Sedans v Spiders

[C M Smith <cmsmith@domain.elided>]

No car company can make decent money selling only spiders and coupes, the 
market just ain't big enough.

Furthermore, since the invention of the unibody, sedans can be made 
lighter, stiffer, and faster than either coupes or spiders (checked out the 
European touring car championships lately? Tried to outrun a Volvo Turbo 
wagon  or a SAAB 9 3 turbo Hatchback no less!?!). The spider cannot compete 
on a power to weight basis because the open top prevents the body from 
being made stiff enough. The coupe has to have almost as much sheet metal 
and glass as a sedan, and because the door openings are bigger than a four 
door, by the time you make them as crashproof (passively that is), they end 
up heavier than the equivalent sedan. Everywhere but North America these 
simple truths are well understood and accepted by the marketplace.

In North America the auto market is so badly distorted by the selective 
safety and emissions regulation, and dominated by two and a half 
manufacturers, that I believe the car market is doomed. People drive 
fantastically heavy, lousy handling, cramped (even the huge Navigator, to 
pick only one absurd example, is stupidly inefficient in space 
utilization), expensive and very unsafe trucks disguised as cars. The very 
few cognoscenti that drive sports machines because they love them are left 
unsupported by the masses of sedan customers that are needed to make the 
sports models economically feasible.

Until the American public truly wake up and protest the gross encroachment 
upon their rights that selective regulation of the auto industry has 
produced, you will be forever stuck in SUV land. Now that Europe has woken 
up to collision regulations and emission controls, all that is keeping 
better cars off your shores is Federal regulation heavily favouring 
vehicles no sane market would ever support anywhere else in the world. And 
we in Canada just follow in your footsteps. Why? Because we are the number 
one exporter to the US car market in units and dollars, so we have a vested 
interest in protecting the manufacture and sale of this crap in North 
America. Poetic justice, we get to drive the same crap. But, at least in 
much of the country, if not for much of the population, a truck actually 
makes sense... that's why I drive SAABs as well as ALFAs!


Michael Smith
Calgary, Alberta
Canada
91 Alfa 164L, White, original owner

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