The real reason Toyota is beating GM

Mickey Kaus pokes a hole in the theory that "green" is the future of Detroit. The cars that people want are reliable, not necessarily "green."

Today the Washington Post paraphrases Lutz on the importance of the Prius to Toyota:

Lutz sees several reasons for Toyota's ascendancy, none more important than becoming the darling of media analysts and environmentalists in the wake of its seminal hybrid, the Prius ...

In early 2006 -- "much too late," he acknowledges now -- a troubled Lutz saw that driving a Prius constituted nothing less than a values statement for many of its owners, a means to bask in the perception of their own enlightenment. Even more alarming, thought Lutz, was that some consumers not enamored of the Prius itself nonetheless saw its existence as proof of Toyota's wisdom. The Prius's presence alone was drawing people to Toyota lots, where the curious bought everything from bigger sedans to sport-utility vehicles and trucks with about the same gas mileage as their GM counterparts, groused Lutz. Part of what he called the "halo effect."

One sporadically selling hybrid, he realized, had greened an entire company and catapulted nearly every vehicle in its product line. It was a disturbing sea change for GM executives. ... Meanwhile, American automakers, including GM, suffered under the perception that they were stuck in yesteryear and saddled with cars of inferior quality. [E.A.]

Lutz can't possibly be enough of a moron to believe that the Prius and its "halo effect" are a primary reason for Toyota's ascendancy. Toyota has been ascendant for at least three decades, and GM declining, for a simple reason: Toyota built cars that worked ("bulletproof," as they say) at a time when GM built cars that didn't work. That's what was "drawing people to Toyota lots" a generation before the Prius was conceived. Even today, when GM suffers "under the perception that they [are] saddled with cars of inferior quality," you only have to look at the Consumer Reports reliability ratings to see that the reason GM is saddled with this perception is that the perception is accurate. (The Cadillac CTS that Lutz boasts about, for example, may be a great performer. But it's still so unreliable that Consumer Reports can't recommend it. The beautiful Pontiac Solstice, which Lutz championed, has a true crap record. The Prius, meanwhile, is spectacularly reliable.)

For those three decades of Japanese market surge, much of the talk of Detroit executives has been an attempt to dance around the central issue of reliability and 'build quality,' and the inability of Detroit to provide it. For most of Lutz's career, he played down the importance of Japanese reliability by talking up the "romance" of the Euro-style sports cars and American muscle cars he (rightly) liked. Now he plays down the importance of Japanese reliability by talking up the "halo effect" that a cutting-edge "green" car can create with bicoastal elites (whom he doesn't like) and the media.

Environmentalism has become the latest distraction and delusion for Detroit. Chrysler admits that small, fuel efficient FIAT models aren't going to sell in large numbers--but hey, they're going to have a "halo effect" that will "burnish" the entire Chrysler line! Chevrolet will only sell a few thousand Volts--but the bicoastal elite appeal of green will suck media-addled buyers into the "reinvented" GM.

No. Detroit cars will sell when they're bulletproof, not when they're green (or, in Lutz's new spin, when they're made by a company that also sells something "green"). But only one of the Big Three U.S. car manufacturers has made dramatic progress
catching up to Japan on the bulletproof front--and it's not Chrysler or GM. It's the one that hasn't gone broke. ... 2:32 P.M.

Obama Motors debuts

President Barack Obama decided this weekend to fire the CEO of General Motors, Rick Wagoner, and is about to change the board of directors. How can this be, you might ask? After all, General Motors is a publicly held company, not an arm of the United States government.

Silly me. I made the same mistake, too. But since President Obama and the Treasury Department have basically taken over the industries “too big to fail,” Obama was able to ask for and receive Wagoner’s resignation without too much fuss.

With Obama’s announcement today that we “must not, cannot, and will not” let the auto industry fail, Obama Motors becomes the latest acquisition of Obama Holdings, LLC., which will soon branch beyond finance and auto manufacturing to real estate and health care.

Fortunately, Obama has found a way to sink even more money into the money pit by promising to honor the warranties on any new car should Obama Motors fail. I think the only way he could make the situation worse would be to hand over the warranty service to the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department to make sure everyone is serviced in a racially equitable manner. “I’m sorry Mr. Wigderson, but your car is going to have to wait while until we service a sufficient quota of minority-owned vehicles.”

You’ll forgive me if I feel less a tingle going up my leg than a shiver going down my spine. This coup d'état resembles a corporate version of the Kennedys’ 1963 ouster of Diem in Vietnam, with results equally as disastrous.

(By the way, I just spotted this. Great minds think alike.)

I just gained a lot more respect for Marty Peretz

Mickey Kaus, on his blog at Slate, publishes a thread from the infamous "Journolist," the liberal media e-mail discussion group trying to stay private and off the record. If this is the best Peretz's critics can come up with, he has nothing to fear from these intellectual lightweights.

Heck, I can be harsher and more on target than these guys. All anyone has to say is, "Al Gore."

Is it a cheap political stunt?

I'm getting asked if I think Senator McCain's decision to "suspend" his campaign is a cheap political stunt. No, I think Senator McCain's announcement is sincere, unfortunately, and typical of the hubris and grandstanding of most of his senate career.

I think Mickey Kaus was right when he recently asked,

Do you get the impression a McCain presidency would be a bit exhausting?

I actually get the impression that both possibilities for president could be "exhausting" and wonder if Peggy Noonan was right in 2004 when she suggested the country needed a break.

I do think there was a valid point in Senator Obama and Senator McCain canceling some campaign activities to confer with the president regarding the bailout. After all, the two candidates are the de facto heads of their parties. I would note however how little anyone in congress seems willing to listen to either candidate, proving once again that every political campaign is alone on their own island.

I would note, too, that McCain's going to Washington to work on the bailout just completely misses how unpopular the bailout is. Maybe he doesn't care, but I think he's learning the hard way there is no "issue above politics".

Run for the border

Did Senator John McCain really learn his lesson on "comprehensive immigration reform" a.k.a. amnesty for illegal aliens? Mickey Kaus has the answer. Back to school, John.

Legitimate news sites

Tom Haudricourt talked to ESPN radio with Drew Olsen (The "D-List") and "applauded" Milwaukee Brewers General Manager Doug Melvin for not wanting to respond to blogs. (I'd applaud, too, if someone promised me a near monopoly.) Haudricourt then claims Melvin told him that if the local media was going to report what they saw in the blogs, they risked losing their credibility.

Mike Mathias takes a look at Tom Haudricourt's credibility:

Haudricourt is a professional journalist. He should know when he has a source on the record or not—and especially in that situation. The Brewer’s had just signed Gagne to a $10 million contract, and the uproar over the Mitchell report was in full swing. Boras’ unvarnished comments were definitely news, and yet Haudricourt felt his relationship was more important than passing the information along to his readers.

I've already discussed Drew Olsen's little credibility problem, but I was floored when Olsen made this claim, "What has happened is the standard of the Journal Sentinel has changed. It used to be, you gotta have two, maybe three sources. Somebody better be on the record, quoted by name, telling you this before you can run it."

I just got off a flight from Boston and contacted a very reliable club source who told me he knows nothing about any plans to dismiss manager Ned Yost, as posted late last evening by "Badger Blogger," whatever that is. - Tom Haudricourt {emphasis added}

In the radio interview, "My source is more credible."

Do they really want to continue this discussion? Can we talk about the Brewers team that quit on it's manager, something Haudricourt and Olsen didn't report until afterwards? (Yeah, it's pre-internet. The only ones who could've called them on it were the season ticket holders who saw it first-hand and had no blogs then to complain.)

By the way, the Brewers come home May 27th.

Almost timely in a way only blogs can be (in this case, ironically so), Mickey Kaus discusses timeliness, blogging, the mainstream media, and Model 2. For more fun, here's Kaus' original post on Model 2.

A different mayoral endorsement

Barack Obama may have been endorsed by Waukesha Mayor Larry Nelson, but that's nothing compared to being endorsed by former Washington DC mayor Marion Barry. (Ht: Mickey Kaus)

D.C. Council member Marion Barry will endorse Barack Obama for president later this week. The former Washington mayor told me he has selected Obama because "he's a fresh start, a new direction. I listened to him Sunday morning on C-SPAN and it was like a breath of fresh air."

Barry, who remains popular in his Southeast Washington ward and in neighborhoods where longtime residents feel as if the city they grew up in is changing without them, said he was an early supporter of Bill Clinton back in 1992 and that he was "close to endorsing Hillary this time." But as Barry has watched the campaign, he has concluded that Sen. Clinton represents older and less flexible forces in the Democratic party.

Barry's decision may have been a crack decision, but his support for Obama is as solid as a rock.