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T’S A VEXING QUESTION, a riddle seemingly without a clear answer. The world’s car manufacturers are as perplexed as everyone else about the real cause for the decline in the car’s position as one of the most important, most desirable human artifacts.
Much has been written about the advent of autonomous vehicles, robo-taxis gliding silently through the cluttered mazes of today’s large cities. Yet autonomous vehicles are, in my opinion, a result, as opposed to a cause. So-called subscription services, where a monthly payment gives the customer access to a number of vehicles in that brand’s portfolio, are also cropping up as a creative solution to bring in customers. And then we have car sharing, provided by companies such as Maven. And, of course, the quasi-taxi service provided by Uber and Lyft.
All of these newfound ways of putting “butts in seats,” to use automotive-sales vernacular, have one major troubling thing in common: They downplay, or sidestep, vehicle ownership. Therein lies the real problem. When large segments of the population view the car not as a desirable object to own and covet, but merely as a convenient way to travel to a given destination, it means the love affair—torrid, passionate, and long-lasting though it was—is beginning to flame out.
WE DIDN’T ACTUALLY PLAN TO DESTROY THE
JOY OF OWNERSHIP.
JOY OF OWNERSHIP.
The industry itself is at least partly to blame. We didn’t actually plan to destroy the joy of ownership, but often out of sheer necessity, we did things that hastened it. When vehicles became expensive, we discovered ever-longer financing periods—now 80 months and higher—to get monthly payments to an affordable level. Arguably, it does the job, but the buyer, in many cases, never actually owns the vehicle and usually trades it before having any real equity.
And then there’s leasing, the great social leveler, wherein a buyer essentially pays to cover depreciation of the vehicle for 24 or 36 months, plus a profit for the leasing company. Again, the customer has use, but never ownership. Leasing also leads to “price inversion,” where a German sedan has a lower lease rate than a Ford pickup, and anyone able to afford a $400 monthly lease payment can drive a luxury car. The cachet, the pride, and the privilege of ownership is gone.
And then, on top of all this, we have what I would term “cancerous proliferation,” or more densely filled product portfolios, where every major brand, foreign and domestic, has an entry in every real or imagined market niche. Individually, producers see themselves as simply responding to competitive pressure, and that’s good. But collectively, it results in an intensifying torrent of new nameplates, designations, body styles, and power sources. It is a rush of information average consumers can no longer digest; they tune out. ***-for-tat product planning leads to cross-brand sameness, lack of standout appeal, and inevitably, loss of the urge to own.
The immortal David E. Davis Jr. once said, “The problem with General Motors is that nowhere in the United States is there a 14-year-old boy with tears in his eyes saying, ‘Please, Dad, buy a Lumina.’ ” That boy is now gone; gone for all brands. He just wants the latest smartphone. And an Uber. A
Bob Lutz has been The Man at several car companies. Ask him about cars, the auto industry, or life in general.
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