I’ve never been a car aficionado. My brother seemed to inherit Dad’s Corvette-gene. Not that he would go off and spend big cash on a sports-car or anything, but he did go for a Mustang back when he was single. Me? I’ve owned three cars: a Hyundai Excel, a Saturn SL1, and a Honda Element. I’m not exactly stylin’ and profilin’.
That said, I admit that I once had a certain fondness for the Chrysler Crossfire. I think it’s largely because it looks like a coupe that a Micronaut would drive.
In the last year, I’ve become enamored of the Chrysler 300. I think it’s largely because it looks like something Batman would drive.
At first, I thought the 300 was a car for oldies, but then I noticed younger drivers in them, and started seeing tricked-out (sorry: pimped) models. Personally, the “black rims” thing always struck me as silly-looking, but it was a good indicator that the big-barrel sedan had crossed over. I found that I really liked the car’s lines, and wondered if it might be time to retire the Element of Style.
I was able to talk myself out of buying one because of Chrysler’s corporate ownership. Mercedes-Benz, which acquired (“merged as equals with”) Chrysler in 1998, employed Jewish slave labor during WWII. Around the time of the merger, economist Steve Landsburg wrote a neat article about the implications of “punishing the child for the sins of the father” when it comes to corporations:
Corporations can be punished for misdeeds in at least two ways. One is a consumer boycott and another is a (voluntary or involuntary) fine. Both kinds of punishment have been visited on Daimler-Benz (though arguably at levels that are small compared with the underlying offenses). In the 1980s, the corporation paid about $11 million to the descendants of its slave laborers.
Who exactly suffers from those punishments? You might think the $11 million came from the pockets of those who owned Daimler-Benz stock in the 1980s, but that’s not necessarily the case. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that in 1950 it becomes foreseeable that Daimler-Benz will eventually make reparations. Then every share of Daimler-Benz stock sold between 1950 and 1980 sells at a discount reflecting that expectation. Without the discount, nobody would buy the stock. So given sufficient foresight, the prospect of a 1980 punishment hurts the 1950 owners, even if they sell in the interim. And those who buy stocks after 1950 are not punished at all, because the discount compensates them for the fine.
He makes some interesting arguments in that piece. Lately, I’ve been rethinking my aversion to buying a sorta German car, and not because I wanna zoom around in that 300. It’s more a question of globalization, and the moral lines we draw in the sand. I mean, because I drive a car, I can’t help but prop up Arab dictatorships. That said, I can elect not to do publicity for a country that has a strict anti-Israel policy. But I don’t know how viable it is to protest so selectively.
For instance, my wife drives a Mini Cooper. The parent company is BMW, which makes it problematic for me. My knee-jerk reaction is not to support a German car company.
That said, the car is assembled entirely in the UK, and it seems to me that the British could hold an awful lot of resentment toward Germany. So, does the fact that commerce helps both nations serve to ameliorate some of the ill-feelings from from those nations’ past behavior?
I don’t think I’d ever buy a German-brand car (M-B, BMW, VW), but I can imagine that people whose family served in the Pacific theater consider me a traitor for buying a Honda. Any of you guys have issues about this sorta stuff? Are there nations/nationalities you wouldn’t buy from?
Anyway, all of that is a very roundabout way of posting links to a couple of BusinessWeek articles. The first is about how DaimlerChrysler’s CEO is under siege because of the company’s poor performance (and its avoidance of reality). The other is about Freeman Thomas, the guy who designed the 300. Both stories come with neat slideshows, including shots of two of Thomas’ new vehicles for Ford.
Thomas’ description of the philosophy behind The Interceptor (no comment) probably skewers my exact reason for liking the 300: “This is a car that is at once for the mature car buyer, but for someone who likes to stroke his bad boy side. He wants a grown-up car, but wants to feel fun.”
For the record, I would not ‘stroke my bad boy side’ with a German car.
, in which he checked out the Stasi’s records on him after East Germany’s truth commission made that stuff available. I recall Ash marveling over the sheer volume of reports, and their utter minutiae.