Author Archive

Chevrolet’s Great Engine Warranty

Hyundai, who made a name for itself by offering the longest warranty in the car business, quickly revealed that a great warranty is the secret sauce in changing the way people think about a brand’s quality.  But Hyundai was not the first car company to leverage this tactic.  Back in 1975, Chevrolet knew it had one up on their competitors.  Their amazing Dura-Built 4 cylinder engine was “so amazing and durable”, it boasted a warranty that was 11,500 longer that the 4 cylinder warranties offered by Toyota, VW, and Datsun (that’s the old name of Nissan for the youngsters).  It’s almost a it comical to think that Toyota and Datsun actually gave warranties of 12-20,000 miles on their engine, but they did. These cars are so classic.  I wonder what people would say about these new cars today?

I love this ad for a lot of reasons.  First, I love how they shot the cars in the Mojave Desert, with all its dried up dirt, to drive home the point that it can even last in the desert with not a gas station, human, or restroom stop in site.  It’s just you and your Monza!  But have no fear, the car won’t let you down.

Second, is that it reminded me how cool it used to be that we all described engines in cubic inches, not liters of cubic centimeters.  Since when did we Americans start to care about the metric system and why do we use it for wine, booze, soda, and engines? I loved those days when people talked about their 302 Boss and the 426 Hemi.  America used to be so proud of those big numbers.   Now, we talk in 3.0 and 4.6s.  I liked the big numbers better as it’s simply more American. Maybe Government Motors will push this initiative.

Third, I love how we used to be limited to an “engine warranty” rather than an entire powertrain warranty, which may include the transmission and drivetrain as well. Certainly, this progression of quality and competition over the consumer has benefited all of us.  This ad really reinforces this truth.

Finally, I like the fact that there was no fine print, so they had to be pretty descriptive in the main copy. In fact, advertisers seemed to use the main body of copy as the fine print. Today, there’s so many stipulations and restrictions that we have three areas of text…. the main headline, the copy, and the little print that tells us they may have quite possibly misled us with all their above statement.

Note: Hyundai’s 100,000 mile warranty is Non-Transferable

Speaking of warranties and disclaimers….

A Hyundai buyer recently told me how excited to find out he was buying a 2010 Hyundai Sonata.  He was especially gushing about his warranty and that he will never have to worry about his car again.  Yes, that’s a bit bold, but he was excited and so was I.  And while I was very congratulatory, I had to quickly warn him that her 100,000 powertrain warranty does have a small wrinkle in it. The big 100,000 warranty that is so well advertised is(a) for the powertrain only; and (b) the warranty only covers the original owner.  If you sell the car, the 100,000 warranty is reduced to 60,000 miles – which is the same as their still fabulous bumper-to-bumper warranty.  He didn’t know this, but was still thrilled.  After all, he felt amazing about his purchase and deserved a new car.  You can read his and other consumer car reviews on various Hyundai cars on Honk! Yes, I dropped in a shameless plug

Tesla Kicked It Off

A couple of years back the whole world had their head spinning in amazement as Tesla, the small Silicon Valley company, launched their all-electric roadster. And while electric vehicles have been around before, Tesla made a traditionally niche vehicle available to the masses even if the price tag was well beyond affordable.

The “Tesla” movement surfaced a public outcry (“Why can’t the big car companies build these?”) that was so loud and energized that it compelled the government to loan Tesla $465M of our taxpayer dollars. Tesla got the money and now they have to figure out how to actually produce the $50K Model S they promised.

By now, many have already heard the back story that Lotus was the company responsible for building the Tesla Roadster (the Tesla is a modified Lotus Elise) and that Lotus is taking a year off production of the Elise, which means no Tesla Roadsters.  Yes, it kind of sucks if you don’t build your own electric cars. Tesla will be a legitimate car company, but we may have to wait a little longer than expected.

Porsche 918 Spider (source: autoblog.com)

The 918 Spyder – Not Groundbreaking, But Pretty Darn Exciting

One thing is for sure…  the world heard Tesla’s battle cry and the superstars of the sports car world are now warming up to swing their mighty fists.  At the 2010 Geneva Auto Show, Porsche took more than a swing with their new 918 Spider Concept.  While not all-eletric, the 918’s hybrid powertrain pushes this gorgeous cart from zero-to-sixty in 3.2 seconds. To add to the fun, it sips gas as a rate of 78MPG.

But before we get too excited, the truth is that these stats are skewed.  The car has different drive modes, ranging from gas sipper to full-burst electric racer.  On the high end, it’s only a few minutes of full electric torque blasting through the track. The 78 MPG is only on heavy electric mode, which only propels you for 16 minutes.  That’s not even a trip to the grocery store and back.

Audi E-Tron (source: NY Times)

The Audi E-Tron – Energized Mini R8

Late last year, Audi also showcased their latest sports car entry.  Unlike the Porsche 918 Spyder, E-Tron is all-electric and is almost like a Tesla Roadster with a real pedigree.  It’s 45-kilowatt electric motor will propel this car from 0-60 in a modest 5.7 second time. The car will also travel 155 miles on a single charge. While the car is beautiful, it’s performance is not stunning for what will be a high price tag out the gate.  Another beauty, this car is actually going to be produced in 2012 in small batches, similar to the earlier Tesla runs.

I’m not looking to refute Porsche’s claims or discounting Audi’s performance, but rather point out that everybody who already knows how to build cars is about to take a leap forward. It’s a glorious time for innovation and it looks like the big players will be taking center stage from here.  Thank you Tesla… you were a great opening act.

You’ve likely heard about a bunch of exciting new cars called “Four Door Coupes” (aka four-door fastbacks) that have either recently hit the market or will be coming out in the next couple of years. These entries include the Tesla Model S, Jaguar XF, Porsche Panamera, Aston Martin Rapide, and Volkswagen CC, just to name a few.  It seems like every major car company has one of these sleek cars slated to come out at some point in time

So you may ask, “Isn’t a four door coupe a contradiction?”  The term confuses a lot of people. Since much of the general population refer to coupes as two-door cars, it’s easy to understand why this new term seems like a contradiction in words.  The word coupe is of French origin (meaning “cut”) and refers to a horse carriage with a single row of interior seating and a separate driver row  outside the carriage.  The rear area was “cut” making it more compact. That means it has has little or no rear seat room.  The Society of Automotive Engineering (SAE) refers to a coupe as a vehicle with less than 33 cubic feet of rear interior volume.  That seems consistent with the original definition where the coupe only has one row and little room for another set of people – which is typically reserved for smaller two door cars.  That sheds light on why people associate coupe with two doors.

The other likely reason why we associate two doors and coupes is the four door association with the term sedan.  The term sedan is of Italian origin that’s literally means carrying chair (as in two people – front and rear – carrying another person on a platform that has a chair in it). When it was time to name the first four door multiple row car, it was dubbed the sedan, or saloon.  By process of elimination, many companies started referring anything with two doors as a coupe. Which means that the number of doors never had anything to do with the term coupe.

Now I can stop here and everybody would be happy, right? A coupe is a two or four door car with a small rear area, right?  Well, not exactly. Famous cars like the Chevrolet Monte Carlo, Ferrari Scaglietti, or the Bentley Continental all have rear seat areas that exceed SAE’s guideline. none of these should be technically designated a coupe.

Confused again? Let me finally cut to the chase.  When car companies refer to a Four Door Coupe, they are referring to the automotive designer’s definition of the word.  In product design, there are three “boxes” (or areas) that, at a high level, can make up the configuration of a car. Those include the hood area, passenger compartment, and the trunk.  A coupe a configuration is a design without a formal trunk and therefore is designated a “Two-Box” design… one box for the hood and one for the passenger compartment. Check out the box overlays on the Audi e-Tron concept car below.

Compare the above image with the sedan below (Toyota Avalon), which has a “Three Box” construction since a trunk visually stands out at the rear of the vehicle.

Finally, the minivan below is often referred to as a “One Box,” because the A-pillar (the vertical structure that attaches to the windshield and is in front of the driver) is pulled forward giving the design a minimized hood.  minivans have no visible trunk (how ugly would that be?).

Hopefully, this explanation makes sense of the term Four Door Coupe, which is essentially a four door car with a Two-Box configuration (no trunk). For over a decade, car designers have long dreamed of the four door coupe as the trunk-less look gives it a much more streamlined and sporty proportion. The issue was always length and rear seat headroom of such a vehicle and became a engineer’s packaging nightmare. But with some clever engineering (i.e., lowering the rear seating position), we can now enjoy the sportiness typically reserved for two door coupes in a four door configuration. Let’s take a look at eight distinct Four Door Coupes, both on the road today or down the road in the not to distant future.  Click on any of the colored links to get a better description of the car, including pricing, photos, and even opinions and reviews.

1. 2010 Mercedes CLS - this was one of the first of a new breed of four door coupes.

2010 Mercedes Benz CLS AMG

2. 2010 Hyundai Sonata – The Koreans get serious with design to match their reliability!

2010 Hyunda Sonata

3. 2010 Jaguar XF – The Ian Callum designed beauty has help revive Jaguar.

2010 jaguar XF

4. 2011 Porsche Panamera – the much anticipated Porsche four door fastback… but don’t call it a sedan.

2011 Porsche Panamera

5. 2010 Volkswagen CC

6. 2010 Honda Acccord Crosstour

7. 2012 Tesla Model S

8. Concept: Audi A7

Following our Facebook App – The Good, Bad, and Ugly

From time to time, I’ll write about a specific topic from the start up world of Honk.  The goal is to share war stories and thoughts from the battlefield.  While the start up world is tough, it’s exhilarating – both the ups and downs. I’ll share whatever is on my mind – honestly and truthful.

We launched our Facebook application in December.  As with anything new, there’s so much learning that goes on.  While we all hope for some super out of the gate success, we are all realistic on how the game truly works – try, fail, try, fail, try, learn a little, try…. you get it. Our mission is to figure out how to unlock Facebook as a good communication tool for people shopping for a car. We know our long term plan is sound, but it’s excruciatingly frustrating going through the germination period.

Our initial app is called Cars I’ve Owned (CIO) which enables users to share stories and memories of the various cars in their virtual lifetime of garages. The goal of the app is to enable users to see which cars their friends own, have driven, or even dream of owning. The overarching value is clear – once we can establish who owns what, we can enable users to see which cars friends own so they can ask question about them (i./e., “How do you like your Civic?  I’m thinking about getting one”).  The value is there and we’re out to unlock it.

What have we seen to date?

We’ve had roughly 30K users who have added the app in the first couple of months.  The good news is that a good percentage of these folks end up coming to our destination site honk.com and are valuable users (although 15K is a relatively small sample size).  More good news is that people seem to be filling out their cars.  The bad news is that we haven’t seen a lot of viral-ity to the app yet. Users are checking out friends cars, but they’re not building their own set of cars.  We need to do a better job of getting in front of those users to add their own cars. We’ll work on that one for sure.

We added a “Dream Car” feature on the app, but it hasn’t yet fully caught on – at least in a viral nature.  While I know the key will be to get into the stream, we find a lot of people who like to post their cars, aren’t really inspired to publish them. We have to crack this code and will continue to test!  I wonder if people really do want to share their cars (I would hope so), especially a dream car.  There’s no harm in it – but the benefit could be great.  I’m just glad Facebook doesn’t ask for more details about users on their profile… it gives us all a chance to fill a void.

I have to believe that Facebook is going to be a great, structured communication platform.  People spend way too much time playing games and scanning photos… the evolution has to be meaningful Q&A and purpose-built tools that solves life’s problems by using friend networks.  It’s only a matter of time… and FB is the only game in town who can truly enable this.

More thoughts on this to come….

Toyota’s latest recall is potentially devastating for the car company.  Toyota’s recall – one of the largest of its kind – is likely to change the way people think about the car company.  So how bad will this be for Toyota?  Looking back at other major recalls, Toyota may feel the heat for a long time.

In 2000, Ford was crushed during it’s “Exploder” incident where Explorers had faulty tread issues with its Firestone tires. That recall came at a time when Ford was on a roll, especially with its ultra successful SUV lineup.  And while SUVs remained popular for a few years after the incident, Ford’s brand was damaged.  A more devastating public “Death Penalty” occurred in the 1980s when Audi’s 5000 model had shifter-lock issues, which caused sudden acceleration issues. Audi took huge blow, causing an immediate >50% drop in sales .  It took Audi nearly a decade to get back on track – mostly due to the introduction of its A4 model in the mid 90s.  Audi is now back on track and “Audi 5000″ is merely an urban term.

Almost all of its US built models (no issue with Japanese-built Toyotas, including all of its Lexus or Scion vehicles) were affected.  Toyota (like Ford) is blaming their supplier, CTS.  As a “General contractor” Toyota is certainly to blame and I wonder if the tactic of handing the blame to suppliers is a wise one in the Information Age.  Toyota models affected were: 2009-2010 RAV4, 2009-2010 Corolla, 2009-2010 Matrix, 2005-2010 Avalon, Certain 2007-2010 Camry, 2010 Highlander, 2007-2010 Tundra, 2008-2010 Sequoia.

What do you think will happen to Toyota? Is this going to be another notorious debacle that crushes the company and hampers its “Tiger Woods” like reputation with the US car buying public? Did Toyota make a mistake by not taking the credit for the error?