Free Drive by Tim Falconer Page B

never have a small car again,” he said. “As the average age in Canada and the United States creeps up into the mid-forties and beyond, and as people want to keep their mobility, I think we’re actually going to see more elevated vehicles.”
    If he’s right, that’s good news for the domestic automakers, because they have never had much trouble building big cars that appeal to Americans. It’s the other end of the market that seems to confound these companies. Neither Ford nor Chrysler, for instance, makes a subcompact along the lines of increasingly popular (though admittedly less lucrative) models such as the Toyota Yaris, Honda Fit or Hyundai Accent (GM does offer the uninspiring Chevrolet Aveo in this class). The problem for Detroit is that the foreign companies can now also make big cars that Americans want while still being able to make the small cars that, with higher gas prices and greater environmental worries, they will need.
    AMERICANS HAVE A CURIOUS RELATIONSHIP with the past. They’re quick to revel in their history—and yet they’re constantly in search of the next new thing. In the 1950s, people wanted a new car long before their old one broke down, so they bought big, powerful cars and traded them in every few years. Needless to say, Detroit executives were fine with that. “If you bought a Cadillac in this country, it didn’t mean you were going to keep it for ten years. It meant by God when the models changed, the year after next, you were going to buy another one,” said Dressel, which reminded me of the old joke about Caddy owners trading in their rides once the ashtrays were full. “But, boy, in the 1950s in Germany, if you bought a Mercedes, you were scrupulous about the maintenance and you kept it and you kept it and you kept it. Everything about themsaid, ‘We’re doing this so it will last a long time and you can fix it when it breaks.’” The lack of emphasis on quality, durability and reliability would soon come back to haunt the Detroit automakers as the Japanese Big Three became household names in America.
    Toronto Toyota dealer Ken Shaw’s father, who had owned a gas station since 1958, started selling Renaults in 1963. One day, five years after that, Shaw came home from school and his dad showed him a new car.
    â€œWhat’s a Toyota?” wondered the boy.
    â€œRenault is going down and this looks better,” his father told him.
    Today, Shaw praises his late dad for making the switch, but early on it didn’t seem like such a great decision. “In the seventies, it was terrible. I lost friendships over selling friends a Toyota,” he admitted, adding that some of the cars even had trouble starting in the rain. “There was a time when ‘Made in Japan’ was a joke. But in the eighties we moved from poor quality to average quality, and I would say in the last ten or fifteen years we’ve put together a reputation for quality.”
    That reputation has made life a lot better for Shaw, and when I met him he was in a buoyant mood about the cars he sells. During the 1990s, the majority of his business came from repeat customers, and he wasn’t attracting many people away from other brands. But that started changing five or six years ago. Now, more than half of his customers are first-time Toyota buyers. That’s not good news for the Detroit automakers, who’ve disappointed many customers. “How are they going to get them back? Zero percent financing isn’t going to do it forever; cash back isn’t going to do it forever. If you’ve been unhappy with your car and now you’re happy with your Honda, why are you going to go back?” he said. “I’ve never seen anybody pull up to the intersection and say, ‘That’s a nice deal you’re driving.’ It’s the car, it’s the quality and it’s the ownership experience, it’s not