The Babuk Report

Category: Automobile Design

Navigating around a 1970 Buick LeSabre

The LeSabre is watching me…

At the gym today, the only parking spot available for my 1977 Mini Clubman Estate was next to a 1970 Buick LeSabre four door Sport Sedan. I was dwarfed! Still there as I was leaving, I couldn’t even see around it when pulling out. My thought was “…gee, am I glad that this isn’t a Buick Electra, which was even bigger…”

…just try driving around this in a Mini…

Driving away on North Avenue, what happened to be a couple cars ahead in the next lane but a bright blue 1964 Buick Electra convertible. Absolutely enormous. But, no-one was turning heads to look at it – everyone was turning to look at my Mini !

David and Goliath, er… rather, Benny and the LeSabre

The Electra finally turned off of North Avenue onto a side street. People still kept pulling up alongside my Mini, asking questions and ask questions like – is it legal to have the steering wheel on that side?…

August 9, 2009
Cars with Lots of Real Estate

A friend wrote in reply of my 4 July 2009 post “Big People. Little Cars. Tiny Houses. The Scale of our Neighbourhoods”, which spoke of our neighbourhoods being sized around our mode of personal transportation which, in modern day North America, tends to be our cars. To quote Alex:

“There are a couple of arguments against the move to smaller-more-sustainable automobiles in particular. I’ll coin it “larger-and-more-survivable”.

Not that I have anything against the cute and vulnerable Cooper Mini nor it’s reincarnation, the 21^st Century BMW Mini, it’s just that with the striking deterioration of our public highways, a larger vehicle with adequate ground clearance is soon to become an advantage. By the way, it strikes me that the sudden downfall of public infrastructure is very much mirrored by the downfall of print media. I have a hard time seeing my younger nephews and nieces with their passels of kinder and requisite accoutrements actually fitting into the current generation of mini-vehicles. Indeed, with three or more small children in a vehicle, your old Mini Clubman just couldn’t hold the child seats, let alone the toys, diaper bags, etc that – at least – the younger generation of my family is saddled with. I don’t think that your Mini could even hold an SUV – Stroller Utility Vehicle!”

I’ve always maintained that we design our neighbourhoods around our cars. More succinctly, we design our neighbourhoods around the prevalent mode of personal transportation. We always have – for the longest of times, that mode was on foot – walking. Not until the Machine Age / Post Machine Age has transportation become so notable in our neighbourhoods, because the type of transportation we’ve invented is so different than what we as humans are capable of on our own.

The type of neighbourhood that I live in was built around people walking to a rapid transit or commuter train station, so the buildings and landscape look the way they do to reflect this. Since then and quite suddenly, we’ve built entire cities around the automobile – the prevalent method of personal transportation currently used in North America. Not only would it be difficult to “retrofit” an automobile neighbourhood to be function “walkably”, but trying to get around one of these automobile neighbourhoods by another method becomes challenging, if not dangerous. I know of someone who drives a perfectly restored 1969 Fiat 500 with a bumper sticker that reads “…my other car is a race car…”; he drives it on the expressways of Chicago fearlessly, leaving everyone breathless. The rest of us could never achieve this talent without intense professional training!

So becomes the quandary of dodging potholes and 18 wheelers at high speeds. Part of the format of automobile oriented development is to have an abundance of supply of transportation routes. Abundant infrastructure becomes very expensive to maintain properly.

Personal. mobile spaces within a larger, very public space, both quite flambouyant – "Superdawg", Chicago IL

Now, I do have this thing about the automobile and its allure. As architecture, automobiles are highly sculptural, display the personality and identity of their owners. Automobiles are not just personal spaces with their own environmental hierarchies and transitions, but they are personal space that moves, taking its occupants from place to place while experiencing the space within, and the spaces outside – in motion, in sequence no less. It’s a very contemporary, Machine Age experience – quite exhilarating, since it removes mankind from the need to have ties to the earth.

Although Frank Lloyd Wright was apparently an automobile enthusiast. Oddly, this notion of automobile as architecture goes against his philosophy of architecture being part of the earth. Two very exciting, diametrically opposed concepts.

July 27, 2009
Deux journées de folie en compagnie de Darrel Babuk

session du 8 au 9 septembre 2006

In English: some time ago, I was recommended to Christophe Loustau, Recipient of the prestgious Richard Morris Hunt Fellowship. Christophe’s research project was to document the original New York City – San Francisco transcontinental railway across the United States. I did an amalgamation of many of my usual railway & architectural history presentations. One of those sites was Riverside, Illinois, one of the first – and currently best preserved – transit oriented development, or classic American suburbs, in existence. On the way to Riverside, we happened to stumble across the Route 66 Car Show in Berwyn, Illinois. Christophe politely asked if we could stop to take a look, I think that he underwent a form of culture shock. An entry from Christophe’s journal follows. Maintenant, en Français:

J’ai rencontré à Chicago une véritable personnalité, architecte et passionné de gares. Darrel est d’origine canadienne, où il a grandi dans une gare avec sa famille, son père était opérateur télégraphiste. Notre rencontre c’est faite un vendredi en début d’après-midi. Nous devions nous rencontrer pour un café avant de se revoir le lendemain pour parcourir la ville sur différents sujets tournant autour des gares. Mais le café, c’est très rapidement transformé en road trip dans sa superbe Chevrolet Corvair bleu turquoise de 1966. A l’intérieur, des tapis blancs à petits pois noirs donnent un effet rétro.

Nous sommes parti vers la banlieue de Chicago pour flâner autour de Oak Park et pour voir les différentes maisons de Frank Lloyd Wright tout en discutant. C’est impressionnant de voir l’effet que peuvent produire de simples maisons que l’ont a étudiées, vues dans des livres et de se retrouver là, en face d’elles. Il faut dire que cet architecte est le plus célèbre des Etats-Unis. Son architecture est tout simplement remarquable. Le soir, la pause café à continuer en dîner avec Darrel et sa femme dans un très agréable restaurant.

Le lendemain, nous sommes partis à nouveau à l’assaut de Chicago au volant de sa superbe américaine. Nous avons traversé de long en large tous les endroits les plus intéressants pour mon étude. C’est formidable de rencontrer quelqu’un passionné par un sujet et prêt à vous le faire partager. En chemin, une autre surprise nous attendait sur la célèbre route 66. Une manifestation de voitures américaines anciennes était organisée. Nous nous sommes arrêtées une petite heure pour voir toutes ces magnifiques voitures avec leurs lignes extravagantes, leurs intérieures grands luxes et leurs chromes étincelants. Quelques unes sont de véritables cultes à la culture des années 60 et 70. La célèbre expression “mettez un tigre dans votre moteur” était mise en scène ainsi que le plateau repas haut en couleurs des drive-in.

More of Christophe Loustau’s journal may be seen at http://www.christopheloustau.com

July 9, 2009
Big People. Little Cars. Tiny Houses. The Scale of our Neighbourhoods

It was an odd conversation over the July Fourth barbeque. One side started talking about the increasing waistlines of various people. The other side was talking about my Mini, and their new-found interest in Microcars. Then – like a flyswatter hitting a mosquito – the two groups found out about each other. A sort of reverse serendipity in a way.

For some years, I’ve been promoting the virtues of smaller houses, and expounding on my theory of how we’ve designed our neighbourhoods around cars, and that the size of our cars has directly influenced the size of our houses.

A building with people, built to the scale of jetliners

Think of an airport terminal, and how gates need to be spaced far enough apart to allow adequate space between airplanes, and enough internal space to accommodate enplaning and deplaning passengers and supporting areas. Same kind of idea.

1957 Chrysler 300

There is fresh, new interest in smaller houses, as I predicted in “The Rise and fall of the McMansion and other Midwestern Housing Trends”. The most notable example of interest in market driven, small houses – like the line of Katrina Cottages marketed by Lowe’s Home Centers.

1972 Fiat 500L

While this change was driven for reasons other than our taste in automobiles, it’s ironic that this is just in time for Chrysler – formerly known for very large cars – to become part of Fiat – known for very small cars.

Land uses and traffic along the Chicago River

During the age of canal building, substantial monetary capital was invested into building canals. Land along the canals – a manmade feature – became very valuable because of the uses one could put beside this new transportation artery. This concept was magnified with the advent of railroads and became known as “frontage”. Build the largest building possible on the smallest of frontage, for economy and efficiency’s sake. This concept was extended to a hierarchy of roadways, and gave rise to “skyscrapers”. Not every land use wants to be in a neighbourhood of tall, closely built buildings. Dwellings – where people live – need sunlight, and a connection to land.

The type of transportation used between places defines the physical area covered by a neighbourhood of places.

A “mews” or backstreet, in London

Walking between places usually led to places located within a half mile or a kilometer of each other. These neighbourhoods are more apt to have a variety of services on a smaller scale, built closer together. Think of how many groceries one could carry while walking – this may define how many grocery stores one could find within the radius, while that radius area needs a certain population density to support these stores. At one point in history, to support a walkable economy, grocery type items were sold in “general stores” – increasing product lines to allow financial viability. And likewise, to maintain this density, dwellings were closer together. In Chicago, we have “bookend” neighbourhoods – blocks of single family houses that are terminated with walk up flats.

An unknown regional mall in an unknown city

Personal, mechanized transportation – the automobile – exaggerated this notion to an extreme; in doing so, this scale of neighbourhood – the scale of the automobile – dedicated the most amount of land necessary for transportation uses while increasing the area of our neighbourhoods. One won’t bat an eyebrow to travel more than a mile to shop at a store where one could purchase an entire week’s worth of groceries. In dispersing the apparent neighbourhood so sparsely over such a great area, the social fabric unwinds. People become anonymous. Driving everywhere cuts down on exercise opportunities, just as a loose urban fabric doesn’t seem to care as much about physical appearances – like obesity.

Light rail transit on sodded trackbeds in Grenoble, France

The perfect compromise seems to be public transit – capable of carrying large numbers of people varying distances.

The coming of smaller cars to North America may create denser, closer knit neighbourhoods. Anyone who has spent any amount of distance in my Mini will attest to its lack of comfort, one shies away from travelling far. One would tend ot patronize closer services, or use transit. The smaller dimensions may give way to smaller streets. Chicago neighbourhoods were a mass of two way streets until cars came to be so large that only one drive aisle – not two – could fit on a roadway. Yet, one still needs streets to allow travel between places. Movement between places is an important concept in this era.

The small house movement is an interesting one. A sustainable community needs a critical mass – a density that will allow a certain number of people to be within a certain distance of employment, cultural and shopping services to support the same. A hallmark of land planning since the industrial age has been the importance of movement between places, manifesting itself in transportation.

Federal Hill, Baltimore. These houses measure sixteen feet (about five metres) wide

And certainly, smaller houses with smaller footprints could use far less land than McMansions. Smaller houses could be placed together in relatively dense groupings and achieve the same sort of – whatever openess – one may achieve in low density, large footprint dwelling configuration.

An interesting study could be the ratio of transportation right of way area per capita of a post war suburb vs. a pre war neighbourhood to find efficient and effective land use. Further, my gut feeling is that some of the more effective land uses may be more livable neighbourhoods.

July 7, 2009
Land Development Strategy on Autopilot

First we shape our buildings, and then they shape us”

                Sir Winston Churchill

“Motion is the aesthetic of modern man”

                Clifford Wiens

Maybe it was driving through a crowded parking lot, looking for a parking space. In amidst the row of SUV’s there appeared to be an empty space, only to come upon it and discover that it’s simply a smaller car packed between the Escalades. Or maybe it’s noticing the difference in scale between neighborhoods built at different decades; and that their scale varies directly with the size of their garages. Whether we want to acknowledge this or not, we’re designing our housing stock around our taste in automobiles.

“In the Industrial Age: first we build our cars, then build our communities around them”

                Darrel Babuk

A Forward Thinking concept at the time

Take the ’51 Ford as example. In retrospect, it might seem to be something akin to a lunchbucket on wheels; yet in it’s day, it was a Ford’s first revolutionary design of the modern automotive era. Revolutionary in more ways than one; as the embodiment of the GI Housing Bill and the Interstate Highway Act of a few years later, it conquered countless acres of former rural farmland and helped populate these territories with people and commercial strips.

Levittown was another Forward Thinking concept of its time

In 1951, the sought after housing stock was a single family home of two, maybe three bedrooms with only one gathering space not related to food. These houses were probably configured as two separate levels, one being built inside a roof attic space to conserve materials, thus price. It allowed its occupants to spend more money on other things, like fancier cars…

Cars had smiles in this era – this was our dentist’s car

Later on, by the late 1960’s, it was commonplace to expect our cars and houses to be exuberantly flamboyant. Houses had grown into sprawling ranches and split levels; despite experiments with swoopy rooflines, they still weren’t too large in floor area.

Note that the roofline of this house creates the same sort of smile as did our dentist’s car

Instead, individual houses sat on large plots of land, requiring cars to ferry their occupants back and forth. The idea of a two car family had just entered American lexicon, a two car garage proudly displayed to the street was a status symbol to behold. Cars enveloped similarly swoopy masses of sheet metal, they were difficult to manouever through city street. Chicago reverted many of its neighborhood streets to one way traffic, to accommodate these vehicles.

The freshness of sixties design got a bit tired, then mired in the seventies. Maybe it was the energy crunch, or maybe it was by a series of laws that controlled, rather than encouraged design. By the time the eighties came to be, a book by Jane Jacobs “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” came to be better accepted, and we sought ways to do more with less. A few indulgences came in small packages. Sudden interest in condominiums and townhouses were met by happy buyers in BMW 5 Series sedans. Oddly, while we learned to drive more fuel efficient cars, we started to drive more cars, it really didn’t stem our consumption of resources. We rebuilt our cities, yet kept developing new suburbs. We simply found ways to use more resources.

These days, we have McMansions and SUV’s of all sizes, though the family units that live inside the McMansions are smaller than what lived in the 50’s or 60’s tract homes. The McMansions lack design originality, though they boast rare and expensive finishes, like kitchens with granite countertops. Didn’t the original marble cladding of the Amoco Building mine out one of Michelangelo’s historic marble quaries? Our freeways are constantly choked with traffic. Our expectations have become supersized as we simply want more of everything – good design doesn’t really count, just that there be more of it! The car enveloped by a swoopy mass of sheet metal in the late 1960’s is no larger in floor area than a 21st century full size SUV, yet our SUV’s take up considerably more volume and weigh substantially more. And about the original marble cladding of the Amoco Building – once it was removed due to damage, wasn’t it pulverized and used as roadbed gravel for an extension of the Stevenson Expressway?

Would we have a different urban infrastructure design if we had started to drive vehicles like this?

It makes one wonder about the preponderance of human nature to simply go on autopilot without question: where would we be now if during the fifties and sixties, we had stuck not to the large cars but rather to concepts like the original Austin Mini or Fiat 500; the concepts being produced in Detroit as Ramblers or Crossleys. Would our cities be much more geographically compact, would we be using public transit more often, and would we be living our lives in public rather than in the cocoons of gated communities?

“How often I found where I should be going, only by setting out for somewhere else”

                Buckminster Fuller

June 29, 2009
The Illinois Saint Andrew Society Highland Games British Car Show

The good hostess favours of rain ponchos the evening previous was an omen indeed. Unprecedented 70 mph winds and heavy downpour rains swept through the area. Upon checking email at 430 on Saturday morning, a note read “.. the Games will go on..”

Just a wee bit of the 7000 pounds of this 1953 Bentley R-Series

The Illinois Saint Andrew Society is the oldest and longest continually operating charity in the State; it’s like a Scottish benevolent society. For the past twenty-three years, it has staged the Highland Games – heavy athletics, rugby, soccer, dancing competitions, shortbread baking contests, dog shows, sheep herding… For the past few years, the program has been expanded to include a British Car Show. I am honoured to Chair the committee that organizes the car show within the overall Highland Games Committee. The British Car Show Committee led to the formation of the Scottish Motor Club, an organization that can continually promote the Highland Games, the Illinois Saint Andrew Society, and offer moral support to anyone relatively new to Lucas Electronics.

Looking down the Car Show Row, early in the morning

The Highland Games were held at the Oak Brook Polo Grounds. The grounds are being converted from polo accommodations to soccer; a seemingly insignificant though very major change is that soccer fields have longer cut grass that tends to retain water. The thought that came to mind is that kilts are always preferable to trousers when marching through wetlands. The grounds were awfully soggy at 6AM.

Lotus Europa (left) Lotus Super Seven (Right)

Nightmarish thoughts of low-slung Lotuses (Lotii ? ) and 7000 pound Bentleys came to mind. The Village of Oak Brook was quick to disallow cars on the main field; the car show had to quickly relocate. After an impromptu committee meeting, a well drained site along the main walkway to the admission gates was chosen. Though a bit tight in area, it had exceptional visibility and even offered shade. The Highland Games are highland games first and a car show second, so cars are never a major bill. This year however, despite overnight flooding and fallen trees leaving neighbourhoods in disrepair, some seventeen cars appeared. None sank in the mud, as our site had no mud to sink into.

Not a Sunbeam Imp, but rather a 1973 Land Rover Series III

The Arts & Culture Club of the Saint Andrew Society invited me to make a presentation describing Scottish cars. There were Scottish Americans who formed automobile companies like Winton, Buick, then General Motors; and there was the Rootes Group who built a factory at Linwood, Renfrewshire, Scotland that manufactured Hillman Imps (mainly) with the occasional Sunbeam Alpine and Humber Scepter coming off the line.

1963 Sunbeam Imp, photo from the 2008 Highland Games British Car Show

Midway through the afternoon, a friend’s Sunbeam Imp (as badged in the US) appeared, making the display complete.

Another friend contacted me earlier, I had asked if he could bring his 1929 Austin, as we didn’t have any pre-war British cars showing. He returned the contact indicating that a friend of his was letting him use his racetrack to try out his McLaren F1. This constitutes quite an acceptable reason for not attending the Highland Games British Car Show.

Lotus Elise

Early in morning however, my daughter won First Place for dancing the Flora, and Second Place for the Sword Dance!

A good time was had by all, with the Lotus Corps Chicago attempting to convince me that my next car should be a Lotus M100, while people from New Zealand approached me, actually recognizing my car as a Clubman Mini, and sharing stories.

June 21, 2009
Scottish Motor Club Oak Park Avenue British Car Show

The Scottish Motor Club is comprised of Illinois Saint Andrew Society members who own classic British cars and look for excuses to get them out of the garage now again. In doing so, we promote the Society, its goals and its programs. I chair this group. Our major event is the Highland Games British Car Show, held this year at the Oak Brook Polo Grounds. We attend other events throughout the year, and this year, we decided to hold a ‘pre-event’ in a neighbouring community to promote the Saint Andrew Society and the Highland Games. The Oak Park Avenue Business Association is a group I know. I used to hold membership in this organization when my practice was located in Scoville Square in Oak Park.

By using a few contacts I know on the Avenue; the Scottish Motor Club made a presentation to the Association to stage a car show with accompanying events. Two other businesses on the Avenue, the K9 Cookie Company and The Irish Shop helped us on this presentation. The Magic Tree Bookstore lent support and their facilities, as did the management of Scoville Square. The Wednesday Journal newspaper gave publicity. With all approvals in place, and with an effort of heroic proportions mounted by the manager of Cucino Paradiso who secured a street closure permit, the show went on as planned.

1967 MGB-GT

On the afternoon of July 14, like clockwork, Oak Park Avenue between Lake Street and North Boulevard was closed down, and about sixteen or so British cars and a motorcycle appeared, as did a client who drove his 1963 Lincoln Continental ( let’s see – this was the basis for the US presidential limousine, it saw a lot of international exposure: ok, we’ll let it in! ).

1957 MGA “hotrod”

It was a great collection – an MGA and an MGB-GT, a couple Jaguar XKE’s and a classic Jaguar XK150, a Triumph TR3 and Spitfire, a bunch of Lotus Europa’s and assorted other cars.

Not even counting the 1967 Sunbeam Tiger that kept driving around but never stopping, we had fifteen or so cars appear – real cars, not counting the folded-paper model cars that were displayed through the Chameleon Clothing Company.

1973 Jaguar XKE 2+2

The K9 Cookie Company joined with the Oak Park Animal Care League to stage a dog show with an interactive exhibit identifying the thirteen breeds of dogs from Scotland, they both invited friends with dogs to bring them to the Avenue and parade them around. The Thistle and Heather Highland Dancers made an appearance, then the City of Chicago Pipe Band ( who practice around the corner at Grace Episcopal Church ) marched onto the Avenue and played, eventually the highland dancers started dancing flings to the pipe band, and then sword dances – at one point, there were about 200 people watching.

The Thistle and Heather Highland Dancers with the City of Chicago Pipe Band

It was quite the afternoon of activities. All was so successful that no one even noticed that this was an entirely volunteered event – no one was paid anything for their energies other than hearty gratitude and applause.

Thank you!

June 17, 2009
Forecasting Global Economic Strategy, Understanding Urban Planning and the 1977 Mini Clubman Estate

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

While I’ve been avoiding the temptation, the removal of General Motors from the Dow Jones Index may provide a good reason to describe my own car, to draw parallels to the direction of this economy, and to the future of urban planning, of all things.

Both General Motors and Citi Group were recently removed from the Dow Jones Index, and replaced with Travellers Insurance and Cisco Systems. One could argue that the financial conditions of both GM and Citi had made them dead weight, they were not reflective of the US economy. It was curious that General Motors was not being replaced by another car company. Could it be that the automobile industry is not being seen as the driver (pardon the pun) of the overall economy that it once was?

1977 Mini Clubman Estate

Now, I drive a 1977 Mini Clubman Estate complete with right hand drive and British plates.

People stop me on the street and ask what it is ( “a car” ).

Some ask what kind of mileage it gets ( ” about forty in town” ).

Others ask if it’s legal to drive something with the steering wheel on the wrong side ( “of course it is, I’m driving on the right side” ).

Still others: how fast can it go? ( “I’ve had it opened up at 65” )

And still others wonder if it’s safe on the same road as giant SUV’s. Why one feels a need to drive a mammoth SUV in the middle of a large city and try to park it somewhere is beyond me. My Mini Clubman Estate belongs in a big city. That said, we don’t live in a big city, nor do we make a living by hauling things. The Mini wouldn’t be at all appropriate there, or in places where snowdrifts are bigger than it is.

In 1959, Minis were produced by the British Motor Corporation, sometimes known as Austin – Morris. It was designed by a team led by Sir Alec Issigonis during a one week design charette and was a revolution automotive concept – the absolute minimum car possible to transport four people. In 1969, a jazzed up version, the Clubman, was introduced. It had a flattened front to appear more modernand several trim upgrades. Like the regular Mini, the Clubman also came in a “wagon” version, the “Estate”. A Mini Clubman Estate Estate is what I drive.

If it didn’t make so much sense, it would be fun. Maybe it’s so fun because it pushes one’s bounds of tolerance so much.

In fact, my Mini makes perfect sense as something to be driven in the city. Asides from great mileage, it takes up less space and can manoeuvre around some of the tightest places. From an urban planning standpoint, our cities have been designed and redesigned around transportation. In recent memory, cities have come to be designed around cars.

Combining examples from previous posts and from my “Secret Streets of Chicago’s Loop” presentation, one can point at the original layout of the Chicago Loop. It was designed around slower modes of transportation supporting a smaller population. It was eventually necessary to accommodate faster and heavier modes of transportation, the Great Fire providing a clean palate for redesign. The solution was to widen every second street with the other streets left as original.

Arcade Place at LaSalle Street, Chicago

Street upgrades have continued to accommodate faster modes of transportation, and to accommodate more traffic generated by a larger population base. The avenues that became primary streets of Chicago’s Loop are big and wide, able to accommodate the largest of vehicle. Out in the suburbs, where traffic travels even faster, streets are much wider and consume far more land while oddly supporting a sparser density. Back in Chicago, the remaining narrower streets – several of which still contain storefronts – make my Mini feel right at home. It’s a great example of designing streets around and the scale of our cities around the transportation we use. Going further, several sections of Chicago’s “L” use little more than a back alley’s right of way, while a subway can snake its way around, virtually unknown.

But I digress – enough about urban planning and back to my Mini and its irony concerning our economic direction…

By the time my Mini was built in 1977, the British Leyland Corporation was making itself more apparent. A variety of British marques were having difficult economic times, so the British Government and other parties stepped in, consolidated models, cut costs and proceeded on. While the Countryman version of a Mini came with real wood trim, the Clubman Estate came with a “swoosh” of fake wood trim along each side. Most Mini Clubman Estates came off the assembly line painted a “Harvest Gold” beige kind of colour with dark brown velour upholstery – the sort of fabric of jammies sold at Woolco that wound up under the Christmas tree. One would gather that producing many cars in one colour would reduce costs. As the model progressed on in years, many components came to be made from cheaper and cheaper materials. The marque’s image took a hit.

It took a solid change of course to right the Mini’s image – drop the Clubman, improve quality, and to build on the ‘fun’ aspect by producing special “themed” models.

If one were to change a couple names, this story may seem much like a drama being played out in Detroit as of this writing. Emotional connection to automobiles aside, indicators may be saying that the automobile industry isn’t going to play the major part in a manufacturing economy that it once did. Perhaps our cities have reached a point where traditional transportation systems are maxed out, and we need to return to mass transit to make our cities liveable.

Will the automobile ever regain its influence on the economy? Perhaps not. Getting around and moving about will continue to be a driver of the economy. The mode of transportation will simply have changed.

This begs the question: if Cisco replaced General Motors, are Wall Street’s forecasters envisioning that electronic communications will replace physically moving people from one place to another and that social skill known in Chicago as “schmoozing” ? I hope not.

June 3, 2009