The Annual Visit to Detroit: The Car Industry's Big Millennial Grab

by Sam Dean

A few days ago, in my professional capacity as a Japanese TV News Producer (read: guy who carries tripod, tells police, “sorry, we’ll leave”), I was dispatched to Detroit for the North American International Auto Show.

The first day began with the Car of the Year awards, and the first of many bad metaphors to come: “Michigan’s film industry is also booming, so to put this in film terms: this is the feel-good movie of the year, and the NAIAS is the theater.” On stage, the CEOs lined up almost Von Trapp-style, except for that one guy on the right. The Chevy Volt beat out the all-electric Nissan Leaf and the nobody-cared Hyundai Sonata for the award, and a bunch of people yelled in excitement. As my Japanese colleagues noted, it isn’t really an electric car, and it would be nice if they stopped lying and just called it a hybrid.

I later found out that Nissan didn’t even bother setting up a booth at the show, having decided, probably wisely, to focus on China and India instead. No word on whether they’ve gone as far as Cadillac to court the Chinese consumer, though. (Also, having a film called “The Birth of a Party” about the rise of your Communist Party just doesn’t sound right.)

For the next few hours, I alternated between watching our pile of equipment and moving our pile of equipment somewhere else while my boss, the anchorman, did some reports from the floor. Each car company has a complex unto itself, giant booths for giant wares. Acura has an open espresso bar with little pretzel almond toffee stick snacks, but I’m stuck watching the stuff near Toyota’s joke stretch minivan. It’s called the “swagger wagon,” and goes along with a black and white ad of white parents rapping about something. It’s playing on a loop on a giant screen without sound, so I’m just gonna guess that it’s a little bit funny, a little bit cringey.

Toyota’s big press conference was for the new “Prius family,” featuring a station wagon, a little coupey guy, and a plug-innable Prius. In keeping with the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi (N.B.: j/k), all of the music during the presentation seemed to be Wii-generated.

I only see Detroit itself from the rental car in the middle of the day, when I have to drive my boss to the airport. For such a famously blighted city, it seems pretty much like any other boring place, distinguished only by the highway signs for the Bridge to Canada and its angry public art. For lack of expertise and fear of offending those Detroit scholars out there, I will keep it to one comment: The GM tower complex resembles nothing so much as Orthanc, the Black Tower of Isengard, and I commend the journalists of the bailout for not making more comparisons along those lines. (I guess Ents=UAW?!)

Gen Yers, or Millennials, or what have you, are notoriously uninterested in buying cars, and our withholding seems to have driven the car companies mad with desire. Besides the booth babes (who I thank for the many mints), I’m probably the youngest person here, so let me just say: as much as we youngs like iPads, and think that playing instruments on iPads is the coolest thing ever, and love having parties on stage while a bunch of old guys in suits watch us have our awesome iPad instrument parties, we still probably won’t buy a Chevy.

A Hyundai, on the other hand, now that’s a totally different story! The company’s Detroit press conference kicked off a new campaign, with both a new, totally not generic/insipid slogan (“New Thinking. New Possibilities.”) and a new “brand theme song.” Turns out they had a hard time coming up with the theme song, though, so, as the CEO told us, they “wondered if it could be found… by having OUR CARS PLAY A GIANT MUSIC BOX.”

Unsurprisingly, after designing and filming an elaborate hanging steel paddle system wherein a bunch of cars with sticks welded on their roofs could hammer out a song, they found what they were looking for. GMB-based composition is known for its results-based performance in the corporate jingle field.

After a juiced-up PowerPoint interlude, Hyundai hit paydirt: “a new car segment aligned with the needs of Generation Y.” And what might those needs be? Efficiency? Cheapness? Ability to serve as temporary home when it becomes clear that our apartment is made of nothing but bedbugs and drywall? Wrong! We need “The Urban Offroad,” a car called “The Curb” that can handle anything, “from potholes to nightclubs,” and rolls on 22s, which are only 2 inches away from 24s — the most urban of tire dimensions. It also has retractable bike rack, “so the owner could park and ride a ‘Fixie’ (fixed gear) bike to the rest of his destinations as an alternative transportation source.”

But, in case urban as an adjective isn’t quite your thing, Hyundai’s got another car for your youth-having lifestyle: The Veloster. No, it isn’t a French bicycle with claws, nor a sea bug that’s somehow grown wheels, it’s just a kind of sporty looking three-door car. According to the panel of paid youth representatives that get on stage when the thing is unveiled, though, it’s so much more. Shaved-head-with-blazer man says he’s into “performance,” and wants a car that’s both practical and fun, “but that’s just me.” Slight-dude-with-cardigan just graduated from design school and got a great job in a new city, but he misses his friends, and he’s not the best at texting, so he’s really into how the car lets you yell stuff and then sends that as a text. (One can imagine the autocorrect joy/horror).

And for cute-girl-with-long-skirt who loves fashion, the Veloster is not her first place, it’s not her second — “it’s kind of becoming my third place.” Because after the exciting, extremely social, hyper-creative lives we lead in our homes and offices, we really need a tiny pod — with doors that lock — for our “third place.”

Shortly after the youth representatives finish their brand sculpting, the PowerPoint resumed. Over a picture of the Veloster against a forest background, the words “PARADIGM SHIFT,” just like that, all caps, slid in from the left. I felt a mix of disgust and excitement at being treated so crassly. I am still always astonished at how, of all the books I’ve read and movies I’ve seen and music I’ve listened to, Dilbert remains the truest to life.

Sam Dean is a writer (and occasional TV producer). He lives in Brooklyn.