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Save Detroit!

I tend to occasionally have car issues. Unfortunately, every time I consider what the perfect kind of car might be, I realize that the automakers of the world have no idea how to make the kind of car that would be a hit with me. So, as I was thinking about this driving to work last week, I realized that, given sufficient success of this idea (which I think isn't inconceivable), I could totally save Detroit (not completely of course, but some).

Perhaps you're unaware of the current Detroit issue. If so, a bit of background is in order. Detroit is best known for it's previously successful auto industry, which has completely folded since the recession. Since the major auto plants shut down, there's hardly any way to make money in Detroit any more. The unemployment rate in Detroit is the highest in the nation at 28.9% as of last July. Previously, Detroit was the eleventh most populous city in the nation, but I guarantee that isn't the case now. The average listing price of houses in Detroit, from a quick look at Trulia, shows that a mid-to-upper-range house in the Detroit suburban area is $49,000. That's peanuts, and that's actually better than I thought it was. People are fleeing. Michigan is just completely hosed. The Pontiac Silverdome, built for $56,000,000 three decades ago, just now sold for $583,000. That's $7.25 a seat.

This mass exodus from Michigan sets the perfect stage for a James Bond Villian style plan. Think how many airships you could store in a gigantic but deserted football dome. So this is where I come in.

The Volkswagen Beetle

The Beetle, as I'm sure you know, was one of the most prosperous vehicles ever. The original 1960s Beetle had a production run from 1938 until 2003. Holy crap! It's no question that the Beetle was successful. But why?

I don't know if you've ever had the chance to actually look inside a Beetle, but it's really simple. And I don't mean just the interior, I mean the trunk (the front of the car) or the engine hood (the back of the car). It's a super simple car! There's wheels, lights, an engine, a place for people to sit, a steering wheel, and not really much else. Basic basic. I was seriously shocked how minimal the internals of the car were. It makes my manual 1996 Saturn, with its simple onboard car computer, look like an advanced spaceship. When production of the Beetle slowed to just the few remaining Mexican plants, many people bought extra Beetles so they had parts with which to fix their current Beetles.

Not only was the car simple and easy to repair by yourself, the parts were mass produced (so, at the time, readily available), and of high quality. The engine used in the Beetle is one of the most widely used and most versatile engines in the world. People even use the Beetle engine to power small aircraft. Every auto mechanic had parts and knew how to fix the Beetle. It was study, high quality, well known, and everywhere. I'd love to know what cars these days match that description.

Lastly, because of it's ease of construction and simple parts, the Beetle was a pretty cheap vehicle to produce, so the cost of buying one was not very high. It wasn't the fanciest car on the road, but people who wanted fancy bought different cars. For a while, Volkswagen had just cornered the market.

The car I want

So as I said, I drive a 1996 Saturn. It's a nice car, fairly easy to maintain, gets good gas mileage, and is all manual. There is nothing automatic about the car, and I love it. But it's still way too complicated. I recently had to go get a little device that tells me the readouts of the car's onboard computer to figure out which O2 sensor had gone bad or whatever the current thing is. I just want a box on wheels. And not this kind of box; I seriously would be okay with something that had the visual appeal of this box on wheels. I just want to get from A to B, you know?

I looked around, and for the life of me I cannot find a car company that makes a car that has just the bare minimum required to be road worthy. Why not? I know people would buy it. Just build a safe steel frame, put an engine in, a transmission, put some tires on, etc. Who needs all this extra crap? Like, think about what a car needs to get anywhere. I guarantee you won't list most of the things you'll see if you go open your car hood. Air conditioning? That can go. Speaker system? Bring a boombox instead. Automatic tire pressure checking? I'll check my own tire pressure, thanks. In fact, I'll check my own gas and oil levels too. And I still think automatic windows are silly. Okay, so maybe no one would buy the car I want, but that's okay; I'm kind of a Luddite. All those things that aren't really needed to haul your rear around probably can be modular.

Basically, what I'm suggesting is a car that is built out of cheap but rugged commonly-available parts and designed to be the simplest to repair and maintain as possible. That would bring the cost of manufacture and the cost of ownership down. Cheap to manufacture, cheap to own. Easy to fix, easy to run. Quality, highly-available parts, so you get a dependable and rugged car with no frills that gets you from A to B. And by frills I mean things like being able to unlock all the doors to your car at the same time even if you aren't incredibly flexible.

Clearly there would need to be market research to find out the things that people have truly decided they can't live without in a modern car, but am I crazy thinking no one would go for this? I would totally go for this in a heartbeat.

Saving Detroit

For this next section, let's just presume that my car idea can possibly become something like a modern day Beetle.

I was thinking about how I would go to market for something like this, and of course I started thinking about it in terms of a venture-capital-funded startup (hey, the startup industry worked well for Tesla). But then I started thinking, well, crap, I only know a handful of auto mechanics, and I certainly don't know thing one about building a running car plant. Where could I find a bunch of people with skills in the car industry looking for work?

Detroit, obviously. I wouldn't trust any of them as far as I could throw them in regard to actually running the business, but Detroit is hurting so bad right now you could cut tons of deals. Cheap housing for your employees, cheap factories you can buy off the hands of GM, cheap football domes for your airships, tons of cheap labor (the cost of living is just dropping like a rock there).

But, there's a few problems. The great auto people (designers, architects, engineers, etc) have all probably left. You'd have to lure them back. I don't really have a feel for how hard that would be. Second, Michigan is a unionized state. That would have to go (do you think Toyota's employees are unionized? No. Can you think of any unionized automotive companies that aren't getting throttled by the ones who aren't unionized? I can't). The government of Michigan would probably be pretty resistant to changing something like union laws, but I'm sure none of them are really interested in staying with the status quo.

So?

What do you think? Crazy idea? I would buy 5 of this car. If this car even anywhere near approaches the success of the Beetle (which I think was successful for many of the same strengths I would want this car to have), Detroit would be totally revitalized.

I think it's worth pursuing. Maybe after I get off the couch though.