The Crank did not get his name easily. It didn't come from box tops or by digging through Cracker Jack. No, this particular moniker was hard-earned; a lifetime of grouching isn't for the fainthearted.
He says this so that what follows won't be taken as puffery.
The Crank is bullish on General Motors. Yes, the stock is at a 50 year low. Yes, it is popular and very easy to bash GM's current leadership. But of the three Detroit car companies, GM is the one with the best product line, the best financial resources, the best global distribution, and the strongest commitment to the business.
And the most important part is that product. The Crank has driven almost everything that GM has made in the last 17 years, and there was plenty to wail about. But in the last 2 1/2 years, GM has gone from strength to strength to strength. It started with superior interiors in even the low end cars. It moved onto driving dynamics, build quality, and exterior design. To date, the best statement of the new GM is the Chevrolet Malibu and its cousin, the Saturn Aura. The Malibu, quite simply, is a jaw dropper -- like the ideal prom date, beautiful, well put together, and cheap. It is a car that should be causing sleepless nights across the Pacific and the Atlantic. And it's just an example of what GM can now do. The trick is getting people into the showrooms to see the cars in the first place. Always has been.
Nobody knows what's going to happen to Chrysler, but the morning line has the company in pieces within a very few years. Whether the Dodge brand gets sold to the Chinese or is simply applied to cars made in the Middle Kingdom is irrelevant; in either case, this is not your father's Chrysler. Plymouth is gone and Dodge is for the high jump; that leaves an emasculated Jeep and the Chrysler brand whose equity has been so diluted over the past decade as to be meaningless. Some in Auburn Hills may complain that the company was micromanaged under German occupation, but whoever greenlighted the Caliber, Sebring, and the emasculation of Jeep is probably still in the building. If nothing else, this makes Chrysler guilty of harboring a fugitive from justice.
Ford keeps trying. They keep making appealing products that somehow fail to capture the American imagination. The Crank is an unabashed fan of the way Fords drive, and the current Taurus and Taurus X are remarkably undershopped automobiles. Ford has handled its foreign acquisitions with a maturity and sensitivity that make GM seem positively Neanderthal. While making some product errors, Ford added value to Jaguar and has also done well by Volvo. Their financial condition is sufficiently parlous, though, and their failure to capture the national imagination enduring enough, that if Ford survives as an independent company, it will be thanks to Mazda.
Not only is Mazda engineering the best platforms in the forward line up, it is better positioned than any other major carmaker to weather the era of 4-dollar-a-gallon gasoline. They don't have full-size trucks or sport utes; their smaller cars are interesting rather than simply economical; and even their larger platforms offer a qualitative difference from their competition. Drive a Mazda CX-7 or CX-9 in close proximity to a Honda Pilot or Toyota Highlander and you'll see what I mean. Car or for car, Mazda offers more interesting driving for the dollar. Car buyers can either buy simple or, for the same money, buy interesting. Guess what they prefer?
Over time, the internal combustion engine is doomed. The trick while they’re still around is to put them in appealing packages to give a car buyer or something more than basic transportation without bleeding wallets dry. Mazda does that; GM can too. After that, it's everyone to the lifeboats.
