand and go upmarket and look at those high end machines, with dreams of pushing the envelope.
Every car basically does the same thing, and the trucks are too danged big. They all look similar, with 2.0L turbo I4s (yes, not ALL…), all with pleather seats, all with tablets in the front, all with 200 – 300 HP, all with…you get the idea. And EVs are basically cell phones that roll…that you can’t do anything with. I appreciate safety and boring, but I would love the option for exciting that doesn’t destroy the planet. And Teslas deciding to barrel into a train crossing is not my idea of “exciting.”
Hah I agree the trucks are to big. I’ll be driving around on my 92 Cummins and there will be newer stock 250/350’s or 2500/3500 and they make my truck look small and the height of their tailgates are just ridiculous seems when closed those tail gates are higher then my roof line. I also find it funny when I talk to guys with newer trucks and they get less the 20mpg and my truck consistently gets 20-22mpg with heavy foot (unloaded that is) and they always say I am lying.
One of the problems with being a modern day “enthusiast” is that the vast majority of new cars are inaccessible to beginner gearheads. I remember by first job on a car being a thermostat on an 1983 Chevy Caprice Classic Wagon (mmmmmmmm….). The level of pride and joy I had of replacing the $5 part that would have cost me $100 at the mechanic was palpable. Granted, this is many, many, many….many years ago.
Now, simply changing oil is a challenge. Part of this is government regulation, but that same Chevy got 12.5 MPG and pumped out more smog than horsepower, so that…you know…makes sense. At the same time, where are the simple 100 HP hatchbacks that you can bolt a cool aftermarket turbo on to make a commuter into a comet? That’s what gets people to come to your brand and go upmarket and look at those high end machines, with dreams of pushing the envelope.
Every car basically does the same thing, and the trucks are too danged big. They all look similar, with 2.0L turbo I4s (yes, not ALL…), all with pleather seats, all with tablets in the front, all with 200 – 300 HP, all with…you get the idea. And EVs are basically cell phones that roll…that you can’t do anything with. I appreciate safety and boring, but I would love the option for exciting that doesn’t destroy the planet. And Teslas deciding to barrel into a train crossing is not my idea of “exciting.”
Hah I agree the trucks are to big. I’ll be driving around on my 92 Cummins and there will be newer stock 250/350’s or 2500/3500 and they make my truck look small and the height of their tailgates are just ridiculous seems when closed those tail gates are higher then my roof line. I also find it funny when I talk to guys with newer trucks and they get less the 20mpg and my truck consistently gets 20-22mpg with heavy foot (unloaded that is) and they always say I am lying.
A few comments pointing at dealers, but that isn’t a new problem and that didn’t hurt enthusiast cars from coming out for years. If anything it should almost be easier to shop for an interesting model when shopping online, now that most dealers are up to date on this even (even if they jack up the price, they at least take an online conversation seriously, not always the case ~10 years ago).
There are simply fewer options available, and other market forces like tightening safety and emissions regs seem to be the cause there. “Lack of demand” reads more and more like a PR-friendly way to say “we can’t justify the R&D and/or sell it profitably.” VW dropping the manual GTI when the take rate was what, 40%? feels like a good example of this. Sure it’s not a high volume car but not like it was cheap or unknown either.
I point at the dealers cause any cool cars immediately gets a jacked up price which kills the enthusiasm.
Like I said – that isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s not the usual “I wanted green and they tried to push me into the gray one they had on the lot.” If someone is that enthusiastic about a car they’re likely going to find a way to get it, and if the dealer pisses them off enough they’ll probably be turned off of the entire brand period (and we saw some OEMs trying to combat dealer markups). There’s waitlists, build quality/reliability once they’re out, maybe even plain overhype that can play in before anyone ever talks price with a dealer.
I don’t agree. It is different now because there are so few cars that appeal to enthusiasts. The current dealer model is a huge problem for the last few enthusiast cars left and one of the reasons why the manual is so close to death.
If you want one of the options that still remain, they may be hard to find but not hard to shop around. Several of the brands that still make fun vehicles have limited production totals already in mind from the start. A dealer charging over sticker isn’t pressed if you pass on it because they have other sales volumes they need to chase, which is what the manufacturer wants out of them anyway, so it benefits them.
I put the lack of options like manuals, different bodystyles, etc. more on changing regulations than demand. That’s why I mentioned the GTI take rate example. Look at Honda 10 years ago, they offered two coupes with two manual powertrains each, plus two manual sedans, now there’s just two types of manual Civic. They don’t/won’t prioritize development and production of the smaller number of build varieties over other volume models. Which I get, but that kills my enthusiasm for the scraps we do have before there’s ever any chance of getting up close with a car.
Dealers are gonna dealer but it doesn’t mean manufacturers are doing any favors either.
A few comments pointing at dealers, but that isn’t a new problem and that didn’t hurt enthusiast cars from coming out for years. If anything it should almost be easier to shop for an interesting model when shopping online, now that most dealers are up to date on this even (even if they jack up the price, they at least take an online conversation seriously, not always the case ~10 years ago).
There are simply fewer options available, and other market forces like tightening safety and emissions regs seem to be the cause there. “Lack of demand” reads more and more like a PR-friendly way to say “we can’t justify the R&D and/or sell it profitably.” VW dropping the manual GTI when the take rate was what, 40%? feels like a good example of this. Sure it’s not a high volume car but not like it was cheap or unknown either.
I point at the dealers cause any cool cars immediately gets a jacked up price which kills the enthusiasm.
Like I said – that isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s not the usual “I wanted green and they tried to push me into the gray one they had on the lot.” If someone is that enthusiastic about a car they’re likely going to find a way to get it, and if the dealer pisses them off enough they’ll probably be turned off of the entire brand period (and we saw some OEMs trying to combat dealer markups). There’s waitlists, build quality/reliability once they’re out, maybe even plain overhype that can play in before anyone ever talks price with a dealer.
I don’t agree. It is different now because there are so few cars that appeal to enthusiasts. The current dealer model is a huge problem for the last few enthusiast cars left and one of the reasons why the manual is so close to death.
If you want one of the options that still remain, they may be hard to find but not hard to shop around. Several of the brands that still make fun vehicles have limited production totals already in mind from the start. A dealer charging over sticker isn’t pressed if you pass on it because they have other sales volumes they need to chase, which is what the manufacturer wants out of them anyway, so it benefits them.
I put the lack of options like manuals, different bodystyles, etc. more on changing regulations than demand. That’s why I mentioned the GTI take rate example. Look at Honda 10 years ago, they offered two coupes with two manual powertrains each, plus two manual sedans, now there’s just two types of manual Civic. They don’t/won’t prioritize development and production of the smaller number of build varieties over other volume models. Which I get, but that kills my enthusiasm for the scraps we do have before there’s ever any chance of getting up close with a car.
Dealers are gonna dealer but it doesn’t mean manufacturers are doing any favors either.
Honestly what’s the point of making boring cars?
Sure the new Prius has a boring drivetrain, but it looks very good, and imho that doesn’t make it boring.
Ford has the 1.5L I3 Ecoboost in their Bronco Sport, but won’t option it with a manual, making it best case a mundane unreliable mill.
We can make good looking cars that happen to be efficient, as well as mundane looking cars that are a blast to drive, and we can make good looking cars that are a blast to drive, so why are we making so many ugly cars that suck to drive and chug gas?
I see this as part of the core problem. So many people are led to believe that their car needs to be some sort of giant weapon, an extension of their ideal personalty. At least in the US, we’re stuck on this notion that everything needs to be some sort of weird chimera that incorporates the do-it-all notion of utility, escapism and toughness. That’s how we end up with absurdly large trucks, Jeeps with angry faces and nothing but lame-under-the-skin crossovers that look like they could go offroad, but likely never will. Their biggest challenge will be a somewhat snow-covered driveway approach that incorporates a slight incline.
Manufacturers and marketers have tapped into the jugular of fear and doubt, and they’ve been pumping money out of it ever since. You MIGHT need 4wd, you MIGHT need to tow something, you MIGHT need to carry 9 people, you MIGHT need to do any number of things you don’t actually do. Just line up all these insecurities and then produce a solution to all of these problems. Here, we made a giant SUV that can go offroad, haul everyone and everything, looks tough and goes fast.
It matters not at all that the vast majority of buyers will never go offroad, that they’ll be driving like their great grandmother, that they’ll usually be commuting to work solo in these things and they probably live somewhere where it snows to accumulation only a handful of times a year. All that matters is that the buyers FEEL like they’ll need these things. Once those insecurities are resolved, they won’t care much about the fuel economy and certainly not about the driving experience. I would presume that most people have never really put much thought into the driving dynamics of one car vs another. They’ve neither driven nor ridden in a Miata, S2000, Corvette, M3 or anything like those. As long as the thing they drive has Apple Carplay, little else matters about the driving experience.
I don’t much care for Maximum Bob’s approach to things, but in this case, he’s right. The decline of engaging cars is what you get when you take a business-first approach to carmaking. The people that can get you to believe that you need a lot of things that you will never use will make more money than those that will build and sell you something engaging. Once the majority of people accept this position as normal, not only will they buy into it, they will defend it with all their might. They will claim that “well, I just like driving something like that, there is nothing wrong with that”, activating the notions of freedom, personal choice and expression. That is the pervasive effect of extremely good marketing in action; get your customers on board AND get them to be advocates for what you’re selling.
So, this is why we have so many ugly cars that suck to drive and chug gas. It was no accident.
Honestly I don’t think consumers deserve or have earned most of the blame for this.
There are so many CUVs and unibody pickups that could easily have Hybrid drivetrains that are more durable than the stock ICE drivetrains (via planetary e-CVTs) and get a massive MPG boost as well, but they don’t.
The Bronco Sport should have the 2.5L Hybrid drivetrain out of the Maverick for the “automatic” option and a manual transmission for the 1.5L, make the AWD variant use AWD-e like Toyota’s CUV hybrid offerings.
The Hyundai Santa Cruz should use the hybrid drivetrain out of the Tucson, but they built the Santa Cruz in such a way that said drivetrain won’t fit, even though they’re both built on the same platform.
The Wrangler Hybrid should have an ICE motor running as a generator (maybe use the same 3.6L V6 out of the new Ramcharger), and have electric motors driving the axles, not a Turbo 4 mixing with electric motors through an automatic transmission to go through through a traditional transfer case through the traditional drive shafts to the axles.
Honestly many of these new hybrids are more compliance car like than the actual compliance cars of old, and I’d argue many of them are even less reliable than the compliance cars of old.
I don’t necessarily blame consumers for how things are. I blame greed. Consumers, however, are the point of manipulation so they end up looking like they’re the problem.
Sure, individuals all have some choice when choosing their car. However, with a pervasive and extremely effective campaign to tell them what they need that extends beyond adverting and directly into our culture, it’s very difficult to remain unaffected.
IDK exactly why they can’t put the P/HEV into the Santa Cruz, but Hyundai only builds the Santa Fe Hybrid in Alabama, the Tucson P/HEVs are all built in Korea and they don’t build the Tucson hybrid in Alabama just the ICE version with the 2.5L GDI engine and 8AT. Seems more likely that due to not building the hybrid Tucson in Alabama and not building the Santa Cruz in Korea they don’t have the capacity to combine the power train and body together more than a packaging issue.
I forgot the Santa Fe hybrid is built on the same platform as well. I originally meant to say the Santa Fe hybrid instead of Tucson hybrid, even though I was technically correct.
From what I’ve read Hyundai came out and said it would take a major redesign of the Santa Cruz to fit one of their existing hybrid drivetrains in it, and that’s why it won’t happen for this generation of Santa Cruz.
That sounds like a poor excuse especially when the platform is already electrified and at least the HEV pack is small enough to fit below the second row seats on the Tucson. Also when the chief competition has a hybrid available (Ford Maverick) etc.
Ugh the angry face Wranglers. I find them so soul-crushing. Lets take one of the last friendly approachable looking car faces and turn it into a pissed off macho-man brodozer. It used to make me cranky to see one but now it just bums me out.
Honestly what’s the point of making boring cars?
Sure the new Prius has a boring drivetrain, but it looks very good, and imho that doesn’t make it boring.
Ford has the 1.5L I3 Ecoboost in their Bronco Sport, but won’t option it with a manual, making it best case a mundane unreliable mill.
We can make good looking cars that happen to be efficient, as well as mundane looking cars that are a blast to drive, and we can make good looking cars that are a blast to drive, so why are we making so many ugly cars that suck to drive and chug gas?
I see this as part of the core problem. So many people are led to believe that their car needs to be some sort of giant weapon, an extension of their ideal personalty. At least in the US, we’re stuck on this notion that everything needs to be some sort of weird chimera that incorporates the do-it-all notion of utility, escapism and toughness. That’s how we end up with absurdly large trucks, Jeeps with angry faces and nothing but lame-under-the-skin crossovers that look like they could go offroad, but likely never will. Their biggest challenge will be a somewhat snow-covered driveway approach that incorporates a slight incline.
Manufacturers and marketers have tapped into the jugular of fear and doubt, and they’ve been pumping money out of it ever since. You MIGHT need 4wd, you MIGHT need to tow something, you MIGHT need to carry 9 people, you MIGHT need to do any number of things you don’t actually do. Just line up all these insecurities and then produce a solution to all of these problems. Here, we made a giant SUV that can go offroad, haul everyone and everything, looks tough and goes fast.
It matters not at all that the vast majority of buyers will never go offroad, that they’ll be driving like their great grandmother, that they’ll usually be commuting to work solo in these things and they probably live somewhere where it snows to accumulation only a handful of times a year. All that matters is that the buyers FEEL like they’ll need these things. Once those insecurities are resolved, they won’t care much about the fuel economy and certainly not about the driving experience. I would presume that most people have never really put much thought into the driving dynamics of one car vs another. They’ve neither driven nor ridden in a Miata, S2000, Corvette, M3 or anything like those. As long as the thing they drive has Apple Carplay, little else matters about the driving experience.
I don’t much care for Maximum Bob’s approach to things, but in this case, he’s right. The decline of engaging cars is what you get when you take a business-first approach to carmaking. The people that can get you to believe that you need a lot of things that you will never use will make more money than those that will build and sell you something engaging. Once the majority of people accept this position as normal, not only will they buy into it, they will defend it with all their might. They will claim that “well, I just like driving something like that, there is nothing wrong with that”, activating the notions of freedom, personal choice and expression. That is the pervasive effect of extremely good marketing in action; get your customers on board AND get them to be advocates for what you’re selling.
So, this is why we have so many ugly cars that suck to drive and chug gas. It was no accident.
Honestly I don’t think consumers deserve or have earned most of the blame for this.
There are so many CUVs and unibody pickups that could easily have Hybrid drivetrains that are more durable than the stock ICE drivetrains (via planetary e-CVTs) and get a massive MPG boost as well, but they don’t.
The Bronco Sport should have the 2.5L Hybrid drivetrain out of the Maverick for the “automatic” option and a manual transmission for the 1.5L, make the AWD variant use AWD-e like Toyota’s CUV hybrid offerings.
The Hyundai Santa Cruz should use the hybrid drivetrain out of the Tucson, but they built the Santa Cruz in such a way that said drivetrain won’t fit, even though they’re both built on the same platform.
The Wrangler Hybrid should have an ICE motor running as a generator (maybe use the same 3.6L V6 out of the new Ramcharger), and have electric motors driving the axles, not a Turbo 4 mixing with electric motors through an automatic transmission to go through through a traditional transfer case through the traditional drive shafts to the axles.
Honestly many of these new hybrids are more compliance car like than the actual compliance cars of old, and I’d argue many of them are even less reliable than the compliance cars of old.
I don’t necessarily blame consumers for how things are. I blame greed. Consumers, however, are the point of manipulation so they end up looking like they’re the problem.
Sure, individuals all have some choice when choosing their car. However, with a pervasive and extremely effective campaign to tell them what they need that extends beyond adverting and directly into our culture, it’s very difficult to remain unaffected.
IDK exactly why they can’t put the P/HEV into the Santa Cruz, but Hyundai only builds the Santa Fe Hybrid in Alabama, the Tucson P/HEVs are all built in Korea and they don’t build the Tucson hybrid in Alabama just the ICE version with the 2.5L GDI engine and 8AT. Seems more likely that due to not building the hybrid Tucson in Alabama and not building the Santa Cruz in Korea they don’t have the capacity to combine the power train and body together more than a packaging issue.
I forgot the Santa Fe hybrid is built on the same platform as well. I originally meant to say the Santa Fe hybrid instead of Tucson hybrid, even though I was technically correct.
From what I’ve read Hyundai came out and said it would take a major redesign of the Santa Cruz to fit one of their existing hybrid drivetrains in it, and that’s why it won’t happen for this generation of Santa Cruz.
That sounds like a poor excuse especially when the platform is already electrified and at least the HEV pack is small enough to fit below the second row seats on the Tucson. Also when the chief competition has a hybrid available (Ford Maverick) etc.
Ugh the angry face Wranglers. I find them so soul-crushing. Lets take one of the last friendly approachable looking car faces and turn it into a pissed off macho-man brodozer. It used to make me cranky to see one but now it just bums me out.
This is my biggest concern with Stellantis. They are losing good talent left and right, it’s like a bunch of people fleeing a sinking ship. Pretty soon all that will be left is the bean-counters, the Indian and Mexican engineers they are hiring now to replace the Americans, and whatever new fall guy the French want to send to run these companies.
They need Jim Farley, or a Lee Iacocca, or a Bob Lutz to show up and save the day, but they had something close to that with Tim Kuniskis at Dodge and Mark Allen at Jeep. And both are gone in the past two months.
Shit ain’t looking good folks.
This is my biggest concern with Stellantis. They are losing good talent left and right, it’s like a bunch of people fleeing a sinking ship. Pretty soon all that will be left is the bean-counters, the Indian and Mexican engineers they are hiring now to replace the Americans, and whatever new fall guy the French want to send to run these companies.
They need Jim Farley, or a Lee Iacocca, or a Bob Lutz to show up and save the day, but they had something close to that with Tim Kuniskis at Dodge and Mark Allen at Jeep. And both are gone in the past two months.
Shit ain’t looking good folks.
It’s the dealers. Every time an enthusiast car gets put out dealers inevitably rush to throw on a 15-25K market adjustment. Unsurprisingly interest cools real quick for that BS.
This. If the past few years have taught me anything, it’s that dealers will effectively kill any enthusiasm people have for cool cars.
It’s the dealers. Every time an enthusiast car gets put out dealers inevitably rush to throw on a 15-25K market adjustment. Unsurprisingly interest cools real quick for that BS.
This. If the past few years have taught me anything, it’s that dealers will effectively kill any enthusiasm people have for cool cars.
There are a lot of factors, but let’s get real, this is mostly market driven. Now that young people are spending every last dollar on housing, who can enjoy the frivolity of fun new cars anymore? This is an opportunity cost issue, I know a lot of people who would love to purchase a fun car, but they’re not going to jeopardize their ability to have a decent place to live for the chance to own a fun car.
Housing *and student loans*
14 years down, only 11 to go!
The demands on the young have changed. The 15 year old across the street is saving up for an IPhone. At 15 I was delivering newspapers so I could buy a jeep.
We hardly even have a local newspaper in print these days so I don’t even think delivering newspapers is an option her anymore, nevermind what the proceeds could buy.
Does that 15 yo know s/t/he/y can buy a perfectly fine used iPhone for a lot less than a new one? Dunno about the battery but it could be a good idea for a kid to learn how to replace iPhone batteries and make a side hustle out of it.
To be fair, you can’t send nudes or make a tiktok with a Jeep.
There are a lot of factors, but let’s get real, this is mostly market driven. Now that young people are spending every last dollar on housing, who can enjoy the frivolity of fun new cars anymore? This is an opportunity cost issue, I know a lot of people who would love to purchase a fun car, but they’re not going to jeopardize their ability to have a decent place to live for the chance to own a fun car.
Housing *and student loans*
14 years down, only 11 to go!
The demands on the young have changed. The 15 year old across the street is saving up for an IPhone. At 15 I was delivering newspapers so I could buy a jeep.
We hardly even have a local newspaper in print these days so I don’t even think delivering newspapers is an option her anymore, nevermind what the proceeds could buy.
Does that 15 yo know s/t/he/y can buy a perfectly fine used iPhone for a lot less than a new one? Dunno about the battery but it could be a good idea for a kid to learn how to replace iPhone batteries and make a side hustle out of it.
To be fair, you can’t send nudes or make a tiktok with a Jeep.
Hey, I’m an enthusiast. Why don’t you go make me a car that’s interesting and affordable?
EDIT: oh well, I completely missed the point, that’s what you get when you dive right into the comments section after half-reading a title ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hey, I’m an enthusiast. Why don’t you go make me a car that’s interesting and affordable?
EDIT: oh well, I completely missed the point, that’s what you get when you dive right into the comments section after half-reading a title ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
He’s not wrong. However there is a tale of caution for the inverse, when a industry is entirely ran by enthusiast. The bicycle market is completely ran by persons who are committed cyclist. Specialized, Trek, Cervelo/Santa Cruz, kinda Giant, what have you. Boardrooms are full of people with strong tan lines and nicely shaved legs. Which makes sense, given these are the people willing to climb the under paided shit mountain that is the bike industry. The problem comes when they fill the boardroom, they focus on the cool stuff, and just ignore the bottom of the market. The industry is about as healthy as tuberculosis ward in 1920’s. Take Specialized for example. The Sworks Tarmac SL8 had millions dumped into R&D for what was a fairly marginal. Ended up with a road bike that retails for 14.5k. Probably make a few grand per unit sold. All maybe two thousand they sell. A quarter of them will be given for free to their various trade teams (quickstep, Bora etc). Which they also paid to ride them. Which they hope will turn into sales. But “win on Sunday, sell on Monday”, doesn’t mean selling them the literal race car, and that’s what the bike industry is trying to do. Now, taken those millions you spent on saving 10w at 45 kph on your top end road bike, and reinvesting in two things, lowering the cost of your bottom end and increasing the amount of cyclist would actually expand your market. However, the board having been so far removed from being that entry level person, no longer thinks about the person just wanting a functional bike to get to A and B and doesn’t care about marginal gains. That person, then doesn’t buy your overpriced bike, thus they end up increasing the number of active cyclist that might motivate a city to build more bike lanes, which makes more cyclist.
Granted a car is less optional for most people. However, there are other options. And a focus on the high end user can force your natural market towards those options.
That’s interesting! I like to ride my bike (~2001 Diamondback), but I know nothing of the industry. We need some Biketopian content.
Trek, Specialized, Santa Cruz, Rivendell,vetc don’t need to fill in the low end. There are plenty of cheap Pacific Bicycles bikes at Walmart for that. And China who makes plenty of city/cruiser/cargo bikes has mountains of surplus bikes they’d love to dump on us which really shouldn’t be an issue given there’s no bullshit safety or emissions excuses to keep them out, just 100% good old protectionism.
There are also LOTS of great used bikes on Craigslist for under $100 or much less. People just throw them away.
When I’m talking bottom end, it’s more the 500-1000 range hybrid, entry road and mtb. This was the bread the butter for retail after the Lance boom. The Walmart bike was also a totally separate market with little cross over. Known as the Bicycle Shaped Object in the industry. However Walmart brands have been moving in that 500 range. Also, like cars people just getting into often want a relationship with a dealer and have the new=reliable view.
Why anyone would bother spending 500-1000 for a new, low end bike is baffling to me when Craigslist is full of perfectly good, high quality used bikes for much less. Hell I have a 10 yo high end carbon framed Giant Propel bike I was given for free. Finding very good used bikes for cheap isn’t hard. Just be a bit flexible on your expectations and you can end up with a great bike for $$ or less. Or just let it be known you like bikes and you might end up with a shed full of free or very nearly free bikes from folks who bought a high end bike as a New Years resolution and it sat unused in the garage next to all the other unused exercise equipment.
“Also, like cars people just getting into often want a relationship with a dealer and have the new=reliable view.”
Unlike cars bikes are very easy to service in a living room with a few basic tools. I dunno who wants a “relationship” with a (ugh) dealer except maybe the dealer. I prefer to avoid overpriced shops and DIY. Thanks to YouTube and Amazon DIY has never been easier.
I agree with you, and have so many spine frame Lemonds to prove it. But I was just at the bike shop picking up some cables, and the persons in front of me. A.) had a blow out because he pumped his 26×1.75 or thereabouts Schwable Marathon to 100 psi. And the person after couldn’t figure out how her pump worked because she was using a schrader valve air compressor into a Presta tube. My brief time spent behind the counter at a shop, the two different valves thing came up at least once a day. Both tubes held air, but she got new tubes anyway and paid for a tune up, which I’m sure they’ll just move the barrel adjusters around for a bit. This is honestly most people who own and ride a bike. Even though it would take maybe an hour to learn and then do a cable replacement or whatever. They have no interest and actually doing that. Mechanical confidence to perform even the most basic task is just not that common.
That spine bike sounds interesting. I’ve been eying Lemonds for a while now but I prefer fully butted, pre 1990 bikes. A spines bike just might be what I need to scratch that itch.
For me, they are peak bike. Comfortable as all hell, fairly light, I race P/1/2/3 crits on it just fine. Fits a 28 well and a thin 30 if you’re willing to risk it. Greg has a thing with geometry, his bikes were always longer top tube and higher. Closer to a 80’s Colnago/ Italian fit. They made Ti in the Tete La Course which are hard to find and fairly expensive. The steel ones had a Reynold’s and a True Tempured versions, really not much of difference between those two.
How much of this is market driven? Looks like Trek will still sell you an entry level road bike for $1k, but that gets you rim brakes, and how many people in 2024 are willing to go for that, even if they’d almost certainly meet their needs?
I would argue very little. That Domane ALR is basically unchanged since I was on a Trek trade team the first time in 2013. Between not having disc brakes and Sora being pretty harsh, and those ALR frames ride harsh as hell. While it will work, it doesn’t sell itself well. The Giant Contend is another example, that bike rides like total ass. Get a beginner on it and they’re often like “why would I want to ride this?”.
That hasn’t been my experience. I bought my first road bike–a Bianchi Campione–when i was 15, over 25 years ago. It cost me $1200. I finally decided to treat myself to a new bike a few years ago and bought a CAAD12 105 for a pretty much identical sale price and it still blows my mind how much more bicycle you get.
The Caad12 was really in a sweet spot for bikes. When manufacturers actually respected and tried with aluminum. You had the Allez Sprint which was great, ALR Emonda was good and TCR ALX or whatever it was called was pretty fine. Caad12 was really just a rework of the Caad10, which was probably the greatest mass produced aluminum bike, so Cannondale was in a great place to start development. The Caad12 disc wasn’t great though, too stiff in front and will wash out when you dive it. Still a pretty common problem with disc brake aluminum bikes. 1300 bucks now gets you a Caad Optimo, which is compact positioned worse aluminum bike with Sora 2×9 and promax brakes.
Huh. Well i guess it’s good i’m not in the market. I love my CAAD12. Got it with rim brakes of course. I will never understand disc brakes on a road bike. Nothing more than a New Thing to convince people to buy more new stuff. The only cool thing about the disc CAAD12 is how unbelievably sexy the top of the seatstays looked with no brake bridge.
He’s not wrong. However there is a tale of caution for the inverse, when a industry is entirely ran by enthusiast. The bicycle market is completely ran by persons who are committed cyclist. Specialized, Trek, Cervelo/Santa Cruz, kinda Giant, what have you. Boardrooms are full of people with strong tan lines and nicely shaved legs. Which makes sense, given these are the people willing to climb the under paided shit mountain that is the bike industry. The problem comes when they fill the boardroom, they focus on the cool stuff, and just ignore the bottom of the market. The industry is about as healthy as tuberculosis ward in 1920’s. Take Specialized for example. The Sworks Tarmac SL8 had millions dumped into R&D for what was a fairly marginal. Ended up with a road bike that retails for 14.5k. Probably make a few grand per unit sold. All maybe two thousand they sell. A quarter of them will be given for free to their various trade teams (quickstep, Bora etc). Which they also paid to ride them. Which they hope will turn into sales. But “win on Sunday, sell on Monday”, doesn’t mean selling them the literal race car, and that’s what the bike industry is trying to do. Now, taken those millions you spent on saving 10w at 45 kph on your top end road bike, and reinvesting in two things, lowering the cost of your bottom end and increasing the amount of cyclist would actually expand your market. However, the board having been so far removed from being that entry level person, no longer thinks about the person just wanting a functional bike to get to A and B and doesn’t care about marginal gains. That person, then doesn’t buy your overpriced bike, thus they end up increasing the number of active cyclist that might motivate a city to build more bike lanes, which makes more cyclist.
Granted a car is less optional for most people. However, there are other options. And a focus on the high end user can force your natural market towards those options.
That’s interesting! I like to ride my bike (~2001 Diamondback), but I know nothing of the industry. We need some Biketopian content.
Trek, Specialized, Santa Cruz, Rivendell,vetc don’t need to fill in the low end. There are plenty of cheap Pacific Bicycles bikes at Walmart for that. And China who makes plenty of city/cruiser/cargo bikes has mountains of surplus bikes they’d love to dump on us which really shouldn’t be an issue given there’s no bullshit safety or emissions excuses to keep them out, just 100% good old protectionism.
There are also LOTS of great used bikes on Craigslist for under $100 or much less. People just throw them away.
When I’m talking bottom end, it’s more the 500-1000 range hybrid, entry road and mtb. This was the bread the butter for retail after the Lance boom. The Walmart bike was also a totally separate market with little cross over. Known as the Bicycle Shaped Object in the industry. However Walmart brands have been moving in that 500 range. Also, like cars people just getting into often want a relationship with a dealer and have the new=reliable view.
Why anyone would bother spending 500-1000 for a new, low end bike is baffling to me when Craigslist is full of perfectly good, high quality used bikes for much less. Hell I have a 10 yo high end carbon framed Giant Propel bike I was given for free. Finding very good used bikes for cheap isn’t hard. Just be a bit flexible on your expectations and you can end up with a great bike for $$ or less. Or just let it be known you like bikes and you might end up with a shed full of free or very nearly free bikes from folks who bought a high end bike as a New Years resolution and it sat unused in the garage next to all the other unused exercise equipment.
“Also, like cars people just getting into often want a relationship with a dealer and have the new=reliable view.”
Unlike cars bikes are very easy to service in a living room with a few basic tools. I dunno who wants a “relationship” with a (ugh) dealer except maybe the dealer. I prefer to avoid overpriced shops and DIY. Thanks to YouTube and Amazon DIY has never been easier.
I agree with you, and have so many spine frame Lemonds to prove it. But I was just at the bike shop picking up some cables, and the persons in front of me. A.) had a blow out because he pumped his 26×1.75 or thereabouts Schwable Marathon to 100 psi. And the person after couldn’t figure out how her pump worked because she was using a schrader valve air compressor into a Presta tube. My brief time spent behind the counter at a shop, the two different valves thing came up at least once a day. Both tubes held air, but she got new tubes anyway and paid for a tune up, which I’m sure they’ll just move the barrel adjusters around for a bit. This is honestly most people who own and ride a bike. Even though it would take maybe an hour to learn and then do a cable replacement or whatever. They have no interest and actually doing that. Mechanical confidence to perform even the most basic task is just not that common.
That spine bike sounds interesting. I’ve been eying Lemonds for a while now but I prefer fully butted, pre 1990 bikes. A spines bike just might be what I need to scratch that itch.
For me, they are peak bike. Comfortable as all hell, fairly light, I race P/1/2/3 crits on it just fine. Fits a 28 well and a thin 30 if you’re willing to risk it. Greg has a thing with geometry, his bikes were always longer top tube and higher. Closer to a 80’s Colnago/ Italian fit. They made Ti in the Tete La Course which are hard to find and fairly expensive. The steel ones had a Reynold’s and a True Tempured versions, really not much of difference between those two.
How much of this is market driven? Looks like Trek will still sell you an entry level road bike for $1k, but that gets you rim brakes, and how many people in 2024 are willing to go for that, even if they’d almost certainly meet their needs?
I would argue very little. That Domane ALR is basically unchanged since I was on a Trek trade team the first time in 2013. Between not having disc brakes and Sora being pretty harsh, and those ALR frames ride harsh as hell. While it will work, it doesn’t sell itself well. The Giant Contend is another example, that bike rides like total ass. Get a beginner on it and they’re often like “why would I want to ride this?”.
That hasn’t been my experience. I bought my first road bike–a Bianchi Campione–when i was 15, over 25 years ago. It cost me $1200. I finally decided to treat myself to a new bike a few years ago and bought a CAAD12 105 for a pretty much identical sale price and it still blows my mind how much more bicycle you get.
The Caad12 was really in a sweet spot for bikes. When manufacturers actually respected and tried with aluminum. You had the Allez Sprint which was great, ALR Emonda was good and TCR ALX or whatever it was called was pretty fine. Caad12 was really just a rework of the Caad10, which was probably the greatest mass produced aluminum bike, so Cannondale was in a great place to start development. The Caad12 disc wasn’t great though, too stiff in front and will wash out when you dive it. Still a pretty common problem with disc brake aluminum bikes. 1300 bucks now gets you a Caad Optimo, which is compact positioned worse aluminum bike with Sora 2×9 and promax brakes.
Huh. Well i guess it’s good i’m not in the market. I love my CAAD12. Got it with rim brakes of course. I will never understand disc brakes on a road bike. Nothing more than a New Thing to convince people to buy more new stuff. The only cool thing about the disc CAAD12 is how unbelievably sexy the top of the seatstays looked with no brake bridge.
It’s not that there aren’t auto enthusiasts at the engineering level, it’s that there isn’t a project manager willing to give them a change to express themselves. The decision between making a Viper or a K-car isn’t coming from an engineer, it’s coming from the VP.
It’s not that there aren’t auto enthusiasts at the engineering level, it’s that there isn’t a project manager willing to give them a change to express themselves. The decision between making a Viper or a K-car isn’t coming from an engineer, it’s coming from the VP.
Working at a car company is a dead-end job, shitty job.
Tesla was a fluke because for all his flaws Musk is a brilliant hype-man (and also, among others at Tesla, had the vision that electric cars could be performance toys for the rich instead of compliance cars).
The conventional wisdom for me growing up is that if you want to have nice cars do not work in the car industry, and the best way to end up with a small fortune in the auto industry is to start with a big one.
Tesla was an outlier and it is reverting to mean as every other automaker on earth has introduced high-performance electric cars and Tesla has become a commodity manufacturer outside of Musk’s bullshit to rubes about robots and AI.
There is a lack of smart car enthusiasts in the automotive industry because smart car enthusiasts do not work in the auto industry.
You are correct. Me? GMI BS. GaTECH MS. 10 yr at gm. 30 at suppliers. I worked 2x as hard and got 1/2 as much as guys who stayed away from auto.
For example, I remember reading, as a kid, an article by the brilliant, and still-working, Kevin Cameron, saying that if you want to have cool motorcycles and cars do not work in the motorcycle or car business.
There was another article, by Csaba Csere I believe, that claimed that the US could not keep up with Germany and Japan in the automotive industry (although I think the gap has narrowed or closed) because in the US the best engineers go into aerospace and defense.
I never heard that last sentence before but my god that makes waaaay too much sense! When I was in engineering school that was always the top goal, aerospace or military weapons. What a different car industry we would have without the military industrial complex
My dad spent most of career in aerospace. Places like Lockheed, Aerojet, Lorel, GE, etc working on ICBM motors, space shuttles, ISS nuclear submarines, nuclear powered bombers, the SR71, nuclear breeder reactors, basically all the really cool cutting edge stuff. You’d THINK it was a dream job.
Nope!
He constantly ranted about how awful it was being a mechanical engineer.
He got no respect and how his classmates who went into business ended up making far more money than he did with a fraction of the skill. Job security was also tenuous. The industry was great till the late 60s then it got awful, lots of booms but a lot of busts too. Many layoffs. Money was always, ALWAYS tight. That fear of going broke is part of what made me the cheap bastard I am today (cheap bastard isn’t just a screen handle).
I visited dad at work once, GE nuclear I think it was. The early 80s was not a good time to be in nuclear power or aerospace, weird because you’d think *but Reagan* but no, both industries sucked to work in. The engineers there didn’t have good things to say either. One guy might as well have had “Fucking KILL ME!!” written on him.
By the time the mid 90s rolled around both the aerospace and nuclear power market had soured so much it became an early forced retirement.
That all painted such a bleak picture I decided to stay as far away from engineering as I could. Unfortunately I ended up as a scientist. Frying pan, meet fire.
Aww FUUUUCK!….
Moral: Mothers, don’t let your children grow up to be STEM.
Tech also.
You’re not wrong. I chose my university based on a wish to be in the auto industry, but every time I talked to someone who worked in the industry they had nothing but complaints. All of them car guys, all of them miserable working in automotive. I chose to just find a company that respects my time and work on whatever it is they make so I could just buy a fun car and drive it instead of making boring cars for others to buy. I’m not quite a year in yet, but it’s the best my life’s ever been.
I think it is important to add that it is not just dead-end, it is no longer a stable job. I worked for many years at Whirlpool (appliances) in western Michigan. Every few years they would lay off a bunch of engineers, and those engineers would head west across the state to work in automotive. Few years late, auto layoffs occur, and a surprising number of engineers head back west to design appliances again. So Lutz’s comments about “they could be building cars or appliances” was especially sad and funny to me.
Pensions are dead. Company loyalty is dead. The stock market goes UP when layoffs go up. What do they expect?
Apologizing for piling on the auto industry negativity but as an engineer in the supplier world, agreeing 100% here. Whether it’s the annual round of layoffs, or a company’s embarrassingly bad job retention strategy, or other work related nonsense that drives people to quit, the job situation for myself among other coworkers has been far more volatile than it has in the past. Company loyalty means nothing anymore when everything short of executives are disposable. The light at the end of the tunnel, at least where I work, is that more people are seeing through the thinly veiled BS that spews from the all employee meetings.
I do admit that the passion for the auto industry has been thoroughly sucked away having been at it since I was an intern way back in college, but hobbies (car related and not) and places like here keep the enthusiasm alive for me.
Working at a car company is a dead-end job, shitty job.
Tesla was a fluke because for all his flaws Musk is a brilliant hype-man (and also, among others at Tesla, had the vision that electric cars could be performance toys for the rich instead of compliance cars).
The conventional wisdom for me growing up is that if you want to have nice cars do not work in the car industry, and the best way to end up with a small fortune in the auto industry is to start with a big one.
Tesla was an outlier and it is reverting to mean as every other automaker on earth has introduced high-performance electric cars and Tesla has become a commodity manufacturer outside of Musk’s bullshit to rubes about robots and AI.
There is a lack of smart car enthusiasts in the automotive industry because smart car enthusiasts do not work in the auto industry.
You are correct. Me? GMI BS. GaTECH MS. 10 yr at gm. 30 at suppliers. I worked 2x as hard and got 1/2 as much as guys who stayed away from auto.
For example, I remember reading, as a kid, an article by the brilliant, and still-working, Kevin Cameron, saying that if you want to have cool motorcycles and cars do not work in the motorcycle or car business.
There was another article, by Csaba Csere I believe, that claimed that the US could not keep up with Germany and Japan in the automotive industry (although I think the gap has narrowed or closed) because in the US the best engineers go into aerospace and defense.
I never heard that last sentence before but my god that makes waaaay too much sense! When I was in engineering school that was always the top goal, aerospace or military weapons. What a different car industry we would have without the military industrial complex
My dad spent most of career in aerospace. Places like Lockheed, Aerojet, Lorel, GE, etc working on ICBM motors, space shuttles, ISS nuclear submarines, nuclear powered bombers, the SR71, nuclear breeder reactors, basically all the really cool cutting edge stuff. You’d THINK it was a dream job.
Nope!
He constantly ranted about how awful it was being a mechanical engineer.
He got no respect and how his classmates who went into business ended up making far more money than he did with a fraction of the skill. Job security was also tenuous. The industry was great till the late 60s then it got awful, lots of booms but a lot of busts too. Many layoffs. Money was always, ALWAYS tight. That fear of going broke is part of what made me the cheap bastard I am today (cheap bastard isn’t just a screen handle).
I visited dad at work once, GE nuclear I think it was. The early 80s was not a good time to be in nuclear power or aerospace, weird because you’d think *but Reagan* but no, both industries sucked to work in. The engineers there didn’t have good things to say either. One guy might as well have had “Fucking KILL ME!!” written on him.
By the time the mid 90s rolled around both the aerospace and nuclear power market had soured so much it became an early forced retirement.
That all painted such a bleak picture I decided to stay as far away from engineering as I could. Unfortunately I ended up as a scientist. Frying pan, meet fire.
Aww FUUUUCK!….
Moral: Mothers, don’t let your children grow up to be STEM.
Tech also.
You’re not wrong. I chose my university based on a wish to be in the auto industry, but every time I talked to someone who worked in the industry they had nothing but complaints. All of them car guys, all of them miserable working in automotive. I chose to just find a company that respects my time and work on whatever it is they make so I could just buy a fun car and drive it instead of making boring cars for others to buy. I’m not quite a year in yet, but it’s the best my life’s ever been.
I think it is important to add that it is not just dead-end, it is no longer a stable job. I worked for many years at Whirlpool (appliances) in western Michigan. Every few years they would lay off a bunch of engineers, and those engineers would head west across the state to work in automotive. Few years late, auto layoffs occur, and a surprising number of engineers head back west to design appliances again. So Lutz’s comments about “they could be building cars or appliances” was especially sad and funny to me.
Pensions are dead. Company loyalty is dead. The stock market goes UP when layoffs go up. What do they expect?
Apologizing for piling on the auto industry negativity but as an engineer in the supplier world, agreeing 100% here. Whether it’s the annual round of layoffs, or a company’s embarrassingly bad job retention strategy, or other work related nonsense that drives people to quit, the job situation for myself among other coworkers has been far more volatile than it has in the past. Company loyalty means nothing anymore when everything short of executives are disposable. The light at the end of the tunnel, at least where I work, is that more people are seeing through the thinly veiled BS that spews from the all employee meetings.
I do admit that the passion for the auto industry has been thoroughly sucked away having been at it since I was an intern way back in college, but hobbies (car related and not) and places like here keep the enthusiasm alive for me.
He’s Bob Lutz so who am I to disagree. But I will because I have bought three new cars in the last four years…and one older “enthusiast” vehicle. (What Autopian writers call their dream cars, aka an amusing POS). I have to say that I’ve been pleased by all of the new cars. Two are Joe Lunchbucket Chevys and they have been nothing but great. You get in, push a button, something in front of you makes a nice noise. Not terribly fast, but they both are super responsive.
The other car is an electric which is also a pleasure to drive. By the way, it’s not a Tesla and I bought it as much for the styling as the performance…
A friend of mine bought a Hyundai CUV hot rod – which they don’t make anymore because no one bought them – but it is way fast and enthusiastic…
Point being….I probably would have agreed with Mr. Lutz back in the day when run of the mill cars were sluggish and unreliable. But many run of the mill cars are really high quality and fun to drive today. And if you look at all the pieces and parts, it takes more than an enthusiast to engineer a defect free car, fun to drive or not. That the cars are pleasing (at least those I’ve chosen) tells me the automakers are doing something right. By the way, and I know this is anti-Autopian, but I’ve cleansed my palette of “enthusiast” vehicles, at least for the time being. I’ll live vicariously through the adventures of others while I enjoy the enthusiasm, comfort and reliability of new cars.
“…dream cars, aka an amusing POS.”
right there with you!
He’s Bob Lutz so who am I to disagree. But I will because I have bought three new cars in the last four years…and one older “enthusiast” vehicle. (What Autopian writers call their dream cars, aka an amusing POS). I have to say that I’ve been pleased by all of the new cars. Two are Joe Lunchbucket Chevys and they have been nothing but great. You get in, push a button, something in front of you makes a nice noise. Not terribly fast, but they both are super responsive.
The other car is an electric which is also a pleasure to drive. By the way, it’s not a Tesla and I bought it as much for the styling as the performance…
A friend of mine bought a Hyundai CUV hot rod – which they don’t make anymore because no one bought them – but it is way fast and enthusiastic…
Point being….I probably would have agreed with Mr. Lutz back in the day when run of the mill cars were sluggish and unreliable. But many run of the mill cars are really high quality and fun to drive today. And if you look at all the pieces and parts, it takes more than an enthusiast to engineer a defect free car, fun to drive or not. That the cars are pleasing (at least those I’ve chosen) tells me the automakers are doing something right. By the way, and I know this is anti-Autopian, but I’ve cleansed my palette of “enthusiast” vehicles, at least for the time being. I’ll live vicariously through the adventures of others while I enjoy the enthusiasm, comfort and reliability of new cars.
“…dream cars, aka an amusing POS.”
right there with you!
I don’t know, I’d also ask what automakers are doing to create and maintain enthusiasts. Building an entire model range of crossovers isn’t helping that. Letting one or two enthusiast models hang around aging without meaningful updates and virtually zero marketing doesn’t help, nor does bundling desirable features into enormous options packages, nor does allowing dealers to slap huge adjusted markups on everything, nor does not building enough to have saleable inventory. It varies by automaker, but at least some of that affects pretty much everyone