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Spinning My Tires   is one man's view of the world of cars. Random thoughts, ideas and comments pop up here, all of them related to owning, driving and restoring cars. I've been doing this car thing as long as I can remember, and have enjoyed a great many car-related experiences, some of which I hope to share with you here. And I always have an opinion one way or another. Enjoy.

E-mails are welcomed--if you have thoughts of your own to share, please send them.

Additional Spinning My Tires editorials can be found on the Archives page.

2/1/03

Looking to the Past to See the Future

War is in the air, and nobody knows when or if it’ll come home to his or her hometown. The economy is still shaky; it’s recovering maybe, but many remember that not too long ago things were pretty grim in the economics department. There are crazy people loose in the world killing a lot of innocents because of age-old differences. Nobody knows what will happen to fuel costs and supplies if the war comes, and the auto industry is nervous about the future of their products.

 It’s spring, 1941.

 Or it could be February 2003.

 There are things happening in the world today that I’m not too happy about. But I’m not here to talk about politics and world affairs—this is where you and I come to relax and soothe our souls. War or peace, feast or famine, turning a wrench on my cars shrinks my world to the size of a two-and-a-half-car garage.

What I would like to talk about is the direction Detroit is taking with our beloved automobiles, and that they could do worse than looking to their own pasts to find their way into the future. Is today’s consumer really so different than those in 1941? I have a collection of old Buick ads, and all of them seem to espouse bigger, faster, more powerful, more economical, and less expensive. Different than today? I think not.

But I look at my Century, and I see a car that has what I call intangible quality. This goes beyond the trend-setting styling that lasted more than a decade, beyond the state-of-the-art in engine design (overhead valves and dual carburetors when everyone else was using flatheads and single-barrel downdrafts), and even beyond that thing they call value. No, whenever I remove a bolt or component from my Buick, I can feel the pride that somebody more than 60 years ago put into attaching that piece. The quality of that Buick meant something to somebody who wore coveralls for a living, not just the guys in suits who decided who their customers were.

When I hold the parts in my hands, I can feel their quality. It isn’t in the machining (though there are some quite elegant machined elements on the car) or in the way the parts are shaped. Instead, it is the intangible feel that these are parts that weren’t built down to a price, but rather up to a standard that says this sucker’s gonna last forever! The 320 cubic-inch motor in my Century weighs 862 pounds dry. That’s nearly twice the weight of any 8-cylinder engine currently in production today. The iron in it has high nickel content, and it’s exceptionally difficult to machine with today’s tools. They did it that way not because they were wasteful, but because they didn’t have finite element analysis to tell them exactly how many micro-grams of iron were needed to make that block “good enough.” Instead, they over-built everything to insure that it would last. And the mere presence of old cars confirms that they believed in making quality their priority. They didn’t believe they were building collector’s items, of course, but they did want people to know that the cars they built were as good as they could possibly make them.

The engineers weren’t stupid. Even though their methods may not have been exact, their thinking was quite elegant. The car was designed to be repaired. Components are simple and easy to disassemble and service. Everything is accessible, and wherever possible, the engineers designed parts that were either positioned for their own protection, or had the protection built right in. Planned obsolescence wasn’t in anybody’s vocabulary back in 1941.

As far as the guys at GM were concerned, this was possibly the first and only car some of their customers would ever buy, and the cars they were building in 1941 would probably have to last through the war and beyond. I think that meant something to everyone involved. It was as if they were honored that their customers would choose their product. And every guy working on the assembly line felt that way too, and put his heart into those pieces of steel and iron rolling down the line. It just meant something to be building that car.

Do you ever feel that way about changing the spark plugs on your new car? Have you ever even seen the spark plugs on your new car?

When I see what the automakers are thinking about the future, I hope that they can see what the past offers. I’ve seen photos of the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), the cars, the people and everything else that makes it so wonderful. But I only see the surface, because that’s all they build any more.

You’ve got the Chrysler PT Cruiser, the VW New Beetle, the Mini Cooper, the Plymouth Prowler (RIP), and all these great concept cars that tap the past, but make them desireable in today's market. These cars seem to resonate with the public because, after all, wouldn’t you rather have a neat-looking car, all other things being equal? Of course you would.

But this is just marketing flim-flam. Eye candy designed to give the consumer (we aren’t customers any more, just consumers) a vicarious feeling of connection to the past. And it works OK, I guess, but what if I could get into a new car and feel the care and craftsmanship that went into it in my bones. Some high-end cars probably still deliver that feeling (the hand-built Aston-Martins probably still have that vibe, along with some other high-end exotics), but for the most part, the engineering is now dedicated to shielding the consumer from the messy bits instead of embracing them as a part of the whole.

Most of the domestic automakers are struggling to play catch-up today. They’ve been at it for more than a decade, and still haven’t learned all the rules of this new market. Incentives and rebates, exaggerated sheet metal with add-on spoilers and wings, and commercials with rock stars and flashy colors are what they offer us. What we want is great product that talks to us in whatever way we want it to talk. The Germans and the Japanese figured this out a long, long time ago.

I think Detroit could do worse than to look into the past and see that what made these cars they idolize so great was a holistic approach that insured that every part of the car was just as good as it could be. Whether that meant an engine that would last forever or bodywork that was gorgeous to look at, everything was as right as they could make it.

I won’t argue that today’s cars aren’t great—they are. They’re better than they’ve ever been, in fact. But they are missing a few things that can’t be manufactured at the factory or created in an ad campaign.

Soul. Passion. Love. Pride.