It’s an old trick in the U.S. auto industry to blame consumers for bad corporate behavior. Automotive News (2022) recently lent a helping hand by playing the victim card to justify the lack of improvement in fuel economy.
An unsigned editorial pointed a finger at the popularity of larger vehicles for average fuel economy getting stuck at 25.4 miles per gallon in 2021. This was the same “real-world average” as in 2020, according to a recently released annual report by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, 2022).
“Automakers have no desire to stop selling their most popular and profitable offerings, especially when they see the thin — and sometimes nonexistent — margins generated by smaller cars and those powered by expensive battery packs,” Automotive News insisted (2022).
Also see ‘Auto media copy each other instead of covering news that matters’
The last paragraph of the editorial concluded on a particularly amusing note: “Until consumers and regulators are able to strike a balance between desire and practicality, average fleetwide fuel economy is unlikely to make any major leaps. And that is a disappointment for the industry as a whole.”
Why, yes — the industry is so disappointed. What bullshit. U.S. automakers have been peddling desire over practicality since at least the early postwar period. The dominant approach to designing cars has been to make them bigger, glitzier and more powerful. The only times U.S.-based automakers in particular have reversed course and made their cars smaller and more practical was when forced to by external pressures such as foreign competition or government edict.
Deviations from the norm have been fleeting
One can point to occasional deviations from the norm, such as in the 1950s when American Motors discontinued its big cars in favor of compact Ramblers. The automaker’s leader, George Romney, even predicted in 1957 that small cars would account for 50 percent of U.S. sales by 1960 (Blond, 2022).
Ford Motor Company executive James Nance responded to that prediction in a typical way: “All our consumer surveys show that Americans want a big package. And that’s what we’re going to give them” (Blond, 2022; p. 171).
Indeed they did. American cars grew so large that some of them no longer fit in a regular garage. Meanwhile, municipal officials complained that some cars were larger than standard parking spaces (Cray, 1980). Hey, but that’s what the public wanted — tailfinned mansions of glory with gas-guzzling V8 engines!
Also see ‘‘Lower! Longer! Wider!’ fixation of US automakers left opening for imports’
Well, at least not for long. Output of big premium-priced cars fell by 49 percent between 1955 and 1959. Americans instead bought small imported cars in such unprecedented numbers that they garnered 10.1 percent of the market in 1959 (Klier, 2009). Nance was shown the door and Ford’s Robert McNamara played a major role in shifting Detroit’s single-minded focus away from big cars.
Looked at it from a historical perspective, McNamara and Romney were outliers among U.S. automotive executives. More typical was Lee Iacocca, who like his boss Henry Ford II, “wanted big, creamy, plush cars” rather than the smaller ones that McNamara had championed (Halberstam, 1986; p. 375).
U.S. auto industry is still biased toward bigger vehicles
Despite all of the changes in the U.S. auto industry since the 1970s, its leadership is still biased toward bigger, glitzier and more powerful vehicles. Although foreign automakers once offered a counterpoint to Detroit fare with their smaller and more practical cars, today those differences have mostly disappeared.
Consider Honda, which grew with remarkable speed in the 1970s because of the groundbreaking Civic and Accord. In 2023 the automaker no longer offers in the U.S. a single subcompact economy car. In addition, its smallest crossover vehicle, the HR-V, weights almost 3,300 pounds and has roughly the same footprint as a 1960s American compact (Dorian, 2023). The next step up is the CR-V, which weights more than 3,900 pounds despite being only slightly larger (Stafford, 2023). That’s twice as heavy as the original Civic.
Conventional wisdom holds that Honda, like other automakers, is just giving consumers what they want. There is obviously some some truth to that.
Also see ‘Popularity of SUVs could offset climate advantages of EVs’
Nevertheless, if we are being honest we would acknowledge that automakers are on an unsustainable path. Even if you pretend that climate change is not a clear and present danger, it is painfully obvious that cars have become too expensive as they have grown bigger, fancier and faster. Even Automotive News (2023) gingerly acknowledged that the average cost of a new vehicle — which hit a record of $49,507 in December — has risen so high that it can require 84-month loans. This may depress car sales in the years ahead.
Peter DeLorenzo was more blunt: “I consider 84-month financing to be borderline criminal behavior. Knowingly signing up consumers to a loan that maybe one percent of the participants will actually stick with until term is usurious. People are being enticed to enter into a contract that puts them upside down to the tune of thousands of dollars before they even leave the dealership, with no hope of ever recovering from it” (2023, original italics).
We are reliving the excessiveness of the late-1950s
We should also acknowledge the power of marketing to change consumer behavior. The Volkswagen Beetle became so successful in the U.S. partly because of the effectiveness of its advertising. For example, VW directly attacked the idea that bigger cars were better (go here for further discussion).
Where is that happening today? I would suggest that we are swimming in a sea of marketing me-tooism because of the industry’s lack of diversity. Almost all automakers in the U.S. market are selling larger vehicles, which tend to generate bigger profits. So of course that’s what they emphasize.
Also see ‘How come a car that goes 0-60 in 9.7 seconds is now so terrible?’
In theory, Mitsubishi has the greatest potential to counter this trend because 1) the automaker’s standing in the U.S. is so shaky that it has nothing to lose and 2) it has an unusually narrow lineup of vehicles. Unfortunately, Mitsubishi has emphasized a generic CUV that attempts to get attention with hideous styling.
We are reliving the late-1950s, but with one key difference: Consumers don’t have nearly as many alternatives to the status quo. Yet industry apologists such as Automotive News blame unsustainably high sales of big SUVs on consumers.
Denial is a hell of a drug . . . until it stops working.
NOTES:
Production figures were calculated with data drawn from the following sources: Auto editors of Consumer Guide (1993, 2006), Gunnell (2002) and Wikipedia (2020). Specifications are from Automobile Catalog (2023) and Flammang (1992).
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 1993, 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, Ill.
- Automobile Catalog; 2023. “Home page.” Accessed Feb. 1.
- Automotive News; 2022. “An uphill fight to improve nation’s fuel economy.” Editorial (subscription required). Posted Dec. 18.
- ——; 2023. “Editorial: Seven-year loans could eliminate sales tomorrow.” Editorial (subscription required). Posted Jan. 22.
- Blond, Stuart R.; 2022. Spellbinder The Life of James J. Nance, Volume Two, 1955-1984. Kindle Direct Publishing.
- Cray, Ed; 1980. Chrome Colossus: General Motors and its Times. McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, NY.
- DeLorenzo, Peter; 2023. “Right now? It’s ugly.” Auto Extremist. Posted Jan. 16.
- Dorian, Drew; 2023. “2023 Honda HR-V.” Car and Driver. Accessed Feb. 1.
- EPA; 2022. “The 2022 EPA Automotive Trends Report: Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Fuel Economy, and Technology Since 1975, Executive Summary.” Environmental Protection Agency. Published Dec.
- Flammang, James M.; 1992. Standard Catalog of Imported Cars, 1946-1990. First Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised Fourth Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Halberstam, David; 1986. The Reckoning. William Morrow & Co., New York, NY.
- Klier, Thomas H.; 2009. “From tail fins to hybrids: How Detroit lost its dominance of the U.S. auto market.” Economic Perspectives. Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Second Quarter: pp. 2-17.
- Stafford, Eric; 2023. “2023 Honda CR-V.” Car and Driver. Accessed Feb. 1.
- Wikipedia; 2020. “U.S. Automobile Production Figures.” Accessed March 28.
- Yates, Brock; 1983. The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry. Empire Books, New York, NY.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- wildaboutcarsonline.com (Automotive History Preservation Society): Ford Falcon (1960); Volkswagen (1960, 1961)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Ford (1975); Oldsmobile (1959)
We live in strange times. While everyone talks a good game about combating climate change we still embrace oversized, overpriced SUVs like drunken sailors downing ever more liquor. While I am not ready for a pure EV, I wholeheartedly embrace the Toyota hybrid vehicles. We have a 2010 Prius and a 2017 Highlander hybrid. We are awaiting a new 2023 Prius to replace the 2010. In 2017 we were fortunate the Toyota added the hybrid option to the Highlander (unfortunately only for one year) so we didn’t have to spend nearly $50000 for the privilege of driving a hybrid. We downsized from a minivan to the Highlander as our family needs changed. I suspect we will downsize again once we stop shuttling our daughters to and from college. Unfortunately the only thing we can’t downsize is the ever increasing cost of owning any vehicle let alone a fuel efficient one.
Talk about coincidence, there’s one article about how pick-up trucks became bigger then I saw on GMInsidenews. https://www.axios.com/2023/01/23/pickup-trucks-f150-size-weight-safety
https://www.gminsidenews.com/threads/how-pickup-trucks-got-so-big-size-weight-and-safety.306761
And to think then Toyota, Nissan, Honda have followed in North America, the trend of “bigger, longer, wider” when we compared the size of the current Accord, Camry and Altima from the same models offered 20 years ago.
I wager you would have gotten off much cheaper had you 2 Prius to drive and rent something larger for the few times you shuttled children to college.
Welcome to ‘Merica. The Fiat 500 bombed, but maybe Fiat was the wrong badge for the US. The new Ford Maverick is quite large but it has a basic price of under 25k. It’s like the original Maverick, basic but has all you need, and like the original Mustang can be optioned quite nicely. It doesn’t have a front end that looks like a Jack o lantern either. Let’s see how this car does on the market, it may be a turning point. Now, gas back in 1959 was around 31 cents per gallon. I used the federal Consumer Price Index calculator and got a figure of 3.17 per gallon. Where I live it was slightly under that around Christmas, and is about 3.45 now. The greatly improved average mileage of cars compared to then means to me we are probably paying less for gas than we were then. People complain about gas prices, but it doesn’t seem to stop them from buying Escalades and Hellcats.
One You Tube creator referred to the Maverick truck as “diminutive”.
I almost put my foot through the screen….
As a retiree on fixed income with lots of medical expenses in terms of copays, I am now priced out of the new car (and maybe the used car) marketplace. I realize that I won’t be around much longer, but I want a safe, economical car that has a long-lived engine unlike many of today’s high-output, three-cylinder snowmobile-engined cars and C.U.V.s. I am still leery of electric vehicles, especially the ones that have proven to spontaneously combust. Gasoline and oil prices will not come down significantly, so the average driver is going to be squeezed, especially since our oil companies are pushed to maximize their record-setting profits. Driving less and enjoying it less, too.
James, I completely agree. Living on a fixed income can be a real challenge. My approach has been to buy economical used cars and drive them into the ground. Actually, I’ve been having a hard time parting with a 1989 Honda Civic because I enjoy its design so much (at least to my eyes, it has a Swiss Army knife practical simplicity).
I’m on your side, Steve. The same way.
Such tremendous waste on a grand scale and the manufacturers don’t help things by making their products more and more complicated and expensive to disassemble and repair
I’m glad you posted about this subject, as I’ve wondered the same thing occasionally. We’re 30+ years into the SUV “craze”, so I think it’s no longer a fad but a real trend. (BTW, I’m using the term SUV to include crossovers and other similar vehicles.) There are some real benefits to having an SUV, the higher seating position, greater seating and cargo capacity and with today’s technology the mileage burden isn’t dramatically different than a similarly sized sedan.
However, there are drawbacks to other motorists. When SUVs were becoming popular, one of the benefits was the ability to “ride higher”, or to see over other traffic. Now that everyone has a SUV, the height advantage has been eliminated. OTOH, trucks are getting taller and it won’t be long before truck based SUVs will get taller along with them. I wonder how long it will be before we’ll need to carry ladders to enter our vehicles? However, for sedan drivers like myself, it’s a festival of looking at SUV undercarriages when I’m in traffic.
GM introduced the idea of the annual styling change in the 1930’s and the domestic industry as a whole introduced the idea of longer, lower and wider in the 1950’s. If you would have told me 50 years ago that almost everyone would be driving a SUV-like appliance by now, I would have said you were crazy. In contrast to longer, lower and wider, it seems only the longer and wider parts have survived so now, it’s more like longer, higher and wider.
In the 1950’s there were the early imports and Rambler to counter the “dinosaur” image of the domestic car makers. This forced them to introduce domestic compacts and mid size cars. By the time we get into the 1970’s, the Japanese makers (in particular) introduced sub compacts and again Detroit obliged and bowed to exterior pressure much like it had in the 1950’s & 1960’s.
But what external pressure will cause the automakers to bow this time? It’s no longer just Detroit alone, as all the automakers in the US market have offerings that pretty much mirror one another. I believe that BEVs will change the automotive landscape, mostly because they will not have to conform to the weird environmental policies that are imposed upon gasoline vehicles.
I’m hoping we will see a renaissance in vehicle design, not just styling, but a range of sizes and shapes like we haven’t since before the involvement of government regulation was introduced to the business. In just one instance, without the need to make mileage targets, could we see the resurgence of other body styles?
I can only cite a few examples of BEV design that we all have any familiarity, which leads me to Tesla. Tesla offers (in the USDM) a small range of sedans (!) and a SUV. Many of the other start up BEV companies usually have a sedan as their leading offer. Almost all of the legacy automakers in the USDM have eliminated their sedans and has nothing but a SUV heavy (or only) line up. The legacy automakers in the US are starting to crank out some BEVs, but as an example, the early ones are still SUVs or SUV-like vehicles. I was hoping to see some diversity from the legacies, but no luck, so far.
I have a theory that road range incidents began to spike when SUVs started gaining in popularity.
Can’t see over, around or as we were taught in Driver’s Ed to scan through the windows of the car ahead to see traffic conditions, road hogging, headlights at night directly hitting your rear view mirror [Fords seemed to be the worst for this, can’t make a left hand turn safely if the driver is facing one in the opposing lane.
I used to laugh when I heard the mob on call in shows in the mid 90s explaining how much they “needed” an SUV.
Buy what you want. But no one is fooled that it’s a decision based on “need”.
There’s more that’s going on here than the North American bigger is better mentality. Safety regulations and regulation of ICE emissions are killing the supermini class in Europe, for example: https://europe.autonews.com/sales-segment/automakers-fight-rescue-small-cars-extinction-eu-rules-bite
Safety concerns will likely continue to militate against truly small cars for the foreseeable future even as EVs proliferate.
That said, there are those who make a credible case that the SUV’s day is numbered, for example: https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/citroen/359477/electric-cars-will-kill-suvs-says-citroen-ceo
There is something to this, and the issue is the aerodynamic implications of a larger frontal area (CdA). This is different from coefficient of drag (Cd), which we normally think of as the measure of aerodynamic efficiency. The CdA of an SUV is always going to be greater than that of an equivalent car. For example, the Tesla Model X and Model S have the same Cd, but the Model X has a CdA that is 8% greater. That may not sound like much, but as speed increases, it meaningfully limits the Model X’s range capacity relative to a Model S with the same battery capacity.
A hint that Monsieur Cobee’s thesis could be correct is the introduction of the Hyundai Ioniq 6. It’s a low, teardrop-shaped sedan not because Hyundai thinks people want to buy sedans, but rather because that’s the shape that gives you the greatest range for any given battery capacity.
If governments truly are going to force a full transition from ICE to BEV vehicles, affordability may well dictate maximum aerodynamic efficiency as a means of ensuring at least some level of affordability.
My read is that it’s greenhouse-gas regulations that are undercutting the viability of ICE-powered small European cars rather than “safety regulations.” I would agree with your second article about how aerodynamics could become increasingly important as we move into the EV era. That strikes me as a long-overdue change. The brick-like front end of almost all American trucks serves no practical purpose.
You state about Mitsu: In theory, Mitsubishi has the greatest potential to counter this trend because 1) the automaker’s standing in the U.S. is so shaky that it has nothing to lose and 2) it has an unusually narrow lineup of vehicles. The problem here, that you fail to even acknowledge, is that Mitsu is owned and controlled by Nissan. It would be Nissan financing, and thus gambling, on anything done by Mitsu.
Bear in mind that Mitsu had the least expensive, by far, EV on the US market with the i-MiEV, based on the Mitsu i, a Kei car not otherwise sold in the US. Priced $5000 less than the least expensive Nissan Leaf it dies the day Nissan took over. How likely were they to spend enough to effectively market anything else from Mitsu?
Welp, Brian, do note that I said “in theory.” A fundamental challenge of every writer is to decide what to prune and what to leave out altogether.
I was not enthused when I heard about Mitsubishi’s tie-up with Nissan because it could lead to more me-too cars. I have argued that this can be a real problem with industry consolidation — the automotive equivalent of 500 channels and nothing’s on.
Here is a piece that I wrote a while back about Mitsubishi’s decline in the U.S.
Excellent piece.
Detroit spent billions on a downsizing orgy in the late ’70s then spent then next twenty years forgetting everything they learned [compare and contrast: 77 & 92 Impala].
‘Consumers don’t have nearly as many alternatives to the status quo.’
I’ll keep what I have. My response is to opt out of their game, period
The sweet spot for me has always been 176-186″ 68-69″ wide, 2600-2700 lbs.
That’s been what I have looked for and owned over the past 40 years.
Currently they record as 186″, 178″ and 185″ spanning three different decades 60s,80s,00s. 103″-106″ wheelbases.
Oddly enough there have been only two occasions over that time where I needed to rent a truck to haul anything.
The excess and styling atrocities of the current era easily surpass that of the 50s or the ’70s.
The soon to be BK Three: just keep doing what you’re doing and happy motoring.