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May 21, 2006 I will do something that people rarely do in writing articles. I am going to definitively state my bias. I am a Honda person. The reason I am is simple, when I was poorer than I am today and the only cars I could afford were used I purchased several American manufactured cars. Inevitably my history with them was one of pain, breakdowns and rather unfortunately expensive repairs. My wife had an American car that cost her entire summer’s wages in college and caused her to have to work during the entire semester during school when the whole point of working that summer was to not have to work during the semester. The end result is that my wife and I have not purchased a single domestic car whenever the opportunity has arisen to purchase a new car. This kind of damaged marketing has caused irreparable damage to domestic manufacturers far beyond any marketing campaign. The simple fact is that this hasn’t just happened to a single family or isolated groups. My parents had horrible experiences with new domestic manufactured cars and they really started the whole Honda purchasing trend in my family. My family is growing and the cars we own are becoming less suitable to our familial size. I currently own a 2001 Honda Accord Coupe. This is ok with two parents and a single child; however, we have a second child due sometime in late August or September. My grandmother-in-law was ready for trading her car in and getting a new one. Her car was a 1998 Chrysler Concorde LX with 30,000 miles on it – extraordinary low miles for a car of its age. My grandmother-in-law is the legendary – this car was owned by an old lady – sales pitch. We asked her if we could purchase it from her as the size of the car is ideal for having children with a large interior and a massive trunk. It seemed odd that I was going to be a owner of a Chrysler and no less – a used car, but I was willing because of the knowledge of the history of the car. My grandmother-in-law is a die-hard Chrysler fan – so she decided to simply give us her Concorde. This is phenomenal and of course we made every attempt to try and give her money for it, but she was adamant. She went and purchased a new 2005 Chrysler 300. Everything she ever said about the Concorde was raves about how the car virtually drove itself, about ride quality and in general how much she liked that vehicle. Here is a review of the 1998 Chrysler Concorde. And specifications for the 1998 Chrysler Concorde Astonishingly, when I looked up the Chrysler 300, I found some notable information. First, there is no version of the Chrysler 300 that matches the mileage that the 1998 Chrysler Concorde gets. Best mileage for the 300 – 21/28. Best mileage for the Concorde 21/30. In addition to the recorded mileage, when I ran a simple test run of this aging 1998 Concorde on the NJ Turnpike and returned highway mileage of 31 MPG. This is disappointing in that when you consider new cars you are led by marketing to believe that the new cars are better than the older designs they are replacing. In the specifications I looked up the weight of the 1998 Chrysler Concorde and the 2005 Chrysler 300. The highest weight for the 2005 Chrysler 300 is 4046 pounds, the weight of the 1998 Chrysler Concorde is 2080 kilograms or 4585 pounds. So, by easy comparison you can understand that the engines (any of the engines) for the Chrysler 300 are all less fuel efficient than the engine in the 1998 Chrysler Concorde (LX model). It was clear even from the dealership that the Concorde had a larger trunk than the 300. Believe me, you might not think trunk capacity is important, but when you have a family and strollers everything comes up to can you transport the strollers and can you put the car seats in and can you put the kids in the car seats without suffering massive amount of stress and trauma. It should also be noted that the 300 (190) that delivers similar mileage to the Concorde (200) has 10 less horsepower than the Concorde. Now for some opinion: My experience with this 8 year old 1998 Chrysler Concorde has been fantastic. It is enjoyable to drive has adequate horsepower and space that matches my present needs. Marketing for the 300 has been impressive. So impressive that it completely glosses over the fact that in many ways the car it is replacing was a better car, which weighed more but had the same (or better) mileage, larger trunk and interior space and is more competent in driving. The Concorde had no need for computer capabilities for traction control as it was a front wheel drive. It would seem that the whole goal of changing the vehicle to rear wheel drive is to allow for a macho high horse power version of the car. In the end, I have to pick on Honda a bit, too. My 2001 Honda Accord Coupe EX 4-cyl, gets mileage of 23/30 compared to the much larger 1998 Concorde’s 21/30. Given the difference in the size of cars one would expect the Accord to have much better mileage. Given that my Honda weighs appreciably less than any of the 300s or the Concorde one would think it would deliver mileage in to the mid 30s on the highway. Sadly it does not and at the same time does not offer the size I need in my current family scope. Over time manufacturers come out with new models on a annual basis and we assume that always the new model is better in all ways than the previous model. This is the go-get-the-new-model psychology in American people. Clearly the 300 is a much more stylish car than the Concorde, but is it really a better car? So far my non-professional assessment and my grandmother-in-laws assessment is, not really. It seems odd to me that the good mileage version of the 300 is a lighter car with less horsepower than the Concorde, but managed to get worse mileage. It would seem that if you took the 200 HP Concorde engine and plopped it in to the lighter 300 you would get both higher horsepower and better mileage. Of course, you can not really plop the Concorde’s engine in to the 300 as the 300 is a rear wheel drive car. Surely Honda has done similar new versions of cars that get worse mileage than their predecessors. A simple look at the size of the Honda Accord now compared to when it first came out in the seventies is an implicit acknowledgement that the current car cannot get as good mileage as that old car. It should be a standard that new cars should surpass the older versions in every possible way. Certainly leeway can be given that some models have more powerful engines and sportier emphasis, but at least one version of a new car replacing an older model should be – look at how much better this is than the older car – in every single specification. Since there is no reliance that new cars are better than the models they replace – the only reason to buy a new car is that it should be more reliable than a used version of the old car. This really does not offer the consumer enough of a reason to go out and spend the big bucks on a new car. It is annoying to see some of the advertisements for cars today. Chevy pushing the Cobalt with – hey look it gets great gas mileage at 34 MPG – when long before the Cobalt came out in 1992 I had a Honda Civic with a sticker getting 40 MPG highway and it routinely got up to 43 on trips to Florida. Laughable at best that the Cobalt, Chevy’s small call for the economically minded cannot achieve what I had in a car 14 years ago. Honda Civics have grown in size, but you can still get a non-Hybrid version that gets 30 mpg city and 40 mpg highway. Equally laughable is that a company would pitch the mileage of a small car at 34 MPG when it is reasonably well known that a Honda Civic Hybrid gets 49 city MPG and 51 Highway MPG and that Honda Insight and Toyota Prius get better mileage by far. Just to give this a little perspective I went searching for the fuel economy of Honda Civics on in to the past. 1986 Honda Civic had a fuel economy of 31/37. In fact I can find a 1985 Honda Civic which lists a fuel economy of 38/42! Chevrolet has nothing to claim with its 34 MPG as in 1985 they had a Chevy Cavalier Converible that was rated at 26/35 and a regular Cavalier that also achieved 26/35. Really, if efficiency is your goal, I don’t think anyone in their right mind is going to pick a Chevy Cobalt no matter how much they pitch its 34 MPG fuel (in)efficiency. I wouldn’t pick a Chevy Cobalt as the Chevy Cavalier (Cobalt’s predecessor) was the one that my parents leased new and determined that they would not be getting a domestic built car again. To continue putting all of this in perspective the Honda Civic and the Chevy Cavolier/Cobalt are direct competitors. In the 21 years that I can find data never once did the Chevy cavalier achieve the EPA mileage of 40 MPG highway. Meanwhile, I’m not even bringing to the foreground the fact that there have been Civics that have EPA mileage in to the 50’s highway – and I’m talking in 1985. In 1995, 1996 1997 and 2004 there was a model of Cavalier that reached up to 37 MPG highway, but make no mistake, the 2005/2006/2007 Cobalt with 34 MPG is a manual transmission vehicle that runs on premium fuel which represents a small amount of the total sales of all Cobalt cars where the 40 MPG on the 2005/2006 (2007 is not listed yet) Civic is on an automatic transmission running on regular fuel. Equally humorous were commercials GM ran for their cars a few years ago. A mid-thirties couple stopped on the side of the road necking. A cop comes over and asks them what the problem is and they say they had engine problems. He looks at the car and says – it is a Chevy, try the key and it will start. I am sure they didn’t mean the commercial to be funny, but as an owner of a used 1981 Oldsmobile Omega and my wife as an owner of a 1989 Chevy Corsica hatchback I can tell you from personal experience that these cars were not where I would look for an example of how reliable cars should behave. The Corsica wasn’t too bad but the 1981 Omega was a complete and total disaster which I owned I think for 6 months. Certainly Hondas and Toyotas are not problem-free vehicles. My Accord Coupe had a warranty replacement of the transmission and the new transmission came with a 70,000 mile warranty. The first time my 1992 Honda Civic broke down was when it reached 160,000 miles and the distributor went. My wife’s 1997 Honda CRV has never broken down and it has 206,000 miles. My parents put over 200,000 miles on their 1989 Honda Wagovan (possibly the worlds ugliest car). I have certainly heard of people getting new car lemons from Honda, but I have not experience those phenomena myself. My extended family has owned:
Each one of these cars represents a lost sale for domestic manufacturers. It isn’t a lost sale for choice of style, specific color or even engine power. It is a lost sale due to a concentrated thought process and aversion to manufacturers of cars that have caused injury to us in the past. When it comes to breaking down on the side or the road or getting a new car as a lemon I go with probabilities. Even though I very much like this 1998 Chrysler Concorde, it is unlikely to sway me to purchase a new domestic car. The probabilities are that I lower my risk in buying a Honda of being broken down on the side of the road. Mostly, I will do whatever I can to avoid being in that position. In fact, I suspect that is how many people feel today and why Honda and Toyota are enjoying sales in the stratosphere and building as many cars as they can in the United States of America, while our domestic manufacturers struggle for their existence. It will take years of domestic car manufacturers producing consistently (manufacturer wide) better cars than Honda and Toyota (demonstrably better) before someone like me or anyone in my family (me, my wife, both of my parents) will ever even consider buying a new domestic car. Economics People do what is best for their family. On the micro-economic level this is the only choice to make. On the micro-economic level we say it would be good if the American people saved more money. On the macro-economic level if every American started saving a lot more money it would cause massive job losses and economic hardship. On the micro-economic level many people choose to purchase foreign cars. On the macro-economic level this is causing our entire car manufacturing industry to fail. Fortunately, as there has been a strong yen it has become more profitable for companies like Toyota and Honda to build cars in the United States of America and job losses in the automobile industry have been movements from union to non-union shops and domestically owned manufacturers to foreign manufacturers. It is a question of which company profits from the sales of new cars and what country that company belongs to determine our trade losses. Sadly, the only way for this to be reversed is for domestic manufacturers to improve greatly and to make cars that are more fuel efficient and our domestic manufacturers are very slow to understand and take action in these matters. Trade restrictions with Japan would only result in Americans paying more for cars and inevitably the slowing of the domestic manufacturers attempts to catch up with Japanese cars – after all why improve your cars if you can get the government to even out competition with cars that are clearly better than what you manufacture. Trade restrictions would be a very poor solution for the American people. The best way to deal with this problem is to send lots of letters to GM and Ford and Chrysler (Daimler) and say – I would love to buy your cars but it appears quite plain to me that in the best interests of reliability and high mileage that I purchase Hondas or Toyotas. Please come out with cars that are actually on par with the reliability of Hondas or Toyotas and small cars that have mileage comparable to Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas. If no customers tell the auto companies how they feel the domestic manufacturers will continue to make and sell low (relatively) reliability cars and will not focus on creating high mile per gallon cars. According to Consumer Reports, American car manufacturers still lag greatly in terms of reliability. According to Consumer Reports every single car in their top ten cars to purchase are Japanese models and about half of those models were Hondas. American car manufacturers – where is your pride – when you are soundly beaten by Japanese manufacturers in almost every way except size and horsepower? What will it matter that you make the biggest SUVS with the poorest mileage when no one buys your cars? If domestic car manufacturers have a shred of pride they will rise to the challenge and produce cars better than the best Japanese cars and win back their market share. Win back their market share through better cars not through better marketing.
Once again I would like to thank my grandmother-in-law for giving us
the
Concorde. It will serve us well and delay the purchase of a new larger
vehicle to replace my Accord. And in addition to that my son loves
that
car. He could be the next generation that turns back to domestic car
manufacturers. You can imagine; however, that as his father I will
warn him
against getting a domestic car until such time as I have firm evidence
that
their cars have improved significantly. Kids rarely do what you ask
them to
do, though.
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