Seen but not photographed, Fisker Karma

It's one of the few really new cars besides Tesla.  It looks like a Corvette, but it has four doors and lacks GM's design features to nowhere.

Mustachioed Saturn

It's a shame that Saturn never made it.  When I was working on Japanese Car Magazine, I met some people there.  It was 1995, and they had just decided to ruin it, by folding it into the larger GM empire.  No one said that the other divisions were great, but using their stuff was cheap.  I only talked to the PR people, who were charged with selling a bad idea.

Some people think that the company is continually derailed by "beancounters," but they are wrong. GM is beancounters.  Accounting is the company.  Executives get special editions that rarely leave Michigan, while the rest of us get GM cars.

Occasionally, something slips through that is unusual or that gets a cult following.  If you own a GM car, you might as well decorate it.

Mr. Fusion

At the time, the movie made the future look interesting and plausible.  Instead, the intervening years had few automotive accomplishments.  Between 1985 and 2015, there was the SUV boom, and we found out that GM was incapable of making cars that start with an ignition.  Oh well.  This Mr. Fusion was on something from Toyota.

LAAS 2013: GM Becomes Honda

Well, almost. Notice how everything in the Chevy Aveo (Sonic in the American market) is accessible and easy to spot. This is a big departure for GM.  Had they been smart enough to get rid of the Chevy emblem, it would have been nearly perfect. As busy as things still are, it is an incredible contrast to the wretched, overwrought interior of the Honda Accord.  Honda put in three sets of screens, along with myriad dials and buttons.  It has been decades since anyone has thought such a thing, but Honda needs to take a lesson from GM and simplify.

LAAS 2013: Honda becomes GM

 

Here's a wild prototype from Honda. It looks great.  It runs on fuel cells. You can walk right up to it, and you will never see it again.

Seen but not photographed: Audi GT-R

Maybe it's their version of the midengined Corvette that GM threatens from time to time.

It looks like a fun car.  It moved the tester to stomp on it on a well patrolled street.

Unlike most Audis, this one looks like everything else.  The motor sounds like a small block Chevy.  

Not an International Incident

At GM, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly.  Around 1990 this car was built.  GM settled on an international theme, even though Oldsmobile hadn't sold anything in a foreign country since 1925.  Anyway, absent international sales, they decided on plastering the fender with a bunch of flags.  That should make Toyota buyers take a second look.  It didn't, and their gaffe went unnoticed.

To save costs, GM got the flags out of an old encyclopedia.  Had the cars left the US, someone might have been offended.  The Spanish flag is left over from Francisco Franco and his Falange.  Spain's flag was different by the time this car came out, but it didn't matter.

The Mexican Car Market: A short series that's too long.

How did Detroit blow it?  There are two problems with their mindset.

The first is their idea that America is a foreign country.  The "Imported from Detroit," Chrysler ad that rocked America a while ago was old hat to Californians.  Before the rest of the country was foreign, we were.  Ads from the (then) Big 3 tried to appeal to all of us hippie surfer dudes who could see that they were cool too!  Hey hey, would California like something imported from Detroit? No, we just wanted cars that ran.

Fast forward to 2013, and America is so foreign that it doesn't occur to them to make a small pick-up truck.  Look at the automotive fora.  Lots of people need small trucks for their businesses.  They mention that they're not stonemasons.  Many carry large, but light loads.  The funnier posts mention that there is no need for anatomical compensation.

The two small pick-ups pictured here are from VW and GM in Brazil.  They're good sellers.

Their second problem is their idea that Korea is Japan.  Ever since they got burned by the Japanese, they have been looking to align themselves with the next Japan.  They are as pathetic as the old colonizing Europeans looking for India.  Place names with variations of the word still exist all over Asia and the Americas.

Here are two pictures of Detroit at its laziest.  The Dodge Attitude has most of its Hyundai badges left on.  I didn't photograph their Verna, but that's even worse.  I also photographed the Chevrolet Chevy.  This Daewoo brings to mind old Monty Python jokes about crossing things out and writing over them in crayon.

At times, Korea beats Japan, but they do it on their own terms.  Hyundai and Kia are part of the home team.  GM not only uses Korea to alienate Mexicans, but Koreans as well.  Incredibly, they had the temerity to throw away the Daewoo name and heritage everywhere, even in Korea.

Other foreign companies in different places have managed to achieve home team status.  VW did it in Mexico and Brazil.  Ford has done it in much of Europe.

Meanwhile, the penny-wise search for greatness continues.  The Germans have found that Eastern Europe isn't Germany.  VW is paying a ton of money for the second time to find out that the US isn't Germany.  Honda has joined many other companies in finding out that China isn't Japan.  Suppliers have also learned that China isn't the US or Germany.  In 2011, Tata found out that England isn't India.

The ruse is always the same.  One country looks exactly like another, but without the disadvantages.  Short-sighted executives fall for it every time, and bad products result.

Seen but not photographed: Cadillac Cherokee

It flew by me in Westlake Village. Of course, it has another name, but it looks like the box that AMC and Chrysler made for too long.