American-muscle symbol Hummer has been sold to a Chinese firm, and for the first third of the year, truck sales are down by 152,000 at Chrysler, 220,000 at Ford, 251,000 at GM, and 130,000 at Toyota.
The debate will go on for quite some time, but when it came to dealing with the crises in the automotive industry, Washington got it right on two counts. First, keeping GM afloat maintained some stability in the manufacturing base, though as a taxpayer I have serious doubts I will see any of my investment recouped in my lifetime. And second, when it made a single, national standard for fuel economy/emissions that will save huge sums in development. (Downside: It will make everyone's car or truck more expensive.) They still have the big picture on CAFE and such wrong, but that's another story.
What happens now and how GM and Chrysler fare in the future is anyone's guess. So rather than further analysis, prognostication, or bad news, let's take a collective breath and hope the worst has passed, and I'll take this opportunity to remember lighter motoring moments from past decades.
The most amusing comments come from engineers, often regarding future product while the adjacent rep cringes. Getting a stone chip through no fault of my own on a prototype vehicle drive, my engineer co-pilot immediately chimed in, saying, "Great, another $100,000 windshield." And he wasn't kidding.
Driving a hybrid and discussing mileage, an engineer noted that, yes, it gets good mileage, but "you could get good mileage without driving a handbag." When we got out, I understood what he was talking about"when I looked at the vehicle, it resembled a handbag. I could even imagine where the handle would go.
Another engineer put customer satisfaction scores in context when he said (and later backed up in documentation) that his company got hammered in such surveys because every vehicle's clock was in the instrument panel and not in the radio or centered in the dash. Apparently Americans are quite particular about where the clock goes. I just like it if the digital, nav, and analog displays all show the same time.
Then there are inevitable snafus. One hot fall day, a Blazer gave up its air-conditioning in Death Valley, less than one week after Chevy had taken it back for a few days to make running line upgrades to the A/C. I had an Expedition get stuck in low-range, rear drive, but disconnecting the battery clunked everything back to the default high-range, rear drive. I scheduled a Honda Ridgeline for a towing test. It arrived with instructions for installing a trailer brake controller, but it appeared without a trailer hitch.
A Fleetwood pusher motorhome opened three of the five right-side compartments every time I turned left, and I once tested a travel trailer that moved the oven and smoke detector on right turns. I got a Glendale fifth-wheel for a test that required two people to get a slide-out moving"after we removed the eight-foot-long trim piece held on by one staple. And 17 years after my first H1 drive, I finally had one break on me"and an associate reading about it laughed aloud because he'd broken one (the same way) two weeks earlier.
I've watched Jeep skunkworks guys do trail repair on their creations in Moab, and when the tequila and beer were gone, the stories they told made it sound as if they fabricated a new brake caliper mount out of a windshield-washer jet. I've stuck a Nissan Hardbody in goop that almost bettered a 20,000-pound-rated winch, but that wasn't the truck's fault. I've been on a Toyota event where the two-hour drive route was prerun backwards"but didn't work in the direction intended"and our last-to-leave four-cylinder, 4WD automatic 4Runner was the first car back by 25 minutes.
After the obligatory burnout shot in a pickup comparison test, the rubber left piled up spontaneously caught fire 10 minutes later, and we all know how hard it is to extinguish a tire fire. I think this material is used for those birthday cake candles that never go out.
I've sat in press conferences where a manufacturer throws another's car up on the screen with a new Kleenex sponsor Photoshopped on it because of all the whining about rules parity, and after the press corps' reaction, quickly observe, "Oh, we're gonna hear about this." I've watched as CEOs make pronouncements about being first with a new feature only to look at their engineering manager and query, "We are going to be first, right?" or have one of us say, "What about Brand F's truck last year?" I've seen "concept" cars unveiled at auto shows with regular production-style serial number plates behind the windshield.
Yet one of my favorite adventures was being on the field where the Goodyear blimp docks. There are a few of these blimps cross-country; you've probably noticed one of the fleet at a race or sporting event near you anywhere across the States or southern Canada. At that time, the airship's service truck was a Dodge Ram, and like many pickups, the Ram came with tires from a number of manufacturers. You could have heard a pin drop or sensed that giant airship deflating when it was pointed out that the Ram had Michelin tires on it.
No matter what the government has come up with for emissions, safety, or fuel economy requirements, which manufacturers have flourished and which have foundered, and how the economy is growing or contracting, there have always been trucks of some shape or form to work with, play with, and create a hobby or lifestyle around. And there will always be stories to tell.
With a used-vehicle pool of tens of millions of trucks, that won't change regardless of what happens to Chrysler, GM, Ford, or Toyota.