“Isn’t it painful watching the U.S. teams get beaten in a game that we used to own? And I’m not talking about basketball or golf; I’m talking automobiles,” Dale Dauten writes for King Features Syndicate.
“The U.S. auto brands are running up a historic losing streak. Where will it end? Project it out on a graph, and the U.S. auto industry is . . . is . . . wait a minute, where did it go? Oh, there it is – on the carpet,” Dauten writes. “Could the American auto industry disappear? Impossible. But then, that’s what I would have said about American brands of televisions a couple of decades ago.”
Dauten writes, “We need a hero, a giant. I don’t think the new guy who’s going to run Ford is the one, but let’s hope. (Alan Mulally is from Boeing, which is not a hopeful sign. If you want to make a Pinto seem like a bit of heaven, get into one after coming off an airplane.) No, we need Steve Jobs to start an auto company. Hey, Steve, come on. You’re probably a bit bored with Macs and iPods and Pixar, so give it a shot. I’ll place an order for one of your cars right upfront, and I bet there are plenty of others like me.”
Dauten writes, “I’m begging you, Steve Jobs, to start a car company. You understand that it’s not about being the cheapest; it’s about being the coolest by being the most functional and a joy to use. We need less Detroit and more California, and you’re the one for the job. I don’t want a Gates or a Trump; I want a Jobs. Let me know, and I’ll send a deposit check.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: No better time than now to trot out the old chestnut (slightly updated):
If Microsoft Built Cars…
1. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you’d have to buy a new car.
2. Occasionally your car would just die on the motorway for no reason, and you’d have to restart it. For some strange reason, you’d just accept this, restart and drive on.
3. Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail to restart and you’d have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you’d just accept this too.
4. Apple would make a car that was powered by the sun, was twice as reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive–but most people wouldn’t know it or believe it.
5. Apple car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars which would make their cars go much slower.
6. The oil, engine, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced with a single “General Car Fault” warning light.
7. People would get excited about the “new” features in Microsoft cars, not knowing that they had been available in Apple’s cars for many years.
8. Microsoft cars would come with 5-year-old Apple car paint jobs, but they’d be the same crappy Microsoft car underneath.
9. The airbag system would say “Are you sure?” before going off.
10. If you were involved in a crash, you’d have no idea what happened.
There are more, but we’ll spare you.
Lurker_PC wrote: “Honestly I just don’t believe American cars are of the same quality as most of the foreign cars. I have several friends who need to buy a new American car after 5 or 6 years because of the start of some major problems. I on the other hand am still driving my 12 year old poor man’s Lexus (94 Toyota Camry) which does have a few minor problems – but the engine and transmission are still going strong.”
I have two american cars: a ’93 Saturn with 204,000 on it and an ’87 Jeep Cherokee with 225,000 on it. Both made in the US and both running great (though the tranny is showing a little age on the Saturn). I have had bad experiences as well with US cars – I think it depends on the car and how you take care of it.
Lurker PC is right.
I used to be a Ford guy. No more. Toyota all the way.
Why the fu*k can’t we take apart an japanese vehicle, and copy it?
But re” Apple Car co.
Think of the models.
“The new Apple Leopard”.
(Tiger, etc.).
The Brit car industry died in the 1970s-80s because of three things —
1 Interfering politicians
2 Deathwish unions
3 Rubbish management
Combine these with a simply ghastly generation of crap on wheels and it was a terminally painful to behold self-extermination.
There’s still an industry here but just assembling, for better-run companies like Honda, Nissan and Toyota.
Hang in there USA and do it right!
My Toyota Prius (almost) feels like the “iPod of cars” to me. There are so many things about it that just work in an “oh yeah, that makes sense” kind of way. And the innovation in fuel-saving is nothing short of amazing — and I’m not just talking about the fact that it’s a hybrid. Even when it’s cruising on the freeway, using the gas engine only, it gets 45-50 MPG because of how the engine and the car body are engineered.
It’s funny, I was thinking just yesterday about how I so wished Apple would go into the car business. I once heard Jean Louis Gassee speaking at a MacWorld Expo in the late 80’s. He talked about how you could throw out the steering wheel, accelerator, brake, clutch and gear shift and replace all of that with a joy stick which (at least theoretically) could be driven by either front seat passanger (he also said that such a car would never be built because it was too radical and the cost of retooling along with the high risk would never allow any car company to make such a car).
I think the Prius comes closest to this with its keyless entry and push button to start (why DO we need to stick a key in the ignition and turn it? How 1950’s!).
Well, I’m sure Apple could come up with the coolest user interface for a car if they wanted to. Too bad it will never happen…
I suppose that Apple could become involved in an industry Apple knows practically nothing about, look at Microsoft.
Lets just hope that the Apple car is not cube shaped.
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Real IT guy says:
“Ahhh, that must be why Honda, Toyota, Mercedes and BMW all have hugely successful manufacturing operations…in the United States.
Hell, every Honda Accord *in the world* is made at their Ohio and Tennesee plants.”
Before you start talking about cars like you know what you’re saying, get the facts straight.
Honda, Toyota, Mercedes, and BMW are NON-UNION. Unions are what’s killing the domestic manufacturers.
Also, not EVERY Accord in the world is built in Ohio and Tennessee. The US Accord is just that, a US Accord. The Accord that is sold in Europe is sold as the Acura TSX here in the States. The US Accord is a much bigger car.
Apple or Steve Jobs building a car is non-sense. What manufacterers have to do is build what the consumer wants as Honda does with two different Accords. The domestics built SUV when they were popular, but haven’t adapted.
umm…that Tesla car, wow, it’s insanely ugly. Check the Saab Aero X if you want to see design and future technologies. (Okay, I know it’s still prototype stage only)
BTW, how did they manage to get hold of the “Tesla” name/brand? Nikola was probably the most outrageous genius of the last 300 years – how can someone just use his name like this?
Real IT guy: I think you will find that the Accord and the Odyssey are made in Canada.
And the version i heard was that the North American Accord was sold as an Acura in Europe
American Cars – Gas Guzzlers … Inefficiency is built in – and ride and handling suck.
@ gorufo
LMFAOFF
Good one.
Actually the major fault for beachballs is slow hard drives, for some reason these devices haven’t increased in performance realtive to the rest of the computer.
Slap a pair of 10,000 RPM Raptors in your Mac Pro and RAID O for a boot drive, you’ll be extremely pleased.
Laptop drives spinning at 5400 RPM is a sad joke.
Detroit industry is like California government: The problems are too deep, with too much bloat, too many career insiders, and too much status quo for it to be saved by anyone.
The auto industry is too bloated anyway; there are too many GOOD players fighting for too few consumers. Why jump into the scrape-and-claw?
Then there’s the issue of being competitive: look how long (in decades!) it took the imports to master their game and become serious rivals. No startup today will have THAT kind of time to get it right.
Steve J, do us all a favor, and stay in the businesses you know you’re good at.
@ gorufo
I love it! You are awesome!
MDN Magic Word “chief”
How about a 32 year old American designed and built pick-up truck with nine hundred ten thousand miles on the clock, that still is reliable enough to take on long cross-country trips – I’m talking fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred mile trips. My 1974 full-size Jeep J-20 Pick-up.
Hmmm, SJ starts auto company and first couple of cars have good success. Then he gets an idea for an insanely great car and when this sedan for the masses hits the market it costs $80K and is a major flop. SJ brings in a sales guy to run the company and SJ gets fired. He then works on his next car company which Apple Industries (formerly Apple Computer) buys to offset their line or boring beige sedans. SJ introduces line of cute and bubbly cars, think a refined smart car. It sells very well but is only available in Indigo blue.
Ok, someone else finish the story….
Apple would be/could be the company to bring back the “electric car” and make it a success.
It’s all about product. Products that suck have a poor future. Companies that perform inconsistently in product have a poor image. Consider what Ford did to Jaguar: Overpaid for the brand then over-economized in development. Result: Fag-uar! Talk about dumb! Focus clinics are dumb too! If you listen to your customers too closely you’re likely to come up with a GT40 or retro-Mustang instead of a modernized Mini.
The fix: hire a European and give him some autonomy.
The writer makes a great case, and we all know Steve could pull it off… but this sounds like a case for Richard Branson.
I hear they’re doing amazing things now with balloons in transportation.