Oddly enough, my new hobby, collecting diecast cars, has even helped enlighten me on how incredibly stupid car companies, particularly American car companies, are.
As a collector, I have found myself gravitating towards the Ford Mustang. Old and new, they comprise a big chunk of my collection, to the extent that I have more Mustangs than any other single type of car. It's the icon I'm drawn to, really, more than anything else.
In my excitement over this particular make of car, I read a bit about them on the internet and watched some youtube videos of my favorite show, Top Gear in which the new Mustang was reviewed. Predictably, the Mustang was lambasted by the show's hosts in view of its poor handling. The same went for the Shelby GT500, the 2007 version of the legendary 1967 Shelby GT500; its poor handling caused a couple of reviewers to give it the thumbs down.
What bothered, me, however, was not the bad review, but a certain technical detail about the car, namely that it employed a live axle, which means that instead of rear-wheel independent suspension, which is what most current performance cars (and most passenger cars for that matter) employ, both its rear wheels turn on a solid metal rod.
Ford and legendary Mustang Tuner Carroll Shelby have defended the decision to deprive what is currently their flagship muscle car of the best technology available, stating that to put in this system would have made the car more expensive by about 5000 dollars and that the handling would not have significantly improved anyway (the latter of which I severely doubt).
It's not like I would ever buy this car anyway, but I was intrigued, so I dug a little deeper and learned what the ultimate cause for the cost-cutting was: Ford is basically in deep shit, having posted its biggest financial loss in years.
Like the other big two car manufacturers, Dodge and General Motors, Ford's primary lines of vehicles are its big, stupid, gas-guzzling SUVs and its pickup trucks, which basically panders to big, stupid Republicans. As is the case with so much else, Americans just have to do everything in ridiculous excess. What do you expect out of a nation where "food fights" are a staple in many of its slapstick comedies?
Well, apparently gas prices have severely curtailed the Americans' propensity to guzzle gas, and so all of the big three have suffered severely for it, with Toyota overtaking GM as the world's number one seller of automobiles, which says a lot considering GM has divisions all over the world churning out all kinds of different cars.
Because Ford, however, has ventured most of its eggs in the SUV basket, it's lost money hand over fist and now can't even afford to put independent rear-wheel suspension in arguably one of its most important products. The proof that things have gotten progressively worse for them is the fact that the previous generation Mustang did, in fact, have IRS.
So it is of some consolation that at least some of the conspirators behind the death of the electric vehicle are finally paying their dues. People are finally using their most powerful weapon against the capitalist; the dollar, or more appropriately, their refusal to spend it, and have brought one of the world's biggest capitalists to its knees.
However, the new Mustang, medieval suspension notwithstanding, is apparently quite the seller, with its iconic appeal and good looks. The other big two car companies have taken their cue and are reintroducing their own sixties icons, namely the Chevrolet Camaro and the Dodge Challenger. Thinking that the SUV is on its way out, the big three may come to believe that the solution is to go retro and bring back the muscle car. The only problem is, these muscle cars still use five-liter V8 engines. It's kind of amazing how myopic these people can be. One would think car executives are smarter than the morons who buy their products.
Of course, if the market is flooded with gas guzzling muscle cars, with gas prices continuing to escalate, it'll only be a matter of time before people stop buying these cars for the same reason they did their SUVs and pickup trucks, and start going back to their gas-sipping Toyotas, Hondas and other non-American cars.
It'd be nice, actually, if some Japanese or European company actually bought Ford out, the way Ford bought British companies Jaguar and Aston Martin. It would be nice to have business managers with long-term vision, and not just a desire to make a quick buck, running the company, and maybe the electric-car technology Ford (and its co-conspirators in the big three) sat on may see the light of day at last. Or, at the very least, a change in company philosophy would come about, with much less reliance on motor vehicles with a displacement any bigger than two-and-a-half liters.
This is Ford's chance to effect a huge paradigm shift; having been screwed by the oil companies who really couldn't give a damn about anybody's bottom line but their own, it is in a position to start hitting those companies back by making cars less dependent on their products. It can join other eco-warrior car companies like Honda and Toyota and make a clean break from the rest of the Detroit conspiracy with cheaper, and more importantly more fuel-economical cars.
Maybe using a revamped business policy that steers away (pardon the pun) from SUVs and excess, they can actually start making money again, and afford to put some real suspension in their Mustangs. Maybe (gasp) they can start making the Shelby GR-1 concept car a reality.
It's poetic justice to see the big three floundering as a result of all their indulgence. The trick now is how to do the same to the oil companies.
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