Reuters/Larry Downing
San Francisco's Lincoln Ford Mercury, the last domestic car dealership within the city's 47.6 square mile area, abruptly shut its doors on May 1, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. "It's a tough market. Imports have a much bigger share in San Francisco," Dennis Fitzpatrick, owner of Concord Chevrolet and regional vice president of the California New Car Dealers Association, told the paper. "When you can sell 100 imports a month as opposed to 25 domestic, and what with the rents and real estate, it's tough to make a U.S. car dealership pencil."
In a country and a state once
hailed for its car culture, this is quite a bellwether for a series of
interrelated trends and forces that are reshaping our economy, society,
and cities. For one thing, there's the
changing consumption patterns of the creative class (who are an even bigger,
more unified buying force than the old working class). Some may prefer smaller cars -- Minis and the
new Fiat 500s; others like their hybrid Priuses; still others go for electric-powered
Volts and Teslas. Then there are those who still like the more conspicuous
consumption of higher-status, higher-performance foreign cars -- Porsches,
Mercedes, Beamers, and the like. One
thing is certain: Fewer and fewer want
to bear the old industrial-age badge of the Big Three. And of course there are the growing numbers
who have given up the car completely -- who
are moving into dense, walkable neighborhoods served by cable cars, where there
is not a lot of room for (ever try to park in downtown San Francisco?) and no
need for the Lincolns, Fords, and Mercurys, Buicks, Cadillacs, and Chevrolets
that provided mobility and the ideal of freedom for their parents and
grandparents.
But most of all, it seems to herald the death knell of Fordism, which Victoria De Grazia defined as "the eponymous manufacturing system designed to spew out standardized, low-cost goods and afford its workers decent enough wages to buy them." And hopefully the beginnings of something new, more human scale, healthier, denser, and better.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/05/san-francisco-just-lost-its-last-domestic-car-dealership/238790/
