There are about 18 major passenger vehicle manufacturers on the planet, although the number will soon drop. Between them they have about 50 brands or what, in more innocent stringback-glove-and foaming-pint days, used to be called marques. As the industry consolidates into almighty conglomerates, the most urgent creative task is to understand what these brands mean. How did they acquire their value? How can this value be exploited and extended? If you haven't got it, how can you get it?
Today anybody with machine tools and access to cheap labour can make a car. If someone gave me the money I could start tomorrow. This is why the smarter automobile makers are already contemplating a future when they subcontract dirty manufacturing, leaving themselves with the most precious commodities and vital disciplines of the information age: design, marketing and distribution. At the same time, for many individuals the car has ceased to be a viable means of transport: legislation and congestion mock the spirit of democratic mobility that inspired the first makers of automobiles. Equally, technical distinctions are thinning and today there are very few positively bad cars on sale.
Competitive advantage used to come from the simple ability to manufacture, now it comes from something infinitely more subtle and mysterious: image. Unlike a production line, which is predictable, the image a car possesses is volatile, transient and difficult to control. Here we are in intellectual territory, surroundings that until now have been alien to the motor industry. Manufacturers may have total control over the design and content of the cars they sell, but they cannot control their afterlife. It's the same with paintings that acquire meanings which the artist may never have intended.
Although advertising can help build a brand image, it doesn't always work. Some things are beyond the opinion research, brainstorming, and cost-per-thousand figures that dominate this pseudo-science. It is really more snake oil and sorcery. Despite what the agency might say, you can't help who buy the cars. Maserati, for example, always attracted the wrong sort of people: men who wear those woven shoes and have a disinclination to do up their shirt buttons. Now Maserati is owned by Ferrari, but these old impressions stick: it's a truism of marketing that image endures long after the reality that brought it about. Even BMW has its problems. In the 80s there were discussions about buying-in used cars to prevent them falling into the wrong hands. Certainly, BMW does a marvellous job of fetishising cupidity, but recent embarrassments with British investments have led to an unfamiliar image crisis. It will be some time before wholesome estate agents stride into wine bars and flash their 3-series key fobs. To add to a basket of positive associations, largely justified by a tradition of refined design and superb engineering, BMW now has to tackle less welcome associations including arrogance, indecisiveness, ruthlessness and a certain reluctance to be straightforward. Still, there are some who say that an air of menace is a significant part of the BMW brand proposition.
General Motors invented brand strategy in the 50s when that wizard of kitsch, Harley Earl, defined car design as giving the customer a "visual receipt" for his money. But a brilliant strategy that clearly defined Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Buick, Pontiac and Cadillac so that every nuance of US taste was not just catered to, but anticipated, has gone astray. Now General Motors has the unfortunate reputation of owning five brands that even Americans won't buy. The Chevrolet Vega and Chevette were recently described by the New York Times as among the worst cars ever made. It always used to be described as social suicide to be seen driving a Chevy off the Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard ferry.
Some of this rubs off on Vauxhall, General Motors' local product. Many people would rather walk than use one. As a brand it represents an almost fathomless black hole. Far better be in a Skoda than a Vauxhall. With roots deep in the European engineering tradition, Skoda never deserved its comedic reputation: the cars were in themselves fine. Their only problem was that the Czech factory was crippled by under investment and as late as the 80s they were still producing a car that was no more technically advanced than the 1936 Volkswagen. And of course corrupt Comecon supply chains meant Skoda had shabby materials and irregular ancillaries. But they were cheap and where brands are concerned cheap doesn't necessarily mean good. Skodas were bought by low income individuals and this set up a resonant chain that said "I am poor" and as a result of that robbed downstream Skoda owners of sexual allure and social prestige to a disturbing degree.
Then Volkswagen bought Skoda to have a brand for Eastern Europe and things got better. Except the advertising, which was as dismaying as the jokes. As a careless shortcut to credibility, explicit associations made people scratch their heads and wonder why buy a Czech Volkswagen when you could buy a German one? That problem has now been solved by some fine cars, although Skoda does still have its difficulties with names. Felicia sounded like a sexual practice with your teeth misisng.. Now there is Fabia, but it is a car that can be bought without a keen sense of irony. Fallon McElligott's latest television ads attempt to change our view of the brand. The current one has a British dignitary enthusiastically touring the factory in the Czech Republic before asking if they also make "those funny little Skoda cars" as well. It is cleverly conceived and beautifully executed, and although the Skoda brand still has a mountain to climb, it is well up the lower slopes.
Machines have life and they tend to betray the preoccupations and beliefs of the people who make them. Skoda is now making well-designed cars so its brand will continue to increase in value. Those people are really committed. Maserati, on the other hand, was not: the Maserati brothers never actually wanted to make road cars, they were only interested in racing. And this is why Vauxhall has the allure of a dead cat : there is nothing to believe in.
Again, nobody's heart was in Rover: the whole misadventure was like Goldsmith's line about toiling pleasure sickening into pain. This is why BMW will be fine: everybody knows they are fanatical about the product. Jaguar is exemplary too. It just gets better and better. Jaguar's image is so strong it can even survive close association with John Prescott.
But the biggest brand problem of all? It is Rolls-Royce and Bentley. Instead of rock solid associations of aristocratic privilege, luxury and graciousness, images of scrap metal dealers float into view. Anyway, things can only get better: Dirk van Braeckl, the designer who did so much to improve Skoda, has gone to work in Crewe. The way things are now, Rolls-Royce can only benefit from association with Skoda.
Cars that ended up with the wrong image
Citroën 2CV
Designed in 1935 by André Citroën as a replacement for the French peasant's horse and cart, the ungainly 2CV has been adopted by sandal-wearing teachers and liberals across the UK. No gite-loving Francophile would be content without one.
Ferrari
Once an aristocrat's plaything Enzo's work of art is now the quintessential flash footballer's run-about. In fact the players' car park at Old Trafford easily passes for a Ferrari showroom.
Ford Mondeo
Tony Blair's Mondeo man stereotype had the marketing men crying into their espressos. The car is now indelibly associated with the middle-England mediocrity of estate agents, school runs, and 2.4 children.
VW Camper
Hijacked by tie-dyed hippies and bronzed Californian surf bums, the 1960s saw the VW Camper transformed from family recreation vehicle to mobile den of iniquity.
Ford Escort XR3i
Conceived in 1982 at the height of Thatcherism, this beast was soon snapped up by boy racers and equipped with fluffy dice and matching his'n'hers name stickers in the window. As soon as the sun set in Essex, every one way system became an unofficial XR3i racetrack.
