Eliminate the Sex to Help Automotive Companies Survive?

The big three automakers, hat in hands to the American taxpayer, will require more than a bailout according to analysts.

Correspondent Derek Armstrong

Ford, Chrysler and General Motors would have everyone believe that a basic retool to make more efficient cars is all that’s needed to save millions of jobs, and an entire industry.

However, the latest Financial Times estimates indicate  demand will under perform automaker capacity, even if products can be brought in line with economic realities. With nearly 1000 cars for every 1000 people of driving age in the United States alone (compared to 24 per thousand in China) and a dwindling demand, even the most aggressive taxpayer bailout won’t help much. Factories must still close. Layoffs will still occur.

New estimates from the Financial Times indicate that there will be a market for under 7 million cars this year. Only two years ago, demand was over 9 million.

The obvious answer to the issues are exports to still-growing foreign markets, assuming the credit crunch doesn’t squash growth. Traditionally, however, American-made and designed cars haven’t done well in growth markets abroad.

Grant Thornton's automotive consultancy indicates: "Chrysler as we know it will cease to exist very soon." Call it death by market saturation.

If the market forces and economy make the future of the big three seem dim, there are solutions.

All manufacturers are suffering, including the Japanese car companies, but those who can’t change, or who are hampered by old school managers who refuse to dynamically change, should simply die. Or, at least grow from the ruins of their near-death. Only brave and novel new approaches can work.


First: Eliminate Show Room Inventories
Just in time works in most industries and it can work in the automotive sector as well, eliminating waste, reducing below-cost selling as year-ends approach, and minimizing carry costs and interest for struggling dealers.

Second: Retool Now
It may seem counter-intuitive, but just-in-time inventory, together with new economic realities and changing consumer needs — together with a focus on foreign growth markets — require immediate retooling for the future, regardless of financial hardship now. Better inventory control and real-time access will allow major savings and better products.

Third: Eliminate the Model Year Entirely.
Model years were always a marketing gimmick. Models and improvements can come any time, with real responses to markets in real time. The cost of re-tooling manufacturers can be largely offset by elimination of the costly yearly model cycle.

Fourth: Speaking of Marketing, Eliminate Sex
With model years moving to as early as March — Toyota’s coming 2010 Prius launches in March 09! — substantive marketing savings can be removed from budgets by the simple elimination of model years which serve only one purpose: to add sex appeal to car-buying. Remove the sex, provide the information instead.

Fifth: Make a Better Product or Die
Our economy has always been based on the strict ideal that success is driven by the engine of better thinking and products. Any company who cannot radically rethink, retool or re-imagine, and respond realistically to the demands of consumers, should just be allowed to extinguish themselves.

The Correspondent— Derek Armstrong is the chief crime reporter for Crime Report USA, a contributor to Films & Books magazine, Deadly Prose magazine, EDI Weekly and an investigative journalist contributing to several newspapers. He is a frequent guest on CNN, NBC, and other networks, and the author of eight books, including the investigative true crime blockbuster Drew Peterson Exposed, the eternally popular Alban Bane crime thrillers MADicine and The Game, and the cult classic historical fantasy novels The Last Troubadour and The Last Quest (from Kunati Books).