WIRED Article: Beyond Detroit

The June issue of Wired Magazine has an article about the auto industry. I don't see it at http://www.wired.com yet. Some might want to buy the hardcopy issue for this article alone.

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Detroit's Big Three automakers have for decades been notoriously hostile to outside innovation; Flash of Genius and Tucker, films that decry the industry's insularity, are both based on true stories. No small U.S. company has grown into a big carmaker in the past 50 years -- one of the reasons that the automobile itself hasn't changed more fundamentally during that time. "It's as if the computer industry were still dominated by Wang and Data General and DEC, and they were still selling minicomputers," says Henry Chesbrough, executive director at UC Berkely's Center for Open Innovation.

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Detroit doesn't have to be hostile to outside innovation at all. More than anything Detroit knows how to mass produce and drive down production cost through efficiency better than anyplace else. It takes a hell of a lot more than just product design to become a large automaker.

This dovetails with why Detroit became the 'arsenal of democracy.' From Time magazine in 1942:

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It is cutting costs and saving time all along the line through mass-production short cuts: a parts plant lopped 25% off the time Army Ordnance thought it would take to make machine guns; an automaker cut the time scheduled for a British ack-ack gun by four months and evolved a new way of broaching the barrel that cut that operation from 3½ hours to 15 minutes; another parts maker improvised machine-gun equipment that beats regular arsenal machinery by 20-30 times; an automatic cannon that cost $1,200 to make 18 months ago now costs around $600; a new flame-cutting process turned out 12 tank-engine sprockets in 6 minutes v. 8 hours formerly required for a single sprocket.

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In early 1941 the as yet unrealized goal of [[California based) Consolidated Aircraft was to build one bomber A DAY. Within three years Ford went from breaking ground in a soybean field to turning out a bomber AN HOUR.

Unfortunately that wouldn't happen today with Ford, it would be studied to death first, bankers would try to wring the last dollar out of Ford, or the government, and the product would be shoddy.

However, Detroit's big three have had a problem with innovation, marketing, and has harbored suspicion of any manufacaturer they deemed as getting into their business.

Who killed the electric car?

Who buggered up Tucker, DeLorean? The windshield wiper guy?

Who destroyed the streetcar systems in the US?

Who desroyed the rail lines in the US?

Who has kept mass transit from being built in many US cities?

We all know the truth.

I have only bought American for thirty years, and will continue to do so, because it's about the people who make the cars for me, not necessarily the politics and general bullcrap coming from the corporation.

But now the gig is up, and American manufacturers have had a wake up call to end all wake up calls. If this doesn't force them to adapt to new thinking, get 45-50 mpg, as do their own cars in Europe, then market forces will take over, and whatever emerges will be smaller leaner, and probably foreign.

American auto makers have made some really ugly vehicles for years now, as have the Japanese- the difference is the Japanese cars will run forever, retain their resale value as a result, have better maintenance records, and get better gas mileage.

Why this wasn't a warning to GM, Ford, Chrysler, I don't know. Toyota has been gaining ground on GM for years, and the one-two punch of frozen credit markets and the general collapse of the economy has brought them to their knees.

They should have been better prepared.

It reminds me of what my father said about Chrysler's management in the 50's & 60's and how suspicious they were that Frenchman Raymond Loewy was on the scene, sniffing around for automotive design jobs, and eventually designing the Avanti.

Chrysler CEO Quinn wouldn't hire him, negating Loewy's decades of product design which placed him in the Pantheon of industrial designers, said he "didn't trust any Frenchman with a pencil-thin mustache."

Unfortunately, this same mentality has taken root since, and held up remarkably well over the years.

Committee design has been the downfall of automotive aesthetics, so that's and easy one to fix- give one designer carte blanche to create fantastic automotive designs as was the case with Harley Earl, Virgil Exner, Elwood Engle, etc.

Keep the bean counters out of the design shop. Period.

Get the techies under the hood, and the rest should fall into place. People are visual, they have bought ugly cars because that's all that's been offered. Good design has unfortunately been only for the rich in the last 40 years.

You need to study history and look long term, friend, instead of buying so wholeheartedly into faddish thinking and pop culture propaganda. Your comments about Ford alone reveal your ignorance.