SHOULD AUTOMOBILE ENTHUSIASTS BE POLITICALLY ACTIVE?

Autoweek's Senior Editor for Special Projects, Kevin A Wilson, recently published an editorial entitled "Why We're Not Just A Car Magazine." http://www.autoweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061009/FREE/61002022/1054/FREE

Wilson argues that "We can’t just play with our cars and ignore what’s going on, because cars sit right at the white-hot center of the way we live in this country." He laments that when Autoweek does venture into the "real world" where politics and automobility intersect, the magazine is shelled with negative letters. It seems that the vocal minority only want "cars" without all the pesky politics involved.

Wilson caps off his editorial with a nonpartisan call to become "involved" in the political process.

The question isn't whether he's right. It's whether he went far enough.

I'm uncertain how anyone could be offended by Wilson's somewhat meek call to "get involved" in political issues affecting motoring. In fact, to suggest the need for defending our automotive freedoms in the political arena seems about as obvious as pointing out the sky generally appears blue.

But the real problem is when Autoweek or other automotive publications take anti-freedom, anti-hobbyist or anti-free market stances, such as the Automotive News publisher Keith Crain's cheer-leading for draconian CAFE standards. While advocating for more "environmental" regulation may satisfy a few liberal subscribers, the vast majority of automotive magazine and newspaper readers would rather have market solutions to the alleged "problems" of automobility.

Perhaps the only thing American automotive magazines have done worse than rallying the political muscle of automobile enthusiasts has been providing support for the American automobile industry against the multiple attack of the consumer/safety/environmental interests. No magazine I'm aware of even attempts to put these issues into focus in such a way as to spur grassroots action, or even to correct the record in the public debate! Thus, with the exceptions of the Specialty Equipment Market Association, a few other trade groups, and the small organizations you mentioned in Wilson's editorial, the "pro-automotive liberty" forces are weak and disorganized.

But general calls to "get involved," without more direction, lack effectiveness. If the National Rifle Association merely suggested voting, without fully briefing the relevant issues and advising its members on exactly who is putting the our personal freedoms at risk, the political clout of the "gun owners lobby" would be greatly diminished. Wilson's tepid declaration that "We don’t care if your votes cancels ours" doesn't exhibit either leadership or any sense of how precariously balanced and fragile automotive liberty is. Yet it is an all too common viewpoint among automotive journalists.

We are at about the "1967-1968" era the second performance car era. If the automobile enthusiast community isn't vigilant and engaged, we will soon be reliving the anti-car, 1970s (although with much fewer avenues for circumvention this time around). Automotive journalists ought to be sounding the alarms to the threats occurring at local, state and national levels.

For example, the automotive press has reported on the State of California's lawsuit against six of the world's largest automakers, including General Motors and Toyota Motor Corp., over global warming, charging that greenhouse gases from their vehicles have caused billions of dollars in damages. California State Attorney General Bill Lockyer (D) claims the automakers "have created a public nuisance by producing 'millions of vehicles that collectively emit massive quantities of carbon dioxide.'"

The automotive press has done precious little to present the other side of the argument. Moreover, the press has failed to identify the real risks to automotive liberty in a way that resonates with grassroots enthusiasts.

The real threat is that these sorts of high profile lawsuits will drive public opinion, and then Congress to pass restrictions aimed at reducing carbon output.

Imagine how much fun motoring will be in 10 or 20 years if:

• Fuel economy standards become so high that no V8s can be produced.
• The OEMs "can" all V8 crate engines and other performance parts out of fear of "carbon" litigation.
• Draconian "carbon use" taxes (sort of like the punitive cigarette taxes smokers now routinely pay under the various "tobacco lawsuit settlements") on gasoline, gasoline-burning equipment and the replacement parts for such equipment are enacted to curb "excess" emissions. (Far-fetched? I just read Al Gore (D) is now pushing a "carbon use" tax as a replacement for payroll taxes!)
• Harsh "clunker" legislation is passed, aimed at clearing the roads of C02-emitting "old" cars and drying up parts supplies for them.
• Increased state- or industry-sponsored "crusher" programs (such as UNOCAL's infamous one) are instituted in settlement of the lawsuits.
• Increased restrictions on registering "kit" and "continuation" cars (such as the "new" 1969 Camaros built from Chinese uni-body stampings or even "new" 1932 Ford-based "street rods") are enacted to force people into state-approved, factory-built economy cars.
• Competition for the shrinking number of "collector" cars drives prices even higher than they already are today.
• Lawyers and regulators begin turning their focus on extorting payments from racing venues, tuners and aftermarket supply companies for "carbon pollution."
  More force-fed propaganda fills the public school curriculum about the harms that motorsports and "gas guzzlers" (i.e. performance cars and race-car tow vehicles) allegedly cause to the environment (as if it couldn't get any worse)

All of these scenarios are foreseeable if this sort of California/Kyoto CO2 madness takes hold.

A second big threat is that these lawsuits will force the automakers to settle them by pledging to cut fun cars like the Shelby GT500, the Mustang GT, the Z06 and other Corvettes, the SRT-8s and 10s, the new Challenger, the new Camaro, and anything else that smacks of "excessive" carbon emissions.

Without new performance cars (that someday become more affordable USED cars and create a trickle-down of parts in the aftermarket), the whole grassroots motorsports movement takes huge steps back to the days when the automakers didn't offer anything interesting or helpful to performance enthusiasts.

The anti-car forces understand all of this.

If you have any doubt, read some of the recent feedback to my post on "Click and Clack and the 500 Horsepower Ford Mustang." There are legions who will defend paternalistic nonsense, such as:

"Upwards of 200 horsepower is practically expected today. And there are cars with 300 h.p., 400 h.p. and more. In my humble opinion, that’s crazy. There’s not a car on the road that truly needs more than 200 h.p. Most cars would be fine with a lot less."– Tom Magliozzi, co-host of NPR’s "Car Talk."

"We’ve gone horsepower crazy." Ray Magliozzi, co-host of NPR’s "Car Talk."

See http://speedzzter.blogspot.com/2006/09/click-clack-and-500-horsepower-ford.html

This kind of "expert" talk resonates in the elite, bi-coastal "echo chamber" of anti-car hysteria, which incidentally also funds liberal anti-car politicians such as California Attorney General Lochyer (D).

Many automobile enthusiasts see the carbon dioxide litigation and legislation as not a serious threat. Yet a look at the battles against tobacco and guns ought to suggest otherwise. The cigarette companies fought their battle in the courts for over twenty years, before they lost. And they started losing because public perceptions changed.

The gunmakers are still fighting their battle (although the early results have been mostly positive--as they were for the tobacco companies). And every year, legislative attempts are made to pass expensive, restrictive stuff, such as ammo "fingerprinting," ammo taxes, and ownership restrictions.

Although the case for automotive liberty is inherently much stronger than the argument in favor of tobacco use, the battle for public opinion can still be lost through neglect or inaction. If we lose the battle for it to Al Gore (D), Attorney General Lockyer (D) and the Sierra Club-types, policies oriented towards killing both the new and vintage high-performance automobile hobbies can take hold.

The critical risk is that Ford Motor Company (R) and the rest of the Big 6 might settle the lawsuit(s) under terms that aren't favorable to enthusiasts and collectors (such as refusing to license aftermarket replacement items for models deemed to emit an unfair share of carbon dioxide).

Old guys who remember 1969-1975 have seen some of this before. For example, FoMoCo was kowtowed by Congressional hostility into killing virtually its entire factory racing and "Muscle Parts" programs in November 1970. It took TWELVE YEARS to get things even partially back on track. The lesson is that if the OEMs can't make a "business case" for serving racers, "hot rodders" and performance enthusiasts, they will throw us under the bus without a second throught.

And if it comes down to the Big 6 automakers having to spend billions and billions to pay off the states and "clean up" the CO2 "problem" for the "good of all mankind," do you really think anyone is going to look out for a couple million "crazy gearheads" and their "fuelish" interests at the margins?

The time to get focused on stopping this insanity is NOW! Not ten or twenty years from now when we've all been branded anti-social outlaws, the Big 6 have been coerced to abandon us, and we're all sneaking around like smokers just to get an occasional "hit!"

Lawsuits, such as the one filed by California are targeted toward US, even if we aren't named defendants. The car-hating liberal polticians who think up this stuff must be driven out of office and replaced by people who will protect our interests and automotive freedoms at every level.

The California lawsuit is emblematic of the threats to our liberty at all levels of government that the automotive press is under-reporting. If automobile enthusiasts are blissfully ignorant and apathetic, it's because the automotive press has failed to report on the critical issues and motivate grassroots political action.

GHOSN COY ON "RENAULT ALLIANCE" WITH FORD MOTOR COMPANY (R)

Now that Kerk Kerkorian and Jerry York's plan for a grand World alliance between Renault, Nissan and General Motors is in tatters, the fast talk among the Old Detroiters and auto industry wonks surrounds whether Ford Motor Company (F) will replace GM as an alliance partner to take on the monolithic Toyota menace.

Last week, GM's "circle-the-Wagon[er] defense saved Rick Wagoner's regime by demanding Renault SA and Nissan Motor Company, Ltd. each pay a dowery to GM for the privilege of the hook-up. Dual CEO and cost-cutter extraordinare Carlos Ghosn did not see the benefits in "pay for play" for his two companies and, thus, the corporate "marriage" talks are off.

Not even Kerkorian's substantial minority stake in GM or fear of the Toyota juggernaut was enough to swing a link-up.

With Renault and Nissan free again to play the field, the industry wags again take note of William Clay Ford, Jr.'s admiration of Ghosn. This forms the basis for the speculation of a new, "on the rebound" "Renault Alliance" with stand-in suitor FoMoCo.

Some industry pundits assume that Ghosn will stoke the flames and force FoMoCo's hand. For example, Autoextremist Peter M. DeLorenzo speculates that Ghosn will take his "traveling salvation show" into the media to hector FoMoCo into talks. See www.autoextremist.com

Yet Ghosn--so far-- isn't following the gossipy pundits' courting expectations. Automotive News has reported that Ghosn claims he has "no plans" for talks with Bill Ford. "'I want to make it very clear we are not taking any initiative', he said, referring to merger talks." www.autonews.com

Reading between the lines, Ghosn's statement may suggest that FoMoCo need not try to extract cash from Renault and Nissan as a condition of cooperation. No dowery. No financial incentives. No "cash back" dividends.

It may also mean that FoMoCo's years of losses projected in the current "Way Forward" plan (and recent bad press from yet another huge recall of bread and butter Ford models), as well as Renault/Nissan's own marketshare challenges, make a "Renault Alliance" with a fat, slouching American less than attractive.

Or may be it's the heady, unexpected success of Renault's Formula One effort--which after a dramatic swing in the drivers' points after Michael Schumacher's Ferrari blew its engine for the first time in six seasons, is now almost a solid lock to win the World Championship with Fernando Alonzo--that has a little pride bursting from Ghosn's rhetoric. Who needs old FoMoCo--which left F1 years ago with its tail between the legs of its mangy Jaguar--when Renault has the gusto to beat Toyota and the rest of the World in elite motorsports? Surely "World Championship on Sunday, sell on Monday" has some validity in the international marketplace.

Or it could just mean that Ghosn doesn't want to look too eager for a seat at the table in FoMoCo's Glass House.

After all, a little period of recovery and self-reflection is appropriate after a break-up on the scale of the GM-Ghosn courtship.

Yet it's probably clear that if FoMoCo is interested, Bill Ford himself will need to step into the "Kirk Kerkorian" role to kickstart the process. Whether such a "Bold Move" (or foolish move, depending on where one lives in the Detroit social structure) is in Bill Ford's arsenal remains to be seen.

But if the hiring of Boeing's Alan Mulally is any indication. The press statments may be 180-degrees out from the reality of the situation. If Bill Ford starts saying "We're not looking for an alliance," you can probably bet the FoMoCo jets are already fueled and sitting on the tarmac in anticipation of flights to Paris.

Still, it doesn't seem as if anyone's rushing to the altar just yet.

NASCAR’S MARK MARTIN DUMPS FORD MOTOR COMPANY (R)

"This is a business . . . You can’t let emotions get into it." – Mark Martin

Today the talk of the world is North Korea’s underground nuclear bomb test. Most of us expected it, sooner or later.

In the world of Ford Motor Company, however, journeyman Roush Ford driver Mark Martin dropped his own bomb this weekend.

Instead of becoming Roush’s semi-retired elder statesman and a full-time Craftsman Truck Series racer for FoMoCo– as Ford Racing fans all expected -- Mark Martin now plans to drive almost two dozen races in each of the next five seasons in a Chevrolet for the struggling MB2 team.

Unlike the North Korean nuclear test, we had no warning. No expectation. No inkling. Not even a hunch.

To Ford fans who have pulled for Mark’s Roush Fords over the past eighteen seasons, the move was even more unexpected than Brian Vickers nerfing his teammate Jimmy Johnson into Dale Earnhardt, Jr. on the last lap of Sunday’s UAW/Ford 500 at Talladega.

To Ford fans, it was a slap in the face . . . a punch in the gut . . . almost like Babe Ruth turning his back on the Boston Red Sox for the hated New York Yankees.

Say it ain’t so, Mark! Say it ain’t so!

Yet Mark, NASCAR’s perennial bridesmaid, is now "turned out"-- walking the streets and selling his "love" to the enemy.

His defense?

It’s a "business." The founding driver of the most important Ford team in NASCAR goes over to the "Dark Side" and all he’s got to say to his long-suffering "loyal" fans is that "emotions" aren’t part of the calculus.

Now that really goes a long way to explain why folks spend over $75 a ticket and sit in traffic for hours when the NASCAR circus comes to town, doesn’t it? That explains why members of Team Ford Racing would get up early on race day and pay a lot extra to hear Martin’s scripted spiel or stand in line for hours to get his autograph. Or even bear the indignity of wearing Mark Martin gear emblazoned with ads for an erectile dysfunction product. It’s all just "business."

Isn’t "loyalty" driven out of emotion?

Driving a truck on the interstate or hauling fares in a taxicab is a "business." But motorsports – at least from the spectator’s perspective-- is something much more.

If it was just a "business," Martin’s fans probably wouldn’t have taken his loss of the 1990 Winston Cup championship so hard. Martin lost it by 26 points. But Ford racing fans remember that a penalty assessed against Martin’s Thunderbird for a welded instead of bolted-on carburetor spacer – a careless and inadvertent infraction which everyone knowledgeable at the time admitted created absolutely no performance advantage – was the difference between winning the Winston Cup for Ford and being an also ran.

It’s not as if Ford racing fans haven’t had their hearts broken before by the "business" side of racing.

• "Million-Dollar" Bill Elliott– once upon a time the driver for a family team that literally put Ford racing back on the map after over a decade of factory neglect – closed out his full-time career in a Ray Evernham Dodge and was even spotted in a back-marker Chevrolet at times since.
• New Toyota team master Michael Waltrip wheeled a Woods Brothers Ford for 95 races during the early part of his career–even taking The Winston all-star race, before "the business" pulled him over to Chevrolet.
• Former ChampionDale Jarrett flip-flopped between Chevy and Ford, turning stints in a Wood Brothers Ford and a Joe Gibbs Chevrolet before settling in with Ford’s Robert Yates. Yet Dale has chosen to close out his fading career in a Toyota.
• Former champion Kurt Busch rode Roush Fords to almost instant stardom, but "the business" lured him over to a Penske Dodge.
• The infamous Jeff Gordon was Ford’s brightest young talent, right up until he secretly inked a deal with Chevy’s Rick Hendrick in 1992.
• And even the legendary David Pearson–who drove nearly every brand of car in NASCAR except for perhaps a Hudson–achieved near mythic stature running part-time in 143 races (including 43 wins) for the Wood Brothers–only to finish out his days in a GM car.

Cynical NASCAR wonks undoubtedly will point out the fluid nature of alliances with manufacturers in the sport. Most all of the greats have migrated from brand to brand, depending on "business" realities.

• The so-called "Last American Hero" – Junior Johnson -- achieved huge fame by inventing "drafting"in 1960 and through his quixotic 1963 charge in Ray Fox’s "Mystery Motor" "Porcupine" Impala. But abandoned by GM, Junior eventually finished up driving for Ford. Then Junior was a leading Ford car owner until FoMoCo’s disastrous November 1970 decision to quit racing. Junior became Chevrolet’s number one car owner in the 1970s and early 1980s, accounting for five championships in less than ten years. But believing that GM was giving more aid and comfort to upstart Rick Hendrick’s multi-car operation than to his own, Junior flipped his operation back to Ford for the remainder of his car owner career.
• Richard Petty jumped to Ford for the 1969 season because Chrysler refused to let him drive a Dodge Charger Daytona instead of a brick-like Plymouth Road Runner on superspeedways. But in 1970, the King stepped out of his Torino Talladegas and returned to Plymouth on the strength of the brand’s loose copy of the Charger Daytona–the Superbird. Petty stayed loyal to Mopar right up until the flagging days of the old Chrysler Corporation in 1978. He jumped over to GM only when it was clear that the Dodge Magnum wouldn’t be competitive and Chrysler wasn’t in any shape to develop a winning race car.
• NASCAR’s only African-American winner, Wendell Scott, started racing Flathead-powered moonshiner cars, but spent the first portions of his Cup career in Chevrolets before finishing it out in a series of wrinkled and underfunded Fords.
• Bobby Allison first achieved significant recognition with a privateer 327-powered short track Chevelle, battling among the Hemis and 427 FE Wedges. But for several seasons in the late 1970s, he wheeled about the only competitive Ford (other than Pearson’s Mercury) in NASCAR.
• Although Dale Earnhardt is most closely associated with Chevrolet, his big break came when Willy T. Ribbs missed practices in 1978 and Earnhardt was tapped to drive the #96 Ford Torino. Then when Earnhardt’s car owner Rod Osterlund sold his championship-winning Chevy team to J.D. Stacy, Earnhardt stopped briefly at the underfunded and struggling Richard Childress operation before spending two seasons in Bud Moore’s Thunderbirds.
• Ricky Rudd switched back and forth between Chevrolets and Fords several times during his storied career as NASCAR’s reigning "Ironman." He spent time in Junie Donlavey’s Truxmore Ford early in his career. He swapped seats with Earnhardt, taking over Bud Moore’s Thunderbirds when Earnhardt returned to a vastly improved Richard Childress operation. Next, he left for stints with GM teams, including the Rick Hendrick superteam, before owning his own string of Tide-sponsored Fords. Then he became the last driver of the Texaco Havoline-sponsored No. 28 Ford for Robert Yates. He finished out his full-time career in a Wood Brothers Ford.
• Robert Yates himself has followed the "business" of NASCAR between brands. Starting out with Ford’s Holman-Moody, he moonlighted on developing the big-block Chevrolet after Ford cut its ties in the racing pull-out. Yates next found himself working as an engine man for DiGard’s Chevrolets and Buicks. Then he worked for the Ranier/Lundy team, buying it, and fielding Fords for almost two decades for the late Davey Allison, Ernie Irvan, Dale Jarrett, Ricky Rudd, Elliott Sadler and David Gilliland.
• Even the gate-mouthed Darrell Waltrip bookended his Cup career in Ford products. He started out in an ex-Holman-Moody Mercury and finished up in a Taurus. Yet even after decades of promoting Detroit iron, he became the public "face" of Toyota’s NASCAR ambitions.
• But, perhaps the biggest "business" opportunist in recent memory has been Roger Penske. Penske first made his car-owner reputation outside of NASCAR in Mark Donohue-driven Chevrolets. Then he switched to American Motors. Then to Mercury. When Penske pulled out of NASCAR, some of the left-overs of his Mercury team went to Bill Elliott’s fledgling family operation. After spending a decade or so away from NASCAR, he returned as owner of Rusty Wallace’s Pontiac. But then Penske switched the team to Ford. And after playing a pivotal role in developing the NASCAR Taurus, Penske abandoned Ford for Dodge.

Mark Martin’s defenders will undoubtedly point to these examples and others in his defense. They’ll also point out his pre-Cup career was in GM short-track cars. They will point to his IROC-series success in non-Ford products. They will mention about how NASCAR is all about the drivers and not the cars or the manufacturers anymore. They will justify Martin’s obvious disloyalty by suggesting that Roush didn’t do enough to let Mark "do what he wanted to do" by running a reduced schedule. It’s just "business," remember.

All of this misses the point.

Mark Martin was one of the few surviving links to the "old NASCAR." Of Ford’s drivers in the 1980s, Mark Martin was the only superstar left. For Ford fans still left empty by the deaths of Davey Allison and Alan Kulwicki, the defections of Bill Elliott and Dale Jarrett, and the retirements of Ricky Rudd and Junior Johnson, Martin was the sentimental favorite. Martin was a link to both the underdog re-emergence of factory-backed Ford racing in the late 1980s and the later time when Fords made up two-thirds of the starting field. Mark Martin represented the sort of loyalty and stability that seem no longer relevant in a "business" context.

Mark has marched to a different beat most of his career. While Earnhardt intimidated his way to seven championships, Martin’s calculated and "business-like" driving style has so-far kept him from the sport’s ultimate prize. While most of the garage area, like the deep South, has turned Republican, Martin is a proud Democrat. Martin adopted a vigorous fitness regimen long before NASCAR’s old guard recognized the need to work out with more than 12 ounces or a cute, nubile "cookie" at a time.

Ford racing fans overlooked Martin’s quirks because he was the long-suffering founding driver of Roush’s NASCAR superteam. They cheered for Mark as an underdog and as an "everyman." They cheered him as perhaps the best long-time recent driver never to win the season championship. They saw Martin as a part of the Ford family, if not an extension of Jack Roush into the cockpit. They saw him as the mentor to champions Matt Kenseth and Kurt Busch. They remember him from his days when he’d have perhaps the only competitive Ford in a sea of GM cars in the Busch Series. Some even copied his number and paint schemes on their own short-track cars. In short, he simply was a fixture in the mind of the most Ford racing fans. As reliable and immovable as Stone Mountain or Mount Rushmore.

And undoubtedly Mark probably resents living in the shadow of Jack Roush, as well as the shadows of the Earnhardts, Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and a whole plethora of younger, more telegenic drivers (most of whom are now in Chevrolets or Dodges). He even lives in the shadows of Roush Racing’s younger drivers who have won or nearly won championships and have lucrative commercial endorsements. He may see this new venture as a way to define himself outside of Jack Roush’s universe and becoming his own man.

Or maybe it really is just "business." Perhaps he’s just for sale to the highest bidder, like much of the NASCAR Nation. Perhaps the fans perception of Martin as a Ford loyalist was all just an illusion of marketing and hype.

And FoMoCo likely shares some of the blame. Ford’s inability to recruit and retain a sufficient number of teams means that there are few seats available in competitive Fords. And it puts pressure on Yates, Roush and perhaps the Wood Brothers to field full schedule teams. With NASCAR’s decision to limit the number of teams a car owner can affiliate with, this problem will only get worse.

Whatever the reason, Martin’s defection is another sad chapter in Ford Racing history.

And unlike the fans of Martin's successful rival from the 1990 season, former Martin fans will now suffer the indignity of seeing him driving for the other side as his skills decline and memories fade. At least Earnhardt fans will always remember him as he was during his glory days. They will not see his reputation sullied by hanging on as a part-timer on a marginal team affiliated with an arch-enemy manufacturer.

But it's just another "business," right? Why waste any "emotions" on it?