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Worst things first
First
Published: The Sydney Morning Herald
Friday, November 26,
1999 |
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OK, so we all agree there are
too many Car Of The Year awards. So let's redress the balance. Editor TONY DAVIS leads the
Drive team in presenting the inaugural P76 Awards For Outstanding
Mediocrity. Magazines,
newspapers and radio stations give out far more earnest plaudits than there are deserving
recipients. But while others are back-patting, we feel it's time to get serious about
tail-kicking. In this unique event where only losers win, there are 10 silver P76s and the
supreme accolade, our superb trophy finished in a gold-plating so convincing it is almost
certainly what the P76 designers themselves would have chosen. |
| Silver P76
for St Peter-like triple denial before the cock crows: Toyota.
The company that was at one with John Laws suddenly became at two when the "cash
for comment" scandal erupted. When Drive asked Toyota's public relations company
whether it had any photos of The Golden Tonsils posing with a car, the response after a
pause was: "Ah, whatever the answer is, I think it will be no". The following
call yielded: "Sorry, we have no photos of Mr Laws with a Toyota until further
notice".
Toyota also gets honourable mentions for charging $45,000 for the new Celica while
still making air-conditioning an optional extra and for having two launches for the Avalon
during 1999, when it won't be on sale until well into 2000.
Silver P76 for services to motor sport stupidity: Mercedes.
When its Le Mans race car performed a terrifying flip in the hands of Australian driver
Mark Webber, the company screwed on a couple of extra winglets and sent the young
Australian back out - to flip again in equally death-defying fashion. Mercedes-Benz
officials implied that the driving of the young Australian was to blame - until his
Scottish team-mate managed to complete a triple back-flip on prime-time television. The
company claiming to be the world's smartest and most safety conscious should have stayed
at home.
Silver P76 for crookest embellishment: Holden.
When Holden this year released what was demonstratively the best big car it had
produced - the WH Statesman - it decided one last touch was needed. Unfortunately, that
touch was a great expanse of plastic wood which might have lowered the tone of a Lada.
The plastic-vaguely-pretending-to-be-wood phenomenon was rampant elsewhere. Hyundai's
Grandeur was marketed with the slogan "Leather. Wood. Mettle" - despite the fact
that the only real wood was in the head of the man who thought up the slogan.
But back to Holden, which deserves an extra brickbat for dumping the Holden Precision
Driving Team after 30 years. (It will henceforth be the Hyundai Precision Driving Team but
we're too polite to make further comment). |
| Silver P76
for most ill-advised literary debut: Dick Johnson.
The difficult thing about reading Joyce's Ulysses is that it contains more than
900 pages densely packed with multi-lingual puns, stream of consciousness passages and
huge shifts of perspective. The difficulty with reading the autobiography of racing driver
Dick Johnson, Don't tell me I can't do that, is that it's absolutely deathly
boring, ineptly written twaddle. What could be the year's most unspeakably awful joining
together of words in any discipline was the perfect companion for DJ's motor racing
season.
Silver P76 for showing how not to launch a new car: Jaguar.
The Jaguar mantra - "we once had some quality problems but everything's all right
now" - got its stiffest working out yet when the media was called to drive the new
S-Type. One car filled with smoke while elsewhere transmissions lashed, windows whistled
and power steering hoses popped. Jaguar officials announced after the fact that the cars
were "pre-production" and that customer cars would be later-build, altogether
better cars - honest. Business as usual, really. |
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A special commendation also goes
to Saab which tried to disguise the appalling torque steer of the over-powered,
under-cooked Viggen by having the press launch on the arrow-straight road between Darwin
and Alice Springs. When advertising the 9-5, Saab used the Photoshop program to increase
the size of the wheels; pity the same program couldn't be used to add traction control to
the Viggen. |
| Silver P76
for Himalayan PR snow job: Lexus. How better to prove that the new Lexus IS200 was a
credible sporting car than to enter it in the 1999 Targa Tasmania? In the hands of Neal
Bates and Coral Taylor, the car scored a top 10 finish. Trouble was that in spite of the
huge "Lexus IS200" signs along each side, the car in question was actually a
Japanese market Toyota Altezza - a model with a completely different engine and a great
deal more of the thing that the Australian spec Lexus most lacked: power. |
| BMW deserves a mention for PR
hyperbole in claiming "The gull-wing Z9 stole the Frankfurt Motor Show". To most
of us, the Z9 looked like an Audi TT with a 1988 Walkinshaw Commodore body kit. If it
really stole the show, no-one saw fit to report it missing.
Silver P76 for ingenious numeracy: Indy 300 organisers.
The crowd figures for the Honda 300 Indy race at Surfers Paradise were given as 102,844
for race day and 250,817 cumulative over the four days. Organisers score a P76
not for attracting so many people but for so cleverly hiding them. Where did they put
them? Certainly not at the October Long Weekend race at Bathurst. |
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| Silver P76
for publicity stunt gone wrong: Volvo.
In its never-ending quest to eat with the grown-ups, Volvo loaned a high-performance
V70R wagon to the Federal Police in early May and sent out appropriate media releases and
"boys in blue and their new car" PR photography. Two weeks later the V70R was
nearly written off. Volvo said it was good PR because the officers were not seriously
hurt. We reckon it would have been better PR if the officers had missed the concrete
pillar in the first place.
Elsewhere, Nissan's media skills were highlighted when it flew journalists from all
around the world to Japan to tell them the company was about to sack 21,000 employees and
shut seven factories ... because of a lack of money.
Silver P76 for creating a pig's ear: Ford.
For decades car-makers have taken bits of sedans to make their light commercial
vehicles look more attractive. When creating the Falcon Classic sedan, Ford had to pull
the grille off its utility to spruce up the appearance. All-in-all, it wasn't a pretty
year for Ford: the new Fairlane/LTD drove well but looked like a hatful of Forte grilles
while, overseas, Ford built the 3,500kg, 5.8-metre long Excursion 4WD, arguably the most
irresponsible vehicle of all time. In Japan, its Mazda division continued its replacement
of a style-leading range with whitegoods on wheels.
Silver P76 for lamest excuse for failure: Seat.
When the local distributors for the Spanish car announced they were pulling out, the
number one reason given was the Asian currency crisis. Considering the cars were built in
Spain by a German-owned company and sold in Australian dollars, it seems obvious really.
After all, the brand's failure wouldn't have had anything to do with the fact that the
cars were dour in appearance, much too dear and completely failed to get anyone excited
except a 24-year-old woman living in Perth who has since calmed down. |
And the winner is ...
It was a hard fought contest, but it seems obvious that the Gold P76
should be awarded for the pedal services to oral cavities provided by Mitsubishi Motor
Corporation president Katsuhiko Kawasoe (pictured).
We all knew Mitsubishi was doing it tough in Australia but no-one was game to
speculate that it might close down, on account of the huge damage this would do to buyer
and supplier confidence. No-one except Kawasoe.
As the local PR people trumpeted that, despite falling sales, it was business as usual,
Kawasoe was telling the US publication Automotive News that recently lowered
tariffs meant that the Adelaide plant no longer could compete with cars and parts imported
from Japan.
"This is a terrible problem for me ... It makes my head ache ... Although I hate
to shock our Australian employees, it will be necessary to drastically restructure,"
he said.
When asked whether this meant a shutdown he said, "I cannot say anything
further."
He didn't need to - he'd already given Mitsubishi Australia the year's worst publicity
nightmare. |
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They also swerved
Additional commendations to:
* VW for delaying the Bug so long it's no longer the New Beetle.
* Honda for furthering the concept of the daft show-car with the nightclub-inspired
Fuyajo-powered wheelie bin.
* Alfa-Romeo for the most user-unfriendly sound system. Even changing radio stations
takes several key-strokes.
* Land Rover for conspicuous consumption: topping Drive's Gas Guzzler Black List with
the Range Rover 4.6 V8.
* Bugatti for ridiculous consumption: it presented three show-cars during the year and
between them they had 54 cylinders.
* Subaru for redefining limited edition by bringing in another 400 STis. Yes, they were
sedans but still ...
* Persons unknown for misguided larceny. In Western Australia in August, he, she or
they stole a Kia Ceres truck.
TO ERR IS LEYLAND
It's almost 25 years since the demise of the Australian-built P76, a
car which changed people's perceptions about the number of faults which could be added on
to a fundamentally sound package. The fact that this frankly horrible car was an
adventurous failure rather than a boring also-ran (and won the Wheels Car of The Year -
which says a lot about something) increases our pride to be associated with it for these
new awards. |
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