Engine Sharing: Even Desperate Times Don't Call for This
August 06, 2008

By Bill Visnic

Alert to the American medical community: new evidence proves severe lack of corporate operating capital causes dull and even impaired judgment.

How did I arrive at this breakthrough mental-health discovery? Reading early this week that General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. reputedly are considering co-development of engines.

GM and Ford are scrambling to unload manufacturing capacity of the blunderbusses nobody wants anymore, but becoming a smaller company takes time and money -- and consequently, not enough cash is coming in.

Desperate times may indeed lead to desperate measures, but this latest Detroit scheme goes beyond the pale: engines are the last -- but best -- vestige of mechanical character we've got left.

What Defines Brand?

GM, in particular, self-decimated its once-storied brands with commonization of styling in the '80s, driven mostly by the same kind of cost-saving rationalization its apparently clueless management board reportedly now considers for engines.

Think of all the best automotive brands, current or past. Almost without exception, characterful and sometimes idiosyncratic engines are central to the image. Honda and BMW are the current icons in this area -- and you're not going to catch Honda in any engine-development tie-ups anytime soon.

What about the contract vaunted Honda had with GM to supply a Honda-designed 3.5-liter V6 to GM for the Saturn Vue? Yeah, it happened. Many insiders at GM were outraged. And despite Honda's vacillating objective to supply engines to automakers endowed with less engine-design brilliance, both companies regretted that 1999 deal before the ink was dry.

Even BMW isn't lily-white in this area. For example, in 2004 it launched a new four-cylinder engine jointly manufactured with France's PSA Peugeot Citroen. That engine can be found today in BMW's Mini and countless PSA commodity cars. The first Mini four-cylinder engine was developed and built by Chrysler, for heaven's sake.

This may be making excuses, but four-cylinder engines are not BMW's hallowed ground - that's occupied by its magnificent inline six-cylinder engine. Particularly for Europe, the propeller gang definitely views four-cylinder engines (the gasoline variety, anyway) as necessary evils, thus the willingness to share with PSA. The fact is, BMW took the lead on the design work, letting its French partners handle the less-glamorous aspect of building the things.

And some years ago, after the 318i hatchback/sedan fiasco, the BMW brain trust in Munich went so far as to vow the U.S. would never again see a BMW-brand vehicle with a four-cylinder engine.

Sometimes, Doing the Right Thing Costs Money

In tough economic times it's tempting to carve out some shortcuts. But in the matter of engine development, there aren't any. You suck it up and pay the price.

Unless the ultimate plan is to merge -- as, has been suggested, this proposal actually signals -- sharing engines is one gambit Ford and GM would be well-advised to scuttle. There's already precious little left to differentiate the products presented by most mainstream automotive brands, and these two already are running short of compelling "buy American" arguments.

Just a week or so before word emerged of this unholy proposition, I had occasion to ask Tom Stephens, GM's executive vice president-global powertrain and quality, about the fate of one of GM's unappreciated gems, the Vortec 4200 inline six-cylinder engine. It's currently used in one product line: GM's Chevy Trailblazer/GMC Envoy midsize SUVs. And those dinosaurs have a date with the executioner.

Stephens said GM Powertrain is continuing on a path to consolidate engine ranges. Making a bunch of different engine families -- in this case, the thrusty and seamless Vortec is as close to BMW's peerless straight-6 as GM's ever had -- just isn't good business. The Vortec 4200 is a marvelous engine, but it's a dead-end layout unless you make a lot of rear-drive stuff.

GM sells plenty of rear-drive trucks and SUVs, not to mention Cadillacs, that could make good use of a soulful inline six-cylinder engine. But GM's already deeply invested in nice but less-expressive V6s that also can be conveniently turned sideways for duty in front-drive vehicles. Stephens didn't exactly say the sweet straight-6 Vortec will die with the Trailblazer and Envoy, but he did say GM only wants engines with plenty of "bandwidth."

Engine as Brand

And that's the problem. "Bandwidth," these days, often is code for "shareholder value."

And because unique and distinctive engines are the best brand-reinforcing play automakers have left (nobody's going to slobber over a vehicle because of its intoxicating iPod interface), joining up to further erode the impact of the greatest remaining expression of mechanical identity is just plain misguided.

Cut the management. Cut the marketing. Cut the workers. Cut the factories. Cut the dividend.

But engine development is one cost of doing business both of these teetering companies had best find a way to leave alone.

PHOTOS:

1. GM's supercharged LS9 V8: The heart of the new Corvette ZR1.

2. What would Ford's dawning years been like if Chevy also was using Dearborn's seminal 1932 V8?

3. GM's Vortec 4.2-liter inline six-cylinder: Closer to BMW than anybody in Munich would like to admit, but GM will kill it just the same.

Posted by Bill Visnic at 3:00 AM under Analysis , Commentary , Companies , Featured , Ford , GM , In the Media , News , Technology | Comments (3) | digg this | Seed Newsvine

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