Life of Automobile, The

by Parissien, Steven

  The fate of America’s Motor City mirrors the predicament of those American and European car makers struggling to meet the Asian challenge. Detroit is still the home of America’s Big Three. But the inner-city suburbs that once housed their workers have disappeared – leaving, as architectural historian Joe Kerr has noted, ‘one of the most distressed urban landscapes in the Western world’. Downtown Detroit is littered with empty skyscrapers; its once-famed department store, Hudson’s (which had been America’s second-largest department store, after Macy’s in New York), closed in 1983 and the building was demolished fifteen years later. The Michigan Theater is now a parking garage; the big hotels are largely empty, and the supermarket chains have deserted the downtown area altogether. The few houses that remain in desolated sections of the inner city (one in five inner-city homes currently stand empty) are being demolished and their inhabitants forcibly rehoused in order to return vast swathes of land to cultivation or grassland. By January 2010, 40 square miles – almost a third of the historic inner city – had been reclaimed by nature. A wry website now promotes tours of ‘The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit’, equating the scarred urban landscape with the remains of Ancient Rome. Journalist Julien Temple wrote in the Guardian in March 2010 that driving down the ‘eerily empty ghost freeways into the ruins of inner-city Detroit [was] an Alice-like journey into a severely dystopian future’. Temple noted ‘the giant rubber tyre that dwarfs the non-existent traffic in ironic testament to the busted hubris of Motown’s auto makers’, and ‘the vast, rusted hulks of abandoned car plants [in] the derelict shell of Downtown Detroit’. Property prices, he observed, had fallen by 80 per cent between 2007 and 2010. Unemployment had reached 30 per cent; 33.8 per cent of Detroit’s population and 48.5 per cent of its children lived below the poverty line; and 47 per cent of adults were functionally illiterate.

  Temple noted ‘the blind belief of the Big Three in the automobile as an inexhaustible golden goose, guaranteeing endless streams of cash, resulted in [Detroit] becoming reliant on a single industry’. African-American author, critic and film-maker Nelson George was of the same mind. Detroit, he observed, ‘once a city of long cars and high hopes, is a place where prosperity, optimism and jobs have disappeared or moved away. Unemployment and crime haunt this city like a death in the family … There is a hole in Detroit’s soul … and there is nothing on the horizon ready to fill it.’

  …

  While Detroit’s Big Three continued to contract, shedding historic marques and models, Asian and European car makers chose to stretch successful brands as far as they could feasibly go. While Aston Martin unveiled the Cygnet, its Warwickshire neighbour, Land Rover, launched a hot-hatch coupé which also doubled as an SUV, and stablemate Jaguar planned a crossover SUV. By 2012, indeed, the crossover SUV (which was ostensibly more environmentally responsible than its full-sized cousins) was all the rage, as astute car makers sought to conjure up yet another lucrative new market. Nissan, having in 2007 introduced the absurdly named but reasonably successful Qashqai compact crossover1 (styled not in Japan but at the firm’s Milan design centre), followed this with the even smaller mini-crossover Juke in 2011. The Juke was cheap and nippy, but the ride was choppy and its exterior looked like a mutant frog fresh from the animal hospital. Nevertheless, the fun-size crossover concept triumphed over the car’s styling and performance, and sales greatly exceeded expectations.

  As the world’s car makers rushed to emulate Nissan, many of the new SUV crossovers they produced sported some unlikely badges. In 2012 Fiat launched a Maserati-branded SUV, the Kubang, targeted at the US market; yet while the Kubang was designed by Fiat’s Ferrari subsidiary, it was effectively little more than a Jeep Grand Cherokee (now the flagship of Fiat’s Chrysler operation) and was built alongside the Jeep in Detroit. Even Porsche, which for decades had confined its model range to sports cars, introduced a crossover SUV, the Cayenne, in 2002, and a decade later partnered this with a smaller, twodoor version, the Cajun. Porsche also created a four-door luxury sedan,2 the Panamera, for 2009. However, critical reaction was mixed. To many, the Panamera was awkward and ugly – a bloated and distended 911. Top Gear’s indefatigable presenter Jeremy Clarkson (writing in The Times in 2008), declared that the car ‘made Quasimodo look like George Clooney’. The Panamera was also undeniably overpriced, costing far more than superior competitors such as the Jaguar XFR. Nevertheless, by 2010 the Panamera had, despite its critical reception, become Porsche’s bestselling model, proving particularly popular in America, where Porsche’s traditional sports cars were often perceived as being both too small and too ‘European’. Not every cross-genre model proved a sales success, however. Ford’s Lincoln Blackwood luxury pickup of 2001 proved to be a crossover too far, and production was halted after just one year.

  While eager to develop new markets and product types, prescient car makers such as Porsche were also careful to stress the continuity of their ranges, recognizing the invaluable role that the corporate DNA plays in reassuring both current owners and potential customers. Thus even the newest Porsches, Mercedes and BMWs still bear a family resemblance to their illustrious predecessors. In addition, by the mid-1990s some auto manufacturers were not only acknowledging the evolutionary design of their current models, but were beginning to disinter much-loved models from automotive history.

  Early attempts at raiding the past were essentially conjectural exercises in nostalgia rather than revivals of particular classics. Perhaps for that reason they were not entirely successful. The Nissan Figaro, a cartoon parody of the Renault Dauphine, was launched with the inevitable slogan ‘Back to the Future’ in 1990. Its nervous manufacturer marketed the little car without the Nissan badge; underneath, though, it was little more than a Nissan Micra. Initially intended just for Japan, the Figaro established a niche market in Britain, where it featured on television as the mount for the fictional character Sarah Jane Smith and for the BBC political commentator Andrew Marr. However, it remains very much an acquired taste, its styling hovering uneasily between retro and caricature.

  Equally awkward was the Chrysler PT Cruiser of 2000, designed by Bryan Nesbitt for Chrysler design boss Thomas Gale. This unashamedly oldfashioned model sought to recapture the glory days of Chrysler’s postwar heyday by combining an MPV’s space with the looks of a streamlined saloon of the late 1930s. The result, though, was a graceless and ungainly car which, like the Figaro, seemed more of a mocking satire than an affectionate tribute. From 2007 production of the PT Cruiser was wound down, and it ceased altogether in 2010.

  In 1994 Volkswagen entered the retro market with the first real attempt to exhume a past masterpiece, unveiling its prototype New Beetle compact at the Detroit Motor Show. It was another four years, however, before the New Beetle appeared in American showrooms, while the car’s European launch was not until 1999. The production model was based on the Polo platform and featured an engine at the front – not at the rear, as in Ferdinand Porsche’s KdF-Wagen. Yet the parabola curve of the New Beetle’s roof, together with the distinctive styling of front and rear, undoubtedly recalled the ancient Käfer.

  VW soon found that the retro design hampered maintenance. At the same time, the car’s reputation was damaged by a series of reliability problems and its appeal hindered by its over-identification with young female buyers. VW’s New Beetle was just too cutesy – and, unusually for Volkswagen, too fault-prone – for the mainstream market. In 2011 VW, acknowledging its faults, launched a comprehensive redesign. The new-new Beetle1 was larger (based on the platform of the Jetta rather than the smaller Polo) and more purposeful, having had its sweeping roof brusquely flattened.

  While Volkswagen initially floundered with its daring retro concept, BMW got it right first time. The Munich giant, having acquired one of the most iconic models of the twentieth century (and one frequently cited as the most influential car after the Model T Ford), adapted it for a demanding new audience. BMW’s new Mini2 had its fair share of problems on its launch – even a r
ecall or two, reminiscent of the bad old days of British Leyland. It also had a tiny boot and precious little legroom in the rear. But it proved to be a huge hit. Like its 1959 predecessor (and unlike the New Beetle), it was both classless and gender-free. Designed by BMW’s Frank Stephenson – who told Autocar he wanted everyone’s first impression to be ‘it could only be a Mini’ – its appeal seemed limitless. And, as BMW had hoped, it particularly fascinated American consumers. By 2002 over 260,000 Minis were being sold annually in the US, and over a million worldwide. At Cowley, BMW expanded the highly successful Mini range into the Cooper S, a convertible, a coupé, the Clubman, the Countryman and the lower, sleeker Paceman sports activity coupé of 2012. It has to be said, though, that the further BMW departed from Stephenson’s original concept, the less visually successful were the results. The Cooper SD coupé of 2011, in particular, looked as if it had lost its rear in a nasty accident.

  Where BMW led, Fiat followed with its immensely successful and enjoyable new 500 of 2007. Adapted by designer Roberto Giolito from Dante Giacosa’s classic original of fifty years before, the 500 effortlessly reinterpreted Giacosa’s immortal concept for a more technological age – and for larger occupants. (Only when you see the 1957 and 2007 models parked together do you realize just how much bigger the new 500 is than its 1950s inspiration.) Built in Poland and Mexico, the 500 brought the Fiat brand back to North America for the first time in twenty-six years. Crucially, Fiat made a virtue of the Cinquecento’s flexibility. There were, the car maker proudly announced, over half a million different personalizing permutations for the product, including an American sports version, made in Michigan at a Fiat-owned Chrysler plant; a coupé, devised by Milanese design consultancy Zagato; an upgraded, high-performance global range, marketed under the disinterred Abarth brand;1 a Start&Stop stop-go version; and, inevitably, an electric adaptation, with a sturdy 75 mile range. There are plans for an estate version. (In the late fifties Giacosa converted the diminutive 500 into the improbable Giardiniera station wagon,2 which involved lying the engine on its side, lengthening the wheelbase to create a usable rear seat, and fitting better brakes.) A limited edition of two hundred Ferrari 500s were supplied to Ferrari owners as courtesy runabouts while their sports cars were being serviced. There were also custom-built black or white Gucci-styled versions, and a bright pink Barbie edition, made in 2009 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Mattel’s iconic doll. Within three weeks of the 500’s launch, the entire year’s production of fifty-eight thousand had been sold out. Subsequently, the 500 was showered with awards, including CAR magazine’s Car of the Year for 2007, European Car of the Year for 2008 and World Car Design of the Year for 2009. Giolito’s attempt to emulate his illustrious predecessor seems to have worked brilliantly.

  While BMW and Fiat revived two of the most important cars of the 1950s, Ford reworked its most celebrated phenomenon of the sixties. As we have seen, from the 1970s onwards Dearborn allowed its sleek, stylish Mustang to become first a sagging, bloated subcompact-derivative and then a blandly styled, Japanese-looking sedan. In 2005, however, stylist Sid Ramarance – working under the direction of Ford’s chief stylist, J. Mays,1 who had been part of the team behind the New Beetle – introduced a fifth-generation Mustang which finally recaptured the lean muscularity of Bordinat’s 1964 car, using an idiom that Mays christened ‘retrofuturism’.

  Oklahoma-born Mays had been bitten by the automotive bug while working at his father’s auto parts store as a boy. Graduating from the prestigious Art Center College in Pasadena, California, in 1980 with a BSc in transportation design, he began his career at Audi in Ingolstadt, where he helped to revamp the Audi 100 and the VW Golf. In 1989 he returned to the US, though still on VAG’s payroll, and working at VW’s Simi Valley Design Center in California was one of the authors of the New Beetle concept. After spells back in Germany and running his own design consultancy, in 1997 he was made Ford’s vice president of design. There he profited from the profligacy of the Nasser years, working on models as diverse as the Aston Martin DB9, the Land Rover Discovery and the short-lived Ford GT of 2005–6. There, too, his exposure to Jaguar and Aston Martin’s rich brand heritage helped him to develop his ‘retrofuturist’ vision, which he subsequently applied not only to the Mustang but also to the Ford Thunderbird. Harley Earl’s fun, sporty T-bird had by the 1990s become a characterless twodoor sedan, which was finally (and justifiably) axed in 1997. In 2002 Mays revived the concept in the form of a Jaguar-powered coupé/convertible whose retro lines instantly recalled Earl’s original.1 And where Ford led, GM followed. In 2011 General Motors vowed that the new generation, Kentucky-made C7 Chevrolet Corvette would be a truly global sports car, more like a Ferrari and less like a Chevrolet,2 with body styling that returned to Bill Mitchell’s classic Sting Ray Corvette of 1963.

  Mays’s new ’02 Thunderbird exploited two of the motoring public’s current enthusiasms: retro styling and diminutive size. Indeed, in the early years of the twenty-first century small was, once again, beautiful. Ford led the way in this market sector, too: Jack Telnack and Claude Lobo’s cute and modishly styled Ford Ka,3 of 1996, was distinctive, androgynous, and very successful, even though it performed less impressively than its racy lines would suggest. In 2008, however, Ford effectively gave up on the idea; the second incarnation of the model was far more conventional in appearance and was in truth little more than an inferior Fiat 500, using the 500’s chassis and engine and being manufactured at Fiat’s Polish plant.

  Ford’s breakthrough in the microcar market was exploited by Mercedes’ revolutionary Smart car of 1998. The Smart went a stage further than the Ka; it was so tiny that it could be parked nose-to-kerb like a motorbike, yet its turbocharged 599cc engine was capable of over 80 mph.

  This extraordinary miniature car had started life as the Swatchmobile, a concept developed in the late 1980s by the Swiss CEO of Swatch watchmakers, Nicolas Hayek. In 1991 Hayek persuaded Volkswagen to share the substantial costs of the project, but the agreement was hastily terminated two years later by Ferdinand Piëch, newly installed as Volkswagen’s CEO, who preferred to develop VW’s own microcar. Hayek turned instead to Daimler-Benz, a deal was hammered out, and a new manufacturing plant opened at Hambach, on the Franco-German border in Lorraine, in 1994. However, the Germans soon found themselves at odds with the mercurial watch tycoon, who insisted that his Swatch brand name form some part of the car’s identity. Daimler-Benz’s management adamantly refused and forced Hayek into a clumsy compromise: Smart, an awkward acronym of Swatch Mercedes Art. The two companies also quarrelled over the car’s fuel system. Hayek wanted a hybrid drive train, but the German car maker installed a relatively conventional gasoline engine. At this defeat, Hayek’s patience finally snapped; in 1998 Daimler-Benz bought out Swatch’s remaining stake in the company and badged the car as a Mercedes.

  Daimler-Benz originally envisaged a whole line of Smart models. However, the strange-looking auto struggled in its early years and spin-off variants such as the Roadster, an SUV(!) and a four-seat supermini were soon discontinued. At time of writing, the Fortwo remains the only petrol-powered Smart product – although a rechargeable, electric version was released in 2010, and a roadster version is planned.

  The dominant issue in early twenty-first century motoring, however, is not vehicle size or cross-sector adaptability, but fuel flexibility. Gasoline prices in the US rose by over 300 per cent between 1998 and 2008, despite an enormous government subsidy which keeps the cost of the fuel far lower than in the rest of the developed world. US oil production peaked around 1970 (as Shell geologist M. King Hubbert correctly predicted as far back as 1956). Now everyone is speculating when will world oil production begin to decline? The debate over Peak Oil is one that haunts not only the oil industry but also governments and car makers across the globe.

  Despite long-standing concerns over the future of oil, however, the electric car has not prospered until very recently. Experiments were made with electric cars during
the Second World War, when petrol was rationed in most combatant countries, but few of these bizarre contraptions survived into 1946. In France in the 1950s, Casimir Loubières hand-made the electric Symetric car (he then followed it with a bizarre proposal for an atomic-powered variant complete with fluorescent, radioactive rear bumpers); and in 1967 Ford made an experimental twoseater electric car, the Comuta, though only a handful were built. A Ford of Britain executive was perhaps being a little premature when he predicted, ‘We expect electrical cars to be commercially feasible within the next 10 years’, but he was certainly more prophetic when he added, ‘we believe their uses will be primarily as city centre delivery and suburban shopping cars’.

  In 1985 the cause of the electric car seemed consigned to the grave following the dismal failure of the over-hyped, battery-powered British three-wheeler, the Sinclair C5. Open to the elements – which was rarely ideal in rain-soaked Britain – and with a top speed of only 15 mph, the C5 rapidly became a national joke. (Sales were not helped when, in a ridiculous PR gambit, the C5 was promoted by former racing driver Stirling Moss.) Sinclair Vehicles went into receivership only nine months after the C5’s launch.