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Krome On Cars

By Charles Krome

When I first saw Chrysler's recently announced product plan, I have to say it looked like the company's road to potential success would be a long one — as in three to five years long. After all, that's the amount of time it's going to take before Chrysler has a complete, Fiat-approved lineup in place, and that's a lifetime or two in the auto industry.

But it turns out that Chrysler has a bit of a secret weapon on hand. In fact, if ever a new product were poised to attract American buyers and get them buzzing about Chrysler, it would have to be this one: live TV.

By the end of the year, the company will be offering a system that can feed up to 20 channels of television programming to the DVD screens of its cars, trucks and crossovers. Yes, other aftermarket companies have tried this before, but they've relied on unwieldy and expensive satellite dishes. Chrysler will do the trick with an unobtrusive antenna and a $629 price tag (installation will be extra).

Now, I strongly believe we'll be seeing renewed interest in the minivan segment in the near future for two key reasons: First, some of the people who started buying full-size SUVs as family haulers will begin coming back to minivans — instead of crossovers — now that interest in trucks is shrinking. Second, the segment is long overdue for a breakthrough product that will kickoff the world of minivan 2.0. As I've mentioned before, the segment has been pretty stale for a while, and something like a crossover minivan or one with a hybrid powertrain could be a big winner in the U.S.

Coincidentally, the Chrysler Town & Country and Dodge Grand Caravan are due to get big-time mid-cycle enhancements next year, and — although this is sheer speculation on my part — a hybrid T & C with live TV, from the original minivan company, strikes me as a simple and logical way for Chrysler to find success before 2012.

And speaking of technology, Ford has just announced it will bring inflatable seat belts to market on the 2011 Ford Explorer. The belts were developed to help protect rear-seat passengers, who don't benefit from the same comprehensive airbag force field that currently shields those in the front seats.

The news will help further strengthen Ford's safety positioning and be an important differentiator for the new Explorer. This is important, because Ford's full-size SUV will be dropping its body-on-frame "real truck" design for that 2011 model. Some pundits will certainly point to this move as important on its own, but the fact of the matter is that Ford will be following in the footsteps of General Motors and its full-size crossover fleet (Chevrolet Traverse, Buick Enclave and GMC Acadia).

The crossover crusade could also very well continue with a new addition at Porsche. Okay, I know the company is only a bit player in the U.S. market sales-wise, but as a long-time Porsche slappy I can't help paying attention to its plans — even when they include a Volkswagen-driven expansion that could see some seven new models introduced by 2013, along with further dilution of the brand.

I mean, I don't want to go all "Porsche — There is no substitute" here, but I can't see how the next-gen Porsche Cayenne, a smaller SUV based on the Audi Q5 and a hybrid Porsche Panamera will do much for the automaker's reputation, or even for its bottom line.

The danger is that Porsche will head down the same path as BMW, which is struggling mightily to reincarnate itself as a full-line automaker. But the thing that folks at BMW and VW don't seem to understand is that excellent products are now just the price of admission in the industry. That is, they're necessary, but not sufficient, for sales success.

For that, you've also got to either cater to your target audience's perceptions or spend billions to change them.

And that's why I'm thinking there will be a lot more people watching new Porsche commercials from the warmth of their Chrysler minivans than there will be people actually buying those Porsches.

Select photos via Chrysler and Ford

See, I was originally going to call this column "October Auto Sales: The Losers," as a counterpart to yesterday's "The Winners," but I thought that was too depressing. And now that the auto industry is finally, finally, really, seriously turning around (hopefully), I want to avoid connecting "depressing" with any bit of it.

Take the situation over at Toyota. Yes, the division itself saw October sales fall a bit compared to the same month last year: down 2.32 percent, to be exact. And yes, the company's financial problems have led it to pull out of Formula 1 racing, a decision that Toyota, anyway, views as humiliating. But even though the world's No. 1 automotive OEM seems on the brink of pulling a complete General Motors, it's at least battling back with an aggressiveness always missing from the old GM.

The recent news that Toyota will look to trim its efforts in the full-size/body-on-frame truck segments, although on the face another defeat, can actually be viewed as a decision to stop throwing good money after bad, especially in segments that aren't likely to see much future growth. And the same can be said about the Formula 1 situation. The U.S. is Toyota's top market, and while the racing series gets at least the same amount of buzz overseas as NASCAR gets here, American interest in F1 has been on a steady downward slide ever since Mario Andretti stopped driving for Lotus.

As a result, the billions Toyota will now save from these two decisions can be used to further improve vehicles like the Toyota Camry, Toyota Corolla, Toyota RAV4 and Toyota Prius, all still among the top 20 sellers in the American market in October.

Honda is also doing well by some measures, putting three vehicles on the top-20 list despite October sales that were essentially flat. Those products were the Honda Accord (up 17.3 percent), Honda Civic (down 14.6 percent) and Honda CR-V (up 19 percent). Again, it's worth noting that the Accord and CR-V, like the Prius and RAV4, are in two of the best-performing segments, mid-size cars and crossovers. Further, Honda has already gone through the kind of big-time cost cutting that Toyota is now dealing with, previously eliminating, for example, its plans to replace the Acura NSX supercar and as well as its V-10 engine program, and also pulling out of Formula 1 at the end of 2008.

The other brands that saw negative October sales results are a bit of a mixed bag. Mazda figures were down by 8.4 percent, with the new Mazda3 up more than 10 percent and the company's primary crossover, the Mazda CX-7, also in the black. On the other hand, demand for its recently redesigned mid-size sedan, the Mazda MAZDA6, was down, as were purchases of the Mazda MAZDA5 mini-minivan.

Things were worse at BMW, with the company notching an 18.6 percent October sales fall. The Bavarians are on an incredible product- and technology-building drive, pumping out an ever-growing number of new models sporting an ever-growing choice of powertrains. But the company's relatively high sticker prices and, shall we say, "polarizing" design choices simply aren't translating into the sales needed to support BMW's plans.

And that really covers all the major manufacturers — except for Chrysler. Fiat's American division saw October sales plummet 30.3 percent, with Dodge falling 22.2 percent, Chrysler proper off 35.6 percent and Jeep seeing a 36.8 percent sales decline. Every model was down except for the Dodge Avenger (up 13 percent) and the Dodge Grand Caravan (up 8 percent).

Now, following Chrysler's recent marathon media presentation, detailing the company's "official" future product plans, I'm thinking these kinds of numbers won't be changing significantly until at least 2011, which is when some of the new Fiat-influenced products will begin having an impact on the market. Until then, the best Chrysler can likely hope for is to establish a plateau — even if it's at October numbers — and then hang on for dear life.

The other big news to come from October has to do with the product mix. Breaking sales down by segment, the "Wall Street Journal" is indicating that only three segments saw sales increases. As one would guess, sales of both crossovers and mid-size cars were up, the former by 19.2 percent and the latter by 9.6 percent.

To me, this is further evidence of shifting customer tastes, showing buyers moving into relatively more fuel-efficient segments, even if it has become that the majority of them aren't ready for truly smaller products like those from MINI (which reported a nearly 21 percent sales drop in October) or Smart (which saw sales crater to the tune of more than 70 percent).

Oh, wait a minute. The data also show that the top segment for October, in terms of year-over-year sales numbers, happened to be large SUVs, up 39.6 percent last month.

Frankly, I can't tell if that means we ended the month with a treat or a trick.