What’s wrong with the American auto industry?<\/p>\n
The Big Three’s bread-and-butter cars are decidedly lackluster compared to their foreign counterparts. In the latest issue of Newsweek, there’s a two-page ad for Buick inside the front cover. The central selling point of this advertisement praises the plant where the car is manufactured for having won a J.D. Power award. The ad doesn’t spotlight any of the car’s attributes. Not even standard feature lists or warranty comparisons (that Chrysler was so fond of in the early ’90s when all their cars were dogs). No–the plant is evidently the car’s strongest selling point versus its competitors. Have we really sunk that far?<\/p>\n
GM is offering ridiculous rebates. Everywhere I look market share is dropping. But as I’ve heard it said many times, the problem is that American car manufacturers, on average, just aren’t making anything Americans want to buy.<\/p>\n
Toyota’s introducing a very well-engineered line of hybrid luxury cars. Honda’s making forays into the SUV\/truck market with the Ridgeline, which despite naysayers is going to be a big hit. And the list goes on… Technological innovations are being incorporated left and right in mainstream cars–mainstream import cars. Where’s the long-term vision of American manufacturers?<\/p>\n
It’s clear a radical shift of the business model is in order. What I see happening is another event like the one that transpired in the auto industry in the early ’70s: Another energy crisis will hit, and American manufacturers will scramble to adapt to market conditions foreign companies had forseen and prepared for years in advance. Market share will plummet, and just as import carmarkers grabbed a much larger slice of the pie back in the ’70s, the upcoming energy crisis will be their cataylst for outright dominance of the American market.<\/p>\n
What do you think? What should American manufacturers do make themselves more competitive, beyond a simple answer like “build better cars?”<\/p>\n