Changing Minds: A Detroit News Series

[Variance]

Changing Minds: A Detroit News Series

Part One: http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A...382/1148/AUTO01

They are dramatically changing the way they do business by cutting costs, restructuring operations and pouring resources into new products.

But Detroit's troubled Big Three automakers have an equally tough task ahead in changing the minds and attitudes of American consumers.

Concerns about quality and reliability are the prime reasons that consumers avoid vehicles built by General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and the Chrysler Group of DaimlerChrysler AG, according to an exclusive study conducted for The Detroit News by J.D. Power and Associates.

The News study found that despite making significant improvements in quality, the Big Three still suffer from the perception that their products are inferior to those made by Asian competitors.

Part Two: http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A.../701040379/1148

It is a cold December afternoon and Christine Medvec is trying to figure out what to do with her cat as a research team from Ford Motor Co. moves from room to room in her small flat, examining her CD collection, peering into her bedroom closet and asking why she chose to place a blue pottery bowl in the living room even though she knows it clashes with the rest of the decor.

Ford designer Solomon Song, looking the part in an all-black outfit, contemplates the wall hangings.

"I'm noticing that you place things in a certain way," Song says, pointing to two picture frames that flank the front window. "How would it make you feel if there was not one on the other side?"

"My eye would be drawn, probably, to that empty spot," Medvec says. "It's about balance."

Medvec's Boston flat is a long way from the Dearborn design studio where Song usually spends his days. But this is no social visit. It is a trip to the front lines in Ford's war for the hearts and minds of the American consumer -- a trip more and more of the company's designers are being asked to make as the automaker struggles to reconnect with drivers like Medvec who have rarely given domestic brands a second thought.

Part Three: http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic.../701050416/1148

Laurel Mathews pampered the khaki green Jeep Cherokee she bought barely used from a dealer in 2003. Stringent maintenance. Wax-and-polish cleanings. Oil changes every 2,000 miles.

Given the meticulous care -- and the SUV's $15,000-plus price tag -- the upstate New Yorker was more than dismayed when she tried to sell her Jeep two years later.

"I couldn't get more than $5,000," she said, speaking from her Brewster home, where a Honda CR-V now sits in the garage. "It was in perfect condition. That was my baby. I was horrified."

Mathews' experience resonates with the nation's car-buying public and has become a big problem for Detroit automakers.

Part Four: http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic.../701060404/1149

Each year, Detroit automakers spend billions to get on the shopping lists of drivers like Alex Beaty. A Wisconsin factory worker, Beaty, 19, is an ardent environmentalist who drives a 1993 Eagle Summit that gets 42 miles to the gallon on the highway.

He knows U.S. automakers sell more fuel-efficient vehicles than in the past, including gas-electric hybrids, but his next car is likely to be Toyota's hybrid Prius or Honda's hybrid Civic.

"I look at GM from time to time, but if I were to go out and buy a new car, I wouldn't consider GM," he said.

And Ford and Chrysler aren't even on his list.Getting people like Beaty to take a fresh look at their vehicles is one of the biggest challenges facing U.S. automakers.

Nearly one in five prospective buyers polled for an exclusive study conducted by J.D. Power and Associates for The Detroit News indicated that they will not consider a domestic brand -- and 40 percent of them named poor fuel economy as a reason.

[NOS2006]

Going into and studying people's houses to find subtle touches that can influence his vehicular design? That's very innovative and very neat.

[balthazar]

Nice to see a begrudging mention of the FACT that American brands have equaled or surpassed foreign makes (primarily the Germans), even if the reference was buried far below the catalyst ("...Big Three still suffer from the perception that their products are inferior...")

It would be refreshing & a near public service to stop talking about the misconception, and write a positive factual piece highlighting the slip in quality of foreign brands and a repeated listing of reasons American consumers avoid imports. After all, it would be the SOP of the media to dwell on misfortune- they just need their antennas adjusted.

Maybe some of the hypocrit consumers like >>""I just stay away from American cars," said Leona Drolet, an Ocala, Fla., resident and owner of a Korean-made Kia Sephia sedan. "I've had nothing but problems with them."<< will realize how utter stupid they sound talking about American vehicle problems while owning the absolute dregs of autodom (that is, untill the Chinese get here).

[Variance]

There are two more parts to the series. I added them to the first post.

[balthazar]

If the foreign makes are here to stay and "American" because they say so, why no articles proclaiming how 'American' hybrids are leading the industry, or 'American' vehicles have excellent, class-leading quality & economy?

Oh right; because segregation and national origin are trotted out only when they serve the 'damnation agenda'. Can't have it both ways, retards. These f@#king journalists are still calling Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge domestic and toyota American. I'd prefer to be informed by horny chimps.

NEVER ONCE have I seen an article that quotes an American vehicle owner telling us why he would never consider a foreign make, yet the DetNews piece above must literally be the 100th example I've seen of random consumers beating and beating and beating and beating it into the reader's heads how they would never buy another domestic. Wonderous, eye-opening tales regarding the domestics, always including liberal useage of terms such as "troubled", "concerned" "suffer", "couldn't", "wouldn't" and --lest we omit-- "horrified". Spell-binding.

Nope, not a shred of evidence, not a single example exists even hinting that the media is anything but fair & above-board. Not a whisp of bias, because, you see children; there is none.

[CARBIZ]

You know, politicians are always haunted by things that they said/did years ago by some media outlet dragging out some printed quote or gaff on TV news from 15 years ago. Why is the media not held accountable for its clear biases? You can casually flip through any MT or C&D from 25 years ago and you will see them whining how the Big Three are closing the quality gap and how great the latest Datsun or Toyota is.

How can the Big Three have been closing the quality gap for three decades? The media outlets are just regurgitating the same old &#036;h&#33; forever. To read what they printed decades ago, then compare it to what they are spewing today is a real eye opener. They cannot get through one article or story - even the so-called positive ones, without sounding condescending or making flippant remarks.

The media do not REPORT the story, they CREATE it.

[RJB]

That is kind of creepy that these designers are combing around somebodies house and these people actually let them. I don't know if I would want something as intrusive as that to happen. I might meet them somewhere and discuss different aspects of what I like and don't like with fashion, art, books, and cars.

[regfootball]

You know, politicians are always haunted by things that they said/did years ago by some media outlet dragging out some printed quote or gaff on TV news from 15 years ago. Why is the media not held accountable for its clear biases? You can casually flip through any MT or C&D from 25 years ago and you will see them whining how the Big Three are closing the quality gap and how great the latest Datsun or Toyota is.

How can the Big Three have been closing the quality gap for three decades? The media outlets are just regurgitating the same old &#036;h&#33; forever. To read what they printed decades ago, then compare it to what they are spewing today is a real eye opener. They cannot get through one article or story - even the so-called positive ones, without sounding condescending or making flippant remarks.

The media do not REPORT the story, they CREATE it.

me and a buddy were discussing the media the other day, and why they are biased, and generally lean left.

how that discussion was relevant here, generally you will find that people who are drawn to writing as a profession, are often pushy about their points of view, and have no interest in hearing the opposite viewpoint. Writing has always been the traditional way to get your fact, er, opinions out into the masses, i.e. thousands/millions of people, with no mechanism for anyone to challenge your point of view in return. Except for maybe one or two letters to the editor that MIGHT get printed about what you wrote. Even if 75% of the population that reads your spooge disagrees with you, since you are the one who was annointed to write for the paper or whatever, your opinion is the CORRECT ONE.

Now with the internet of course and blogging and email you get chances to counter those supposedly expert journalistic opinions and get a bit of a chance at a fair counterpoint. But the bottom line is that the picklehead journalists are all educated to promote the notion of self indulgence to their own thoughts, and to get them printed for many to read and accept as fact. So, they latch on to a notion of something and beat it to death....because there is no alternate viewpoint.

Which is why sites like Cheers and Gears are so great. We can all post our brains out, and we at least get chances to debate with each other. I can post what I THINK is the way something is, but I know half are gonna agree and half are gonna disagree. I don't care who agrees or disagrees, that's the point...I respect that everyone has their opinion and I am not out to try to change what others think and I don't think anyone else here on C/G does. But I am telling ya, professional journalists / editors etc. they could care less what the everyday man thinks. People get into writing as a career, to push agendas. And writing was at least at one time a place where you could foist your opinions unchallenged. Others had no mechanism to respond.

It absolutely must drive all those editorialists crazy at the newpapers these days, the ones who maybe were educated in high universities, baby boomers, high idealisms, and now after all these years of free reign on peoples thoughts, they can be confronted by readers in innumerable ways. It must just drive them nuts to just now find out how wrong they are most of the time.

But after so many years of promoting an agenda in the press it becomes so engrained in people's minds and people cannot reason for themselves. Hence, donestics bad, imports good. Because the hippie editor drove a toyota in college or their vega got some rust.

Edited January 14, 2007 by regfootball