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about what’s coming down the road, they are focused, more than ever, on the present. The advent of the Internet has given them more access than ever before to information about the cars they are interested in. Comparing cars is easier than ever. Such mysteries as leasing, invoice prices and used car values are explained at the stroke of a few keys.
    Rather than listen solely to Detroit, consumers now listen to each other. In an age of data, one of the most important criteria in buying a car is word of mouth. And what customers seem to be telling each other—in person, in e-mail and on the Internet—is that there are better choices than vehicles from Detroit. Satisfied customers have become the best selling tool foreign manufacturers could ever have. And they realize it, which is why they are so completely focused on consumers. No matter what GM, Ford and Chrysler have used in their attempt to fend off foreign competition, consumers’ own resolve has been the one weapon that GM, Ford and Chrysler seem powerless to defend themselves against, for all their years of unquestioned industrial might.

CHAPTER TWO
    A FALLEN COMRADE
    THE DETROIT AUTO SHOW at times brings to mind the May Day military parades that were a perennial feature of the old Soviet Union. The two weeks at the beginning of every January mark the American automobile industry’s time to show off all its prestige and might. In the past, the show has attracted presidents and senators, celebrities, talk-show hosts and every manner of corporate leaders, all drawn by a glittering array of vehicles to the Cobo Convention Center on the banks of the ice-strewn Detroit River. The 2003 show was no exception. Strolling the cavernous hall, it was hard to know where to cast one’s eyes first. “A Proud and Primal Roar,” the
New York Times
headline announced. It seemed to sum it up best. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler had thrust deep into their very core to come up with vehicles that marked the essence of their being as American companies and that represented the message that they wanted their audience to understand: We still have it and don’t you forget it.
    At one end of the show floor was the sprawling GM display, whose highlight was the gleaming Cadillac Sixteen, an expression of the ultimate in late-middle-aged male testosterone. Its proud creator was GM’s vice chairman, Bob Lutz, who at age 71 had outlasted virtually his entire generation of industry executives to end up triumphantly as Detroit’s best-known automotive figure. The Sixteen was only the latest exercise in automotive fantasy that had come to life under Lutz’s direction, and one that he had long wanted to produce.
    Years earlier, Lutz had sketched something that looked very much like the Sixteen on the back of a menu during a dinner at Die Ente Vom Lehel, the elegant restaurant in the Hotel Nassauer Hof in Wiesbaden, Germany, near Frankfurt. At the time, Lutz was the president of Chrysler, which was known for risk taking, spunk and its ability to stretch development dollars farther than any other firm in the industry. The fact that this led to vehicles with subpar quality, and that Chrysler’s success was really based on the popularity of its Jeeps and minivans, was rarely discussed. The sketch was meant to show where Lutz would go if he had the resources to develop his ultimate dream car. It would have been a step beyond the Dodge Viper, the low-slung, sexy two-seater that jump-started Chrysler’s image after its second brush with bankruptcy in the late 1980s.
    Chrysler, in third place among the American companies, did not have the money or the inclination to produce Lutz’s dream car. So he gave away the sketch to a journalist as a souvenir. But GM, where he had been given virtually a free hand since arriving in the late summer of 2001, had the resources and, moreover, the need for such an image-builder. With Lutz in charge of product development, GM wasn’t about to let luxury car