Marginal Utility

by Tom Bozzo

A major curiosity of modern journamalism is the story whose rationale disappears with the slightest bit of research. (It's cousin, the opinion piece arguing X, whose author can be shown to have argued ~X by application of Google, is a major scourge too.) This example does not concern an Important Subject, but I don't really have the stomach this morning for an important one. Scene: Detroit Auto Show. Article: Fraternal Twins in the Showroom. Micheline Maynard, after mentioning that some cars look like they're in the wrong place, writes:

Consider the sporty new Nissan Altima coupe, whose sleek design looks a lot like the Infiniti G35, a car that Nissan’s luxury division sells for thousands of dollars more.

True, the Altima resembles its more expensive sibling. But this neglects the underlying cause: what Americans know as the Infiniti G35 — since we are willing to pay a premium for incomprehensible brand messages, showroom ambiance, and alphanumeric model designations — is sold as the Nissan Skyline in Japan.

But that's not all!

A short walk away is the concept version of a Honda Accord coupe, with crisp, muscular lines and an aggressive stance that would look far more at home across the Cobo center aisle in the display for Acura, Honda’s upscale brand.

Indeed, the forthcoming Accord more nicely steals design cues from Audis and BMWs than the Altima puts on the Skyline/G35, for my money. But if you're paid to go to auto shows by the Paper o' Record, you might note the detail that those Acura sedans are, themselves, based on Honda's midsize car "platform" underlying the Accord (indeed, as I've noted in the archives, the price range of cars based on the platform is enormous), and are due for full model changes along with the Accord.

This also misses a broader trend whereby bread-and-butter family cars have gained amenities that were sybaritic luxuries as recently as the '90s; aping the complicated shapes (due to the application of 3D design tools and new metal-bending methods) of luxury cars is part of this deal. For students of consumption inequality, it's perhaps worth noting the interaction with the development of the ultraluxury car market. When family sedans are faster than sports cars of the early-emissions-control era and warm their drivers' backsides on cold mornings, someone who wants to get ahead in the positional arms race (and has investment banking or hedge fund money burning a hole in his/her pocket) needs race car power and limited semi-bespoke production to keep the riff-raff out.

But back to the point about journamalism. So many people manage encyclopedic knowledge of the car market without compensation that you might expect that actual paid automotive journalists actually would know stuff about cars. (Think of jobs as professional LEGO builders, where the appeal of turning one's hobby into a job brings out top builders, even from highly-compensated conventional professions, in stiff competition for underwhelming pay packages.) On the important subjects, it seems like just dumb luck that there's a Dan Froomkin or David Cay Johnston to offset the Jonathan Weismans and Judith Millers.