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In a database in my primary computer sits a decade’s worth of automotive stories that I’ve reported daily at 570 KLIF AM. Although the reporting lasts only 90 seconds each day, the text prints out at 898 pages and just over 409,000 words. It’s a tiny window in time, and not just for the automotive or energy news; through it we can also look back on the successes and failures of manufacturing worldwide over the past 10 years.
In January of 2000 I reported that General Motors was introducing its 80-mile-per-gallon Precept concept automobile. Just a few months later, Chrysler said they were about to premiere their ESX3 family sedan, also a hybrid electric and capable of getting 72 miles to the gallon. Interestingly, Chrysler executives also promised to use the technology in the ESX3 to improve the fuel efficiency of their sport utility vehicles by 20 percent or more. No one was asking why, if Chrysler had a 72-mpg family sedan, putting the same technology in a Jeep Grand Cherokee would achieve only 3 more miles per gallon. In any case, neither the Dodge ESX3 nor the Jeep Cherokee that "gets 18 miles per gallon in town" has made it to market in the nine years since their fanfare.Billion-Dollar BusyworkLike today, 10 years ago this month we witnessed a huge movement in the buying and selling of automobile manufacturers. Rover was being ditched by BMW, GM was buying into both Fiat and Subaru, Ford had just acquired Land Rover from BMW, Renault had bought Samsung Automotive of South Korea, Daimler had acquired controlling interest in Mitsubishi, and numerous parties wanted to pick up Daewoo.Oh, and General Motors announced that it would buy the 50 percent of Saab it did not already own, would put $3 billion into designing new cars for that company, and would double its sales and product line by 2003.But wait, there was more: Volkswagen and Toyota announced they would design and build automobiles together, and GM revealed plans to do more joint ventures with Isuzu. In the end, no vehicles from VW/Toyota ever seemed to materialize; Samsung has been a disaster for Renault; Ford sold Land Rover and Jaguar to Tata Motors of India; and Daimler bailed suddenly on Mitsubishi, almost causing that firm to collapse. GM sold its ownership stakes in Subaru, Suzuki and Fiat; Rover collapsed under its new private equity owners; and GM bailed on its joint ventures with Isuzu. In fact, looking back on those 10 years of automotive reporting, one thing is clear: Most of the major promises made by automobile manufacturers were never kept. Though acquiring other car companies or majority stakes in them were called brilliant moves, generally all that buying and dumping produced was financial disaster. To this day, no one besides Toyota and Honda has introduced an extremely high-mileage hybrid electric; then again, both of those companies already had their hybrids on the market 10 years ago. The fuel savings promised by transplanting hybrid electric power trains into larger vehicles, including SUVs, has never materialized. This is not to say that automobiles haven’t improved since 1999: The average gasoline-powered automobile today gets at least the same mileage its 1985 counterpart did —while delivering almost twice the horsepower. It’s also a fact that vehicles today are far better built, safer and more durable; quality has substantially improved.
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