“For those who want to use as little gas as possible but still need the capabilities of a full-size pickup truck, the hybrid twins from General Motors will fit the bill nicely. So let the love affair continue.”
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A UAW workers writes:
REMEMBER WORLD WAR 2? who did America & the World turn to in that time when Japan & Germany were murdering millions of people in the world – The WORLD turned to the Americans for help and how did America help win the war against Japan – I’ll tell you who it was, The Big 3 Auto Companies that’s who- FORD – GM & CHRYSLER – they rebuilt and retooled all their factories and plants so that they could build Tanks – and Jeeps and Trucks and Troop Carriers -Boat Guns and Ship Artillery Cannons – and many types of Weapons and other Equipment – Do you think that when World War 3 comes that Japan and other companies will retool their factories to help America – NO THEY WILL NOT. After 9/11 in New York, Who was it that gave 10 million dollars each? There was only 3 companies that gave that much and guess what else they gave? They gave Fleets of Cars and Trucks / SUVs’ and Building Spaces – It was the Big 3 -FORD -GM & Chrysler that’s who it was – I’ll tell you who else gave, it was USA Harley Davidson Motorcycles they gave 1 million dollars and a fleet of new Motorcycles for N.Y. Police Department – and with all that giving during one of our nations darkest time- Honda & Toyota and all the other foreign car companies DID NOT GIVE ONE PENNY to the people of the United States of America for 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina. Ford- GM & Chrysler Did.
The “original” bailout, also known as “section 136 loans,” still haven’t been disbursed yet, and as the New York Times reports, folks arre getting antsy about it. Politicians are “breaking down the door” of the Department of Energy, trying to get the funds shoveled out to a less than entirely deserving crowd of “energy efficient auto makers.” Like GM (requesting $8b for the Volt), Chrysler ($5b), Tesla ($350m) and some guys who convert Saturn Skys into EVs ($20m). Sadly not everyone involved sees the urgent need to hand out tax money to EV sportscar builders and dead automakers walking. Lachlan Seward, who oversees the loan program, tells the NYT “we are trying to do this in a responsible way that reflects prudent credit policy and taxpayer protections.” Like that matters.
When I was a little boy, my father regaled me with tales of magical creatures that lurked in the Ardennes Forest, the Alps and the high steppes of the Cossack Frontier. Dozens of ’em. And yet Dad forgot the one about the Magical Depreciation Fairy. You know: the creature that lurks in vast concrete expanses that harbor shining metal dragons that enslave weaker members of our society. I shall now inform the Best and Brightest of the characteristics of the Magical Depreciation Fairy, lest ye fall victim to its devious ways.
Not long ago, apropos of I don’t remember what, I posted on this site about a 1960 Imperial and its owner, Jim Byers. Byers had been an impressario of jazz for the Kennedy Center. I met him in the mid-90s while photographing his car. Byers saw my post on TTAC and emailed me. He’d replaced the ’60 with a ’67. Coincidentally, I had fled Boston’s snows for several weeks. We arranged to meet down by the Potomac so that I could test drive the ’67.
Up to now, straight state subsidies were a big non-no in the EU, except in extremely rare and narrowly defined special cases, say farmers, Airbus, windmills, and a catalog so long that it needs a special website. Subsidies to carmakers definitely were against the rules, except in the guise of “green” programs. That was then. For the sake of political expediency, “soft loan and loan guarantee schemes put forward by Britain, France and Germany in an attempt to help companies through the current economic crisis have been approved by Brussels under the recently-relaxed state aid rules,” the Financial Times reports. Bailouts are cool, at least temporarily.
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Intentional ambiguity, id est, “keep ’em guessing,” is a tried and true tool in politics and business negotiations. Case in point: For months, we’ve been following the on-again, off-again attempts to marry cast-off Detroit brands with Chinese buyers. Now, as some deals finally look like they are coming together, China’s top industrial planning official comes out and says that local auto makers lack “sufficient capability” for overseas brand buying deals, Gasgoo reports. Domestic auto makers aren’t ready yet “to go overseas and cooperate with big companies,” Chen Bin, head of the National Development and Reform Commission’s industrial coordination department, said in Beijing yesterday. WTF? (What Thinks Farago . . . .)
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Holy trough snuffling, Batman! That’s one piggishly large salary. Not in absolute terms. In absolute terms it’s a pittance. Lest we forget, try as we might, Tom Cruise scored $20m for Eyes Wide Shut. And that was back in ’99. And you could make a case that that GMAC CEO Alvaro de Molina’s ’08 compensation package was money well spent. After all, Big Al Jr. was at the sub-prime specialist’s helm when it scored $6 billion from Uncle Sam’s magical bottomless pocketbook AND de Molina got the Fed to throw out the rule book and make GMAC a bank instead of forcing it to file for bankruptcy as they’d promised. Reuters! Break it down!
In times of crisis folks tend to look for radical change rather than steady improvement. Before you know it, Steve Jobs is being (wrongly) touted as the saviour of the auto industry, recent authors are expounding on the Googlification of the industry, and GM is staking everything on the Volt. And I’m not even going to get into the theological implications. But like the old fable of the rabbit and the hare, the steady improvements will be what saves the industry. A study by Carnegie Mellon at Green Car Congress shows that plug-ins with smaller capacity than the Volt’s 40-mile EV range are a more cost effective strategy than the Volt moonshot. Go figure.
Take some deep breaths, Mr Jarvis, and check out what Gordon Murray Design is up to over at Autocar. It’s like open-source, and innovative and stuff. Man. Actually it is a pretty radical vision for such a traditional industry. And it’s being done by folks who know things about cars. Oh yeah, and it’s nothing like Google.
When Nissan introduced the Murano as a 2003 model, the styling raised more than a few eyebrows. In 2008, Nissan embarked on a Quest to redesign the machine as a less visually “intriguing” CUV. They tried to thread to proverbial needle: keep the Murano instantly recognizable while updating every body panel and adding one of the most bizarre snouts available on any automobile at any price. As the pimply-faced high school geek cum dot-com billionaire proved, looks can be deceiving. Does the same hold true for the “It Came from Outer Space (or France)” Murano S?
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