You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!
American car companies thinking they can compete with the rest of the world by continuing to build cars that people hate.
That is Crazy marketing. It’s like selling people black licorice when they want Snickers bars. Were you not paying attention, or are you just so arrogant you think that they’ll buy what you produce because you are the master candy maker.
Ultimately, this doomed paradigm did the unthinkable, and sank the unsinkable General Motors, the Titanic of the auto industry.
But be forewarned World, an ass kicking is coming your way. We are America, often lazy and usually stupid, that is until you wake us like a sleeping bear from our blissful slumber. That’s when we yawn, scratch our backside and say “we are going to kick your ass.”
The way I see it, we are awake and we are thoroughly aggravated!
DATELINE: DETROIT – The AP writes: General Motors completed an unusually quick exit from bankruptcy protection on Friday with ambitions of making money and building cars people are eager to buy. Once the world’s largest and most powerful automaker, new GM is now leaner, cleansed of massive debt and burdensome contracts that would have sunk it without federal loans.
That’s great for GM. Out of Bankruptcy in 40 days. Merry Christmas, Happy Easter, Happy Birthday all in one. Anyone got a dollar I can borrow, I need to make change for a nickel.
Thanks to questionable bail out billions, the American public now owns GM.
As your boss, GM, here’s what I want. Are you listening you quondam arrogant fat cat bastards living in corporate towers not paying attention to the world around you? Well listen up CEO’s and automotive hierarchy because I’m about to go on a rant. I want an American designed car that makes women swoon and men get erect. I want a car so hot teenagers want to plug their ipods into it. I want a car so sleek, so beautiful, so hot, the next sports illustrated swim suit model is photographed spread eagle on the hood. Are you listening you stupid ass captains of industry, I’m your boss and I want an American Car to roll off an American assembly line that makes America proud and makes the rest of the world wish they could bathe in the red white and blue.
So here’s the way I see it. The reason for your long circle around the automotive drain is partially because you have been building ugly cars for decades. Back in the day, when TV was black and white and gas was a nickle, American Motor Muscle was king.
Cars like the Ford Mustang and the Chevy Corvette were innovative for their sleek design and their power plants that rumbled like thunder on the back of a wild stallion. These automobiles were rolling orgasmic energy that turned heads and gave drivers a feeling of invincibility and status.
Then American designers got lazy and stopped listening to the customer. To borrow a line from Animal House; “Fat and lazy is no way to go through life, son.” But that is exactly what American motor designers did. They got fat and lazy and stupid. They started drinking on the job and designing boxy cars with no imagination. You might as well have rolled these piles of crap off some assembly line in Communist Romania.
I mean how in God’s name do you explain the Ford Maverick? That was a sick day of food poisoning, and a case of diarrhea that ended up on the drawing board and then mass produced.
Whatever imbecile green lighted that project should have been rubber stamped out of a job.
Instead, the jerk probably got a big bonus.
Can you imagine the laughter in Japan as Ford Mavericks began rolling off the assembly line.
I imagine one Datsun Executive musing to himself; “Ah, America still building ugly cars. We lost war, but we will win battle for global auto domination”
The same laughter was heard in Germany and England and Italy as freakishly ugly little box cars kept being built. The AMC Gremlin. Are you kidding me? The Gremlin? Whoever authorized this metallic abortion should have been water boarded with 30 weight.
Like that wasn’t bad enough, how about the mechanized mistake known as the Ford Pinto. All this car did was look ugly all the time and blow up some of the time. What was Detroit thinking?
The automakers of the 80’s should have been stripped naked and their body hair waxed with a cheese grater. They should have been hosed down with red meat and then made to walk the plank in shark infested waters.
I think these miscreants of industry are to blame for where we are now. They designed and marketed and sold us egg cartons with rubber band engines. Meanwhile the rest of the world was getting up of the mat, circling us and punching us repeatedly in the nose. I don’t think we ever saw it coming. We see it now, don’t we.
Now we sit in the new millennium unemployment office where jobs are gone and assembly plants are closed and the American people are left to wipe the defecation off the bottom of our shoes.
In my estimation, American car company’s gave up. Like a football team with a lead in the 4th quarter, they began designing not to lose, instead of building cars that would win.
So the inspiration that was Mustang and the raw balls to the wall feel that was Z 28, and the pedal to the medal in your face of the Pontiac Firebird, well it fizzled like a match immersed in sour milk.
These classic American cars were replaced with tepid farts on boring chassis. Muscle cars that once made a man proud, were replaced with rancid stains of pedestrian plastic. Drawing boards that once sparkled like treasure in a Gold Rush River were now wrapping paper for stinky fish.
You know what happened? MoTown muscle turned into fat ass boring and badly made.
Suddenly made in the USA was a bad thing. Damn! You think the greatest generation could have ever imagined that?
I’m no automotive historian, but somewhere American ingenuity fell asleep at the wheel. Instead of building cars that made you feel like you were getting laid, Detroit began designing fart bags that made you feel like you were taking out the garbage while someone kicked you in the jewels.
It’s as if the designers in Detroit lost their nerve, as if they were sailing with Columbus and they were afraid to push the limit for fear you might just fall off a flat Earth.
That’s when the hungry little company’s around the world began chewing on our bones. They saw the leviathan of Detroit burp up ineptitude and the world’s auto designers put their elbows to the grind stone.
Little companies like Datsun cranked out the 240 Z. Mazda brought the RX7 to our shores. I don’t know what the rotary engine is, but Americans had to have it.
Toyota had the Corola. The Germans basically kicked us to the curb with faster, sexier, more luxurious versions of the BMW and Mercedes.
Suddenly we were on the bottom looking up. Motown’s mighty shoulder was down, almost pinned to the mat. The referee’s face was poised to end the match. We were so stupid, even then, we barely knew we were in a fight.
As we produced the GMC pacer, the world’s auto makers laughed.
As we drove the Ford Pinto, The world drove circles around us.
Suddenly Americans were buying non American cars. A Blasphemous and ridiculous thought only a decade or two before.
Like stink pouring out of a slaughter house, American car manufacturers began churning out boring, predictable metallic sausage, devoid of inspiration and generally lacking in value.
Pinto and Citation and Focus and the God Awful Taurus. We churned out vehicular turds faster than a cow hooked up to a colonic.
BMW made sports cars that reeked of raw sex. Mercedes produced luxury cars that inspired men to greater aspirations in life. Lexus and Honda were durable, and superbly built.
During the same time period, Indolent American car builders designed chump cars with all the sex appeal of french kissing your grandma. We produced cars for slugs and schmoes who trudged to work and loitered around life. American car companies built Dodge Darts and Ford Fairlanes and canker sores like the Ford Pinto.
And why so many versions of the Ford Taurus, when clearly one was way too many?
Jump ahead 30 years and here we are. American car company’s are under water, their eyes barely poking through the bog like primordial toads trying to stay afloat.
The biggest car company’s have been killed by slovenly stupidity, bad planning and basic engineering lethargy.
The world has blown by us like a 350 Z with the top down. The world is laughing at us, perhaps viewing us like we once viewed them.
Ah, will history repeat itself?
After all, we are America. We invented the car and we taught the world how to drive.
Before you laugh too hard BMW. Before you talk too much crap Toyota and Honda and Volvo.
Be forewarned; we are America. We are some stubborn cowboys who know how to kick ass and take names.
Don’t think we can’t redesign our way right back into the game.
As part owner of Chrysler and GM, here is my suggestion.
Those schematics on the wall that say 2020 model : GO FOR IT!
Those etchings of super fast, super crazy sporty, kick ass machines that usually don’t get built because they are too futuristic. Well, here’s a crazy ass suggestion, build them.
Those clay models of rockets on wheels ; get it going Detroit.
If it looks fast and sporty like Buck Rodgers would have flown one to space, then I say build it, now! If it makes me want to drive it down to the gas station and feel like I’m cheating on my wife, then I say build that son of a bitch. Get freaky with it, get your sexy on, and put some good old fashioned American Muscle under that hood. Put some big daddy rubber on the bottom and make the interior so comfortable you sit in your car to read.
Remember the rush of blood you got when you saw that Mustang. Well get that moon car off the drawing board and onto the assembly line.
As your new boss, GM, listen to me, and listen good. Act like you care. Make me want to drive and drive hard. Designers need to build me a rocket ship, sex crib, and don’t forget to pump up the volume. Tell BMW and Mercedes and Lexus to kiss our American Ass.
GMC is no longer a joke. Watch out World, I’m the new boss, different than the old boss. I say we’re going to put the muscle back into the American dream.
As Sammy Hagar so elegantly sang; I can’t drive 55.
Now drive faster or get out of my way!