If the recent Paris Motor Show is any indication, the auto industry risks careening down a road to a ghetto filled with fleets of bland, uninspiring transportation appliances. As a harbinger of the four-wheel future, Paris could mark the beginning of the end for the car business as we’ve known it for 100 years.
Personally, after Paris, I’m preparing for the wake. I am worried because without passion, energy, vitality and chutzpah, the business of making and selling cars is no different than the washer/dryer industry. At least in the broad sense, Paris lacked passion.
You had to go to the Jaguar exhibit and its C-X75 concept car to see an example of how car companies large and small can inject joy into the electrified future that all the experts say awaits the auto industry.
I mean, if it’s true that “progress” for an auto maker is, as Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche told reporters in Paris, a Mercedes-Benz S-Class flagship luxury sedan powered by a 2.2-litre four-cylinder diesel engine, then we’re not far from snapping shut the casket lid on what used to be a sexy, fascinating and thrilling business.
Who really cares if Mercedes-Benz is the world’s most fuel-efficient premium car maker? Does it matter if Mercedes is the “efficiency world champion?” Perhaps some day, but certainly not to today’s image-conscious Merc buyers. They buy the three-pointed star for power and prestige, not low CO2 numbers and fuel economy from a diesel powerplant.
Zetsche and his team say they would never debase the S with an underpowered oil burner of an engine. Never. Their engine will be different. It will be a Mercedes engine. But a four-banger S-Class? Unheard of in the 100-year history of Mercedes.
But we saw a lot of the unheard of in Paris and much of it was symptomatic of the serious illness starting to afflict the industry. The telltale signs are dullness, and a high level of conformity to the orthodoxy of the so-called “green agenda” sweeping not just Europe, but North America and Asia, too.
Paris – the auto show that sets the table for new-car introductions in the coming year – was alive with European auto makers hustling to market a slew of electric and hybrid vehicles, mainly for low-carbon urban driving. Saving the planet is an admirable goal and if it’s possible to do so with racy electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrids, count me in.
On the other hand, well, big chunks of what the industry is planning can be summed up in one word: Boring.
For every V-8-equipped Lotus Esprit (all 620 hp of it) there were five, no 10, Renault Zoes (a four-seat electric minicar) and Honda Jazz Hybrids (the Jazz being the Fit in Canada). We fell in love with the Esprit not because it’s officially a hybrid (an optional regenerative braking system qualifies it as such) but because it’s a gorgeous monster of a super-car. The Zoe and the Fit/Jazz are – let me be kind here – people movers.
The French auto maker expects to produce about 150,000 all-electric Zoes a year, representing about two-thirds of the company's EV sales in Europe. It’s important as a piece of the Nissan-Renault Alliance’s grand scheme to become a powerhouse EV company. But was I ready to pop the cork on the champagne just at the sight of it? Ah, no.
Truth be told, the Zoe is not an unattractive car, but it won’t set your heart a-fluttering – not even if you are a true believer, a committed environmentalist right down to your Birkenstocks.
The Jazz/Fit Hybrid is another bit of transportation. Sure, it’s a wonder of packaging, a subcompact minivan-like runabout with astonishing fuel economy. But it’s shaped like a bread box and drives like one. Honda Canada wouldn’t be able to give away Fit Hybrids, and won’t have to try. While the Europeans and Asians will get the car, we won’t, not here in North America. Canadians and Americans are not willing to pay a premium for so little driving excitement, even if it’s possible to stuff a hockey team and its gear inside a Fit.
