I come before the Best and Brightest in search of technical enlightenment and Zen master like clarity. The problem? My tweaked Lincoln Mark VIII is losing its factory-fragile transmission, leaving a hot mess of smoky-pink fluid everywhere I park. So my car’s looking for a bailout, and spending a couple grand for my (don’t laugh) dream transmission is now a reality. A more efficient torque converter is on the must-have list: but what stall speed do I chooser? I’m looking for a converter that’ll send the Lincoln down the righteous path of lower ETs with effortless highway cruising and no drama when stuck in traffic. I think a 2500 stall unit is good for street/strip duties, but perhaps its too conservative. What about a 3000 stall converter? The fate of my timeslips (and checkbook) is in your hands. Thank you.
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In case you didn’t know it, TTAC pays its contributors a token fee. They’re all motivated by an onboard desire to tell the truth about cars. So when John Horner contacted me with the idea of putting together a comprehensive list of the bailout banquet worldwide, I knew he’d leave no billion unreported. I just got the email and he’s outdone himself. (I’ve posted the resulting chart as a pdf.) Suffice it to say, I thank John for his dedication to the cause. He’s promised to update this file as the situation develops. And to those of you who’ve said “Why bother? The government does what it wants anyway,” remember that knowledge is power. Whether you agree with the bailouts or not, you can’t fight what you can’t see.
GM recently settled an SEC investigation into its accounting practices. The automaker didn’t admit guilt or pay a fine, but it was confirmation– if confirmation was needed– that GM under Rick Wagoner has played fast and loose with the numbers. And when you’re as big as GM, little “tweaks” here and there can have a significant effect on the bottom line. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that history will eventually regard Wagoner as an accountant gone wrong: a GM lifer whose only genius lay in his ability to make numbers his bitch. Until he couldn’t. As part of that legacy, this [press release after the jump]. I’m no lawyer, but it appears that GM violated rules regarding mark-ups to dealers and, thus, customers. And once again, the “winners” of a legal action against an automaker get discounts on the offending company’s products, while the lawyers get millions of dollars. Not to coin a phrase, but how great is that?
According to Automotive News, Chrysler plans to sell up to seven Fiat/Alfa Romeo-designed models in America. Under this scheme, Chrysler dealers would flog the Fiat 500, Alfa MiTo, and Alfa 147 replacement. There’ll also be up to four Fiat-based cars in the A, B, C, and D segments. Some American car fans are thrilled at the idea of inexpensive, fuel efficient, fun-to-drive Italian cars — even if the machines in question end up as Dodges built in Mexico to Italian blueprints. But that’s exactly what it is: an idea. And a bad one at that.
GM Biofuels Communication Manager clearly doesn’t want go against his firm’s new emphasis on resurrecting the electric car. “When you think about it,” he writes at GM’s Fastlane blog, “the technology news at the auto show rarely has the same emphasis in back-to-back years any more than the Super Bowl features the same teams from one year to the next. GM has multiple approaches to advanced propulsion, including improved internal combustion engines, flex-fuel, hybrids, battery-electric, and hydrogen fuel cells. All have significant dedicated engineering resources, and the best stories – like the best football teams playing on Super Bowl Sunday – are told at the auto shows.” But a man can only feed on weak-wristed simile for so long. Sooner or later, GM’s resident biofuel booster has to wonder: “where is ethanol?” It’s dead, Mr Adler, hadn’t you heard? Price inversions? Refineries going under? The MSM figuring out what E85 does to your mileage? Sure, the huge federal and state subsidies have not yet been repealed,, and we’ll be singing the E85BOTD blues for at least another five years. But the days of GM spinning the stuff of tortilla riots into green PR gold are over. The great cellulosic ethanol hope is years away for GM’s Coskata partners, meanwhile electric cars have become The Big Thing Right Now. So thank you, Mr Adler, and condolences. We now know that the Volt will have a flex-fuel option, and that’s probably all the PR attention ethanol will get from GM for months. And on this point, The General has finally got it right.
The Chevy TrailBlazer is the butt of many a joke, or outright Internet flame. And while many iterations of the GMT-360 platform are brand corrosive, unholy degradations of once-proud marques, the Bowtie Brand’s version remains a working mom’s utility vehicle. As one of our Best and Brightest once told me, buying a vehicle for its engine alone is totally acceptable. With that in mind, have I got a deal for you!
At the risk of slipping in a “I told you so,” TTAC flagged the current automotive meltdown back in summer ’06, when new housing starts cratered. A bit late, but there you go. At the time, TTAC pointed out that the housing slowdown would kill pickup truck sales– at the precise moment GM CEO Rick Wagoner and his media groupies were saying the then-new Silverado was GM’s salvation (Edmunds: “If these hit, GM might have a full turnaround on its hands.”) Obviously, we didn’t see the collapse of the entire housing market and then, by extension, the new car market. But we sure as Hell made the connection between too-easy credit (for both homes and cars) and an eventual, inescapable reckoning. I mention all this because it’s obvious enough that new car sales won’t recover until the U.S. housing market recovers. And not just to us. Speaking at the dealer wake in N’orlins, the National Automobile Dealers Association’s chief economist Paul Taylor preached econ 101 to the bruised and battered faithful.
“One of Cadillac’s most anticipated models is being delayed one year.” Automotive News [sub] breaks the story- and stretches the limits of credulity. Anticipated by whom? The luxury coupe market is a niche within a niche. And to this blogger’s jaundiced eye, the CTS Coupe is hideously overwrought (which probably means it would have been a hit). GM spinmeiser Joanna Krell says the CTS two-door will now appear in summer 2010. Meanwhile, Cadillac really needs to concentrate on flogging the new CTS Wagon, apparently. Oh, and the next gen SRX, which is about as brand faithful as you’d expect for a vehicle that’s so not an Escalade it Hertz. Not to mention the fact that GM may not exist per se in one year. Or that this “postponement” is just another example of GM’s on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again product planning. “Selected journalists were shown the 2010 CTS coupe last August at a private party held in conjunction with the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in California. At that time, the car was scheduled to debut in November at the Los Angeles auto show. In early November that plan was canceled, and the car’s debut was postponed indefinitely.” Taxpayer-funded chaos.
When the aircraft touched down in Oklahoma after a 36 hour journey from Abu Dhabi, my entire unit clapped in elation. We couldn’t stop smiling as we deplaned the plane, and my Commander shook my hand and say, “Welcome back, thanks for all you did, and don’t do anything stupid on your vacation.” So what better to do to celebrate my return to the greatest nation on the Earth, than create a race!
As America’s car dealers gather in N’orlins– an ironic enough venue given that some 80 percent of U.S. car loans are “under water”– the talk of the town is culling. Where once there were too many domestic car dealers, now there are too many car dealers full stop. Now you might think that a process of natural selection would have untied the Oldsmobile-shaped Gordian knot (i.e. 50 states’ worth of franchise laws say they can’t simply pull the plug and be done with it). Nope. In a story that somehow got culled from The Wall Street Journal website, Sharon Terlep provides a reality check. “NADA in December predicted about 900 dealerships — including small numbers of foreign-based auto makers — would go out of business in 2008. But Detroit’s auto makers alone lost more than that, company executives said this weekend. About 300 Ford dealers closed last year, while 401 GM dealers and 287 Chrysler dealers went out of business. Consulting firm Grant Thornton estimates about 2,500 of the nation’s 25,000 new vehicle dealerships will close in 2009. However, 5,000 would need to close to have a healthy level for this year’s anticipated level of auto sales, the firm said this week.”
At the moment, Chrysler reimburses a dealer for the cost of topping-up the gas tank on a car the dealer sells to a customer. No mas. That little tidbit was buried deep in the Detroit News story about Chrysler’s incipient “traveling roadshow”– a corporate effort to “convince” dealers to order more cars despite the fact that no one’s buying them and it costs money for the dealers to have vehicles sitting on their lots. We also learn that Chrysler has frozen the labor rate for warranty work, scheduled to rise in ’09. “‘I think they understand the place we are in and understand the need for all parties to put some skin in the game,’ said [former Toyota Prez and current Chrysler Co-Prez Jim] Press, who received a standing ovation during the meeting with about 400 dealers.” Somehow I don’t think it was that particular statement that earned Mr. Press the standing O. Perhaps it was his pledge to work for $1 until Chrysler paid back its four soon-to-be seven billion dollar loan. Just kidding. Unfortunately. Anyway, Chrysler’s set a target for channel stuffing– I mean, dealer orders…
The German clunker culling initiative appears to work. Dealers report increased traffic. According to two independent surveys, one by BKP Consulting and one by Ernst & Young, 30 percent of the surveyed said they would buy a new car due to the clunker culling money, Das Autohaus reports. There are no exact sales data yet. However, both dealers and wrecking yards report increased traffic. The German car interest group VDA revised its prior prognosis of 2.9m units sold in 2009 up to slightly over 3m. Germans will receive €2.5K if they buy a new car, or a car no older than one year that was registered to a dealer or auto manufacturer – German lawmakers are sensitive to the shenanigans of automakers who increase their sales statistics by registering the car in their name or the name of the dealer. The clunker must be at least nine years old and must be scrapped.
The idea is not new. It was first launched in France, where people get €1K if they scrap a car that is at least 10 years old and buy a new one. Austria already announced a similar one. Austria pays €1.5K for scrapped cars older than 13 years. It is to be expected that most of Europe will jump on the clunker culling bandwagon, each with different conditions. The German program is not without its critics.
California accounts for a huge chunk of America’s new car sales (at least for the transplants). And 13 other states (Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington) follow its vehicular emissions laws. Put them together and they account for just under half of all American new vehicle sales. And now, thanks to President Obama’s decision to grant California a waiver from federal emissions regulations, they’re going to call the shots for the entire U.S. automotive industry.
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