If I may be so bold as to make a declarative statement about the state of the automotive world today, it is that I find the number of SUVs and CUVs on the road today, both depressing and sad. SUVs (of which CUVs are included for statistical purposes) now account for 53% of total sales.
Now admittedly this stems from my interests in watching motor racing and in particular the problem that the V8 Supercars has, that there are basically no donor cars for the category any more but that then maps to the real world and the kinds of cars which are out on the streets.
With General Motors being non existent here, Ford having no Falcon and now announcing this week that the Mondeo will be terminated by the end of 2021, with Mazda announcing that the Mazda 6 is to be cancelled and with the general malaise of what is out there, it makes me ask - where'd all the cool cars go?
No story is told in a vacuum; so the answer of why there are so few cool cars on the road in 2021 fits into a much broader story of the opening of the twenty first century.
The base problem across the Anglosphere and Europe is that real wages peaked some time between 1975 and 1980. There has been a long term trend since then of capital reasserting itself and if the very long game of history returns to normal (which this pandemic has only accelerated), then wages growth should revert to close to zero forever and the rate of return on capital to 2%.
In theory it is possible that taxation policy could correct this but concerted efforts by those with money and power repeatedly try to unpick any gains that labour power might have made during the twentieth century. Money speaks for money and the devil for his own; nobody comes to speak for the skin and the bone. As such, the Matthew Principle that to those who have much more will be given and to those who have not, even what little they have will be taken away, becomes the core thrust of governmental wages, labour, and industrial relations legislation.
What does any of this have to do with whether or not there are cool cars? Cars are very big capital purchases. As such, people tend to make choices which are far more defined by function, rather than form. Cool cars, tend to be more discretionary spending items; which traditionally are bought by people with more money than they care to care about and younger people who do not have other needs that are addressed by function (needing to carry around children, cargo, equipment, tools etc.).
This being said, it follows that if the motor manufacturers are at their heart nothing more than very big businesses and the prime function of any business is to return benefits, profits, and capital growth to their shareholders and stakeholders, then they will sell only that which helps to return said profits. If over the past 40 years, the amount of discretionary spending which can be done by the general public is falling due to falling real wages, then it should follow that the general public is going to spend less on discretionary spending items, which includes cool cars.
The most famous historical example of a car which was specially designed, developed, and produced to be a cool car which everyone could buy was the 1964 Ford Mustang. Granted that there were cool cars before then but the '64 'Stang was built just as the first of the Baby Boomers were turning 18. This was a car built purely as a cool discretionary item, for the sole purpose of capturing the discretionary spending of mostly irresponsible kids. It worked brilliantly. The 1964 Mustang is to the best of my knowledge, still the only car in history to sell more than a million units within a calendar year.
If that formula worked then, then where is the modern equivalent? The short answer is that there isn't one. The market for Mustangs simply no longer exists. Parents in their 50s and 60s aren't likely to hand over cars to their older teenage children any more and kids in their late teens and twenties, have never been paid enough in wages to be able to make such a purchase. This also is running in parallel with the fact that as the rewards of the economy now going to wages now go to capital at higher rates than at any point since 1920, that money is now being parked in real estate; which in turn drives up the price of housing, which means that mortgages and rent now has a greater call on people's incomes. When old people tell you that they had it harder in their day, it is simply untrue. 40 years ago a house could be bought on a single average income and that is impossible today. Kids today might have mobile phones and tablets but that has merely replaced records and going out to restaurants.
If you look at the kinds of things that the kids actually are spending their money on, it's mostly housing rather than cool cars. The motor manufacturers know this and rather than build cool cars which they can not sell (because the kids don't have the money like they did 50 years ago), they build SUVs, CUVs, and pickup trucks. I refuse to say "utes" because the actual number of coupé utilities on sale in Australia today is zero.
The SUVification of everything is a perfectly rational response to the market. It is also a perfectly horrible concession that the car makers themselves both follow and pull the marketplace. As far as consumers are concerned, SUVs and CUVs are sensible purchases. However, they are not cool. SUVs and CUVs are the new brown.
The broad categories of what determines whether or not a car is cool, have remained unchanged. Hot Hatchbacks are generally cool. Coupes are generally cool. Brash brawny cars are generally cool. Rich people have always had the ability to use money to get out of any problem that they desire; the same goes for buying cool cars. The absolute amount of high powered GT cars hasn't changed that much; so this part of the calculus also hasn't changed. What has fallen off of a cliff, are the amount of cheap cool cars. A cheap coupe is now practically non existent.
As little as 20 years ago, there was a Mitsubishi Lancer, Honda Civic, Holden Astra, Peugeot 206, 307, Renault Megane, Subaru WRX etc. which were all smallish coupes and convertibles. There were loads of hot hatches and a few brawny V8 sedans. Practically none of those exist in those forms any more and as far as genuinely cheap cool cars go, there's really only the Kia Picanto GT and the Rio GT and that's practically it. The Toyota 86 was never cheap and cheerful, the Ford Mustang in 2.3 turbo guise was never cheap and what could have been a 3.6L V6 Holden Cruze, never eventuated as General Motors imploded. If I was tasked with going out and finding a cool car tomorrow, I would find that that whole cool car market is pretty light on.
The 1965 Mustang in Australia retailed for £1200. Adjusted for inflation that would cost $33,703. If you want to find a cool car which is under that price, these are your options from the top ten brands: Toyota Yaris ZR ($33,761), Toyota 86 ($32,180), Mazda 2 GT ($28,295), Kia Picanto GT ($19,990). That's it. There are only four. The other seven manufacturers of the top ten volume sellers, have given up on the idea of a cheap cool car. None of Ford, Mitsubishi, Hyundai, Nissan, Subaru, Volkswagen, or MG are willing to sell you anything cool for under that mark of $33,703. I even had to include the Yaris ZR from Toyota which is $58 over that mark, simply to pad out this list.
Part of the problem lies in the broad categories which the big families of car makers find themselves in. Those families are both defined by function as well as cultural expectation of what a car is supposed to do. American cars are built in the spirit of turning a profit. European cars are built in the spirit of making a high quality good. Japanese cars are built in the spirit of making a well functioning good. African cars are built to be rugged and to last. Now all of this sounds like a hideous set of stereotypes and hopelessly inadequate at describing nuances but if you're going to paint a picture, then you need to start with the underlying formwork before you start filling in finer details.
America went down the road of making things cheap; which means the SUVification of everything in the name of profit. The European makers went down the road of quality but still have to sell volume in order to make a profit. Japanese makers went down the road of building a better product but that still means building roughly the same things as everyone else because that's where the profit lies. African car makers have to build things which work properly when roads are sometimes a suggestion rather than a strip of black top In all cases, profit is the master and it is a very boring and unimaginative one. Profit never cares about being cool because it neither understands it, nor is able to capture coolness on a Profit and Loss statement.
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