Confession #39: Grandpa would want more cylinders

Cadillac V8 (Flickr/Hugo 90)

About five years ago, I was standing next to my grandfather watching a commercial for the then-new Cadillac CTS and the announcer was touting its direct injected V6 with 300-something horsepower. My grandfather, long past his driving years but still filled with memories of his '76 Coupe de Ville, turned to me and asked, "Does having a V6 cheapen a Cadillac?"

Grandpa raised a good point. I, raised on turbo fours and preferring condensed European power to the brute force that's long been an American philosophy, thought it was a non-issue at the time. To him, a Cadillac wasn't a Cadillac without eight cylinders. (I wasn't born yet to ask him what he thought of the Cimarron). He never really forgave GM for their downsizing in the '70s and '80s, either. If Grandpa were around today, I wonder what he'd say about the new Cadillac ATS, the 3-series opponent that features two four-cylinders in its engine roster. He'd probably hate it. And, after much thought, I kind of have to agree with him.

Confession #37: The bicker and banter begins just after halftime

If there's one thing the new Chrysler (after an Obama Administration-orchestrated rescue package and Fiat's savior Sergio Marchionne took the wheel) has been able to do, it's start a conversation after a lavish and polished Super Bowl commercial. If there's one bright spot in this absolutely heartbreaking Super Bowl (look to your right to see where I live), it's that some of the car ads this year were genuinely good. That doesn't always happen.

But while Chrysler seemed to steer the talk towards their cars last year after Eminem pulled up in front of the Fox Theater in a Chrysler 200, the discussion is all about Clint Eastwood this year. More specifically, what the veteran actor and director meant when he said in the "Halftime in America" two-minute spot before the Giants squashed the Patriots' lead.

Confession #36: Bueller? Bueller? Bueller's selling a Honda?

Car commercials were always kind of a "who's-who" of famous actors doing voiceovers. Did you know James Spader's been the voice of Acura commercials for years? Jeff Bridges has been lending his to Hyundai ads too. And the voice of Mercedes-Benz? That's Jon Hamm, or, as most people might recognize him, Don Draper from "Mad Men." And Draper's partner on the show Roger Sterling (John Slattery) spent the early part of last year posing in Lincoln ads. 

That's all been topped this Super Bowl season by Ferris Bueller. Err ... Matthew Broderick, as Ferris Bueller, playing Matthew Broderick. It's kind of confusing really. Broderick is the star in a Honda CR-V commercial, but he's acting like his character from the fantastic 1986 film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Only this time, Broderick is a middle-aged actor who plays hooky from work to drive around LA in his CR-V. Is that sad? Well, yes. It is.

Confession #35: Whose Car of the Year is it, anyway?

I remember the holiday season for some notable things. Among them are consuming far too much food that your pants no longer fit, broken Christmas presents littering your living room floor and car commercials that are sillier than normal. Lexus has become synonymous for its “December to Remember” sales event advertisements that prominently showcase a car wrapped in a bow in the driveway as the surprised couple moves in slow motion towards their new RX-GS-IS-or whatever. Corny, I know.

Confession #21: Who wins in the battle between ad dollars and newspaper auto critics?

As a journalist, and one with an admittedly purist mindset, events like Scott Burgess' resignation over The Detroit News' siding with an advertiser's scorn for a car review doesn't sit well with me.

2011 Chrysler 200 Sedan (Chrysler Group LLC photo)

This case in particular seems worse. It's not like a Jeremy Clarkson or even a Dan Neil review, which, while well-written, usually require readers to take many things with a grain of salt. Burgess doesn't have that reputation, and this frank and honest review of the 2011 Chrysler 200, published March 10, was pretty fair. But an advertiser that does business with the paper disagreed, essentially giving editors the choice of a editing the review to remove some unfavorable opinions or losing his ad dollars.

For those out of the loop, the Chrysler 200 is a moderately refreshed version of the Chrysler Sebring, one of the worst products to come out of Chrysler under Daimler's rule and one of the big reasons Chrysler fell on its face during the financial crisis. Under Fiat's stewardship, a renamed version with a new V6, new styling and interior changes has just hit showrooms.

More recognizable to non-auto types, it's the car Eminiem drives in the much-viewed "Imported from Detroit" commercial Chrysler premiered at the Super Bowl.

Confession #20: You can't run on customer loyalty forever

It’s no secret Toyota’s recently been taking its decades-old customer loyalty for granted.

And while company officials and sales figures suggest it’s managed to keep a number of those customers in the fold, could it be only a matter of time before millions of Toyota drivers leave the company?

Bloomberg’s Alan Ohnsman posed the question in a recent article describing the struggle of the Toyota Corolla, the company’s mainstay for the better part of four decades. It long ago passed the Volkswagen Beetle as the most popular nameplate in history, with more than 37 million sold since the 1960s. And, floor mat-accelerator issues aside, it’s remained a byword for durability and reliability.

2011 Toyota Corolla S (Toyota Motor photo)

Toyota’s been throwing those characteristics around in TV ads, with customer testimonials about the number of surviving Corollas in the last 20-or-so years.

But there’s a problem when the best thing a company can say about its product is that it’s durable and reliable. The Corolla’s forever been an example of an automotive appliance, just reliable transportation. And for many years that’s been fine, since that best described the small car class.

Confession #19: Most people my age couldn't care less about cars

I’ve known something was wrong for a few years now. I felt like a car addiction was something to be closeted because people would start squirming away from me.

And if I met “Mad Men’s” Vincent Kartheiser in a bar and started talking to him about turbochargers and Mercedes’ new AMG models, his eyes might roll back into his skull.

This means I wasn’t at all surprised by a recent report suggesting my generation, the Millennials – those born roughly between 1980 and 1995 – have dwindling interest in the car.

For automakers, especially the Detroit Three, this is damning information. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler already lost the Millenials’ parents, the Baby Boomers, to European and Japanese carmakers and that’s where they’ve stayed for the most part.

Confession #10: No Autocar, there isn't one car of the decade

The British motoring publication Autocar is trying to evaluate the Car of the Decade. The latest blogger, Steve Sutcliffe, has it really wrong.

The Bugatti Veyron, as impressive as an engineering feat it is, epitomizes a lot of what went wrong in the 2000s. Yes, it's absolutely amazing that this road-legal car has a 16-cylinder engine, with no less than 10 radiators, and goes 253 miles-per-hour. Every

thing about it is done to the highest standard and frankly I would sell any part of me for a ride in one, let alone the privilege of driving it.

But it's a $1 million car. New. And while it's not like there's one on every corner (unless you live in Dubai), it's not exactly rare or special enough to warrant the price yet. So collectors haven't really embraced it at this point. It's just shocking to grasp the reality that people will actually pay this much for a new car and never realize its full potential.

There are worse offenses of the decade as far as cars go. I notice now that people who in the '90s had Accords, Camrys, and thought a Nissan 300ZX wa

s an exotic plaything for weekends now end 2009 with BMW 3-series and Audi A4s in their driveway, with a Porsche Boxster or BMW Z4 in the garage. It's not like they have any more disposable income than they did 10 years ago, but people have stretched their credit further in order to afford a posh badge.

This phenomenon has done two things. It has cheapened the appeal of premium brands, especially the German ones. That's why Porsche brought us such things as the Cayenne and Panamera. And Audi inflicted the butt-ugly Q7 and BMW brought the aforementioned X6. Other nationalities have had poor offenders, such as Lexus' new HS250h hybrid, which is just a more expensive and less efficient Toyota Prius.
That in turn has narrowed the gap of premium brands in terms of quality and engineering. The Hyundai Genesis, for example, is every bit as good as a Cadillac STS, itself a very competent vehicle competing with the Mercedes E-Class and BMW 5-series. But because it has a cheap badge on it, it's worth 15 grand less.

This brings me to my cars of the decade. There has to be several, maybe 10. The 2000s were just chock-full of new cars and rapidly advancing technology that I really can't narrow it down to a single model.

Confession #7: The Italians are coming

The badge may say Chrysler or Dodge, but in five years the car you rent from Thrifty or Dollar or whatever will be American on the outside and Italian on the inside.

Fiat may own just 20 percent of the Chrysler Group, but it's already going to have a profound effect on the future lineup of the smallest of Detroit's Big Three.

The highlights are this: the brightest points of the Chrysler product line are staying in place. That means Jeeps like the Grand Cherokee and Wrangler, the LX cars (300C, Charger and Challenger) and the minivans (Grand Caravan and Town & Country) aren't going anywhere. In fact, Fiat's rumored to be exploiting them, like their rumored plans to put a future Maserati or Alfa Romeo on the LX chassis and a future JGC-based Alfa SUV (pray that doesn't happen).

But the sore points of Chrysler -- basically everything else -- is going under Fiat rule. That eventually will mean smaller and more fuel-efficient cars with better build quality.

Autocar's Hilton Holloway has a point. There's a reason to be skeptical about the plan because it's going up against what GM and Ford have going in the American market. And now that the General has denied Magna the chance to share custody of Opel, that means the Germans will play more of a role in making sure there are world-competitive in the small car arena.

The only real distinction to Chrysler's new five-year plan is the Fiat 500. The car that made the new Mini look mundane will be saving the bacon of selected Pentastar dealers late next year and could prove to boost sales traffic like the British icon did to BMW centers. If anything, it could suddenly attract a whole new market to Chrysler dealers and maybe some more people will consider products such as Jeeps again.

Frankly, I still have a secret admiration for some Chrysler cars, like the Challenger and Jeeps, and a respect for more mainstream ones like the Charger and minivans. But there's no cachet to the Chrysler or Dodge brands that will make me lose my affection for Subaru, VW, or anything else European for that matter. If Fiat can't do what Daimler ultimately refused to do, there won't be anything left of Chrysler.