Friedman

Tom Friedman has a very odd Op-Ed in today's NY Times. In many ways, it is a classic Tom Friedman piece (sounds worldly, says nothing). For instance, it says this early on:

Look, I get pork-barrel politics. I understand senators from oil states protecting the windfall profits of oil companies. Ditto for farm subsidies. It’s an old story: Protect my winnings, and I’ll reward you with campaign contributions. I get it. I get it.

Followed by this:

What I don’t get is empty-barrel politics — Michigan lawmakers year after year shielding Detroit from pressure to innovate on higher mileage standards, even though Detroit’s failure to sell more energy-efficient vehicles has clearly contributed to its brush with bankruptcy, its loss of market share to Toyota and Honda — whose fleets beat all U.S. automakers in fuel economy in 2007 — and its loss of jobs. G.M. today has 73,000 working U.A.W. members, compared with 225,000 a decade ago. Last year, Toyota overtook G.M. as the world’s biggest automaker.

Which means he obviously doesn't get pork-barrel politics at all. American car manufacturers fight higher mileage standards for a number of reasons, the two primary reasons being that (1) American car manufacturers currently make much more money on low mileage cars and trucks and (2) Foreign manufacturers are much better at making high mileage cars and would, in the view of the American car manufacturers, increase their market share in the short and medium terms if higher mileage standards were mandated.

So, American car manufacturers contribute huge sums to ensure that fuel standards are not raised, and they are not raised. That is pork-barrel politics. What the politicians care about is raising enough money to get re-elected. They really don't care much what happens to Ford, GM, et al in 10 years if they themselves don't survive the next election cycle. It would be responsible for Congress to raise fuel standards, but if those in Michigan voted for it, they'd be operating outside of pork-barrel politics rather than inside it. Friedman doesn't get it, regardless of how many times he says he does.

Further on, he states:

But assisting Detroit’s suicide seems to be contagious. Everyone wants to get in on it, including Toyota. Toyota, which pioneered the industry-leading, 50-miles-per-gallon Prius hybrid, has joined with the Big Three U.S. automakers in lobbying against the tougher mileage standards in the Senate version of the draft energy bill.

Which does sound weird. Why would Toyota, a company that makes the Prius lobby against the new bill?

Is it because Toyota wants to slow down innovation in Detroit on more energy efficient vehicles, which Toyota already dominates, while also keeping mileage room to build giant pickup trucks, like the Toyota Tundra, at the gas-guzzler end of the U.S. market?

Oh, that makes perfect sense! They then can sell very profitable Tundras while at the same time continuing to dominate the fuel efficient markets. That makes sense to me. They are in a win-win situation then, regardless of the outcome. If they succeed in getting fuel standards stalled, they sell Tundras. If they fail, they sell Prius's. I'm not saying I agree with the strategy, but it sure seems to be logical and one that could be very successful. So, he doesn't get pork-barrel, but he gets the Toyota strategy. Bring it home, Thomas!

Sad. If Toyota were to take the lead on this front, it could enhance its own reputation and spur the whole U.S. auto industry to become more globally competitive. Hey, Toyota, if you are going to become the biggest U.S. automaker, could you at least bring to America your best practices — the ones that made you the world leader — instead of prolonging our worst practices? We have enough people helping us commit suicide.

Um, whaaaa? WTF? Toyota has a great reputation, I'm not sure it really needs any additional "enhancing" at the current time. People love Toyota (with the exception of Joe White at the Journal, of course). And why should Toyota help the U.S. auto industry become more globally competitive? I mean seriously, WTF? Is he really asking Toyota to let its competition back into the game? Really? And finally, isn't Toyota bringing their best practices here? After all, they aren't exactly camped out in Detroit talking to the UAW now, are they?

Sadly, this is increasingly a typical Friedman column - world-weary, preachy, ignorant babble.

And to preempt some comments, let me say that I don't necessarily like the fact that Toyota is selling Tundras, nor do I like the fact that they are campaigning against CAFE. I'm just saying that the strategy is (obviously) a winner.

Cars

There are three columnists in the WSJ who generally make me scratch my head in confusion, or drop my jaw in awe, when I read them. They are Hollman Jenkins, Daniel Henninger and Joseph White. Today we will focus on White.

White is the automotive columnist for the WSJ and is generally incoherent. His latest column is titled "Seeking a Cure for Automotive Ennui" and yes, prepare to be wowed. Here's how he starts:

New-car sales are sagging in America and car makers are blaming the housing slump or the credit crunch. I suspect something else. I suspect boredom.

Yep. Boredom. Not the housing market going to hell. Not the tightening credit standards that are slowing the ability of people to secure car financing. Nope. It's that consumers are bored. Why are they bored?

Face it. A lot of the cars sold in America are just dull. Whose heart leaps at the thought of firing up a Toyota Corolla? If you took away the logos, who could discern a significant difference among the interiors of any five $35,000 luxury cars? Black plastic, faux wood grain, even "metallic look" plastics -- clichés all. Sport utility vehicles and crossovers? Ho hum.

Under the hood, too many cars sold in America are equally uninspiring. Car makers have done wonderful things improving upon century-old gasoline internal-combustion engine technology. But it's still a century old. It's as if, instead of the iPod, we still got our music from lacquer records that had been refined to hold 100 minutes of songs.

So, what he's looking for is bold design and a successor to the internal combustion engine? Is that all? Is that the cure for automotive ennui? Maybe, maybe not.

If the cars don't bore you, the driving probably will. In most urban areas, getting anywhere now is about as exhilarating as sitting through a PowerPoint talk on the latest revisions to the company 401(k). The latest Urban Mobility Report released by the Texas Transportation Institute finds that urban congestion has intensified to the point that "free-flowing traffic is seen less than one-third of the time in urban areas over 1 million population."

Oh, so the problem is traffic? So people aren't buying new cars because if they do, they are likely to sit in traffic? Well, that makes sense to me. Why would I want to spend $35,000 on a glorified couch? But wait, that's not it either:

Americans -- consumers, car makers and regulators -- have only themselves to blame for automotive ennui.

Ah-ha! It's our fault! So what's the solution? What kind of new technology, new styling will cure us of our self-inflicted ennui? White presents... Euro Civic!

The Euro-diesel Civic is more fun to look at than most American small cars. It has a three-door hatchback profile, but look carefully and you see the car has four side doors. The front and back are decorated with chromey jewelry. The dashboard glows at night with a techno blue light... You start up the Euro Honda by turning the key, then hitting the red "Engine Start" button – like a race car.

THAT'S the cure? A four-door hatchback with an "Engine Start" button? One that is more fun to look at than "most" American small cars? And could someone please tell me why "chromey jewelry" is great design while "metallic look plastics" are a cliche? Is it the increased chromeyness? Are you kidding me? Apparently not. And, it's much, much better than the Prius:

What's most enjoyable is that despite the donkey-hauling performance characteristics, the Euro Civic averaged about 44 miles per gallon (5.3 liters per 100 kilometers.) By comparison, the Toyota Prius's combined mileage rating, under the new, more stringent Environmental Protection Agency labeling system, is just 46 miles per gallon.

Yes, that's right, "just" 46 mpg. The Prius only gets 2 mpg MORE than the Civic. Oh, and the Prius has a start button which doesn't require you to stick the key into anything other than your pocket and is available in the US right now. Honda, meanwhile, has no plans to introduce the Euro Civic into the US.

And what any of this would do to reduce traffic is anyone's guess.

UPDATE:

Re-reading this, I realized I may not have been sufficiently explicit in my criticism of White. In the past, he has gone after Prius purchasers for being irrational since they could buy a Corolla for less than a Prius and the difference in price could not be made up by a savings in gas. In that case, a car purchase is a purely rational decision and purchasers should be entirely rational when they purchase a car. Then he writes a column like this one that basically takes the opposite side - that car purchasers are bored and need chromey goodness to get them all excited and eager to buy. To a certain extent he's only and constantly arguing with himself, but it gets me frustrated all the same.

Cars Talk (with apologies to Click and Clack)

Holman W. Jenkins Jr. is a columnist at the Journal and not a fan of the Prius:

What Toyota really proved with the Prius, ironically, is that Americans have little appetite for high mileage vehicles -- in fact, are willing to buy one only when the stars align briefly and inexplicably to turn a car into a Hollywood-accredited emblem of personal enlightenment. To put it baldly, Toyota got lucky.

He continues bashing Toyota for the next few paragraphs (even as he says that they are cars of remarkable fortitude), then gets to the point:

As Edmunds recites in chapter and verse, Toyotas are far from being in a class by themselves in quality or value. A buyer who carefully, unemotionally weighs the trade-offs does not automatically end up owning a Toyota, or even a Japanese car -- though shoppers whose perceptions are a lagging indicator still treat Detroit products as automatically inferior.

As it happens, the 2007 Consumer Reports car guide came out about the same time as this article. What did Consumer Reports say? Of the cars from each manufacturer it tested, it recommeded 85% of the Toyotas, 54% of the Fords, 36% of GMs and 21% of Chryslers. So, one could argue that people aren't exactly acting reflexively when they prefer Toyotas. By the way, the guide also recommended 100% of the Hondas and (stunningly) 0%, yes that's 0% of the Mercedes-Benzs. Honda and Toyota are 7 of the top 10 CR picks.

We've been hearing for years about how the American cars are finally catching up to the Japanese and it's only these embedded biases that keep people from buying American again. Time and again, the assertions don't hold up.