Friday, July 8, 2005

Back to the future move with Iacocca is puzzling, bold

By Daniel Howes / The Detroit News

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Lido's coming back.

Bob Lutz has been back at General Motors Corp. going on four years.

Harley Earl (or a lame facsimile) came back to tout Buicks (which need all the help they can get) and then receded back into history, where he belongs.

Any truth to the rumor that GM is planning to insert a talking hologram of Alfred P. Sloan into the next Chevy campaign? Perhaps, but it'd better hurry lest Ford Motor Co. gets there first with an electronic revival of Hank the Deuce.

This is vintage Detroit, where nostalgia trumps just about anything else --including embarrassment. The town that put America on wheels is unrivaled when it comes to looking in the rearview mirror while hurtling down a 21st-century highway in pursuit of the competition and "cutting through the clutter."

Evidently offering would-be buyers employee pricing on their next Chrysler, Dodge or Jeep is not enticing enough. They need the visage and inimitable growl of Lee Iacocca -- pitchman extraordinaire, the revered and then reviled former Chrysler Corp. chairman -- in new ads to close the deal.

If the Chrysler Group's cars and trucks were as mediocre as in Iacocca's heyday, I might get it. But they aren't, which is why this back-to-the-future move is as mystifying as it is bold.

About the only things left of the Chrysler that Iacocca left in 1992 and then tried to acquire with his Vegas buddy, Kirk Kerkorian, three years later are some longtime employees, the headquarters building in Auburn Hills and its three brands.

The ownership is German. Chrysler's management philosophy is more disciplined. The products are edgy, a hallmark of Chrysler for decades, but they deliver a solidity and upscale brand promise that the Iacocca era never really could because it mostly didn't have to.

Look, I'll accept (for now) the Chrysler argument that Iacocca's octogenarian aura still resonates out there; that he has a persona; that his salesmanship is world-class; that the ads, co-starring Jason Alexander of "Seinfeld" fame, are "intended to be fun."

But I have a question: Does an automaker like Chrysler, struggling (with some success) to break away from the fierce foreign competition, really want a last-generation auto baron wooing next-generation customers?

Just asking.

And what happened to the resolve in Auburn Hills and Dearborn that both were too smart to succumb to the lowest-common-denominator tactics of GM?

Give the General one month to pump up the volume and the wise men at Chrysler and Ford who claimed to have new perspectives on the tactics pioneered by Iacocca fold like paper dolls.

Proof that this new low in pricing makes any business sense will come when we see the foreigners join the party. Until then, it's just a Detroit thing -- which speaks a different kind of volume.

Daniel Howes' column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached at (313) 222-2106 or at dchowes@detnews.com. Catch him Fridays with Paul W. Smith on NewsTalk 760-WJR.