Shaking Up the Giant

The ‘80s were pretty horrid for Detroit’s Big Three. Japanese auto makers control 40% of the California market, and all the Hondas and Toyotas and Nissans on the freeways often make it seem like more than that. “It scares the hell out of me to drive around Los Angeles,” one General Motors marketing executive told Times writer James Risen recently.

But 1990 could be even worse than the ‘80s, because the Japanese keep coming at you. They are competitive tigers, they offer quality products, they never stop innovating. When Japanese managers set up production plants in the Midwest, they hire the very same American workers once blamed for the shoddy quality of American cars, and produce autos of a superior quality that was seemingly impossible under American management. But was it impossible?

Until recently, Detroit seemed not to have a clue to the reasons for the Japanese ascendancy; now the industry has stopped blaming everything on Japanese cultural and economic advantages and discovered that to be competitive you have to really compete. They’re finding that you have to have very good products on line and terrific new ones down the road. Detroit has met the enemy and found that, in part at least, it’s Detroit.

So it can only be a good sign that the Big Three domestic auto makers have set up their own think-tank-type design labs in Southern California. These labs have deliberately been located far away from the monster auto bureaucracies in Michigan and purposely planted in a section of the country noted for its atmosphere of innovation and daring. Will anything of value come out of them?

Well, the GM lab in a remote section of Ventura County recently unveiled a startling, and promising, prototype. It’s an electric car that can outrace some gas-powered cars, an 870-pound vehicle that can get to 75 m.p.h. in 8 seconds, and travel up to 124 miles on one overnight charge of its 32 10-volt batteries.

Is it practical? Will it ever go into production? There are no sure answers yet but no doubt many people are hoping that will happen, if only to avoid ecological meltdown. The market potential for electric-powered cars will depend on many factors, most importantly its impact on electric power capacity and, of course, sticker price. But proposed federal and local clean-air laws are increasingly demanding, and may tilt the market scales toward a new, almost pollution-free product line.

It has been true that Detroit reacts to new realities with all the speed of a backlash of taffy. The industry still has many problems and not enough answers. But the Japanese challenge, despite its devastation of U.S. industry, has had the unintended effect of finally waking the sleeping giant in Detroit.