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Updates from April, 2012

  • For a brief moment, I felt like Marty McFly just having been DeLoreaned Back to the Future. A beaming attendant asked if I wanted to “fill ’er up?” This was quickly followed by seven words I thought I would never hear again, to wit: “Check your oil and windshield washer fluid?” And, as quickly as I could utter an agog “high test and yes, please,” precious fossil fuel was being pumped into my little Ford Focus and lickety-split (one is allowed to use tired old clichés when confronting apparitions from the past), my windows were spotless. Wow! Service and with a smile.

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    And then this apparition from the past did something even more extraordinary, something that really is worth taking the drive all the way to the corner of Island Park Drive and Wellington Street West in Ottawa to observe before, like all endangered species, it disappears forever from our Earth.

    Having started my fill-up (and, for an apparition from the past, he certainly figured out my fuel-capless Focus quickly enough), he spotted another customer just pulling up beside another pump and ran — he actually ran — to repeat the same beaming-smile pantomime all over again.
    When was the last time you saw anyone in customer service in any field, let alone automotive, run on his job? With a smile on his face? I can tell you when I last saw it: my last viewing of the aforementioned Back to the Future, where director Robert Zemeckis specifically used the iconography of full-service Texaco attendants to illustrate poor Marty’s desperate disorientation.

    Yet, here was Terrence McDonnell — windshield cleaner in one hand, fuel nozzle in the other — darting from car to car making sure all Island Park Esso Service’s customers were getting the same beamed-back-to-1955 experience. Only the lack of a duck-billed cap and a natty uniform shattered the illusion.

    It meant the entire sojourn back to my hectic, very modern life in Toronto was spent in wistful reminiscence. First, it was remembering the 1966 Plymouth Fury III I drove for a year in college. A lime-green hand-me-down from neighbours and God knows who else, it was motoring at its simplest. An ignition key, two pedals and one stalk-mounted gear selector was the entire complement of controls. Distractions were few compared with the mobile supercomputers we now drive. I suppose I could have fiddled with the radio tuning knob incessantly, but even for an ADDed inveterate channel changer like me, that would have gotten old pretty quickly.

    I also remember working on the darn thing with my dad. Back then we were going through our I’m-the-king-of-this-house-no-you’re-not-I’m-the-new-buck-in-town routine that is part and parcel of the teenage male maturing process. Just about the only communication we could manage was “pass the 5/8th socket.” Thank God, starter motors were easily repairable back in those days or we probably would not have exchanged a civil word for my entire 18th year.

    And it wasn’t just starter motors. Before “efficiency” and “downsizing” forced engine bays to be shrunk, you could actually change spark plugs without dropping the motor or replace a blown exhaust manifold gasket without a degree from MIT. Replacing an oil filter didn’t require the manual dexterity of a brain surgeon. Yes, cars are better, faster, more comfortable and entertaining these days, but let’s not forget that we have sacrificed something for all these new creature comforts.

    I also don’t remember incessant over-policing of our roads being a problem back before God (actually Robert Bosch) invented fuel injection. Speeding was more frowned upon than officially castigated. Yes, we enjoy safer roads today, but methinks that’s more to do with air bags and crumple zones than any of the constabulary’s laser gun ministrations. And, for a jolting reminder of how much things have changed since Island Park Esso’s attentions were common, my son was assaulted the other day and we’ve been told the detective’s caseload is such that there is precious little time to investigate such a — I guess “minor” — crime. Yet, paradoxically, on the way home from the cop shop, we passed no less than four speed traps, most of which were manned by more than one constable. Complain all you want about old-time policing methods, at least they had their priorities right.

    I also miss drive-in make-out sessions, bench front seats, three-on-the-tree and trunks you could swim in. And I feel sorry for anyone who’s never experienced the utter hubris of a Chrysler Imperial (two kilometres long and weighing something like 3,000 kilograms, it still only had two doors and no rear-seat leg room to speak of), the utter insouciance of a Hertz GT 350H Mustang rent-a-racer and the absolute indestructibility of a mid-’60s Ford Galaxie that tackled our off-road races to hidden kegger parties with a robustness unmatched by even SUVs today.

    We continuously congratulate ourselves on how much things have improved. But, cocooned in the cozy confines of my warm Ford Focus while young Terry ministered to my every automotive need somehow made the pitiful few cents a litre I save pumping my own gas seem positively barbaric.


    8:00 am on April 12, 2012
     

  • It was, in every way, a quintessential New York moment. The Mayor was there, there was a protest outside and the assembled media jostled for photo ops with an intensity that elevated the well-placed elbow from mere rudeness to sublime art form. Impossibly leggy model-wannabes inspected credentials with a rigour that suggested new tablets were coming down from the mount and, inside, the good folks from Nissan were hustling about like they were being delivered by God himself (although, by all accounts, Mayor Michael Bloomberg considers himself a worthy substitute).

    It is the New York Auto Show and, since I am being hosted by Nissan, naturally there is a car involved. But, this being New York, the city in which taxis are only outnumbered by feral rodents, its newsworthiness — and the reason for The Exalted One’s presence — is said Nissan’s bilious-yellow cab. Yes, only in New York does one hold a press event worthy of J.Lo for the introduction of a cab. And again, only in New York are there some placard-carrying lunatics protesting the introduction of a cab. (If I am reading their placards right, they’re p.o.’ed the new NV200 is not immediately wheelchair-compatible, although the city has reportedly ordered 2,000 handicapped-accessible NV200s).

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    Then again, in New York, a taxi is by far the most important automobile on the road. One would have to be seriously mad to commute through downtown Manhattan’s mayhem in your own car, even if it was Smart’s sidewalk-compatible fortwo. Indeed, you see so few private cars on the potholed roads that Broadway and Madison Avenue often seem a sea of, well, refer to my previous description of the chosen hue. Mayor Bloomberg, as he eloquently describes in his sermon, er, speech, thinks them worthy of commissions, studies and mayoral action. And he seems most pleased that all taxis now have credit card readers in their (heavily armoured) rear seats. According to a 2007 census, there are 13,237 taxi cabs operating in downtown Manhattan and, if the scene at the New York Auto Show is any indication, they are all outside the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center right now.

    According to Nissan, some 600,000 New Yorkers hop into the back of a cab each and every day and, again according to the automaker, said Manhattanites will enjoy greater headroom and a transparent sunroof that allows passengers, as W.C. Fields used to sing, to stare at high buildings. More importantly, for Wall Street’s young Gordon Gekkos on the go, the NV200 cab sports a USB port to charge their lifelines, er, smartphones. It all makes the announcement that the Nissan mini minivan will replace the entire current fleet — currently comprised of Toyota Siennas, Ford Escapes and the ubiquitous Crown Vics — by the end of 2018 something of a coup.

    At any other car show, Carlos Ghosn’s (Nissan’s global CEO, much overshadowed by His Mayorship at the NV200 off-site launch, but the keynote speaker at the auto show) introduction of the fifth-generation Altima would be far bigger news. Ditto his restated goal of having Nissan and sibling automaker Renault sell 1.5 million zero-emissions automobiles by 2016. Indeed, Nissan, being the global leader in electric vehicles, will be testing a small fleet of battery-powered NV200 taxis. The Big Apple’s limited land mass and relatively short commutes would seem ideal for an EV and even a battery-swapping network. In fact, New York’s very first taxi cab company used electrically powered motor carriages that swapped out their huge lead-acid batteries at the end of each shift. In a cautionary tale, however, the Electric Vehicle Company went bankrupt in 1900 trying to manage all those spare batteries and their battery-swapping stations. In a move so prescient it’s almost precious, the company emerged from Chapter 11 by switching its entire fleet to gas-powered cabs.

    There were plenty of other cars at New York’s Javits Center not painted puke yellow. BMW used the show for its worldwide introduction of the hyper-powered M6 Convertible as well as a facelifted X1 compact crossover. Chrysler revved up its much awaited Viper replacement and Acura took the opportunity to unveil an all-new topline sedan, now rebadged RLX (though the company might be better off returning to the Legend moniker that marked the brand’s heydays). Whatever its name, the new top-flight sedan is said to share the same V6/electric motor hybrid powertrain that powers the upcoming NSX hyper-car, meaning the car should have some serious puff.

    General Motors also took the wraps off its 10th-generation Impala, while Mercedes-Benz showed a new GL SUV and Toyota a new Lexus ES 350. But none could compete with Nissan’s boxy taxicab. After all, no one in New York drives.


    1:00 pm on April 5, 2012
     

  • You gotta love capitalism. Yesterday’s terrorist haven is today’s burgeoning market. In a recent report in Automotive News, none other than Iraq is the new darling of major automobile manufacturers. The automotive tome noted that Volkswagen, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are all pushing to expand their presence in the formerly (and, skeptics might say still) war-torn Middle Eastern country.

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    Iraq’s automobile market is currently less than 100,000 units annually, but, thanks to rising incomes, rapid economic growth and so-called safer streets (hey, only “1,500 Iraqi civilians were killed by bombs, sniper and roadside ambushes last year,” according to Automotive News, down from a peak of 34,500 in 2006), so Automotive News is reporting that some major players are forecasting growth of as much as 30%. General Motors already sells 32,000 cars there a year, making it the company’s second largest market in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia. That’s a mere pittance compared with the 9.025 million vehicles The General sold last year, but the company had targeted the Middle East for expansion. Sectarian violence, improvised explosive devices and state-fuelled religious intolerance be damned, we can sell them some cars, so let’s build us some dealerships.

    Of course, any additional successful market is desperately needed if the auto industry’s recent revival is to continue unabated. China is, by most estimations, slowing its recently explosive growth. Ditto India. And just when you thought we could go back to ignoring the Europeans (thanks to the collective sigh we all breathed when Greece’s bond devaluation deal was finally signed) comes news that the entire EU auto market is about to come tumbling down, dragging all of us with it.

    Bloomberg News is reporting that General Motors sees “clearly deteriorating” sales exacerbating the same kind of production overcapacity that crippled the American auto industry before its bankruptcies/restructuring/debt reduction of 2009 to 2011. According to Dan Amman, GM’s chief financial officer, worsening vehicle pricing — transaction prices are said to have dropped more than $200 in just the last three months — indicate greatly reduced demand. GM, Bloomberg reports, lost $747-million in Europe last year and $15.6-billion since 1999. The $420-million tie-up with PSA/Peugeot-Citroën reported in this column two weeks ago is the company’s most recent attempt to address its overcapacity issues.

    And, unlike the most recent downturn, automakers are not counting on government “scrappage” incentives to artificially boost sales. Despite the recent improvement in Greece’s debt relief, the European economy continues to sour, weighed down by massive debt, debilitating unemployment and chronic over-regulation of the industry. Throw in the fact that, by some estimations, the Europeans may have as much as 20% too much automobile production capacity for current market demands and you have the same recipe for disaster that plagued the U.S. automakers through the last two decades.

    The difference is that our domestic auto industry has already swallowed its Buckley’s — you know, “It tastes awful. But it works” — General Motors declaring bankruptcy (as did Chrysler), shucking income-dragging brands (as did Ford), laying off workers (as did both Chrysler and Ford) and shuttering plants (ditto Chrysler and Ford). Save for the seemingly never-ending death spiral of Saab (and its demise was sparked by GM), Europeans did not react to — or, as those nasty vulture capitalists might say, did not take advantage of — the Great Recession with any dramatic restructuring. Indeed, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne recently called for European Union intervention in reducing the industry’s overcapacity, though Volkswagen, the only major European automaker to make a profit last year, rejects such calls for government intervention.
    The result, as anyone who’s ever tried to peel off a Band-Aid slowly knows, would appear to be a simple delay of the inevitable pain. Hence why Opel is crawling into bed with PSA/Peugeot-Citroën and Fiat is willing to sleep with, well, just about anybody. Volkswagen is said to be fuelling the troublesome price declines by using its heft — and profits from its successful luxury brands — to buy market share. No wonder Marchionne has been so preoccupied with expanding his Fiat/Chrysler/Who-wants-to-love-me-now conglomerate.

    Of course, all this may be the same tempest in a teapot that the Greek debt crisis turned out to be (says he, crossing all his fingers and toes in the hopes that he jumped back into the stock market at the right time). The Economist, in its latest issue — Crikey, Ginger! Can It Be … The Recovery?!! — is predicting a steady, if subdued, recovery (albeit with the same aforementioned crossing of hearts and hoping to die) that would seem to make any weakness in the European auto market of minimal consequence.

    Of course, General Motors guaranteed it was not declaring Chapter 11 and Rob Ford promised Torontonians a subway.


    8:00 am on March 29, 2012
     

  • Haven’t we heard this malarkey before? Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Fiat and erstwhile American automaker Chrysler, wants another partnership, this time with someone out east, say Mazda or Suzuki. It’s all part of Marchionne’s theory that only the largest shall survive the impending shakeup about to wreak havoc in the automotive industry. Or so says his crystal ball.

    Meanwhile, General Motors is hooking up with PSA/Peugeot-Citroën to cure the travails of its perennial money-losing subsidiary, Opel. Of course, having the French telling the Germans how to improve efficiency is a little like the Italians explaining to Americans how to make more reliable cars. Methinks the saviour brings precious little to the table.

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    But Marchionne is committed — as GM seems again — to the ideal that, in the automotive world, bigger is always better. The combination of Fiat and Chrysler is still selling about 50% too few cars for its be-sweatered CEO, who sees eight million cars a year as the lower threshold of viability for a major player in the industry (by the way, only GM, Toyota and Volkswagen currently meet that criteria).

    The problem is that, while the merge-and-acquire theorem of success may make sense on a corporate ledger and in the heartless synapses of chartered accountants, it hasn’t worked so well in real life.

    General Motors, as the name implies, has been a veritable smorgasbord of disparate automakers, some still current (Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC), some recently departed (Saab, Saturn, Oldsmobile, Pontiac and Hummer) and still others long forgotten (McLaughlin, Oakland and countless more). But, although the company has recently returned to what I am sure it sees as its rightful place atop the global sales chart, its success is hardly about the bigger-is-better motif. Indeed, quite the opposite; the company didn’t return to the black until its recent forced ditching of underperforming brands. Its recent success has more to do with jettisoning debt, contracts and loads of unloved model lines than any expansion of its portfolio.

    Ditto Chrysler. It seems like only yesterday that Daimler was welcoming the Auburn, Mich.-based automaker into its bosom only to have the entire merger of unequals fall apart in internecine jealousies nine years later. Does anyone really think it is Fiat’s superior management that is floating Chrysler’s boat or, as is more likely, the shedding of debt and obligation through bankruptcy that is feeding the company’s recent glorious turnaround?

    Meanwhile, Ford, arguably the most successful of Detroit’s once mighty Big Three, became the darling of the automotive media largely because it dumped — voluntarily in this case — all its extraneous brands. Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo were all sold/dispensed/thrown-to-the-wolves so that it might concentrate on its core brand (OK, two core brands, but many wish the Blue Oval would also deep-six laggardly Lincoln as well). Even then — and still — profitable Mazda, one of the apples Marchionne reportedly covets, was largely shunted aside.

    Even the latest darling of the grandiose, Volkswagen, is finding managing so many disparate interests difficult. Remember three years ago when VW’s takeover of Porsche was imminent? Well, the actual nuptials are still as elusive as a George Clooney “I do” and, indeed, VW’s majordomo, Ferdinand Piech, is in trouble with German law-and-order types because a German court couldn’t figure out whose interests he was serving when the whole mess went down (Piech served on the supervisory board of Porsche at the time of the imbroglio while also being the chairman of VW).

    Meanwhile, the other apple of Marchionne’s eye, Suzuki, is in the midst of a separation from Volkswagen as acrimonious as any Kardashian divorce. The German and Japanese automakers penned a stock-swap partnership back in 2009, but that fell apart when Suzuki approached — you guessed it — Fiat for a new diesel engine instead of relying on partner Volkswagen (if this is starting to sound like TMZ Television or an episode of Big Love to you, you’re not the only one).

    The more you look at recent automotive history, the more the odds are against the success of mergers/partnerships, so much so that one has to wonder about the true motivation of these recent developments. I suspect General Motors’ announcement of the Peugeot alliance is just GM doing what it has traditionally always done, trying to acquire expertise. And, likewise, I suspect that Marchionne’s true rationale for incessant acquiring/partnering is that he wants to dilute the importance of the troublesome Fiat division as much as possible (since he took over the Italian automaker, he’s been fighting with Fiat’s unions and trying to move as much production as possible out of Italy). Indeed, things seem so desperate Automotive News is reporting that Marchionne tried to broker an alliance between GM and Fiat (cue those Hollywood bed-hopping metaphors again).

    GM will not solve Opel’s over-capacity production problem and declining market share by joining hands with similarly challenged Peugeot. And the solution to the problem of managing two disparate car companies with vastly different cultures is not to make it a threesome. Contrary to what actor Bill Paxton and his band of merry Mormons think, the solution to one troubled relationship is not adding yet another spouse to the household.

    And, if the drama in the four-wheel world isn’t enough, CAR magazine is reporting that Audi, Volkswagen’s luxury arm, is looking to purchase superbike specialist Ducati, possibly by mid-April.


    8:00 am on March 15, 2012
     

  • That Harley-Davidson uses Twitter to advance its sales is no surprise; virtually every company in the world with a marketing department — even if said department is the former janitor still working out of his previously mop-infested closet — is social media-savvy these days.

    That Harley-Davidson, aka The Motor Company, is perhaps the best at Facebooking should also be no surprise; this is, after all, a company renowned for its connection with its customers.

    (When asked by a Ford marketing type who was in Milwaukee pitching the idea of the Harley-Davidson F-150 how the motorcycle maker managed to connect so deeply with its customers, Willie G. Davidson famously replied, “Well, we do know them all by name.”) That the company has 3.3 million Facebook friends seems somehow natural, considering there are probably more than that many Americans with The Motor Company’s famous orange-and-black logo tattooed on their shoulders, breasts and heinies.

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    What is changing is who those 3.3 million Facebook buddies are. Oh, sure, we all know Harley long ago transcended the old “one-percenters” badass stereotype, rendered inconsequential as it were not by police investigation or judicial writ but by the sheer overwhelming wealth of the Boomer generation. Oh, to be sure, the 40-something Anglo-Saxon white male lawyer/Wall Street broker/insert-your-most-despised-yupster-here traded on that outlaw image to attract his twenty-something trophy wife, but the seeming malevolence of all those bearded bikers was the ultimate façade. Come Monday, their “colours” were traded for pinstripes and their facial hair was suddenly more adroitly coifed.

    But even that faux-ferocious stereotype is morphing once again, says Harley-Davidson. The Motor Company has a new viral marketing promotion — its “No Cages” campaign — that claims there is actually no stereotypical Harley-Davidson rider anymore. Called “E Pluribus Unum” — or “out of many, one” — the new strategy is born out of Harley-Davidson’s new crowd-sourcing Facebook application called Fan Machine, which the company claims allows all those Tweeters to review the company’s advertising, rate it and submit ideas to improve it.

    The centerpiece of the campaign is videos submitted by riders via Twitter — “#StereotypicalHarley [you fill in the blank]” — breaking down all those old social barriers to motorcycle ownership. Meander over to Harley’s microsite (http://www.harley-davidson.com/en_US/Content/Pages/dark-custom/stereotypical-harley.html) and you will find: a pink-haired twentysomething white woman who is actually an honour student; a hard-looking African-American man who is a police officer; a bandana-ed Hispanic man who is a Grade 3 teacher; and a white soccer mom who has the thirty-something aging stripper look down pat. Interspersed among these against-types are a nondescript army intelligence officer and robotics engineer and the one remaining true blue surely-this-is-tired stereotype white male rock star trying to look gritty.

    Harley’s message is simple: We are no longer a niche brand. We are no longer even that larger but equally focused cadre of Boomers that hijacked the brand for the last two decades. We are everyone. We are you.

    It’s working. In the United States, Harley-Davidson is the No. 1-selling brand for young people shopping in the 651-cubic-centimetre-and-over segment (that’s almost 50% of the U.S. sub-35 market, according to R.L. Polk, and almost three times Harley’s penetration in 2008). In fact, so dramatically has The Motor Company changed its image that Mark-Hans Richer, Harley’s chief marketing officer claims that:  “In 2010, Harley-Davidson sold more new motorcycles to today’s Millennial generation young adults than it did when the Baby Boomers generation [today’s “core customers”] was 18 to 34 [1988].”
    Harley-Davidson also leads in catering to the burgeoning female market. Here in Canada, 13% of recent Harley owners have XX chromosomes. And, in the United States,
    Harley sells more bikes to African-Americans and Hispanics than any other brand.
    Busting even more stereotypes — at least for me — is that all these newbies aren’t buying the cheap-and-cheerful Sportsers I envisaged. Like most covering the industry, I assumed — and, yes, I know about “you and me” — that the myriad variations of the iconoclastic Sportster, including the new Seventy-Two tested on Page DT4, were Harley’s draw to this one fringe group. Instead, the most popular single model for 18-to-34 Millenials, women, Hispanics and African-Americans is the full-zoot Street Glide (basically a stripped-down version of the classic Electra Glide), a topline model far removed from the bargain-basement Sportster.

    If nothing else, this shows that Harley-Davidson, at least, is serious about broadening its reach.

    As this column has often lamented, if the motorcycle industry is to be reborn — and just the quickest perusal of sales statistics is enough to know a rebirth is necessary — it will come from expansion into long-ignored niches, such as youth, women and minorities. We Boomers are well into our doddering years and will soon be trading in our Hawgs for walking sticks.

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    9:00 am on March 8, 2012
     

  • There’s nothing like the angst of the truly offended to spur a dedicated columnist back to the keyboard and rumination. And none are more easily offended — at least judging by last week’s column — than the dedicated proponents of the electric vehicle. Loud is their outrage any time their anointed savior is castigated.

    Thankfully, among all the detritus (usually anonymous, by the way) was a gem from Tony Catterall, a reporter whose previous beats included covering the German auto industry in the 1980s and ’90s.

    Proving that there’s nothing new under the sun, Catterall sent along his “Electric cars may drive pollution levels higher” story that was published in London’s The Observer on Aug. 4, 1991 that predated — by 20 years (quite the scoop, Tony!) — my column detailing the University of Tennessee’s contention that EVs may actually result in more overall pollution than gasoline-fuelled automobiles.

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    That report studied 34 Chinese cities and found that, because 75% of China’s electricity is fuelled by coal, the emissions associated with driving an EV actually caused more pollution than tooling around in a conventionally powered automobile.

    As contentious as the University of Tennessee’s study is, Catterall’s now-ancient missive proves its conclusion is hardly new. Indeed, 20 years ago, Catterall reported the same results from Germany’s Institute for Environmental Protection and Energy Technology. According to Dr. Hansgert Quadflieg, Catterall’s story noted, the institute had even then determined that, although electric cars “don’t themselves emit any harmful gases … if we’re going to introduce them on any large scale, we also have to look at overall emissions.”

    Catterall also reported that a Technical Control Board Rhineland (Germany’s sometimes-infamous TUV) computer simulation replacing all the internal-combustion-engine cars in Cologne — then a city of just less than one million — with electrically powered vehicles would have required an additional 7,000 to 9,000 megawatt/hours a day of electricity generation.

    Since about two-thirds of Germany’s electrical generation at the time was generated by fossil-fuelled power stations, Quadflieg told Catterall that overall carbon dioxide emissions “could rise by up to 20%.” He also noted that sulphur dioxide — a major cause of acid rain (my God, do you remember the kerfuffle that used to cause?) — would also increase.

    Of course, power-generating technology has advanced somewhat in the last two decades, although Germany still relies heavily on coal for electricity. As well, it must be pointed out that Canada’s reliance on coal for electricity generation is minimal, meaning that EVs driven here actually significantly decrease emissions compared with a gasoline-powered automobile.

    However, as I noted in last week’s Motor Mouth, the world’s two biggest consumers of automobiles, China (where, according to The New York Times, the increase in global warming gases from China will probably exceed that for all industrialized countries combined over the next 25 years) and the United States (where coal plants are responsible for about one-third of all carbon dioxide emissions), still get the preponderance of their electricity from coal, with neither looking to phase it out.

    It’s also worth noting that, according to worldcoal.org, 42% of the world’s electricity generation stems from coal. The U.S. has approximately 540 generators, more than a third of which are 40 years or older, while China is reportedly building coal-fired plants at the rate of one a week.

    In perhaps worse news, a 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology study revealed that the true problem with Chinese coal power generation was not its powerplants lacking cleaning technology but that the coal being used was of such poor quality. Even more perversely, numerous sources conjecture that the cooling effect of the enormous amount of sulphur the low-tech Chinese plants are pumping out is masking some of the climate-changing effects of its carbon dioxide emissions, something that may cause global temperatures to spike in the near future.

    All of this is just a long way of saying that moving Chinese and American drivers into EVs is far from the climate change panacea many imagine. But, then, if we had all read Catterall’s story 20 years ago, we’d already know that.

    While admitting that EVs have their place — “They can be very useful in niche areas such as local delivery and service rounds. And they help in the fight against local smog, for example in Los Angeles …” — Quadflieg concluded that “we have to keep in mind that with present electricity-generating technology, all [electric vehicles] do is transfer the pollution somewhere else.”

    Sadly, there’s another part of the EV phenomenon that remains equally consistent. One of the letters in response to Catterall’s story accused him of deliberately carrying out an “assault on batteries.”


    9:00 am on March 1, 2012
     

  • The problem with divorce is that bitterness and strife linger long after the feud is over. For the 50% of marriages that end in divorce, the animosity (not to mention the alimony) seems to last longer than “until death do us part.” There’s something about the fine line between love and hate that has the one time that f@#&%$! so-and-so insulted our mother/neglected the kids/slept with our best friend outlive the euphoria that is the start of every relationship.

    I suspect that’s what’s going on with Jaguar. Not that the Coventry-based automaker’s list of “she done me wrongs” isn’t long. Gear heads of a certain age all have a story of the Jag that spent more time on a hoist than on the road, puking oil and transmissions with equal frequency. Nor is it easy to forgive its once-cutting-edge stylists for letting themselves go. What once was avant-garde — the XK120, every XJ until 1986 and, of course, the incomparable E-Type — slowly Kirstie Alleyed into the woefully somnolent XJ40 and the incredibly portly XJ-S. And when that failed to rekindle the romance, we simply got modern renderings of its past triumphs in the 2003 XJ and the 1998 S-Type. It was like watching Hall and Oates belt out “Private Eyes” over a rap backbeat. Ugh.

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    But by far the worst travesty was Ford’s mismanagement. Oh, yes, Dearborn saved Coventry from almost assured bankruptcy and the Yanks did manage to instill a sense of quality control into a British manufacturing industry yet to even hear of the concept. But the final years of American ownership were nothing but draconian cost cutting and incredibly ill-conceived product planning, none of which was worse than the infamous X-Type. Determined to do battle with BMW’s 3 Series and Mercedes-Benz’s increasingly successful C-Class, Ford — let’s have one last huzzah to then Ford CEO Jacques Nasser — foisted its lowly Contour (née Mondeo) platform on Jaguar, had it gussy it up with some fancy leather and then had the audacity to price it higher than its established Teutonic competition. Not only was the X-Type a colossal failure, it sullied the Jaguar name like no debacle before or since. Soon, it became “known” that even the mighty XJ was really just a Ford dressed up in English loincloth.

    What’s so sad about this is that Jaguar is finally building some truly great automobiles. Weight Watchers has been put on speed dial, there’s an entirely new fitness regime and it’s shucked all those tired ’70s disco duds in lieu of a brand new wardrobe. The oldest product in the portfolio, the sporty XK, wears a splashy French Racing Blue paint job, sports 550 Porsche-crushing horsepower and sounds like an escapee from the 24 hours of Le Mans. The mid-level XF is stylish, has the best interior in the mid-luxury segment and, in XF-R trim, is one of the best bargains in the luxury segment.

    Even the hoary, old XJ has been given a new lease on life, packing all its traditional old-world charm in a newly svelte and gazelle-like aluminum chassis — a leading-edge technology now a Jaguar forte, by the way — giving it all the performance one expects from a full-boat luxury sedan with less of the fuel economy/emissions penalty. Indeed, though it is small, there are no obvious weaknesses in Jaguar’s lineup, the XF, XJ and XK all comparing well with their respective competition on both technical merits and price point.

    And yet there are few dates. Jaguar Canada sold only 33 cars in January, a number that Mercedes-Benz exceeded with its S-Class alone. Ten years ago, AMJLR (Aston Martin Jaguar Land Rover) Canada used to sell two Jaguars for every Land Rover it moved off dealership floors. Last year, Land Rover sold three of its luxury SUVs for every Jaguar that found its way off the dealership floor.

    What the company needs, of course, is a car so achingly gorgeous that even we of the 140-character tweet stop in our tracks to ponder its classic lines. A shape that affirms what Jaguar once was, the very cutting edge of sports car design. In simple words, a modern E-Type.

    Judging from the crowds at the Toronto Auto Show, that car may be the new C-X16. Two doors, two seats and lines that you want to show off in the skimpiest of dresses, the new CX is chief designer Ian Callum’s best work yet, no mean feat considering he penned both the current XK and the Aston Martin Vanquish. It’s fast, light and even sports a trendy/environmentally-friendly hybrid powertrain.

    Still dubbed a “concept” car, the C-X16 is almost assuredly destined for production. If not, Jaguar deserved to be divorced.


    9:00 am on February 25, 2012
     

  • I think the enviroweenies are getting nervous. U.S. President Barack Obama recently tabled a budget for 2013 that bumped up the incentives for buying an electric car. Or, as they say in congressional legalese, any vehicle that “operates primarily on an alternative to petroleum,” which, with apologies to those shilling natural gas, really means anything that plugs in.

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    The Democrats’ provisional budget — and, if you were shilling for Republicans Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum, that adjective would be altered slightly to “delusional” — sees the maximum incentive for the purchase of EVs increased to $10,000 from $7,500.

    Dress it up any you want, but even the shallowest of car salespeople knows that you only put incentives on vehicles people don’t want to buy. And you only increase already substantial subsidies if the consuming public seems particularly reluctant.

    Ten big ones is extremely strong medicine, usually reserved for hard-selling luxury sedans long past their due date. Indeed, there’s no way to dress up $10,000 “on the hood” of a $35,200 Nissan Leaf as anything other than desperate measures.

    Unlike the tax credit, which ends after the automaker sells the first 200,000 alternatively fuelled vehicles, the proposed increase has no such limits, the credit diminishing after 2016, presumably after meeting President Obama’s ambitious target of “putting one million advanced-technology vehicles on the road by 2015.”
    Of course, with 17,345 Chevrolet Volts and Nissan Leafs sold in the United States last year, it’s little wonder the administration is a tad concerned. A skeptic might even go so far as to postulate that Americans seem a little reluctant to embrace the liberal left’s electrified future.

    There might be even worse news on the EV front. A University of Tennessee study recently concluded that electric vehicles in China might emit more pollution than gasoline-powered cars. Its conclusion is that, because 75% of Chinese electric power is coal fuelled, an EV operating in China is actually more harmful to the environment than a conventional gas-fuelled automobile. The study was conducted in 34 different cities. It measured everything from dust and metals to the acids produced during the coal-fired electricity production process.

    Naturally, any such hiccup has enormous repercussions as China has committed extensive resources to increasing the use of electric vehicles.

    “An implicit assumption has been that air quality and health impacts are lower for electric vehicles than for conventional vehicles,” Chris Cherry, assistant professor of civil and mechanical engineering at the University of Tennessee, said in a prepared statement online. “Our findings challenge that by comparing what is emitted by vehicle use to what people are actually exposed to. Prior studies have only examined environmental impacts by comparing emission factors or greenhouse gas emissions.”

    Of course, there are numerous other studies showing that, even in China, electric vehicles are cleaner and greener than the gasoline-fuelled variety. Nonetheless, it points to a great failing in the great pollution debate, namely that the world’s two greatest polluters — the one with the most cars and the other selling more cars per year than any other country (that would be the U.S. and China, in case you haven’t been paying attention) — both get the preponderance of their energy from the dirtiest of sources.

    According to the Canadian Press, another study by one of the world’s top climate scientists — Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria — found that coal is a far greater threat to our planet than burning fossil fuels. Weaver estimates that burning all the commercially available oil from the Alberta Tar Sands would only emit enough carbon dioxide to raise global temperatures by 0.03C,  but he adds that firing all the coal still readily accessible in the world would increase the temperature by a disastrous 15C. Yet, there is no public outrage against coal, no groundswell of protest against carbonized plant matter. Moviegoers are not flocking to documentaries lamenting the evils of coal-fed electrical plants.

    For the record, I have nothing against a cleaner Earth. Indeed, I believe the automotive industry should and must curb its emissions footprint. What I vehemently oppose, however, is the hypocrisy that sees the piously environmental willing to push us back to the transportation industry’s Stone Age — as in owners who are afraid to leave the city core for fear they will be stranded by their cars — simply because, every day, they can see the object of their ire, while coal-fired electric generators are far from their everyday commute. Out of sight, out of mind is not a justifiable defence for the puritanical rage of all those who see the automobile as the great evil, while virtually ignoring an equal or even greater issue.

    What scares me most about this devotion to anything electric is that if the great unwashed masses don’t get with this greener-than-thou program — if even the prospect of ludicrously large financial incentives is not enough to place us on the righteous path — then perhaps these same great minds will decide that, since consumers aren’t smart enough to determine on their own that the electric vehicle is our salvation, it will be perfectly justified to force people to buy them.

    Before you dismiss me as just another crackpot, consider the draconian laws being passed banning smoking from public parks based on the dangers of inhaling second-hand smoke in open fields. Those are also being done for our own good.


    9:00 am on February 23, 2012
     

  • There’s a lot more fun to be had railing against the inconsistencies that are the environmental lobby than praising some overly MBA-ed auto executive’s latest gloat on his recent sales success.

    There’s a lot more meat to an investigation on quite how a multi-billion-dollar corporation managed to let an abomination such as the Pontiac Aztek slip through its quality control process than recounting how a thousand engineers painstakingly plodded through four years of R & D to produce yet another competent but uninspiring sedan. Besides, “51-year-old celebrity sleeps with 15-year-old” is always going to get you more hits than “same celebrity later helps little old lady across the street.”

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    Nonetheless, after three years of Greek tragedy and fiscal gloom, it’s safe to say we could all use some good news. And, happily, the automobile industry has some to share. Besides the news that the American auto market has finally rebounded — hurrah! says all of southern Ontario — and that Canadians are buying more cars — last month was the best January since 2008 — there’s the simple fact that auto companies, from Detroit to Tokyo, are building better cars. Never mind that some had to be pushed to the brink — actually past — of bankruptcy to get off their duffs and finally engineer worthwhile automobiles. It’s been a long time since there has been so much consistently good product from such a widely diverse group of automakers.

    General Motors, for instance, has finally laid to rest the adage that Detroit can’t build a profitable, competent economy car. Not only has its Chevrolet Cruze sold more than a million units worldwide, but the same car spawned the technologically advanced Volt electric car, which, despite what you may have read, is not about to burst into flames, nor is it some socialist plot to further the UAW’s cause. On the other side of the coin, Chevy just unveiled the Camaro ZL1 that, while incredibly politically incorrect, is the best $58,000 any muscle car aficionado could ever spend.

    Chrysler continues to defy all expectations by building market share profitably, selling enough Ram pickups and Grand Cherokees to be the Number One-selling brand here in the Great White North. And we are about to find out if a marriage between an Italian sophisticate and a working class Yank can actually produce successful offspring: That new Dodge Dart travelling the auto show circuit is the first truly 100% collaborative effort by the recently merged Chrysler-Fiat duo.

    Ford, now the darling of America’s Tea Party set because it didn’t take one of those terrible Obama (oops, George W. Bush) bailouts, continues to impress with a very stylish new Fusion, a popular series of turbocharged EcoBoost engines and an entire family of electrified vehicles ranging from the Focus EV to the plug-in hybrid C-Max.

    On the Asian front, two more giants seem to have arisen from somnolent repose. It would be easy to dismiss Honda and Toyota’s recent malaise as a simple result of last year’s devastating tsunami (and, of course, Toyota’s unintended-
    acceleration woes), but the truth is that both Japanese giants have been asleep longer than Rip Van Winkle.

    Wander over to the Acura booth at the Canadian International Auto Show in Toronto, however, and you’ll find an NSX so lovingly rendered you’ll forget all about the ZDX. Castigate Honda all you want for taking so long to replace such an iconic beauty, but Honda’s stylists have used the long gestation wisely. Just a little farther down, you’ll find the new Acura ILX, a compact luxury car so pretty it will almost make you forget the Civic.

    And, will wonders never cease, there’s some genuine excitement over in the normally somnolent Lexus booth. The latest version of the company’s mid-sized GS — a once promising sport sedan — is again the height of fashion. And though I have signed all manner of legal proclamations not to reveal the details of its reborn attitude, I can attest that it is the most exciting Japanese luxury sedan in more than a decade. On an only slightly lesser note, Infiniti has a new JX seven-passenger SUV, which, though it looks slightly minivan-ish from the outside, is truly the most luxurious of people haulers inside. It’s also worth noting that Infiniti’s parent corporation, Nissan, is on something of a roll lately, posting record sales and threatening to pass both Toyota and Honda in profits.

    Of course, it’s no longer possible to ignore South Korean automakers, which have gained the most from the American and Japanese malaise. Hyundai’s luxurious Genesis proves there’s more soul than cheap and cheerful, while Kia’s Rio5 subcompact hatchback insists that cheap and cheerful need not be bland nor elemental.

    As incredible as it may seem, the German luxury brands continue their steady march into the mainstream with Audi, Mercedes-Benz and BMW up an average of 33.3% in sales in January over the same period last year. All have broadened their focus to include frugality — each now offers fuel-sipping turbocharged four-cylinder engines in lieu of sixes — as well as ostentatious luxury, still embodied in such stalwarts as Mercedes’ evergreen S-Class, now powered by an even more powerful 4.6-litre turbocharged V8. And, though BMW has unveiled a slew of new products in recent months, the big crowds in the Bavarian booth will be hovering around the recently refreshed 3 Series, the sporting sedan by which all others are still judged.

    If all this sounds remarkably upbeat, it’s because even the most cynical of auto scribes has to recognize this as yet another golden era of automobiledom. Never have so many cars offered so much for so little. Cars are safer than ever, more stylish, more powerful and, yet, somehow more economical. Enjoy it while it lasts.

    dbooth@nationalpost.com


    1:56 pm on February 17, 2012
     

  • As you are reading this, I am cruising my way up to Ottawa, Ontario’s provincial Highway 416 taking me from the provincial seat to the national capital so that I might provide some succor to my aging parental units.

    It is — thanks to the ravages that render all our final years problematic — a trip I am making with increasing frequency. This is the second weekend in three that I make the same sojourn and the third in four. For the past five or six months, I have been making the same excursion essentially every second weekend.

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    And I hate it. Having duplicated this trek now for more than 20 years, I can tell you that the Veterans Memorial Highway has virtually nothing  other than the efficient movement of traffic to recommend it. It is boringly straight, woefully flat and, unless you have a fetish for stunted pine trees, there’s precious little scenery to take your mind off the mind-numbingly monotonous job of holding a steering wheel in the 12 o’clock position. Take away the Big Apple and the balms offered at the new Canadian Tire way stations and the entire experience can seem as tortuous as a four-hour sojourn in a sensory deprivation tank.

    Sometimes, unable to face the sheer boredom, I will book an air flight between Toronto and Ottawa. Of course, that also means renting a car, a cardinal sin for we spoiled autojournalists, not to mention being far more expensive than feeding even a hulking SUV hi-test for 800 kilometres. Other times, I have begged friends, lovers and even the basement troll to accompany me, ostensibly for the grace of their company but really so they will drive and I can work/read/sleep the time away. Indeed, I would do almost anything not to have to pilot yet another car the 429 km to my parent’s bungalow in Kanata ever again.

    Which is why the subject of self-driving cars so interests me. Imagine, if the promise of these robotics engineers be true, I could have a luxurious Mercedes-Benz S-Class or sporty BMW 650i test car drive the dreariness of the 401 while I attend to more important tasks such as banging out some extra bons mots for the Editrix or catching up on some valuable snooze time. Then, like the airline pilot who takes over the controls when it comes time to land, I could switch seats when the road gets interesting. Sounds perfect doesn’t it?

    The truth is that most experts expect just such a vehicle to be offered to the public within the next decade or so. Indeed, as phantasmagorical as the entire concept seems, we’re already pretty far down the development road to the autonomous automobile. After all, what are anti-lock brakes and electronic stability control systems if not automated driver aids that take over the driving of our vehicles when it is determined we’re no longer competent to react? We have luxury cars — Mercedes, Jaguar, etc. — with radar-based cruise control systems that can prevent the vehicle from getting too close to the one ahead, mid-priced sedans with electronically controlled systems that alert us when we are deviating out of our lane and cars, even cheapo Fords, that, with the incorporation of some basic visual aids, can park themselves. It’s not a huge hop, skip or a jump to imagine an automobile that can steer us all the way to, well, Ottawa. Indeed, virtually all the major automakers have been testing such systems and Google has accumulated almost 300,000 kilometres of real-world experience with self-driving, camera-equipped Toyota Priuses.

    The two main technological hurdles remaining for mainstream implementation are: (a) perfecting the 3-D imaging so essential for a computer to replicate what a human eye sees from behind the wheel; and (b) the millions of kilometres of real-world data logging required to get such systems to recognize everything from signs (stop signs, speed limit indicators and even animal crossing signs, all of which differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction) to immediately recognizing the frail human being also known as a pedestrian (Mercedes has reportedly scanned 1.5 million people into its data recognition system).

    Other hurdles remain. The computer controls, for instance, will have to offer far more sophisticated implementation than current methods. The promise of current radar-based cruise control systems is far greater than its usefulness. Yes, these digital drivers can keep you from banging into the car ahead, but their actuation of brakes and throttle (to speed back up when you pass) is far more abrupt than the same task performed by simpleton analog devices (that would be you and me).

    There are also legal hurdles, namely that the human “driver” is, just as pilots of high-tech, self-flying jet liners, still ultimately responsible for his or her vehicle. Will the same apply to these self-driving cars? And, if the driver is still ultimately responsible, will he or she still have to sit in the driver’s seat, ever poised to take over the helm should the computers fail to recognize a danger? After all, I thought the entire point of the autonomous automobile was to leave us to more important/entertaining/relaxing pursuits while the car did the driving.

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    9:00 am on February 16, 2012
     

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