A large part of the auto industry is outsourced to other parts of the world where production and material costs are cheaper, and while people are busy slamming big companies like Apple for having offshore manufacturing plants, the fact is that majority of businesses are seeking to leverage on the costs savings in the same way.

I am so used to seeing these car commercials and buying into their propaganda to buy cars that I have forgotten about the problems they add to the world. After reading this article, I definitely have a another perspective. However, the american society is too entrenched in the tradition of car ownership that it is hard to change things with an article. More people need to sit up and realize the damage that the automobile industry is doing.

It should also be remembered that, as much as this ad seems to be promoting the iconography of the noble “union worker,” it was these same corporations that destroyed (by ANY means possible - up to and including murder) the labor movement of the 20’s & 30’s. Now they’re using it to sell their deadly-dull cars.

And, speaking of this particular deadly-dull car, they HAD to use the Chrysler 200 in the ad because that is the ONLY Chrysler product assembled in Detroit. Imported from Detroit indeed.

THE ultimate “smell test” for commercials which is incredibly useful is the one expressed in the prophetic book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” Niel Postman REALLY GOT IT RIGHT when he suggests we always ask ourselves this simple question when watching a commercial:

“Is it true?”

But of course, 99.999999999999999999% of the time NOTHING in commercials is true. With regard to this particular piece-of-shit commercial, the rule is incredibly helpful.

Let me see, “when it comes to luxury, it’s as much about where it’s from, as who it’s for”...oh yes, the difference between a living room rug made from textile machines, and those hand made ones produced by slave child labor in India and Pakistan. It is a question of blood quality.
Oh and I almost forgot to blame it on labor. Those no good wage and benefits demanding unions. Everybody knows that the worker only needs a full lunch pail and a dollar a day (and they should be proud of it).
Since television is the genuine oracle, everybody knows that George Washington defeated the British by driving a Dodge Challenger. The automobile I am told, represents personal freedom. Be happy dear ones: slaves should embrace their chains.

Yeah, I’m sure I’m gonna be reallp popular in this forum, but, uh, we ARE a capitalist society. The thing that killed “Detroit” (i.e. - the big three, the motor city, which by the way references the entire southeastern Michigan area, because we are ALL part of the system that builds the cars# was the UAW’s and its constituents’ refusal to accept the reality of globalization, and the need to invest in human capital instead of clinging desperately to the fantasy that, given the same equipment and training, there is something innate in an American that renders his ability to rivet a door hinge superior to that of a Mexican, Japanese, Chinese or Indian worker’s. Your employer is not your daddy. The union representing the auto-workers stiff jawed it’s members into obsolescence. Combine that with a very corrupt government on the city level, and a bipolar commitment to good business practice in the Big Three as well as the state government, and there you have it. Sum it up in one word: entitlement. There was a time around here when you were likely to get a brick thrown through your Toyota’s window, and an edjucated person was regarded as the pejorative “management”. Our industry and locale has basically been run by a bunch of self-indulgent toddlers.

Incidentally, yes, Sterling Heights IS a suburb of Detroit, and NO, that’s NOT a big difference. Chrysler headquarters is in Auburn Hills. What about it? “Detroit”, in this context, refers to the American #Michigan, specifically# based auto industry. And, they DID show the blight. What the hell do you think those factory shots of the rouge river plants were? #Quibble quibble. I’m unmoved.#

That was the POINT. We are no Emerald City. But, we’ve got soul, if that counts for anything. I think this is a great direction. Instead of trying to be all things to all people, we can reinvent ourselves as a brand with history and strength and, yes, CAPITALIZE #huuuh! Gasp!# on our beauty-for ashes, exquisite toughness. Think : Harley vs Honda in the motorcycle niche.

Anyway, peace out, naysayers. If you ever want to come visit Detroit some time, I recommend the Jazz fest in the summer, and going to Cliff Bells. Don’t worry, we won’t hurt you. Grown folks don’t mess around with children.

****************

Underneath, the boys and girls at the department of marketing
in the ministry of truth are surely living up to their reputation of
playing the ‘consumerist’ button, IF this ad sold a bunch of those
black cars in the ad AND promoted that m&m to some loftier
status for his contribution, then it certainly worked.

And interesting poll to take would be who actually likes products
from chrysler and a poll of who actually likes and is influenced
by m&m. Then them in marketing can put all those figures in
their demagogue for demographics to sell more better cars and
music.

Herr goebbels is quaintly smiling down on the future he
contributed in building. Certainly has some warranted reasons
for good or bad about fucking the past and not giving a shit
about the future for whoever may be left.

I followed Chrysler’s promos for electric vehicles, which seemed to be on track until early 2009 - two of which looked much more marketable than anything on the market. When Benz ditched Chrysler there was a total blockade on any news of electric vehicles by Chrysler. Even the trade newsletter EV World had no information.

It is clear to me that the coalition that bailed out the auto industry, UAW, US and Ontario governments failed to use their equity to demand that the most advanced engineering goals be kept moving. Instead the electric engineering crew was disbanded.  It is kind of timid that the only electric program now is a tiny Fiat 500 model that is on the drawing board. This is a bit ironic when you consider the aptly phrased by MK, of the Leni Riefenstahl-eque ambiance of the Superbowl ad. Rollzone is right that a massive emphasis on electrics is what would have justified the grandiosity of the ad.

The most compelling economic projects are those that involve the worker owned co-ops along the Mondragon model. This is where economic democracy has a chance to meet its potential, and would be a quantum leap in business maturity in North America. It is too bad that the public and union benefactors are allowing a pay back of the 2009 loans without a fundamental change in the shareholder equity along the CED (community economic development) social economy model.

FYI - People in Detroit and surrounding areas loved this ad.  So many people, who have never driven, owned or leased an American car love to say they drive an import.  Lets face it cars will be our main mode of transportation for some time to come - electric or gas.  When I heard “When it comes to luxury, it’s as much about where it’s from, as who it’s for.” I thought differently.  Obviously it’s “for” the person looking for a car and it comes “from” a company that knows a lot about making cars.  Do you know where this car is made?  Not Detroit but Sterling Heights (a suburb of Detroit) - big difference eh?

HUBRIS & NEMESIS

lacer: People in the US cannot see that there is a way of life other than ass fixation to one’s driver’s seat and that cars, roads, sprawl is not a part of nature like the sky, the air and the sun.

Well put.

We’ve isolated ourselves into vehicles on four wheels as well as behind PC screens in hour cocoon of a home. We have manged to tightly incarcerate ourselves away from inter-relational society such that direct human contact is minimized.

A good reason to get out and around, shopping, is also being brought into our homes by the Internet. Even work - the unique opportunity to enjoy human contact - has a small but growing tendency to be done at home, either partially or fully.

Sunday morning church services are televised into the home or we can go (in some places) to a large parking lot church and attend them in a car.

Our lives have become a passage through a virtual reality ... and we go through the motions thinking that this is the way life should be because, after all, this is the way we are living it.

It’s the American way, so by definition it is right and proper.

As the Greeks defined a long, long time ago, hubris (excessive pride or presumption) is as hubris does - that is, it leads ultimately to nemesis (decline and downfall),

What did they know about life that humanity has either forgot or never ever learned.

Hold on, tp66, let’s not be too quick to blame the big three. We might for instance, consider our own responsibility in letting all of this happen.

The problem was obviously created by market conditions, but it was exacerbated by our attitude toward our public spaces. There is always more land just beyond the county line, just out of site of the mess we keep making of our collective nest. It is only fair that we recognize our own complicity in our misfortune.

We should all have a look in the mirror when it comes to judging the social behaviors we learned as a result of our consumer-ist lifestyles and the way we govern our public spaces.

BYE, BYE PONTIAC

AS: This is a slap in the face of Chrysler’s workers and, by extension, of America’s. Chrysler and the other Big Three automakers have spent the last few decades aggressively closing down domestic plants and exporting operations—and jobs—overseas to cheaper labor markets.

Yes, that which has happened to Detroit’s Big3 is lamentable. But the above comment borders on rhetoric, because the author posits the consequence without mentioning its cause.

Big3 salaries were hallucinatory both on the shop-floor and in Top Management. All it took for the Automotive House of Cards to come tumbling down was a sufficiently deep recession - which had begun in 2008.

Can Detroit build cars? No doubt, it can. But which cars? It cannot build small cars for which the labor input is a significant cost-component. That is, it can build them - but at the price necessary to recuperate costs (and make no profit), it cannot sell them into the American market.

It must build small cars elsewhere. Ditto for Europe, which sources most of its smaller cars not from China but from India.

Detroit can build the larger mid-size and top-of-the-line cars, which it will continue to do - but let’s not expect any competitive prices with the same models built in lower-cost manufacturing climate.

The US cannot shut the doors to foreign imports, thus giving American-made products a huge advantage. To do so will simply start a tit-for-tat Trade War - the consequences of which, for instance, will be to lock out Boeing’s US made aircraft with GE’s or P&W jet engines.

Explain that to American workers at Boeing, GE and P&W ...

The Game of Global Competition, like it or not, has its rules. Nobody can expect to earn great salaries simply in order to spend the money forever on cheap goods from the Far East. That is not how competitive global markets work.

America, for the longest time, had markets that were like impregnable preserves - due to a combination of factors. For Detroit, it was the ability to put together steel made from iron ore sources not that far away, with labor skills that were channeled through an assembly line (pioneered by Henry Ford himself).

But those days are long gone. In the meantime, with colossal hubris, Detroit kept thinking it could pass on the ever higher cost of producing cars to the American public—all the while losing market share to first the Japanese, then the Koreans and now Japanese-engineered cars manufactured in India.

Who’s at fault for the blindness? Both Detroit Management and Unions. They kept up their little game literally till the roof fell in and everything drastically stopped.

Which was dumber-than-dumb. Because salaries have been reduced in the Big3 companies to those practiced at foreign manufacturing plants in America. And despite the fact that the Big3 are once again building cars that Americans want to buy, it will never gain back the market share it has lost.

America’s part of global car production now stands at 9.3%, the lowest in history. (See production history here.) It will likely continue to degrade.

Bye, bye Pontiac, Plymouth, Mercury ...

mk!i was thinking the exact same things all night. I’m from the D and this commercial makes me want to fight somebody. The images of black servility, the appropriation for corporate geed of our beloved Rivera mural. To hell and back? when did Detroit get back from hell? they just closed like 90n schools this year and lets not even discuss they housing and job markets. And in any event its the Big 3 and their ilk that put Detroit through hell in the first place.

Right on, tp66! I couldn’a said it better!

The Chrysler ad is fatuous and offensive in the extreme. It is all rhetoric no substance. This is the kind of garbage you can say, but never believe. Pure sales talk. Mindless boosterism. Yech!

Since when is “quality” defined as the best imagery, top editing and voice talent and hyperpremium advertising space? In fact, I’d be willing to be that alot of the upclose shots weren’t even shot in Detroit. Certainly the cameras, editing equipment and talent used in the ad had nothing to do with Detroit.

Chrysler should fire the ad agency and creative team that proposed such hogwash, and deep-six the brand manager that approved it.

Shareholders can live anywhere.

  Multi millionaire private owners can, too.

  Most of them probably spend most of their time in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and the wealthiest areas of the world’s largest cities.

  Good luck trying to explain this to the people with the “buy American” and “America, love it or leave it” bumper stickers.

hello again. i am infrequent, from amateur hoser
infiltrators from the millennium agenda, knowledgeable only about their culture, but paid to
influence ours, posting hilarious rebuttals to
comments, that are a waste of time to argue, like
pigs and shit. however, the American way of life is
not to be tread upon. if you equate your freedoms
within a one mile radius of your home, and expect to
live out your world in that little bubble, that’s
your right. my seat behind the wheel from suburbia to
workplace, and driving vacations, and visiting
friends, and shopping where i chose, eating where i
want- requires reliable, affordable transportation:
without price fixing and gouging, defective
manufacture, or a tax payer subsidy or bail out.
petrodollars could have financed the expansion of
Government Motors into Brazil and China markets- but
the American tax payers got to pay for it, while
having electric vehicles pushed further down the
road. we have to buy oil until we pay for Dubai. free
hydrogen energy is abundant in the Detroit area, but
then how will we pay for the sand jockeys’ castles in
the sand? do not tread on my way of life, thinking my
liberties damage your little bubble world, or i need
to sacrifice for you. every American experiences the
freedoms of America behind the wheel of their first
motorized vehicle, and perhaps you should come here
and experience it for yourself. it is a very
responsible privilege that is good for your
character: freedom truly like nowhere else.

I was excited when I saw this article because because I thought it would address one of the most fundamental critiques of our society that is all but ignored except for http://www.kunstler.com.  That’s the Automobile way of life so that entrenched into the infrastructure in the USA.  The salient problem is not that Detroit did not jump on alternative technologies or that the workers got screwed, its that our massive investment in Suburban build out and all of its attendant problems is unsustainable. And not only that, it sucks.  People in the US cannot see that there is a way of life other than ass fixation to one’s driver’s seat and that cars, roads, sprawl is not a part of nature like the sky, the air and the sun.  The thing about the Chrysler ad was that is was one of about 20 Automobile ads.  This tells me more than than anything specific in the Chrysler ad.  If you think the future of America lies with a revived auto industry building cars that run on used french fry oil and other techno fixes, good luck.  I’ll opt for livable, walkable communities and bicycles. And check out James Howard Kunstler at the above link—imo he’s the greatest social critic out there, even better than Chris Hedges and Robert Scheer.

..as for Eminem, in my mind he is forever-linked to his close encounter with Bruno at the 2009 MTV Movie awards.

The Chrysler 200 is a Sebring with a facelift and a fancy sound system, as far as I can see. 
4-cyl, FWD, 30mpg, .053 HP/Weight ratio.  Adequate, but hardly revolutionary.
“All dressed up like a well-kept grave,” as WC Fields once put it.
Wrong car for a “ground-breaking ad,” I doubt Oprah would even give these away. 

Even the slogan is a rehash.
“Imported from Detroit” was the intended breakout battle cry for the Mustang in ‘64. 
Changed at the last moment before its unveiling.

If Chrysler had wanted to make an impact, we’d be seeing an all-new 300hp electric or hybrid Chrysler 300 w/ AWD. 
Something Sinnreich would lust after, secretly, of course.

This add is an insult to anyone who is from Detroit. Here we see a corporation daring to co-opt Diego Rivera and Joe Louis, all to prove that Detroit knows about “luxury”. What does a city that has no money give a d about “luxury”? Its a slap in the face. Couldn’t they have promoted a car for the people? It played on the emotions of really stupid people who, seeing pictures of Detroit said to themselves “wow, thats Detroit!” I’m from Detroit, I am those pictures, and if your going to uses those images, you better tread carefully, which Chrysler didn’t. I’m not so desperate to see Detroit during the Super Bowl that I’m gonna let them get away with this. And lastly I’m black, and I’m more than sick of black choirs being pimped out of the church to give credibility to whoever will pay, its primitivism, its exoticism, its exploitation. Its the 21st century equivalent of happy dancing slaves providing entertainment for a plantation party. See the happy darkies sing!

ardee:

I had bellicose inclinations last night.  No excuse for ad hominem attacks,
you’re right.  But let me explain.

I’m a bit tired of comments like:

“The Big Three needed to turn to foreign markets because their competitors
were based in them, so they had to turn the tides because unpatriotic people
prefer foreign cars,” a la Adam.

or

“when people are proud we are powerful, we are united. we believe in those
“lofty ideals of American greatness”—capital P-Principals—and then have the
foresight and the mental and moral fortitude to actually develop those
“concrete and achievable accomplishments” which the author is so clearly
distinguished and capable enough of knowing yet for some reason unable to
explain here. We all know what hard work that kind of imagining is, we’ll cut
him some slack—he probably had to teach a class,” from the enlightened
Michael.

“Unpatriotic,” really?  “American Greatness and capital P-Principals”, is that a
joke?  To add insult to injury Michael tries to belittle the author by implying,
gasp, he is an intellectual, or worse yet, a professor…
Maybe this foolish pride in the American work ethic and patriotism is what got
us in this mess in the first place.  I won’t deny there is unchecked greed at the
highest levels, but it sure takes a lot of non-thinking selfish twats at the
bottom to pull their weight in a society that kneels at the alter of consumption
(and according to the latest obesity stats, they have more than enough heft to
get the job done).
Please, enough with the sanctimonious American Worker business.  You think
others around the world don’t work hard?  Because Chryslers and Dodges are
such good automobiles, right?  The ad sucks because we can literally see the
desperation of a (state supported) company that can’t compete, pleading with
Americans to buy their shit autos based on the fact that a vile celebrity acts
tough about revitalizing a city that evidently NOBODY cares about.  Or maybe
the message is that we should buy a shit car so that we can support our fellow
Americans when our government chooses not to?  Detroit had a chance to be a
WORLD changer.  All it had to do was embrace change and make products we
wanted.  Who killed the electric car?

hello. to look at this jester’s coiffed appearance, and
notice no hair roll, tattoos, or facial jewelry- the
paradigm of appeal has shifted. the eerie ghoulish skin
tone scares my attention. poor artwork depictions and
convergent themes clouded the message. a wealthy
propagandist living outside the realities of Detroit
believes in nationalistic monopolist empire. love
wealth, not people. what a tool. i challenge him to
bring completely electric vehicles to Detroit.

****************

I didn’t like it but I liked the idea it that it shows m&m as what
he is to his fans and this country. He’ll take the high road and
they take the low road as long as they keep paying him for his
type of whatever it is.

By Michael Redd, February 10 at 3:56 am
“the right to work is good for people.”

Isn’t that part of the point of the article? The “right to work” has effectively been taken away from many Americans by the selfish and greedy leaders of US corporations, who dump their domestic workers like garbage and abandon their domestic plants in favor of cheap labor and low taxes elsewhere.

I won’t speak for all foreign car makers, but what about the German ones like Volkswagen? These cars have long surpassed American cars in terms of safety, quality, and fuel economy. German workers are well paid, well organized, have good health plans and work fewer hours than equivalent American workers.

Several European and Japanese automotive companies have plants here in the USA. They presumably are subject to all the same regulations as our domestic manufacturers, but they seem to be doing fine.

Instead of complaining about emission standards, etc. Our American auto manufacturers should have been pushing for a national health plan and other domestic improvements that would have helped to reduce their costs and make it easier for them to keep their business at home.

Have you been to Europe? If you want to buy a good Ford, buy a European one. For some reason, Ford can make nice models in Europe that compare favorably with German cars. Why isn’t Ford making those cars in Detroit?

thethirdman
Eminem is pushing 40 - no spring chicken

I drive a Ford F-250 and often find myself running down jaywalking lobbyists on Capitol Hill as I survey work around town.

It’s the little things in life which make it worth living.

Will consumers turn out in droves to buy Chrysler because Enimem was paid a shitload of money to shill for them?  I do know he follows in the footsteps of George C Scott and Ricardo Montalban who also cashed in on their celebrity to sell U.S. made Chrysler cars.

Hip Hop is soooo dated. The narcissistic thugish attitude typifies that of the culture which believes in its own magical exceptionalism - with obvious disastrous results.

thethirdman, February 10 at 10:34 am Link to this comment

The first two commenters are a joke.  You guys must both be over 50.  Keep
towing the company line boys.  That American dream is just around the corner

Might have served your reputation better had you actually noted what it was about those comments that you disliked. But no, instead you make suppositions about the authors, whatever, kid .

I didn’t watch the Super Bowl, chose to take advantage of the pretty day here to take a long ride into the Sierras instead. But , curiosity being what it is, I went on line and watched all the ads. Unimpressed with most I confess but liked the Darth Vader VW ad and thought the Eminem ad in question was a good one actually. Just my opinion.

I guess that would be *toeing the line* wouldn’t it?  Too young for those idiomatic
expressions.

The first two commenters are a joke.  You guys must both be over 50.  Keep
towing the company line boys.  That American dream is just around the corner…