Grant's Auto Rants

So just what is…"soul"…anyway?

"Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is."  Voltaire

There was a time when a car that was said to have "soul" may have been considered somehow impractical or possess extravagant features. But in reality, soul is not something that you can see or touch. Just a quick glimpse of a Ferrari fills the mind with romantic images of the rolling Italian countryside, a rundown farmhouse set in a vineyard, and a beautiful woman with a carefree attitude. Meanwhile, seeing a Subaru makes one think of infinite assembly lines and parking lots filled with countless copies of identical cars.

When you hear people comparing automotive brands today this theme seems to come up quite often. Sometimes called heritage, legacy, or tradition, "where" a car came from is often a significant part of its identity and is surely something to be exploited by the manufacturer's marketing department. Many consumers even begin their search for a new car based on this very premise.

The performance gap was once large enough to distinguish models and brands through numbers alone. In today's ultra-competitive environment, however, aftermarket tuning, developments in technology, industry consolidation, and continued emphasis on horsepower have basically leveled the field. To be sure, most cars offered today far exceed any needed performance on North American roads, so all the figures are really just for bragging rights anyway.

To generalize for just a moment, the collective marketing of the automotive industry has perpetuated the stereotype that reliability comes from Japan, engineering from Germany, safety from Sweden, and muscle from the U.S. While there is certainly a degree of truth to these ideas, in actuality there is very little separating a $400,000 supercar from your basic $15,000 compact -- at least in function.

So, if our decisions aren't solely based on function, the other half of the equation is form.

Where a car comes from has evolved more into a question of the manufacturer's reputation and history in the industry rather than an actual description of where the car was produced. Many German companies for example have outsourced the actual assembly of their vehicles to countries like Finland, Hungary, Mexico, and even China. By the same token exchange rates have necessitated a natural hedge, and many manufacturers produce right here in the United States, including the Japanese.

Therefore, it's really no wonder that identity has come into play the way it has. Let's consider for a moment two companies that have traditionally been at opposing ends of the spectrum in the category of the "soul." Porsche cars ooze everything speed, racing, tradition, and Germany. In fact, the character of these cars has been so closely linked with the company's history in racing that they have been able to leverage this ideal (in the interest of growth) into one of the greatest marketing coups in recent memory through the introduction of the enigmatic Cayenne sports utility vehicle.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have Toyota whose automobiles are repeatedly described as devoid of personality. To be fair, the Japanese produce cars that are every bit as competent in performance as their European counterparts. Since 1999 Toyota sales have been up 39 percent and their profits were up an astounding 141 percent to reach $11 billion dollars last year. But through this perceived lack of soul, their sports cars simply don't have that "it" factor many seek. Toyota's last Supra effort was awesome on paper -- as was the NSX from Acura -- but the company couldn't give the cars away.

But if the Japanese ever do figure out how to capture soul, it could be curtains for the rest of the industry.

As a matter of fact, these two companies seem to be traveling in different directions where branding is concerned. In an interesting twist of irony, Toyota is actively involved in several forms of motor sports with factory-sponsored teams, including the pinnacle of racing: Formula 1. Porsche on the other hand has ceased its factory-backed efforts and is now concentrating on leveraging its seemingly unshakeable status as a producer of sports cars.

Cars in general don't have the same soul they used to, but marketing teams are still able to leverage their reputations from days past. A recent Mercedes-Benz ad claims that the company doesn't start with a clay model, but rather "with a soul." So the next time you step outside your house  to go to the corner store and see your own car sitting in the driveway, consider what romantic images come to mind and ask yourself whether your car has "it" too. 

Gone Every 20 Seconds

The theft last Fall of DaimlerChrysler chief Juergen Schrempp's $1 million S600 Mercedes-Benz limousine in downtown Stuttgart should indicate that the dark industry of automobile theft may have evolved somewhat, but continues to roll on globally nonetheless.

Before the professionally orchestrated heist of Herr Schrempp's "un-stealable" car during a scant 20 minute stop in front of the German automaker's headquarters, the last press this industry received came in the form of the utterly painful movie remake "Gone in 60 seconds" in 2000. It should be noted that the number of car thefts reached an all time high in the US shortly after the movie came out and viewers saw Nicolas Cage's pathetic portrayal and of the common car thug -- to the tune of 1.5 million cars annually or roughly one every 20 seconds.

If these statistics don't seem that threatening, you may also want to consider that in the US roughly 16 million cars are sold annually, meaning that for about every 11^th car purchased, one is nabbed. In financial terms, this equates to $8 billion a year in direct losses, or a staggering $30 billion in consumer costs via increased insurance rates.

In a nutshell, this is everyone's problem.

Where car theft has evolved is partly in the targeting and partly in the execution. As long as there have been the "have's" and the "have not's," joyriding has been something largely reserved for the younger generation, which usually had little or no intention of financial gain from their theft. As the times evolved and gun ownership and use among youths escalated, however, we saw a sharp (if not temporary) increase in the pastime of carjacking (i.e. lazy gang-member theft).

The more troubling development was on the professional side of the equation. Specific models have always been at risk due to their relative ease of entry, but we have also seen specific parts like airbags, xenon headlights, and navigation systems targeted for their obvious high-margin appeal in the parts trade.

Car theft is practiced worldwide; virtually everywhere that has a high concentration of high-end vehicles along with borders or ports in close proximity is sure to be a hotbed of crime. Europe has been hit particularly hard as socioeconomic and political factors have led to increases in the expanse and strength of organized crime in Eastern Europe. This has led to a large percentage of car thefts being executed by very methodical criminal organizations, which literally fill orders for those in equally corrupt parts of the world. Once they get there, the cars are untouchable.

Walter Schmelzeng is an insurance investigator in Russia who tracks down stolen cars -- 1.5 million of which are already in Russia -- for a German insurance companies. Schmelzeng recently described his aggravations in trying to seize stolen vehicles.

The problem, he said, is that one of the cars he recently found now belongs to a Russian Government prosecutor. When Schmelzeng approached him, the prosecutor did an interview with the local newspaper about Walter. He then went to the local (and also very corrupt) police and arranged to have Walter arrested if he were to drive the car back to Germany.

Walter had also taken cars from members of the Russian parliament, only to have the vehicles returned to them during "safe-keeping" by the police. Not surprisingly, he has had little luck in bringing back any cars at all and no longer even attempts to work in the Ukraine, where several of his colleagues have been murdered by the mafia and he has personally received death threats.

The combination of car crime expertise, along with the car's specific features (bomb, bullet, theft proof) and close proximity to the border is certainly what made Schrempp's vehicle such an attractive target. Even with the latest in GPS tracking equipment, it seems the Mercedes-Benz was "un-stealable" much the same way that the Titanic was unsinkable.