UP FRONT

By Richard Mandel
Editor in Chief

Do You Recall?

Ahh, August. The beginning of the end of summer, the smell of pool chlorine and the tang of SPF 45 mixed with eggs frying on sidewalks, since it’s too hot to cook in the kitchen at 7 am. Already Target has set its Halloween display, and the kids are moaning in the realization that vacation’s nearly over and the textbooks beckon. The horror, the horror.

This is also the time car manufacturers start rolling next year’s model onto showroom floors. The impact of this annual event has been lessened over the last several years, as the Internet has granted preview access to any automotive voyeur with a mouse and a monitor. However, nothing replaces the thrill of sticker shock. How many of us felt interested in Chrysler’s Pacifica that rolled out several months ago, that angular station-wagon-that-wasn’t-a-minivan with Mercedes underpinnings? Now, how many ponied up the 30k skins? (If you did buy one, would you mind coming by the office sometime and taking me out for a ride? You’re probably more polite and less annoying than a dealer rep.)

The real game will start several months after the new model year officially begins, the point when the recalls commence. First will be the minor things — "We found that the driver’s seat may be missing hold-down hardware on these models…." Later come the interesting and frightening ones that entail spontaneous combustion, or automatic transmissions that automatically slip into gear from "park." One example showed up in July in a nationally syndicated automotive Q&A newspaper column. The owner in this case owns a 1999 VW New Beetle with 28,000 miles on the odometer, and a history of having all scheduled maintenance performed at the appropriate times. Now she finds that the car uses a quart of oil every 1,000 miles, a condition the dealership says is normal. The reply to her reads, "My guess is that it’s a manufacturing quality issue. Lots of Beetles and Jettas that we see in the shop burn oil like this. And we’ve gotten letters from owners with the same complaint. It’s just my opinion, but I suspect that VW is well aware of the problem but can’t replace tens of thousands of engines without going bankrupt."

Perhaps there’s a feeling in the corporate office that the buyer is uninformed, and maybe, just maybe there are still some who don’t do the research before they buy. But few people are immune to media reports describing epidemics of trucks with fuel tanks falling out. And there are growing numbers of websites, accessible even from computers in the local library, that provide everything from professional test-drive impressions to the outcries of enraged consumers, gathered around online bulletin boards like villagers preparing to set out to slay the monster, torch in one hand, keyboard in the other.

We aren’t even allowed to repair our cars’ flaws. Look how quickly the car-buying public has come to accept the diminishment of self-service-ability with new cars. Reviews in magazines once addressed how easy or hard it was to change oil — now the consumer is asked to believe a car can go 100,000 miles before requiring service, as if nothing wore while moving under load. Or consider this: once upon a time there was the sealed beam headlight, around which auto front ends were designed. Break a headlamp in a low-speed parking lot collision, you went to the local parts house and bought a replacement that fit Ford, Buick, Plymouth…it was auto-socialism, a state where all were equal. Now glance out in the parking lot today — every car declares individuality with a unique, specially designed headlight cover that will be no less a victim of a common bumper thumper. Have you priced the replacement for that piece of plastic, lately?

I used to wonder why August was the start of selling season for the following year’s model. Now I understand — by December, our biggest wish will be a sheaf of service updates and an itemized recall list in a pear tree.