Car guys, and I am one, have some blind spots.  We want more car than we really need or can use, and we think we’re better drivers than we really are.  Those blind spots make us poor judges of what most people want or need and of the cars that the automotive industry should be building in the future. 

The car magazines lead us astray.  Their road tests feature exotic cars:  Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Lotuses and the like.  Those cars are desirable, but they are fantasies.  Their production is only a tiny fraction of total worldwide automobile production.  They are far beyond the means of all but a few of the magazines’ readers.  Their performance is beyond any reasonable requirement for driving on the road. 

The implied standard of comparison in the car magazines is a racing car.  Cars are often rated based on their performance on a race track.  The assumption is that a car that performs well on a race track will be a desirable street car.  

Performance on a race track has very little to do with desirable performance on the street.  First, driving a high-performance car at anything near its potential on ordinary roads is unsafe, dangerous and potentially deadly.  Second, a street car, even an exotic street car, is not a race car, no matter how well it performs.  Racing cars are stiffer, less compliant and lighter than street cars.  They are on racing tires, and their suspensions are adjustable for maximum performance.  Driving a racing car on the street would be a very unsatisfactory experience. 

Many car guys believe that they are good drivers, maybe even as good as a racing driver.  In truth, they are not even close to the capabilities of a racing driver.  If they ever had the opportunity to ride in a racing car on a road racing track with a top-level professional driver, as I have, they would learn that their driving skills are not even remotely comparable to his, even if they drove as fast as they would like to think they can. 

Car guys need to overcome their blind spots and recognize some new realities.  Oil supplies are dwindling and controlled by countries not particularly friendly to the US or other first tier nations.  Gasoline prices are going to increase, probably to something beyond $10.00 per gallon.  Most drivers don’t share the enthusiasts’ performance values or driving habits.  A new kind of automobile is going to be needed.

High performance cars are great fun and ego-gratifying, but the car of the future is not a 600 horsepower car with a zero to sixty time under six seconds.  It is a plug-in, a hybrid, a diesel or a car with a smaller displacement gasoline engine.  In whatever form, it should have fuel efficiency equivalent to gasoline engine mileage exceeding fifty miles per gallon. 

I’m not a tree-hugger.  I’m not against high-performance cars or having fun while driving.  But I believe it’s time for enthusiasts to turn their attention away from ultimate performance and towards fuel efficient solutions.  You don’t need horsepower to have fun.  The 1945 MG TC had less than 55 horsepower.  People thought it was a blast to drive, and it launched a sports car revolution.  A 150 horsepower hybrid could start another revolution today.

Typically when we think of advanced electronics in cars most of us think that the new technology is only in the high-end cars like the Mercedes S-Class. This is changing and Ford Motor Company is pushing the envelope with the new 2010 Taurus.

The 2010 model has added a bundle of nifty electronics for safety that one might expect on much higher end cars. CMOS image sensors provide blind spot detection on both the left and right sides of the vehicle. The mirrors have displays that indicate an object has entered the blind spot.

The car has a rear video camera which displays on the navigation screen in the dash for added safety when parking or backing up.

Voice activation is available for the navigation, phone and music systems. The in-car voice-activated communications system allows you to operate the most popular MP3 players, Bluetooth®-enabled phones and flash drives with simple voice commands. The car also features Sync powered by Microsoft and includes 911 emergency assistance, vehicle health report, real-time traffic conditions, turn-by-turn directions and other information

In report MP101-09, Adaptive Braking:  No Stopping Its Growth, Semico forecasts that semiconductor revenue from adaptive braking systems will grow at a CAGR of just over 100% from 2007-2012 but safety is being taken to the next level with active systems such as adaptive cruise control and collision warning with brake support. Adaptive cruise control is a truly active feature. Activate it and it functions just like normal cruise control — with one exception. When adaptive cruise control sensors detect traffic slowing, your vehicle also slows down. When the sensors detect traffic has cleared, the vehicle resumes the set speed. Collision warning with brake support helps in case an accident appears imminent. This function will alert the driver if it senses an impending collision with the car in front. A “heads-up” display, which simulates brake lights, flashes on the windshield. If you don’t react and a collision is imminent, the brakes will precharge and increase brake assist sensitivity to provide full responsiveness when you brake.

It is these innovations, all based on advanced and innovative semiconductors that will help rebuild the auto market and provide safer and more enjoyable driving experiences.

Jim Feldhan, President
Semico Research Corp.

Gasoline or electric?  Hybrid or plug-in.  Lithium ion or fuel cell?  What will we be driving?  It depends on the supply of oil, the price of gasoline, global warming, battery technology and more; but, whatever the outcome, there’s opportunity for semiconductors. 

Automobile sales are beginning a recovery from a disastrous slump.  Sales will increase more than 3% annually through 2013.  That may not seem very high, but it is a terrific number in the automobile industry, especially after the last year.  It will lead to much higher semiconductor growth opportunities.  For example, the 2008 – 2013 CAGR for hybrid electric vehicle control semiconductor revenue will be 52.8%. 

Semiconductor growth opportunities will occur, in part, because the kinds of automobiles being manufactured are going to change dramatically.  Cars will be smaller, more fuel efficient, and have alternate power plants.  The facts supporting this have become politicized and are hotly disputed; but here are the basics. 

Oil supplies are being depleted.  The price of gasoline will increase to $10.00 per gallon or more in the US within ten years.  Global warming is real; and people are causing it, not some variation in a natural cycle.  Automotive emissions are a major contributing factor. 

Reducing gasoline consumption is a necessity.  Battery-powered vehicles are a promising solution, but increasing gasoline engine fuel economy can be accomplished sooner than battery-powered vehicles can be fully developed.  The necessary technology is well understood, and the engineering costs are less than the engineering costs for improving battery powered vehicles.  It does require life style changes:  smaller cars, smaller engines and less travel for example. 

There are some significant technical and economic problems to overcome before battery-powered vehicles can become the dominant means of transportation. 

• Battery-powered cars are more expensive than gasoline-powered cars, and the time required for reduced fuel costs to equal the added cost is too long. 
• Today’s batteries are too expensive, too heavy, do not provide enough range and use raw materials that are potential environmental hazards or may be in short supply. 
• The infrastructure and generating capacity required for charging battery-powered vehicles, either at home or on the road, is inadequate or nonexistent. 
• Increasing the number of coal-fired electrical plants to provide added generating capacity for battery-powered vehicles may have severe environmental impacts. 

These problems may eventually be solved, but battery-powered cars will be less than 10% of total car sales by 2013.  Further improvements in gasoline engine efficiency will be necessary, and semiconductors will be needed to accomplish those improvements. 

Gasoline engine efficiency has improved through better fuel injection and ignition timing control and can get even better by technologies such as gasoline direct injection; dual clutch transmissions and electrically powered auxiliaries.  Together these can improve gasoline mileage by 15% to 25%.  The thing that these technologies have in common is semiconductor control.  Freescale is already offering a multifunctional ingnition and injector driver for one and two cylinder engines. 

The efficiency of battery powered cars can be improved by better control of the transition between gasoline and electrical power, in hybrid electric vehicles, and by using more efficient power semiconductors in either hybrid electric or plug-in electric vehicles.  Again, semiconductors are the common thread.

There will be numerous automotive semiconductor growth opportunities in the coming years.  The CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) for unit sales of hybrid electric vehicles will exceed 30% from 2008 through 2013.  During the same time period semiconductor revenue associated with the control systems in hybrid vehicles will increase from $58 million to $179 million, a CAGR of more than 25%.  This is well above the overall semiconductor revenue CAGR.  But growth is not  limited to powertrain or control system semiconductors.   There will be growth opportunities in infotainment, in multiplexing, in body electronics and in other areas.  Semico’s automotive studies identify and quantify these opportunities. 

Morry Marshall
VP Strategic Technologies

In July Semico published a blog, “GM should kill the Corvette.  That blog generated a heavy reader response, much of it defending the Corvette and its pushrod technology.  Having read the responses, I still think the Corvette uses highly-developed but archaic technology; but I also believe that the reasons why GM should kill the Corvette have to do with marketing, not technology.

One of the things contributing to GM’s troubles is that its divisions, which had been separate car companies, lost their brand identity.  The GM car you owned, Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick or Cadillac, once made a statement about you that everyone from eight to eighty, male or female, understood.  You wore that identity like a suit of clothes.  That brand identity was destroyed.  

Chevrolet’s mainstream cars became nearly as big and heavy as Cadillacs:  same size engines, same feature sets.   Smaller Chevrolets were badge engineered to sell as Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs, Buicks or Cadillacs,  cheapening those brands.  Executives decided that it would be more economical to make one V-8 for several different divisions.  A Pontiac might actually have a Chevrolet engine; but, in the minds of the decision makers, the Chevrolet engine was just as good as a Pontiac engine would have been.  Who would care? 

 I once told a GM manager, when the Cadillac Cimarron was introduced, that the Cimarron was a terrible car that did not come close to a BMW in any measure.  His response, “Our customers don’t know that.  They’ll buy it because it’s a Cadillac.”  That kind of thinking ruins brands. 

 GM is now down to three passenger car makes.  To survive, it needs to re-establish a brand identity for each make.  Chevrolet: family sedans for working class customers.  Buick:  prestige cars for middle class customers.  Cadillac: world-class cars for wealthy people.  Sadly, the Corvette, as it is today, does not fit that scheme.   A sports car that would help sell family sedans should be a car that a young person could afford to buy as a first car.  It should be stylish, offer enough performance to be fun to drive, and be dead nuts reliable.  When the owner decided to buy a family car, he or she might think.  “Oh yes, that sports car I had was great.  I think I’ll look at a Chevrolet.”  That would draw the right kind of traffic into Chevrolet showrooms. 

Ironically, Honda has announced that it will put a new sports car on the market in February 2010, the Honda CR-Z hybrid.   This car will feature Honda’s Integrated Motor Assist system, combining an electric motor and the 1.3 liter SOHC aluminum powerplant also found in the Honda Insight.  The pictures look great.   It’s a stylish, affordable sports car with an engine from a family sedan.  That’s exactly the kind of sports car I’m talking about. 

In the meantime, reader response to the original blog was that GM should go on building the Corvette; a car that I believe is a high-performance sports car for a niche market, a car that can be driven safely to its full potential only on a race track, a car with highly developed technology that hasn’t advanced for many years.  In spite of that, I actually agree.  There is a place for the Corvette.  but I’m out of space and time.  In a later blog, I’ll discuss that place.

The Corvette is an American icon, the only American car capable of competing with exotic, imported sports carts; but GM should kill it.  The screams of legions of irate Corvette lovers can be heard in the background; but GM should ignore that and kill the Corvette.  One reason is that it uses antiquated technology, developed to perfection but still antiquated.  An example is its pushrod engine, 

With one exception, no other high-performance engine for at least fifty years has been a pushrod engine.  NASCAR, Trans Am or other rules-limited racing series engines don’t count.  The one exception is the Mercedes V-8 that gave Roger Penske his proverbial unfair advantage at the Indianapolis 500. 

In the nineties, in an effort to encourage the use of stock block engines to reduce costs in the Indy 500, USAC gave pushrod engines 48 cubic inches of increased displacement and 10 inches of increased turbocharger boost, acknowledging that DOHC engines had an inherent horsepower advantage. 

Ilmore Engineering, with backing from Mercedes-Benz, saw an opportunity that USAC didn’t anticipate, a purpose-built pushrod-engine that would have a huge advantage.  Al Unser Jr. won the 1994 Indianapolis 500 for Penske Racing with the engine, said to have 200 horsepower more than the DOHC racing engines. 

The catch is that even the Ilmore/Mercedes engine wasn’t really a pushrod engine.  The pushrods were so short that it was effectively an OHC engine.  The engine just exploited a loophole in the rules.  Ilmore knew that real pushrods aren’t the way to build a high-performance engine.  Corvette engineers know that too, even if they’re still perfecting a pushrod engine. 

The fiberglass Corvette body minimizes tooling costs, but using it makes the Corvette a trailing-edge technology body-on-frame car.  Chevrolet engineers have performed miracles to keep the weight of the base 2009 Corvette at only 3,200 pounds.  The frame is a work of art.  But, imagine how much torsional rigidity could be increased and general shake, rattle and roll could be decreased with a modern, semi-monocoque body. 

 Another reason that the Corvette should be killed is that it projects the wrong image for the new GM.  Back in the day, when GM was selling muscle cars, pickup trucks and SUVs with huge V-8s, a brute force sports car with a big pushrod V8 was a perfect image car.  The fact that the Corvette could match the performance of “foreign” cars at a third of the price just by using more cubic inches was a matter of sly satisfaction.   Those times were awesome, but they’re gone.  To survive, GM needs to become more competitive with cars like the Accord or the Camry.  It needs to shift its emphasis to smaller, lighter cars with fuel economy meeting the 2016 CAFE standard, 39 miles per gallon.  Those cars won’t be using big V-8s.  The 2009 Corvette image won’t fit anymore.   Some say that GM should keep the Corvette because it’s profitable, but GM is bankrupt after years of building “profitable” pickup trucks and SUVS and leaving the mainstream passenger car market to others.   None of this means that GM should be building only hybrid electrics and micro-cars five years from now or that there’s no room for high-performance sports cars.  It’s easy to visualize three new sports cars, one for each remaining GM brand, that would be fantastic image builders.  They wouldn’t have big V-8s, but they would be fun, drivers’ cars.   

If GM can’t find the money for tooling to build new, more fuel efficient cars by 2016, including new high-performance sports cars to help create a new image and build showroom traffic, no amount of government bailout money will save it again. 

Morry Marshall
VP Strategic Technologies
602-788-6553

Whoever is making product decisions about Chrysler models in the new Fiat/Chrysler company has a problem they need to fix.

On a recent trip to the Bay Area I drove a rental car, a Chrysler Sebring LX Convertible with a 2.4 liter DOHC four-cylinder engine and a four-speed automatic transmission.  It was underpowered.  It understeered badly on freeway ramps.  The engine and transmission were extremely rough and noisy above 3,000 rpm, which was especially noticeable when accelerating from 40mph to 65mph on the freeway to merge with traffic. 

As I drove around, pondering this, a thought struck me, “Maybe I’m not the driver this car was made for.  Maybe it was made for a driver who doesn’t want acceleration or handling.”   I decided to see what would happen if I drove the car is if I were that kind of driver. 

At the next stop light, I feathered the accelerator pedal, pushing down only about a quarter of an inch.  The car accelerated slowly to 2,500 rpm and then upshifted.  Voila! No noise!  A Mercedes behind me was trying desperately to get past me.   Drivers in the lanes on either side of me passed me, but at least I wasn’t in their way. 

At the second stop light, I accelerated a little harder.  At 3,000 rpm, the noise and roughness began.  3,000 rpm seemed to be a virtual red line.  I held up someone in an American sedan, but the driver considerately waited half a block to go around me. 

At the third stop light, my victim was a 3 Series BMW.  The driver was noticeably agitated and sped past me at the first opportunity.  

The next time I drove around a curve on a freeway ramp, I held the car at the speed posted on the yellow advisory speed sign.  I have always found those speeds to be ridiculously lower than the safe cornering speed.  Not for this car.  It had no understeer at the advisory speed, but it plowed at 5 mph above that speed.  

Is this the kind of driver the Sebring Convertible was made for, someone that never revs the engine past 3,000 RPM and always dodders around corners?  It must be. 

The Sebring LX Convertible is about 500 lbs heavier than an Accord or Camry sedan with the same size engine, one reason for its pokey acceleration.  Granted, some of the increased weight is because it’s a convertible.  A Sebring Sedan, 443 lbs. lighter than the Convertible would be a better comparison; but there are other considerations. 

The 4-cylinder engines in the Accord, the Camry and the Sebring all reach their peak horsepower at 6,000 rpm or above and their peak torque at 4,000 rpm or above.  The Accord and Camry can reach 6,000 rpm smoothly and easily and are quite comfortable at 4,000 rpm.  The Sebring can not.  With a virtual 3,000 rpm red line, imposed by noise and roughness, the Sebring’s actual power to weight ratio is substantially less than the ratio calculated using the peak horsepower at 6,000 rpm.  At 3,000 rpm, it does not have the horsepower or torque needed to provide satisfactory acceleration. 

I don’t know why the Sebring is rough and noisy above 3,000 rpm.  It sounds like the problem is the automatic transmission.  The engine is manufactured by GEMA (Global Engine Manufacturing Alliance LLC), a joint venture of Chrysler Corp., Mitsubishi Motors and Hyundai Motor Company.  Mitsubishi and Hyundai certainly know how to design and manufacture small, smooth, high-revving 4-cylinder engines. 

 Whatever is causing the problems with the Sebring, they need to be solved.  The noise and roughness needs to be eliminated.  The transmission needs to be replaced with a modern six-speed automatic with a six-speed manual as an option.  The suspension needs to be redesigned to provide transient and steady state characteristics on a par with an Accord or a Camry.   The resulting car will sell.  The target market for the present Sebring LX Convertible is small; drivers who want to accelerate and corner slowly.

This turns the automotive industry on its head.  Instead of an automotive manufacturer controlling the dealerships, the dealerships will outsource production.  Is this an unfair advantage? 

Roger Penske is probably the most successful racing team owner in the history of motor racing.  Others, Enzio Ferrari for example, may have won more races; but only Penske parlayed his racing team ownership into a business empire. 

Penske has always looked for a clever solution that would give him an edge.  In SCCA Trans-Am Racing, the rules were that refueling had to be by gravity.  Fuel cans were used, the same kind that NASCAR still uses.  The Penske team put the fuel in a tank on top of a tower twenty feet or so above the track and refueled through a hose to the car.  Refueling was still, “by gravity;” but a twenty foot pressure head made refueling much faster.  There are many other examples of clever Penske solutions, within the rules but sometimes just barely. 

Leon Mandel, an automotive writer, coined a term for this kind of clever thinking, “the unfair advantage.”  In addition to clever thinking, the unfair advantage included hard work and attention to detail; and it didn’t stop at the track. 

There was a time when racing teams, probably a little unpolished, approached potential sponsors hat in hand, begging for support.  Roger Penske, impeccably dressed, approached potential sponsors with a business plan, showing them the value of the exposure they would get.  He brought sponsors and their customers to the track, wining and dining them in hospitality tents or suites, making them feel like a part of the racing team.  This was a fantastic schmoozing opportunity, a value for the sponsor.  It transformed racing, making it the high-dollar sport it is today. 

Roger Penske used the unfair advantage to build Penske Corporation, with four billion dollars in sales annually from automobile dealerships, rental trucks, diesel engines, fleet management and other companies.  Oh yes!  Penske Racing won the Indianapolis 500 again this year. 

Outsourcing is a way of life for racing teams.  Chassis, suspension components, wheels, engines and other parts are manufactured by someone else and then assembled into a racing car.  Penske Corporation has been doing this successfully for a long time.  There is every reason to believe that it will be equally successful outsourcing automobile manufacturing. 

Since the Penske Automotive Group dealerships will control manufacturing, rather than the other way around, the focus should shift to providing the cars that drivers want instead of finance and manufacturing.  It’s a good bet that Saturn, guided by that input rather than GM corporate dictates, will finally be successful. 

Will others follow Penske’s example?  Will some part of the automotive industry shift from giant, vertically-integrated companies to smaller, customer-oriented companies, much more responsible and flexible, with most manufacturing outsourced?  The Tesla Roadster and Fisker Karma are following this path.  Maybe others will also.  . 

In the middle of a financial crisis, automobile makers worldwide are facing an enormous gamble.  While sales and profits are at a low point, they are being forced by events to invest in hybrid electric vehicles that have an unproven demand. 

Taxpayers are angry.  They believe that their tax money is being used to rescue car makers from problems caused by their own bad management.  They want the car companies to become leaner and more efficient; with lower pay, fewer retirement and health benefits for line workers and drastically reduced compensation for top-level executives.  At the same time, politicians and the public are pressing for green solutions.  Unfortunately, developing those solutions will take money, something that is in short supply at auto companies. 

There are several emerging technologies, gasoline direct injection, dual clutch transmissions and electronic valves for example, that together have the potential of improving the efficiency of gasoline engines by 15% to 25%.  The investment needed to incorporate those technologies is much less than the investment needed to develop hybrid electric cars.  The improved gasoline engine cars would be less expensive than hybrid electric cars; and the auto companies would make a profit on them, which may not be achievable for hybrid electric vehicles for five to ten years. 

Since going above four dollars a gallon, gasoline has returned to a little over two dollars a gallon; but most US drivers believe that it’s only a matter of time until higher gas prices return.  Under those circumstances, hybrid electric vehicles are in demand, but previous experience indicates that consumers soon forget their pain.  If gas prices do go up again, investing in hybrid electric technology will have been a good decision.  If gasoline prices instead stay low for a few years and consumers return to their old ways, as they did in the seventies, developing hybrid electric cars might be a very bad investment.  That is the gamble auto makers are being forced to take. 

There is no doubt that hybrid electric or plug-in electric vehicles can eventually reduce gasoline consumption and dependence on imported oil in many countries, but how soon can they be developed profitably.  With most car companies bankrupt, on the verge of bankruptcy or in severe financial difficulty, it is going to be difficult to find engineering dollars.  Investing the few dollars available in better gasoline engine efficiency is a less expensive short-term solution, with quicker results.  Significant investments today in hybrid electric or plug-in electric cars with a very long term ROI would not seem to be a good business decision.  The Chevrolet Volt will not save General Motors. 

Morry Marshall
Director – Strategic Technologies
Semico Research Corp.
602-788-6553

http://www.automotivedesignline.com/guest_blogs/

Picking on US automakers today seems like piling on, but I have a beef.  Why do US companies always seem to be the last companies in the world to adopt new automotive electronic technologies?  There are many examples, but two will suffice.  In the mid nineties it was J1850 for multiplexing.  The world was moving toward the CAN bus, which originated in Europe.  While US auto manufacturers dithered over J1850, the CAN bus became universal.  Today, it is MOST (Media Oriented Systems Transport), an automotive infotainment network.  MOST also originated in Europe, developed by the  MOST Cooperation, which was founded by Audi, BMW, Daimler, Harman/Becker and SMSC, the core partners that now form the MOST steering committee.  The MOST Cooperation now includes 16 car makers and 80 suppliers.   

Semiconductor manufacturers seem to agree that the adoption of new automotive electronic technology generally begins in Europe, moves to Asia, and finally reaches the United States.  There is also general agreement that BMW and Mercedes are the earliest adopters among auto manufacturers.  MOST is following this pattern with its European origin.  It was used first by Audi, BMW and Daimler and was then picked up by Toyota, Hyundai and other Asian manufacturers.  Although several US manufacturers are investigating MOST, the only currently announced application is in a Dodge RAM pickup.   

There is a buzz among some US auto manufacturers about using Firewire (IEE 1394) for automotive infotainment networks.  There is an automotive Firewire standard, (IDB-1394 CCP (Customer Convenience Port), but Firewire is primarily a computer-networking standard not originally designed for automotive applications.  IEEE CCP defines the physical layer but lacks the network management layers needed for a full system implementation.  Firewire has been widely used by Apple and for digital audio and video connections, but it never became a defacto computer standard. It has been touted for longer than MOST has been around, but to date there is not a single implementation in a production automobile.   

MOST was designed from the beginning for operation in noisy automotive environments.  Its synchronous nature makes it easier to manage the electromagnetic compatibility issues found in cars.  It also reduces the overhead needed to transport a given amount of information. This means that it uses almost all of its nominal bandwidth for actual data transfer. Other networks sometimes can use less than half their nominal data rates for continuous data transfers, such as those needed for A/V streams. The transport capability of MOST 150, the newest version of MOST, is comparable to several hundred Mbps on other networks.   

The US is no longer an automotive island.  US companies are often technology leaders.  They have the engineering talent.  But, the time has passed when US auto manufacturers could develop and use only their own standards and ignore the rest of the world.  When standards as good as MOST come along, it’s time to look outward and adopt them to lead in electronic technology rather than lag. 

Morry Marshall
Director – Strategic Technologies
Semico Research Corp.
602-788-6553

Who could have imagined Chrysler Corp. being rescued by Fiat?  When Fiats last appeared in the US automobile market, they were viewed by most US drivers as quirky little cars from Italy with maintenance problems. 

I owned a Fiat 124 Sport Coupe during the late sixties.  For the time, it was a great car.  It had double overhead camshafts, four wheel disc brakes and a five speed transmission; features that few if any American cars had.  The car had a solid rear axle; but, because the axle was well located, that had no effect on the car’s excellent handling capabilities.  The engine would willingly rev well past its 7000 RPM limit if you let it.  I bought it because I wanted a sports car but had a family and needed something bigger.  It met my needs extremely well, but there were problems. 

The exhaust manifold gasket blew out at intervals between 5,000 and 10,000 miles.  The turn signals stopped working with about the same frequency, and then the steering column wiring harness had to be replaced.  The rear disc brake calipers slid on dissimilar materials and stopped working due to corrosion from electrolytic action when the car was driven on salted roads in the winter.  I was into working on cars then, so none of those things mattered to me. 

Most US consumers didn’t take maintenance problems that lightly.  When gas prices fell back after the 1979 crisis, US consumers returned to big cars, pickup trucks and SUVs and became unwilling to put up with maintenance problems in order to have better gas mileage.  The Fiat dealer service network was also a problem.  Finally, Fiat withdrew from the US market in 1984. 

Fiat can bring a lot to Chrysler and visa versa.  Fiat has a terrific small car, the Fiat 500, named after the much beloved in Italy Fiat 500 Topolino that helped Fiat get back into automobile manufacturing after WWII.  Importing the Fiat 500 would give Chrysler a small, fuel efficient entry into a US market that seems to be ready for it.  The established Chrysler dealer network would give Fiat an advantage that it has never had in the US.  But, as with my Fiat, there are problems. 

The new company will need to overcome Fiat’s image.  US consumers are accustomed to cars that are virtually maintenance free.  They will be put off by any perception that a car has potential maintenance problems.  Today, US consumers want better gas mileage; but they have never embraced small cars like the Fiat 500.  Owning a car like the Fiat 500 may convey a message that you are a conscientious person interested in saving the planet; but to many people in the US it also says that you can not afford a real car.  US cars have an aura of affluence and power that has been important to US psyches.  Small European cars do not. 

If the Fiat/Chrysler merger does happen, watching the new company’s progress in the US will be very interesting.  If gas prices go up again, the merger could be a great success.  But, success will require a makeover of the Fiat image in the US and a permanent shift in US consumers’ automotive purchase decision making patterns.