Pink Cadillac

After reading Tuesday's post on the tailgater in the Caddy who tried to run me off the road---or maybe it was just that his car was hungry and wanted to snack on mine---a regular reader of these pages wrote me a confidential email embarrassedly admitting to being a driver of a Cadillac.

That reader thought I was equating driving a Cadillac with being a jerk.  I'm sorry if I gave that impression.  I have no prejudices regarding Caddies or their owners.  There was a study done by a car company a few years ago that showed that drivers of SUVs were on the whole more likely to be selfish morons than drivers of mini-vans, status-seeking showoffs and bullies with little or no social conscience, but I haven't heard of any similar studies about drivers of DeVilles, LaSalles, El Dorados, and Grand Europeans.

Personally, I make no moral judgments about owners of SUVs, although I do believe that driving an SUV marks you as a bad driver until you prove otherwise.  Other studies confirm this---asked why they drive gas guzzling tanks around, SUV owners are likely to reply it's because they are scared out of their wits by other cars on the road.  Frightened drivers are bad drivers, almost as bad as drivers who don't know the meaning of the word fear---who also tend not to know the meanings of the words Speed Limit, School Crossing, Children Playing, Dangerous Curves Ahead, and Bridge Freezes Before Road Surface.

Drivers of Hummers, I think we can all agree, have no souls.

But when I see a Cadillac on the road the only thing I'm likely to think is that the driver is probably retired and spends the winter in Boca Raton.

Once, down in Florida, I was somewhat perplexed to see approaching, coming the wrong way on a one way street, a Cadillac driving itself.  When the Caddy finally reacted to my insistent horn-blowing and stopped bumper to bumper with my car I saw that it wasn't a runaway on auto-pilot.  I saw a tiny pair of liver-spotted hands gripping the steering wheel and some curls of blue-tinted hair just visible over the dashboard.

My Cadillac-driving reader is in the prime of life and, I'm pretty sure, tall enough to see out the windshield.  The Caddy was inherited from a little old relative who drove it only on Sundays to church.

Once upon a time, though, Cadillacs meant something.

They meant money.  Not a lot of money, necessarily, but enough money.  They meant prosperity.  Earned wealth.  Coupon clippers rode around in Lincolns, Rolls Royces, and Mercedes or they drove flashy Italian sports cars.  You bought a Caddy because you had worked for it.  You could afford it, finally, because the business you had spent the last twenty years breaking your back to build was paying off.  You'd made it, at last.

Or, as Joe Dowd writes in a column for the Times-Herald Record about the day his father drove home in a shiny new Caddy, it meant victory.

...in the early '70s...my father became a chief in the FDNY. One day, he rolled home in a brand-new Cadillac Sedan DeVille the size of our living room. It came complete with tape deck and CB radio; its trunk was big enough to host New Year's Eve parties.

The boys in the neighborhood named it "The White Cloud," and with good reason:

From time to time, dad would let me drive his great white beast with its tapered fins, and it felt like I was steering an airplane along the back streets of Long Island. This Caddy sent a message that we had made it, that there's a payoff at the end of 20 years of eating smoke and studying for Civil Service exams.

And looking out that windshield, it wasn't just a hood ornament cutting through the wind. It was a family trophy.

It said: "We win."

Back then, before Reagonomics and Zero Sum Games and Greed is Good and "He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins" bumper stickers, victory didn't necessarily mean defeat for the other guy.  Neighbors could be excited for you when you pulled up with motor purring and chrome flashing and not moved to envy, resentment, and self-loathing, because the symbol of your success was a flag rallying them to hope for their own.  If one of us can make it, people thought, maybe the rest of us can too.

Making it meant surviving the wolf at the door and the forces that would pull you down into poverty, debt, defeat, misery.  Making it meant that a hostile Universe had to work a whole lot harder to take away your comfort and dignity.

I'm not contradicting myself here.  I'm not suggesting people were more generous, bigger-hearted, or in any way better than people are now.  They could be just as covetous and mean-spirited.  It just took a different make of car to inspire their mean-spiritedness and incite them to covet their neighbor's wheels, a different kind of showing-off.

Seeing your neighbors in their new Cadillac told you what you already knew about them, that they were decent, hard-working, honest people who'd earned and deserved to have a nice car finally after years of driving that old clunker held together with duct tape and baling wire.

At least that's the way it was in my neighborhood.  I'm guessing it was that way in Dowd's too.

But Dowd's column wasn't just about the joys of material success as symbolized by owning a Cadillac.

It was about the joys of owning one of the best built and most handsome cars on the road.  You knew the car was the best because it was MADE IN THE USA by General Motors.

And that equation doesn't work anymore.

Dowd's column was inspired by the news that Toyota is about to overtake GM as the number one auto-maker in the world.

This news is depressing for a lot of reasons, and one of the reasons it depresses Dowd is that Toyotas are boring---"mundane, reliable, boxy little road rats."

Dowd owns an Olds 88 these days.  He's proud of it.  He plans on driving it into the ground.   He longs for the return of the days when everybody drove big, beautiful American-made showboats, when a Cadillac meant victory, when it meant "We win."

Dowd doesn't say it, he refuses to admit it, but I suspect he knows.

Nowdays driving an American-made car, even an SUV or a Hummer, doesn't say "We win."

It says "Sucker."

Americans don't build the best cars anymore.

Pardon me.

I shouldn't say that Americans don't build the best cars.

Americans build great cars.

They just build them for Honda, Toyota, and Hyundai.

What I should say is that American corporations don't build great cars anymore.  American corporations don't build the best anything anymore.  In fact, we hardly build anything at all, but what we do build is second and third-rate.

The Europeans and the up and coming Asian countries laugh at our engineering and technology the way we used to laugh at the Russians.

Which makes sense.  I don't know if one caused the other or if both represent the same corruption, but it seems fitting that while we have a national leadership that would have been at home operating out of offices in the Kremlin our machines, devices, and products are as innovative, efficient, and adaptive as those of the old Soviet Union.

Anybody want to buy a nice used Lada?

Great condition.

Vas owned by leettle old lady comrade from Leningrad who drove it only vonce a veek on Mondays to commune.

Comments

[The Viscount]

You've done it again Lance. Planted a seed that is currently germinating.

I have a lot to say about, SUV's, Pickup Trucks, Jesus Fish, and Bumper Stickers.

My job is currently getting in the way, (it has this annoying habit of cropping up and interrupting my thoughts almost every day!) but I hope to find the time soon.

Thanks.

[Charlie Tangora]

Except, apparently, for computer hardware and software. Software's a tougher question, especially in my field (video games) where the Japanese have been happily demolishing us for decades. But there's very little question about hardware - I'll bet you quite a lot that at least half the major chips in the computer you're using now were made by some combination of Integrated Electronics aka Intel (Santa Clara, CA), American Micro Devices (AMD, Sunnyvale, CA), nVidia (Santa Clara again) and possibly Array Technologies Inc. (ATI, Markham, Ontario). If you're using a Mac, International Business Machines in Armonk, NY also had a hand in it.

Sony has a bunch of chip fabs, but their last major attempt at a general-purpose processing machine, the Emotion Engine in the Playstation 2, is strange, wonky (the floating-point unit has flaws that put the Pentium to shame) and widely hated by developers. The Playstation 3 will be built on technology from IBM and nVidia.

I don't think this refutes your point about cars, but there's a question here: Why are Americans (still) so good with computers and so bad at other kinds of engineering?

[Jennifer]

"Why are Americans (still) so good with computers and so bad at other kinds of engineering?"

A really half-assed guess would be that the field of computers needs forward thinking people whereas other fields of engineering seem to draw the "what was good is still good" crowd. Wasn't Demings the production whiz who finally took his ideas to Japan instead of fighting the old school here in the US?

[Exiled in NJ]

And my father hated Cadillacs. Here's 1200 words about tailfins, Zeppelin and Dad.

http://www2.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/612710

[Kevin Wolf]

Another terrific post.

By the time I was old enough to think about cars, the Caddy had become more disreputable. It was considered declasse because no one was buying them new anymore and if you bought one used that meant you were low class - or worse, black. I kid you not.

[Linkmeister]

jennifer, yes. Although he was invited to come to Japan after WW2; he didn't go there from any feeling of frustration with American industry, as far as I know. Many of his quality ideas were in fact adopted by US firms.

[MoXmas]

Historically, it was only a short time ago when American goods were considered quality. I think that's mainly -- if not entirely -- a post WW2 phenomenon. (That said, American steel has almost always been top rate, yet we were happy to get rid of the industry and send it to other countries.)

As a rule, though, America's economic power hasn't been about quality; it's been about cheap. Industrialization. Good enough products, made and sold cheaply. Or maybe not quite good enough products, but made in such quantities that they overwhelmed the competition. (Like the P-51 Mustang. Or the Sherman tank.)

Right now, for example, I'm driving a Ford Probe. You would only expect to get about 150K miles out of a Ford Probe. (I've got 187K on mine, but I'm crazy.) A comparable hatchback from Toyota, I would expect to get 200K miles out of it. But I would also expect to pay a lot more money for the Toyota. Would it even out over the long run? Eh, maybe. But a '93 Ford Probe cost me $3300 in 1999, and a comparable Toyota at the time would have gone for at least $5K, and maybe $8K. Screw that.

[MoXmas]

Let me add, though, that my main car right now is an '85 BMW. In 1985, I would have said anyone who bought a new BMW was a flaming a-hole. In fact, I think that about anyone who would buy an '06 BMW. Yet now that the car is 20 years old, it seems acceptable to me. I have no idea why.

[blue girl]

Lance, this post was dancing through my head today when I was at a client meeting specifically to get the third degree about something a supplier (that I hired) did wrong on a recent project. The supplier was there with me.

There's always a gray area when a client wants a discount because they don't think the job was produced "perfectly."

I know "perfect" is rare, of not impossible -- And I also the know the difference between "perfectly acceptable" and "It's just good enough -- that's my story and I'm sticking to it."

My supplier was trying to "stick to his just good enough excuse" and my blood was boiling. It was an unacceptable job by anyone's standards.

Anyway, I've known this guy a long time -- he actually owns the company -- you would think he'd have pride in a job well done -- and kind of feel bad about being such a shlub, trying to tap dance and weasel his way out of it, like he was doing. I was embarassed for him!

So, we leave the meeting, get down to the lobby -- and I stop him and ask him how -- how could he possibly NOT care about the quality of his work? How could he try to pass off such poor quality as perfectly acceptable?

After his weasely answer -- which basically was, "What difference does it make? It was a rush job. What did they expect? It's not that bad. Nobody will notice...yada. Yada. Yada."

All I could say back to him was, "You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie!"

MoXmas's comment just rang so true to me. Especially..."Good enough products, made and sold cheaply. Or maybe not quite good enough products, but made in such quantities that they overwhelmed the competition."

I don't think you ever make a ton of money by really caring about the quality of the work you do. Do you agree? It sounds so WRONG! But, sadly -- I think it's true.

[Jennifer]

blue girl-

Was he driving a bloated Cadillac?

[Exiled in NJ]

Sing along everyone!

"Cadillac, Cadillac
Long and dark, shiny and black
Open up your engines let ‘em roar
Tearing up the highway like a big old dinosaur."

Then think of Merle Haggard wishing 'a Ford and a Chevy would last ten years as they should.'

[Exiled in NJ]

I should have gone to Yahoo before coming here just a minute ago. Now I see IBM is freezing its Defined Benefit plan come 2008. 'are the good times really over for good.'

[harry near indy]

i second kevin wolf -- when i was a kid, white folks considered the caddy a black (ie, african american) car.

[blue girl]

Jennifer: No, he drives some sort of old generic car -- I wish I could remember what -- but can't right now. When I was in his car last week his engine light was one and when I mentioned it, he laughed and said it has been on for 4 years so there's nothing to worry about (!) -- (which I kind of have to love about someone)

But he is totally a Michael Brown and on my bad side right now and I can and will totally kick his butt tomorrow!

Also, he is a religious right Republican who used to have a moral compass -- and I won't fail to mention that either. Again (!)

I like these Springsteen lyrics:

Now some folks say it’s too big
and uses too much gas

Some folks say it’s too old
and that it goes too fast

But my love is bigger than a honda,
it’s bigger than a subaru

Hey man there’s only one thing
and one car that will do

Anyway we don’t have to drive it
Honey, we can park it out in back
And have a party in your pink cadillac

Yeah, baby!

[ajay]

it seems fitting that while we have a national leadership that would have been at home operating out of offices in the Kremlin our machines, devices, and products are as innovative, efficient, and adaptive as those of the old Soviet Union.

And, like the USSR, the exception is in the military. You had to keep a bucket of sand by your Foton TV set in case it blew up unexpectedly, but the AK-47 was the finest automatic rifle in the world.

[Crispy]

MoXmas, your Probe is a Ford body on a Mazda MX-6 chassis. I had one of those too. The body was junk - everything was broken. But, it started and ran great every day, for 160,000 miles, until a drunk ran a red light and totaled it.

[MoXmas]

Yeah, I know it's got Mazda chassis. Just like the Pontiac Vibe is basically the same car as the Toyota Matrix, just 4 grand cheaper. With a better radio, too, I think.

BTW, sorry if I've been a bit rant-y the past few days. You should see the stuff I cut out about the US military, and the tankers versus the snake eaters.

[Honour Amongst Steves]

For a while there it looked like American cars had struggled back from the abominable quality they had achieved before the 1990s. (My mother-in-law once owned some subcompact with the Pontiac logo on it. It had plastic panels molded to look like stitched leather, but get this -- they were made of translucent purple plastic and were unpainted. The Devil in the details, indeed.)

I remember in 1970 when the first Toyota Coronas were available, for $1900. I remember people saying, "Oh, how cute! The Japanese are building cars, just like us!" No-one's laughing now.