Catering to California Car Buyers

As Maine goes, politically, so goes the nation.

As Southern California goes, automotively, so goes the national pursuit of our peculiar passions for spry sport utilities, chromed dualies, flirty convertibles and any vehicle that’s just a little brasher, brighter, younger and sportier.

“We will not build a new car or truck without consulting with California,” says Ross Roberts, vice president of Ford Motor Co. He says its citizens are more progressive, less resistant to change and fully in tune with environmental issues. “But the real reason is: Whatever California chooses, the rest of the country will follow. And if California doesn’t like it, we’re not going to do it.”

Despite such devotion, the wheels of California’s car market have been rolling slower of late. Bashed by aerospace layoffs, banged by a wicked recession, reshaped by changing demographics, the state long ago tumbled from its title as the country’s heaviest per capita buyer of cars and light trucks.

Yet typical of their past, Californians continue to reverse the national trend by buying more Honda Accords than Ford Tauruses. And while imports account for 25% of national car sales, the preference for Asian and European cars in Southern California is about 50%.

Historically, while Northern California was choosing to remain aloof from obsessing on automobiles, Southern California was pioneering hot rods, sports-car racing, cup holders, lemon laws, stretch limousines, freeways, cruise nights, auto malls, drive-in commerce from banks to funeral homes, convertible conversions, curb feelers, and world leadership in auto theft and carjackings.

It follows that in the past decade, all the major car builders have opened design studios here.

“We wanted a mixture of European and United States designers living in California and in the environment,” explains Mike Jackson, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Mercedes-Benz of North America.

Here to attend the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show, which continues through this weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Jackson says there is no question California is “the defining market for Mercedes-Benz.”

“If we were to rate California as a separate country among the 160 countries where Mercedes are sold, it would be No. 7,” he says.

We certainly have more freeways, a climate better suited to leisure motoring and a spotty public transit system that has residents of Los Angeles County averaging 2.5 hours a day in their cars.

“This probably is the only city in the world with a cross-town drive of 100 miles,” notes auto industry analyst Jesse Snyder, president of Snyder Research of Moorpark.

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Don Hudler, 39 years with General Motors and president of Saturn Corp., believes that if it hadn’t been for canny Californians moving by the millions to buy inexpensive, economical Japanese imports, General Motors probably wouldn’t have built the inexpensive, economical Saturn.

And but for Southern California’s density, smog, wheezing citizenry and their health and environmental concerns, he says, the only electric vehicles would still be on golf courses.

Leon Kaplan, host of KABC-AM (790) radio’s Sunday motoring program, says we admire cars and coddle cars because we dress for success through cars that we wear. As a statement, as status.

“On the East Coast it is clothes,” he says. “On the West Coast, we buy a sports car as our alligator briefcase.”

We’re a tough audience. Four years ago, without fanfare, without even badges on rolling prototypes, Mercedes shipped examples of its 1996 E-Class sedans to focus groups in Southern California. The handpicked critics were picky and critical.

“So we changed the grille, the front fenders, the side panels at the back,” Jackson remembers. “We pushed the styling into a more emotional direction . . . gave it California’s certain immediacy.”

We’re a well-courted lot. Korean car builders Daewoo Motor Co. Ltd. and Samsung Motor Co. recently purchased Southern California design studios. Neither company sells cars in the United States.

And, of course, we’re trendsetters. Particularly when buying sport utility vehicles. Especially when purchasing Range Rovers, those British-build aristocrats of the snow, sun and money belts.

“Southern Californians live their lifestyle,” reports Bill Baker, spokesman for Land Rover of North America, “and we have conscientiously marketed our vehicle to that lifestyle. To equestrians, to skiers and beach people.”

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As a car dealer for 40 years, Bert Boeckmann, president of Galpin Motors (Ford, Jaguar, Saturn and Lincoln-Mercury) of North Hills, has seen several shifts in Southern California car buying and buyers.

“We’ve gone from the day when a pickup was a workingman’s vehicle to where it is a woman’s vehicle,” he says. “We’ve moved from Volkswagen minivans that didn’t sell well to station wagons people got tired of and back to vans. We’ve gone through performance stages of the mid-’60s, the Cobras and Panteras. The convertible went away and came back.”

In its infancy, in the ‘20s and ‘30s, Hollywood car buyers set Southern California’s exotic automotive pace. Clark Gable drove a Duesenberg; Valentino, an Isotta-Frashini.

After World War II, a westward migration by returning GIs formed a buyer base interested only in the big Buicks and Studebakers it had known before the war. Size and horsepower mattered. At 25 a gallon, gasoline didn’t.

Five years later, says analyst Snyder, America clearly was split into two car centers, one in Southern California, one in Detroit and “both fanatical about cars . . . but different. In Detroit they said: ‘God, I love cars. We make ‘em.’ In California, they said: ‘God, I love cars. We drive ‘em.’ ”

The ‘70s saw another sea change on the Pacific Coast. To indulge their love of driving--or maybe to ease the monotony of freeways--Southern Californians turned to smaller, better handling automobiles. To salve concerns for shriveling resources--the world’s natural and their fiscal--they also demanded gas-stingy vehicles.

“The market out here was so dominated by imports, it really got our attention,” remembers Saturn’s Hudler. “Virtually all of our Saturn styling and market research was done here.”

In those blooming years, reports John Rettie, editorial director of California Report, published by J.D. Power and Associates, the state headed the nation in car sales per thousand residents. It was projected that Californians would eventually buy more than 2 million vehicles annually.

“But we’ve been flat at 1.5 million for 10 years,” Rettie says. “In sales, we’ve dropped [in per capita sales] to about 30th in the United States.”

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One small reason for the plateau is better cars that live longer in this moderate climate. More significant is the loss of 750,000 aerospace jobs in Southern California and the dismal resultant: reduced living standards and buying habits.

Fluctuations in immigrant populations, says Tom Elliott, executive vice president of American Honda, have also changed car industry business curves in California.

California’s mercurial mix, Elliott says, requires constant monitoring. That’s why Honda works with advertising agencies specializing in Asian, Latino and African American media.

It was no accident that General Motors chose Southern California and the Los Angeles Auto Show to introduce its EV1 electric vehicle. For here in sooty California, say GM officials, is where the real need is, where potential buyers lurk and where an electric-vehicle industry is growing.

What they didn’t say is that its electric vehicle won’t work well any place else.

It certainly won’t hit 80 mph in the hills of Vermont or offer a range of 90 miles in the chills of Alaska.

“It won’t do it in Miami because of the heat,” explains Roberts of Ford, “or in the Midwest because of temperature fluctuations.

“The only place an electric car will do what they say is in San Diego County.”