[evolutionmovement]

Large cars have always been preferable to the majority—they innately appeal to the fear and or lack of control people feel over their lives. Pushed around throughout school, stuck in a pointless job with an a-hole boss? Buy a macho truck with a Hemi and intimidate other road users. Afraid of texting drivers (which is only OK if someone does it themselves—it's the other idiots out there who can't drive and text properly) blowing through intersections and killing your precious children? Buy this land ironclad and resist the forces of the evil public that's out to get you! These aren't marketing messages, they're a little more colorful version of what goes through many consumer's minds, albeit probably unconsciously. Even in Europe, small SUVs are being bought in larger numbers. Only gas prices, taxes, and space premiums have made Europeans traditionally favor small cars. MArketing just gives it a little push.

And JD Power and Consumer Reports are garbage. I'll generalize my criticisms to both of them, but they don't take into account REAL long term reliability, cost of labor and parts when repairs are necessary, are dependent on the prejudices and varying tolerances of the public (perception of quality allows them to make excuses for a car and vice versa and a car they're in love with, ahem, MINI, will also catch an unfair break on problems), and apply equal weight to pointless customer "problems" and actual major failures. Famously, a few years back, JDP (or was it CR? I can't even keep them straight) was listing issues of too few or small cupholders on one vehicle and blown transmissions (Land Rover, incidentally—always at the bottom and NOT GM) on another as just being reported problems—they had the same weight since they weren't differentiated. Absurd. I also know the dimwits ranked my old Subarus to be less than great when all 3 of them were cheap, repairable by a monkey on rare occasion they went bad, and tough as nails to a far-better extent than their contemporaries. There's also that boring cars like Camrys discourage abusive driving and appeal to people who drive sedately, artificially pumping up their reliability ratings. My cars were variously jumped, used as battering rams, pegged their speedometers, performed stunt maneuvers, and run at redline in top for 15 hours overloaded with luggage with over 100k miles on it. Never a complaint. Rust killed the first two, but I'll be damned if I let the last one go!

I don't get all the GM bashing. Toyota makes more tanks than they do (the Japanese Hummer, the FJ, never gets criticism), has had more than a few big problems with their cars lately, and they seem to do no wrong. I realize, GM's no saint and Toyota's made more an attempt, but they're also not saddled with all the costs and are in a much stronger financial position where they can take risks like the Prius (which are now sitting on lots). Given the traditionally fickle American customer, they devote their scarce resources on the more sure bet—big cars.

Worst is VW/Audi, yet where's the outrage? I'd drive a Chevette before anything from them (OK, I'd take an R8). Worked on too many, known too many people who've owned them. In fact, though I've known many people with reliable (if not exactly appealing) American cars, far more than those with problems, yet only one that has had a good experience with a VW product built in the last 20 years and even he complains about the retarded part cost. You want to know what's reliable, talk to a mechanic, not a mag that specializes in toaster comparisons.

How did the Japanese steal market share? Americans moved to small cars. Let's look at why. Prior to the first gas crisis, the domestic makers owned the market. The Beetle, while popular was bought only by individualists (to keep it simple). When the first gas crisis hit, the Big 3, raking in the money they made on big cars most Americans loved, were taken as by surprise as the customers. Now people had to wait in long lines and get gas only on certain days and the panic had them looking for alternatives—30 mpg would get them through a couple of ration days, but 10 either made them walk or put them in long lines frequently. It was out of necessity, not choice that Americans bought what was available for small cars—foreign makes being the only ones selling them (for various domestic reasons). Around the same time, substantial safety and emissions standards came into play, castrating the giant engines of the Big 3 and taking away some of the incentive to own them. Not everyone jumped back into an American car with its capped horsepower (insurance companies also played a part) and ugly safety bumpers (though everyone had those). Meantime, what did the Japanese do with their new profits? Invested in product, something the Big 3 had been neglecting to do because it hadn't been necessary (typical American short-sighted business model). The Japanese cars made huge strides in quality and reliability with every generation (a model the Koreans have adopted to great affect as the Japanese are starting to rest on their laurels a little. History repeats), keeping early adopters and gaining new converts as the Big 3 fought to catch up with government regulation, neglecting quality in the interest of cost savings and speed to market. From there, the situation snowballed and combine bad union deals and what the Big 3 are really guilty of more than anything is short-sightedness, a problem endemic to American business, yet GM gets all the bad press. The banks were far worse and required far more money to bail out, but people took GM personally. People get emotional about cars and GM's long descent from greatness hurt and ashamed them. GM and the flag went together—their collapse and disgrace reflects America and themselves. I think the real thing of it is that people are angry at what they allowed to happen to this country in the latter half of the 20th century and in the wake of winning the cold war—where is the promise of peace? A lie. But how could it be anything but when it's human nature to be weak, giving in to base impulses like greed and violence. Perhaps it's a bit of self-loathing, then. Or maybe I'm thinking too much into this and that fly on my wall is simply a fly (though I do believe I detect a robotic eye). I tend do to that sometimes.