This snowbird got out of Florida in the nick of time

Writing is an art, and comparisons among creative people tend to be subjective. If capitalists think that they can solve that by way of market statistics, the Nobel Literature Prize committee and a lot of other people would beg to differ.

If sales must be your measure, then, among the small group of people who live in Panama and write in English for a living, Phil Edmonston is the runaway champ. Actually, he doesn't write just in English, but also in French, for the Canadian market. And while we are at it, why not tear down those language barriers altogether? Phil Edmonston sells more books than anyone in Panama who writes in Spanish for a living, too.

A Washington, DC native who first came down here with the US Army in the 1960s, a Canal Zone College graduate, a dual US-Canadian citizen who served a term as an NDP member of parliament from Montreal, a one-time Ralph Nader protege and a former member of the Consumer Reports board, Louis-Phillip (Phil) Edmonston is into his fourth decade of writing Canada's favorite automobile consumers' guides, the Lemon-Aid books. He's published more than 135 books and sold more than 1.6 million of his Lemon-Aid guides.

Along the way, there have been some market-worshipping types --- so long as they were doing well in the market, that is --- who have tried to stop all this. His very first bilingual auto consumers' guide laid into the Allstate insurance company, and they went to court. Worse yet, it was actually two books, one in French and the other in English, published in a two-cover format to which a publishing company claimed dibs, and they went to court, too. Edmonston sold the print run out from his house, and it's now a collector's item. His corporate foes from back then? Allstate's reputation is still sleazy, it's hemorrhaging money and really isn't the same company as it was back then. The publisher who sued him has also lost its independent identity in the downsizing and consolidation of the book industry.

Later, Nissan, then Honda, sued Edmonston for $5 million --- and each of them lost. Meanwhile, he's been on the scene as an expert witness or otherwise in a number of landmark consumer suits that have cost various car companies some serious money and even occasionally made them change some of their ways.

On February 28 at Excedra Books Edmonston kicked off a book promotion tour that will except for this appearance be in Canada. The book is geared to Canadian conditions, but at Excedra he had advice for auto buyers in Panama:

1. Stay away from European cars. For one thing, they have idiosyncratic ways of wiring that baffle all but their own mechanics, and for another their parts are outrageously priced when available and the service that can be had here isn't very good.

2. Beware of complicated vehicles. "Navigation systems that will drive you into the river" can pose a real hazard, but even more fundamentally, the more complex the gizmoes in a car, the harder and more expensive it is to service the thing when it breaks down.

3. Beware of the hybrids. The claims about fuel economy are exaggerated. For the foreseeable future in Panama, you may as well forget about service. And if you think yourself environmentally responsible for buying one of these vehicles, Edmonston advises you to ask one question: "Where are the used batteries going?" That's right --- your warm green feelings will likely be at the expense of some Third World community that gets its water supply contaminated by the toxic metal residues from your and other developed country consumers' hybrid car batteries.

4. Stay away from Chrysler products. There are some exceptions to this, like the Jeeps, minivans and Caravans, Edmonston opined, and he also allowed that the company's Cummins diesel engine is the best of that genre. But mostly its products are of poor quality and it's bleeding money. "I think we're going to see Chrysler fall, or else merge with someone," he predicted.

5. Buy what Panamanians drive. The Asians have long since come to dominate Panama's auto market and they're the ones with readily available parts and service outlets. Which does not mean that all things Asian are equal, or good. Toyota, Edmonston said "is coasting on its reputation." Nissan has some decent cars out there and some that are not as good. Honda "doesn't have a lot of product here" but does have some good cars coming out. Mitsubishi also has some reasonable deals. But Hyundai, which raided Toyota's quality control department for its best brains, has overcome its serious quality problems of old and is now beating the Asian competitors. Hyundai has acquired KIA, and Edmonston expects that the latter will also improve from that move. American cars? They're unlikely to pose much of a threat to the Asian competition in Panama anytime soon.

Panamanian auto dealers are giving 10 percent reductions these days, but Edmonston expects that they will have to relent and offer better bargains than that when they realize how severe the global economic woes really are.

Edmonston expects major chaos, including failures and consolidations, in the world auto industry. A General Motors merger with Toyota would not surprise him. Given the Indian conglomerate Tata's problems in other businesses, he doesn't give its Jaguar and Rover divisions much chance.

So is this a huge disaster?

It will mean lost jobs and shattered industrial towns and all of the ugly consequences that go with hard times, Edmonston believes, but he also thinks that it will be a buyer's market and that the survivors in the great shakeout will be producing some good cars. But, especially if you are buying a car from an endangered company, you may want to skip the extended warranties because the company from which you buy may not be around to honor them when the time comes.

 

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