Buying Tips

Blogs Offer Peek Into the World of Carmakers

General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz has been blogging for more than two and a half years as the primary author of FastLane on the GM Web site. So he's opened himself up for the kind of criticism that was leveled at him in an August blog post by Gary Dikkers.

"It would be...nice if your executives were more responsive in answering questions," Dikkers commented after GM invited readers to critique FastLane. "Of course they are busy, but they get paid big bucks, and a critical part of their jobs is knowing what the customer thinks."

Other consumers have come to like Lutz's performance on FastLane. "If it's been awhile since an entry from Bob, people ask, 'Don't you care about us anymore?'" said Christopher Barger, GM's director of global communications technology. "The idea that consumers feel that they have that kind of personal relationship with someone at his level isn't something that we anticipated."

Because GM has been impressed with such "stickiness" — FastLane gets more than 3,000 visitors a day — Barger now runs six different blogs.

Toyota and Chrysler also have launched consumer blogs in the last few months. But other automakers are hesitating. "We want to do a long and strategic analysis first, not just jump on the bandwagon," said Chris Hosford, a Hyundai spokesman.

Consumers Enter a New Dialogue
Whether consumers use the manufacturer-run blogs to simply learn more about automakers, to laud them, to influence them or to complain to them, blogging allows a dialogue that wasn't possible before.

Evan Johnson is a college student in Toronto who comes from a family of lifelong Chrysler owners — and who checks Chrysler's blog daily. "It makes me feel in the loop with the company, much more than just seeing them pop up at the auto show once a year," he said.

Meanwhile, Dave Stallcup of Oklahoma City, already has impressed Chrysler blog managers with his devotion to ensuring that the company doesn't discontinue production of its PT Cruiser, as rumored. "We're trying to point out to Chrysler that they've still got a lot of support for it," said the auto-parts salesman, who posts as "PT Dave."

But Chrysler is vague about whether efforts by Stallcup and his online supporters will amount to much. "We don't reveal future product plans," said Ed Garsten, Chrysler's manager of electronic communications.

Consumer respondents have persuaded GM to consider launching a blog dedicated to the Chevrolet Camaro, which the company discontinued in 2002 but plans to revive as a brand-new vehicle for 2009.

Some consumers want to influence the underlying, still-troubled company, not just its Web site. "I'm part of a Greek chorus out here that is trying to do our part in saving GM," said Noel Park, owner of a Bellflower, California, store that caters to Corvette enthusiasts and a frequent FastLane poster. "So we need to get up in [Lutz's] face and make sure GM has product that people want to buy."

Blogs Have Their Limitations
But it's too early to tell whether responding consumers will actually be able to affect car features or corporate decisions. And it's already clear that posters can't use the blogs to submit complaints about their individual vehicles: All three blogging car companies simply refer such posts to their consumer-response departments.

Another issue for consumers: The blogs can be difficult to find. Garsten admitted that the best way to get to the Chrysler blog is to do a search for it rather than try to find it on Chrysler's main Web site. To find FastLane and the other GM blogs on the main GM site, you've got to hit the News tab. And while Toyota provides a clear path to its Open Road Blog at the bottom of its home page, it would be quite easy to miss if you didn't know where to look.

Naturally, automakers often treat their blogs as blatant PR vehicles. Toyota is heavily emphasizing its "green" credentials since launching Open Road a few months ago, for example — an important criterion with the Generation Y consumers who frequent the blogs — while GM is really hyping its planned Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid.

"That [emphasis]," Park said, "tells me that at least they've heard the static through the blogosphere."

A Useful Megaphone for Automakers
So far, the blogging car companies like what they're doing. "Blogs don't cost much, if anything, to put up," Barger said. "You can target people narrowly. And it doesn't matter if they're the only 100 people reading it at the time — they're the people you want."

Blogs also allow carmakers to display some personality and break up the usual homogeneity of automotive brands and marketing.

Toyota, for instance, flashed some uncharacteristic cheekiness when Al Gore III was arrested last summer for marijuana possession after being stopped for speeding in his blue Prius. Bruce Ertmann, a Toyota marketing man who is the main author of Open Road, zinged the young patrician and then noted: "We've heard from some of our Prius owners that say it's kind of nice to know the car is not a slug."

Chrysler uses blog entries not just from top executives but also from various employees "who have something to say to customers about our products and about what they do," said Jackie Headapohl, editor of Voices of Chrysler, which garnered more than 1,400 visitors a day after just a few weeks in operation.

And GM made a canny choice in featuring Lutz, a charismatic figure and former fighter pilot who easily stands out against the industry's legions of cookie-cutter executives. So lately, FastLane also has begun featuring him in video clips, such as Lutz's visit to the Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise in Detroit in August.

In any event, it puzzles Barger that Ford, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz and Nissan, among other rivals, so far have refrained from blogging. "It baffles me that any company would miss the opportunity to engage directly with their base of consumers or potential consumers, especially in an environment of so much criticism of our industry."

For consumers, blogs represent the opening of a whole new set of windows on the companies that make their vehicles. It's the best view customers have ever had.

Dale Buss lives near Detroit and has covered the auto industry for more than 20 years.