Here PDL AE rant of the week www.autoextremist.com
THE SUN SETS ON THE GERMAN CAR THING.
DateTUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2019 AT 09:14AM
By Peter M. DeLorenzo
Detroit. There is a lot of hand-wringing going on in The Biz right now about German luxury cars and their falling residual values. Automotive News even mentioned it in this week’s issue. One entity quoted in the piece suggested that Tesla was the culprit, insisting that the success of the Model 3 has turned the market upside down. Hardly. That statement is wrong-headed and flat-out silly, and not worth going into.
What’s really going on is that the years of egregious behavior on part of the German automakers is finally taking its toll, and it’s going to get uglier. But before we get into that, let’s remember the halcyon days when the German automakers created their reputations almost solely based on their legacy of performance on the Autobahn, a nirvana-like dream state that driving enthusiasts over here could only imagine, unless they took a trip over to Germany to experience it for themselves.
Back then, German cars felt different, looked different and hell, they even smelled different than what we were used to over here, especially since our domestic auto industry at the time was churning out craptastic monuments to mediocrity at a furious rate.
Everything about German cars back then was damn-near mesmerizing - the fit, the finish, the details, the quality and most important, the driving difference they offered. It was a whole ‘nother country in terms of the automotive spectrum, and American driving enthusiasts were hungry to partake.
And the ad themes resonated too: “Engineered Like No Other Car in The World” (Mercedes-Benz). “The Ultimate Driving Machine” (BMW). “There Is No Substitute” (Porsche). The campaigns were filled with Autobahn runs and idyllic coastal drives that implied that you were really missing something and your life would be better if you drove one of these glittering German high-performance machines. People bought into the German Car Thing in droves, and the American market was transformed because of it.
Remember the hilarious scene in Lost in America, the brilliant Albert Brooks film where he was talking on the phone to “Hans” at the Mercedes-Benz dealer about buying a Mercedes and Hans was explaining the details of the car and the cost? It was a minor scene early-on in the movie and then Albert’s character gets blown out of his ad job and he never actually buys the Mercedes, but it spoke volumes. The German Car Thing was actually a thing.
The German Car Thing swept everything in its path, especially at the domestic automakers, as they scrambled to crack the German car code with “Euro-like” entries of their own. American cars sprouted numbers instead of names, vinyl tops and white walls were ditched in favor of black wall performance tires and aluminum wheels, and the designs were heavily influenced by “the German look.”
That didn’t mean, of course, that the American entries had the substance of the German cars, but they scrambled to ride the wave anyway. When I was working at Pontiac’s ad agency back in the day, I remember sitting through a lengthy presentation by Pontiac operatives about how the Pontiac 6000 STE would be The Answer to the German Car Thing. (I fell asleep in the meeting only to be elbowed by a co-worker to wake up; it was that inspiring.)
And who could forget the ill-fated Cadillac Cimarron, the hastily put together and shockingly offensive effort by GM to capture the European wave? Based on the forlorn GM “J” cars (Chevy Cavalier, etc.), the Cimarron was an unmitigated disaster of badge engineering and an absolute low point for GM (one of many, it turns out).
There were other entries, of course. Ford jump-started its “Euro” efforts by actually importing its Mercury Merkur models from Germany. This seemed like a savvy idea on paper, but Merkur was almost dead on arrival in this market, performing listlessly until the experiment was ended in less than five years. And there were countless other “Touring” and “Sport” models unleashed from the domestic manufacturers too.
But the largely reactionary efforts did little to stem the tide of the German onslaught on the American market. And slowly but surely the realization came over the American automakers that in order to really compete, they had to actually design and build better cars – what a concept - which we can thank the German manufacturers for.