{"id":21247,"date":"2024-07-31T22:46:32","date_gmt":"2024-08-01T02:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/?p=21247"},"modified":"2024-08-01T17:26:21","modified_gmt":"2024-08-01T21:26:21","slug":"hemi-requiem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/hemi-requiem\/","title":{"rendered":"Hemi requiem<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our blog-bud Eric Peters mourns the auto-destruction of a once-noble Detroit marque.<\/p>\n

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The End for Dodge?<\/strong><\/a>
Dodge is looking a little green around the gills all-of-a-sudden. Not just Dodge, either. Parent company Stellantis just posted \u201cworse-than-expected\u201d stats for the first half of this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe company\u2019s performance in the first half of 2024 fell short of our expectations,\u201d CEO Carlos Tavares said in a statement that doesn\u2019t quite convey the extent of just how far those expectations fell short. Stellantis\u2019 operating income fell by 40 percent over the past six months \u2013 and \u201cfree cash flow\u201d stands at \u201cnegative $400 million euros.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps not coincidentally, this jibes with what is no longer available this year in all-but-one Dodge model (the Durango, which is a lingering last-call remnant) and no longer offered in Jeep and Ram truck models that used to offer it.<\/p>\n

That being a V8 and specifically, the Hemi V8 that came to define the brands that no longer offer it.<\/p>\n

Not that there is anything wrong, per se, with the new inline six that has replaced the V8 in the models that used to offer it. As Dodge and Ram and Jeep (Chrysler\u2019s down to one model, a minivan, that never offered a V8) have said, the new inline six makes more power and is more efficient.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

The point is it\u2019s not a V8<\/em> \u2013 and that\u2019s a problem for brands that built their brands around V8s. Dodge especially. It\u2019s analogous to what happened to VW when it stopped selling Beetles with air-cooled flat four engines; VW became more like all the other brands. That makes it harder to retain \u2013 and attract \u2013 buyers who wanted what those other brands didn\u2019t<\/em> offer but VW did<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This brings up a general problem besetting the entire industry, which is beginning to face real consequences for putting compliance rather than customers first. It was one thing for the latter to overlook or put up with being obliged \u2013 assuming they wanted a new vehicle \u2013 to accept seat belts and even air bags, which followed as inevitably as AIDs follows HIV. But what began as minor annoyances \u2013 and relatively trivial cost increases \u2013 has metastasized into a kind of cancer that is killing interest in buying new vehicles, not just those made by Stellantis.<\/p>\n

As of last year \u2013 2023 \u2013 the total number of vehicles sold in the United States had declined by 2 million, down to 15.5 million annually from the peak of 17.5 million in 2016. The figure is arguably more ominously suggestive than at first glance, too \u2013 because the population has increased by at least 10 million since 2016. If adjusted for that, the actual decline is probably closer to 3 million.<\/p>\n

Some of that can be attributed to \u201cthe pandemic,\u201d but that\u2019s now more than two years in the rearview. What\u2019s happened over the past two or three years is that a tipping point has been reached \u2013 and passed. The costs of compliance have driven the average price paid for a new vehicle to nearly $50,000 \u2013 and that was as of last year. It is likely to surge past that, this year.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As CF Lifers know\u2014as Eric himself knows\u2014only too well, Amerika v2.0\u2019s power-drunk central goobermint considers this surfeit of trouble, misfortune, and woe a feature<\/em>, not a bug<\/em>. The carelessly-concealed bottom line here is that our FederalGovCo lords and masters don\u2019t want Serf Class knaves driving any<\/em><\/strong> kind of car whatsoever\u2014not even those feeble, useless, coal-powered Yuppie Puppie play-purties they\u2019ve ordered everyone into, they don\u2019t. Want\/need to go someplace well outside easy walking distance from home, you cavil piteously? Work; grocery\/hardware\/pet supply\/Big Box store; Happy Hour to chillax a while with friends (sorry, my bad, Happy Hour\u2019s been outlawed<\/a>); the kids\u2019 Little League game; hospital\/emergency room\/Doc In A Box\/pharmacy\/dentist\u2019s office; the gym; Gramma\u2019s house, perhaps? Spit on your ass and slide, peasant.<\/p>\n

Y’see, there\u2019s a damned good reason why personal automobiles (and Harleys, natch) have long been hailed as \u201cthe great American freedom machine\u201d\u2014because that is exactly what they are<\/em><\/strong>. Unfortunately, individual freedom of movement\u2014a\/k\/a the freedom to travel as, when, and where one pleases unmonitored and unmolested, empowering one:<\/p>\n