| Issue #28, October 6, 2006 |
Classic Cars With Bob Gelber
It is necessary to make a few comments about the debacle that’s going on in Detroit. Recently, virtually all of the major car companies in America announced that they are losing billions of dollars. Frankly, they deserve it, because they have turned a blind eye to the rise in gasoline prices and our dependence on foreign oil. The accusations presented in Bob Woodward’s new book, State of Denial, might be applied to Detroit’s marketing practices and product development for the last decade.
And Asian automakers should not be let off the hook either. They too have been building amazingly large, gas-hungry vehicles. The one vehicle that sums up the whole mess is the super-sized SUV called “the Armada.” Stupid name for a stupid oversize vehicle that has to be sold, even with the temporarily lower gas prices, to stupid people.
Years ago, when gas was forty cents a gallon, Americans were buying small economy cars. Of course, the most famous of them all is the ubiquitous Volkswagen Beetle. I’m not talking about the overly cute, current VW, but the original, strange-looking air-cooled one that was introduced around 1949. Boy, was that thing popular. Why? It broke through social barriers, it was actually cool to be seen in one, and it was a bargain; because, for around $1,600, there was no better car to be had. It was considered to be an intelligent purchase by many.
Part of the Beetle’s success was that it really was an ingenious design. Most of you know by now that it was designed by one of the most prolific car designers of the twentieth century, Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, the same automotive guru who brought us the Porsche sports car. In fact, the first Porsches were thinly disguised Volkswagen Beetles. It was this combination of post-war German technology and German reconstruction mentality that produced the Volkswagen Beetle.
Surprisingly, one still sees old Volkswagen Beetles on the road, and they are still being made in Mexico. Imagine, a sixty-year-old design still in production. In fact, the air-cooled engine is also being sold as an experimental aircraft engine in modified form and is currently being produced by several companies here in the United States. By more than coincidence, the Volkswagen engine bears a strong resemblance to a Lycoming or Continental aircraft engine used in virtually every small plane in the air.
Perhaps Detroit can learn from this success story. What we really need now are many VW Beetle-type cars, strongly built, smaller cars that get excellent gas mileage.
America has to be weaned off its thirst for oversized cars. Many years ago, I wrote an article lamenting the passing of giant cars of the twenties and thirties, like the dual-cowl Duesenbergs, large Packard jump-seat eight-passenger sedans, and, the granddaddy of them all, the Bugatti Royale. I wrote that we would never see the likes of them again, referring mainly to their large proportions. Well, I was wrong. They are here in the likes of the Armada, clogging our highways, and burning more fuel per passenger-mile than some passenger jets.
Small cars are great to drive. Part of the success of the early Volks was that they were fun to drive. Paul Newman, when he was a young actor, used to blast around Connecticut in his Porsche-powered VW Beetle. This was a common and easy conversion to make in the fifties; you could bolt a four-cylinder Porsche engine into a Beetle in twenty minutes. A used Porsche engine was expensive in those days, selling for around $750, almost as much as a secondhand Volkswagen.
Why do you think sports cars are small? They handle better and are more enjoyable driving machines. Incidentally, they all happen to get pretty good gas mileage. I also consider them to be much safer than larger cars. Why? Their better maneuverability and generally superior stopping power make them safer. Get this fact through your heads; it is not the size of a vehicle that matters, but its ability to avoid accidents that makes it safer. An SUV, or any heavy, large vehicle, will end up on its roof during an emergency maneuver way before a smaller, lighter vehicle will. Big, top-heavy vehicles are highway clumsy, period. They also get lousy gas mileage. To me, driving a large, heavy car is analogous to cigarette smoking. Why do people buy crazy-expensive packs of cigarettes knowing that the cigarettes will eventually kill them? If you drive an SUV and smoke, you must really have a death wish.
This may sound like an advertisement, but millions of Europeans can’t be wrong. All they drive over there are small, well-built cars that get good gas mileage. They also take five-week-long holidays; maybe they’re on to something. For years, American car manufacturers have been touting European handling and all that stuff in their ads. What are they trying to imply? Maybe Detroit should build and sell more European-type cars and be smart, save gas and save lives all at the same time.
Bob Gelber, an automotive journalist living in the Hamptons, appears regularly on television as an automotive expert. You can email him at bobgelber@aol.com
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