Oh man, the car industry really must be in the shitter, because here I am writing about it again and you all know how interesting I find this topic. Interesting or not, today’s industry news frightens the crap out of me and it should cause you to run to the crapper too.

October’s sales have dropped by a whopping 32% over October 2007.

In the last few months, there have been bright spots and here in Canada, there are even a few improvements but south of the border the results are astoundingly poor.

To give you an idea, here are the drops by manufacturer by percentage:

Aston Martin -18.6%
BMW Group -5%
Chrysler LLC -24.5%
Ford -32.0%
General Motors -45.1%
American Honda -25.2%
Hyundai -34.5%
Mazda -25.9%
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A while back, I wrote about the price differential between cars in Canada and the United States. Some of the readers who commented and sent e-mails, couldn’t believe that there was such a drastic difference between dealers who are sometimes even in the next town. There is.

I just came across the following statement by John Chow that hits the nail on the head:
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It has long been considered a known truth that the Traditional Imports build better cars than the Traditional Domestics. To the casual observer, it would seem that the TD’s care less about their end product than the TI’s do. Is that really the case?

Over at AOL Autos this week Christopher Neiger spent some time with an incognito quality engineer who has worked for the TI’s and the TD’s. So what does he think? Do the TD’s care less about their end product? He says both the domestic and import car companies took pride in making quality-built vehicles, but also says there was a difference between the two companies he worked for.
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In last week’s Carnival of Wheels, the semi official pizza wagon guy of The Garage, Kevin told a tale of two garages. Within this tale he brought up the topic of the cash discount. We’ve all heard the bit. “I’ll give you a discount if you can pay by cash.” A little extra bit of discount is always a good thing right? Well, maybe not always.
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The Garage has never really had a place for anything from GM. Over my years in the car hobby and in the car industry, I’ve always felt that GM and their dealer network have had this attitude of invincibility. We are The General. That attitude is perhaps more evident here in Durham region, where one of GM’s top plants is located. That attitude is what has led them to lose their market share.

In the past year or so, I’ve watched GM try to reinvent itself and for the most part I’ve been pretty impressed. They are reaching out to consumers in all sorts of new manners, with a steady stream of new products. I discovered another one of those new methods today. GM now has a video feed site & have opened their feeds up to bloggers to post video. Below is an 18 minute video of Chevy’s launch of the new Volt electric car concept. GM seems intent on showing the consumer their new direction in new ways. Let’s just hope their new products can keep up with those from their competition.

Thats right folks, there is some hefty turmoil here in The Garage these days. No, we aren’t losing the war on sploggers, the trouble is much more real world than that. As anyone in the car industry will tell you, ours is as unpredictable as a fart in a thunderstorm. You never know what curves the industry will throw at you. Some of us switch jobs like underwear, it’s just part of the game. Ownership changes happen on occasion. Every now and then, a manufacturer decides to pull a franchise out from under a perfectly good team for some inexplicable reason.
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How can I get a job in the car industry? That is one of the most frequent questions I’m asked by young people looking to break into a career in the car world. It’s a valid question, for while the car industry is a constant revolving door, it can be tough to get in to that cycle the first time.

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Yesterday, over at The Truth About Cars, Mr. Farago has drawn a line in the sand. Fed up with his writers being berated for favouring Traditional Imports over Traditional domestic, Farago has let his readers know that he will no longer accept comments from those who seek to flame the writers for their opinions. These guys know their stuff and the boss is going to stand behind them. Good for you Farago, your team deserves the support.
Now, it’s time for my 2 cents. Or maybe 10.

Like most car guys, I’ve grown up around the Import vs. domestic battle. When I finally joined the car industry, it made sense that I should work in Chrysler store, because I had grown up in a loyal Chrysler household. When I made the switch to a European import store I began to see the difference between manufacturing philosophies. In my time, I’ve worked for Japanese, American and Swedish dealerships and as a result, I’m often asked for my opinion by friends and family who are researching a new car purchase because I’ve seen the products in action.

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Over at The Truth About Cars the debate rages on about advertising. Does it belong or not? Will it affect the journalistic integrity of the site or it’s writers? Apparently, the TTAC leader, Robert Farago has been deliberating this topic for a very long time. Detractors of advertising point to the drivel that we now read in the monthly print magazines. In fact, TTAC recently had some problems with a major German manufacturer after comparing a Swedish grille to an airborne ham wallet. This when TTAC is not even running any ads.

Blogging is a time consuming activity. If it is undertaken as a hobby and traffic is not a concern, then missing a week or so of posting isn’t an issue. Even as a hobby, blogging takes time. If one cares to put together a professional appearing product, it really becomes a part time job. TTAC is certainly a professional product, put together by a capable team of writers. They deserve to support themselves off of what is obviously more than a hobby.

The beauty of the internet is the fact that a writer can express their opinion without having their magazine moved to the top shelf. When was the last time you saw Motor Trend compare a car to female genitalia? Unfortunately, some of the mainstream marketing people haven’t been able to wrap their heads around the modern media. This worry about political correctness may cost a blog a dollar or two, but a well written blog will draw in other dollars to replace them.

The Garage has become an obsession for me, but that was it’s original intent. Blair Valley Media was formed with the intent of generating enough income for me to quit my job in the retail car industry. Those who earn a living blogging say that you should write about your passion so that you don’t burn out. I took this to heart and The Garage was born as the first Blair Valley blog. With The Garage, the intent was to learn how to generate traffic and then gradually introduce some advertising if we actually did generate a base of readership. The advertising will start appearing over the next couple of weeks here in The Garage, but plans are for the ads to be unobtrusive and automotive related. Will advertisers affect our content? NO. Even once my livelyhood depends on the Blair Valley network, the integrity and flavour of our writing will not change. Is it possible to do this? Of course it is.

Over at TTAC, readers comments have focused on the big guys. Road and Track, Car & Driver, Automobile, Motor Trend. Well, Peter Egan aside, none of the big guys have rowed my boat in years. There is a little Florida based publication called Grassroots Motorsports that truly is a Grassroots car mag. They write about building and racing entry level cars in entry level series. This print mag is written by real car guys & girls for real car guys and girls. They have been so successful over the past couple of decades that they have recently launched a sister mag, Classic Motorsports. These folks have a hell of a lot of fun and continue to stick by their original intent. I think that you might call that having integrity. What does this mean for TTAC or The Garage for that matter? What it means is that you can continue to write what you feel and what your readers have come to expect and still generate the advertising dollars needed to grow your business.

Let’s face it, a well written blog is a part/full time job. To be paid for a job well done is the least that anyone can expect.

Ok, so I know that “they don’t respect my time, so why should I respect theirs”, but there are some things you should know. Due to the nature of the car industry, employees work very long hours. Often service advisors work 11 or 12 hours a day, 5 and sometimes even 6 days a week. Think about it, they are there when you are on the way to work and there when you come home from work.

I know that this is not your problem, but you can make things a bit easier for them. Most of us show up a half hour early to get things rolling to begin the day relaxed. If the sign on the door says “open at 7:30″ and you are impatiently walking around the waiting room or worse, going into the office at 7, you aren’t going to receive the warmest reception. On the other hand, think about the end of the day. Last weekend was our Canada Day & the 4th of July in the States. On Friday, we had told all of our customers that we were closing at 5 so that we could join the traffic to get out of the city to be with our families for the long weekend. One customer said he would be there by 5:30. He actually showed up at 6:15 and then wondered why the lights were off and we weren’t very happy to see him. I know that most people aren’t this inconsiderate, but I just use this example to illustrate that sometimes your own behaviour can dictate the quality of service you receive.

Just a little bit of psych work here. Be considerate of the hard working service advisor’s time and he will be more likely to be considerate of yours.