Confession #46: I can't imagine marketers picking baby names

Opel ADAM. And some jumping people
(General Motors photo)

I won two goldfish from the Monroe School carnival when I was 8. They lived for about a week, but I still named them Bob and Buster – and no, I couldn't tell them apart. I arrived at Bob and Buster because Bob Crown appeared regularly on local TV commercials promoting his dealer, Crown Dodge. Next to him, usually sitting on a Durango or something like that, was his bulldog, Buster. Seriously, those were the best names I could come up with.

Names for living, breathing things are hard. My parents chose my full, legal name by committee. That's why, when I show off my driver's license, people sometimes die of laughter. But why should naming a car be that difficult? It is, because Opel just picked one of the first names in the baby book.

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 #33: Give Saab a chance, but don't hold your breath

2012 Saab 9-3 Independence Edition Convertible (left),
Saab 9-5 SportCombi,Saab 9-3 Griffin SportCombi,
Saab 9-4x and PhoeniX concept car (Saab Automobie AB photo)

Last February, I was pretty elated when Spyker closed the deal to rescue Saab from the crusher of liquidation following an aborted attempt from tiny supercar maker Koenigsegg to buy the fellow Swedish brand from a bankrupt General Motors. I kept looking at my iPhone for news about the deal, occasionally getting death stares from a professor while she was talking about something. I’m not one to text during class, but Saab’s fate was fascinating to me.

The news this Halloween that Saab will be allowed to continue its second reorganization plan now that two Chinese companies you’ve never heard of will buy the carmaker and invest in it hasn’t got me quite so giddy. Pang Da and Youngman aren’t exactly big-time players in the China automotive, not like Volvo’s owner Geely anyway. Pang Da doesn’t actually make cars either; it’s a distribution company. It’s kind of like when Roger Penske’s company tried to buy Saturn, only this time Pang Da’s collaborating 40/60 with Youngman (an auto company) and Saab has its own engineers and plants.

The Chinese firms want to finally give Saab not only a serious distribution arm in their country, but produce three new model lines – including a large crossover and a small 9-1 compact rival to the Mini.

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 #11: Why I envy Dan Neil and his Pulitzer

Almost five years to the day, LA Times columnist Dan Neil ruffled GM's feathers so bad during a review of their "best effort yet" at the time, the Pontiac G6. (That car was coincidentally the last Pontiac made and its efforts did little to turn the now-defunct division around)

Neil returned last week with a review of the polarizing GMC Terrain (here)

GMC Terrain: No bark, no bite, but plenty of fleas - latimes.com

The last thing the LA Times needs is for GM, still one of their biggest advertisers, to suspend their account like they did over the G6 review.