Squashed

Marco

I disagree. While it is true that many consumers demanded ever-larger SUVs, the appeal of the SUVs was largely image-based. The image was largely shaped by the manufacturers’ advertising.

But the bigger problem in my mind is that the industry essentially surrendered in the efficiency market. Americans aren’t the auto-buffs they once were. When I was a teenager, the only time you would have a bunch of guys standing around a car with its hood open was when the battery had died and we were all pretending we knew how to use jumper cables. There are a few reasons why this is the case—but the industry doesn’t seem to realize that most people don’t even care how many cylinders their engine has or how fast their car can go. Detroit never figured that out. They chose to focus on the niche luxury market, and they’re suddenly surprised when it’s collapsing. Even their approach to hybrids reveals this stupidity. American hybrids are not notably more efficient than their non-hybrid counterparts because the industry thought adding an electric motor would be a nice luxury to throw in for a bit of snob appeal. It seems it didn’t even occur to them that more people might be serious about things like fuel efficiency than some leftist fringe.

I don’t fault the Detroit Three for selling SUVs—but I do fault them for not having a backup plan. Detroit should have known the consumers would be fickle. Would it have hurt them to put out a few options at the low end? The recent turn in the industry should not have caught anybody by surprise. Sure, it’s a business’s job to cater to consumers—but it’s also a businesses job to have enough foresight not to fail when painfully predictable things happen.