Niche marques

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@domain.elided>]

Bob Brady writes, "just remember, the very reason why many digesters 
picked alfas to drive (uniqueness) is probably the last thing the 
sales people at Fiat want to hear."

Not long ago, on another mailing list, I read a quote from the current
president of Saab (the fellow who was put there by GM after they
purchased the Swedish carmaker): "I get furious every time I'm driving a
Saab and some other Saab driver waves to me, because it means we're
still a niche manufacturer."

What is wrong with being a successful niche manufacturer?

Lest anyone think this is yet another anti-big-business rant, I'm not in
the slightest against expanding market share, fat quarterly profit
margins, year-over-year growth or high P-to-E ratios.  The computer
networking business, just to pick one completely arbitrary example,
could get a whole hell of a lot bigger and I wouldn't complain in the
least. :-)  This is emphatically not a money-is-bad screed; money is
good, it lets me buy cool old cars every few years, and lets me pay for
the parts needed to keep them going.

Because there sure as hell aren't very many cool new cars.

Which small, unique manufacturers are left?  Well, Morgan are still out
there in Malvern Link, still making ash-framed roadsters with
sliding-pillar front suspension and now with tire-shredding V8 power at
the other end of the chassis; not only are they selling all they can
build, there's a years-long waiting list.  You can (at least outside the
Land Of The... uh, what was the question again?) still buy a Caterham
Seven, significantly uprated from the original fragile Chapman design
without losing the lightness, agility and blinding speed that made the
car a legend.  Or, if you don't feel like buying something which is
essentially a modern replicar made by the original manufacturer, there's
TVR, still independent, still making breathtakingly unique cars that
appeal very strongly to certain people -- and not at all to anyone else.

And the folks at TVR (and Morgan, and Caterham) are okay with that. 
They're not as big as Fiat, or VW-Audi, or DaimlerChrysler; heck,
they're probably not even as big as Mastro Subaru-Alfa (plug the
sponsor, Scott, plug the sponsor :-), but they're still selling cars and
still making enough money to pay their workers and buy more sheet
metal.  Perhaps it's the tradition of cottage industry in Britain that
makes it socially acceptable for these companies to remain independent,
small, and focused on what they do best, rather than feeling the
compulsion to diversify into what the rest of the world already does far
better than they could.  Whatever it is, I'm sure that the heads of
Caterham, Morgan and TVR probably don't take it as a personal failure if
someone driving one of their cars waves at them.

It just seems as though all of the world's major car companies, for
whatever reason, are moving in the direction of homogenization, of
adding everybody-else-has-'em comfort and convenience features in an
attempt to appeal to another three-tenths of a percent of the target
market in the mid-range four-door sedan bracket, with the result that
all cars everywhere are more and more alike every year.  No, there's
nothing wrong with wanting the business to grow; besides, it's their
company (for any value of "them" you might select), they can do what
they want with it.  If I held stock in Ford, or General Motors, or
DaimlerChryslerCrosbyStillsSaccoandVanzetti or whatever they're calling
it today, I'd sure as hell want them to go after their "fair share" of
the market.  But there's very little chance I'd trade my stock in on
such a company's products; popularity, standard feature lists, and J.D.
Power satisfaction ratings are the last thing on my mind when it comes
time to buy a car for me.  

Last week, my wife and I saw a commercial for a Web site that lets car
shoppers compare a list of features from several different makes and
models, and then choose the one that offered the best value.

I hit the mute button and turned to my wife, jaw open in mock amazement.

"Do you mean that there are people who make a decision to buy one car
instead of another because of its FEATURES and its RELATIVE VALUE?" I
said, doing my best impersonation of Claude Rains as he shuts down
Humphrey Bogart's gin joint in "Casablanca."  "Are there actually people
who don't care what kind of car they own, as long as it has the most
stuff they want for the least amount of money?  What kind of sick,
twisted reason is THAT for buying a CAR?"

I guess the moral here is that while there are strong business reasons
for companies to treat their cars as a commodity product like a
coffeemaker or a fast switching router or a commercial refrigeration
unit (or to sell to buyers who do, which may be more to the point), some
of us used to be a lot more turned on about buying from companies that
treated their cars, first and foremost, as a source of passion,
self-expression and exhilaration.  And companies that genuinely do that
(as opposed to companies who buy aging marques who once had a reputation
for passion, self-expression and exhilaration, and then slap that
marque's badge on thinly disguised commodity cars in an effort to gull
the public with excitement by proxy) are getting fewer and fewer all the
time.

 --Scott Fisher

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End of alfa-digest V7 #991
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