No prizes for guessing “not so much.” But with its product line dead in the water, Chrysler desperately needs to generate some kind of enthusiasm for its continued existence. And at this point, the promise of what Auto Motor und Sport call “retro-flitzers” like the Fiat 500 and 500 C shown above is the only shot they have. And sure enough, Automotive News [sub] reports that Fiat may export European-built cars in order to speed up the timeline for integration with Chrysler. “We are currently working on a plan to begin shipping the Fiat 500 minicar and the Alfa Romeo 940 [entry-premium car] to the U.S. in about a year,” says the anonymous source. who These cars would be sold at “some” Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep dealers in advance of production of the 500 at Toluca, Mexico and the 940 at an undisclosed American plant. Which means taxpayers will be funding a premium captive-import-led “turnaround.” Oh boy. Meanwhile, Fiat is considering building its production purgatory-bound 169 upper-premium sedan on Chrysler’s LX platform. I can see the “Italian Engineering” ads now.
Pity the print journalists. You work hard to live up to stringent standards of journalistic ethics, collect quotes, confirm sources and generally bust your hump only to have some snotnose with a laptop beat you to the punch. Ken Bensinger of the LA Times knows what I’m talking about. He has a piece today that compares the Chevy Malibu with the Chevy Impala, a contrast he spins into a number of critiques of GM’s product overlap, cannibalism and image-weakening products. Sound familiar? I thought so. As tempting as it might be to blame the family bankruptcy for falling standards, or guffaw at the very notion of a newspaper criticizing an automaker’s business decisions, this isn’t Newspaper Deathwatch. On to the cars.
The Automotive Lease Guide is slashing projected residuals for 2009 GM and Chrysler vehicles, reports Automotive News [sub]. ALG says that their new 36-month projections reflect the brands’ “uncertainty,” heralding the arrival of yet another dire consequence of bankruptcy that the bailout was supposed to prevent. Oh well, what’s a few billion among friends? Now let’s take a look at the nitty-gritty.
One of our Best and Brightest wrote an insightful comment on how NOT to buy a car in another thread. I asked flashpoint to expand on his advice for your edification.
If you purchase a car using your Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC), it only makes sense to do so if:
#1 you are in excellent financial standing with excellent credit standing;
#2 you have a steady occupation with little risk of being laid off; and
#3 the entirety of the car price can be paid off with the HELOC.
Ever heard a movie hero say, “It sounds simple, but it just might work!” Humans have a natural tendency to over-complicate problems and, thus, devise inherently delicate solutions. Have a look at Operation Eagle Claw, the 1980 Iranian hostage rescue attempt. Or consider the upcoming Presidential Task Force on Autos. The PTFA will waste countless hours with Chrysler and GM auto execs, union reps, dealer council chiefs, supplier supremos, investment bankers, outside analysts and not a single average car buyer. They will devise a clever plan that will please no one and fix nothing. What a waste. In this case, all the Obama administration need do is nothing whatsoever.
Autocar reports that GM will import 100 left hand drive Camaros to the UK. All UK Camaros will come with GM’s 500bhp 422bhp 6.2 liter V8 and will list at 35k pounds sterling ($50k). But will anyone short of the Hamster (get it? He’s short!) actually buy one?
Barack Obama’s plan to appoint a “car czar” to oversee the auto industry bailout has been shelved, reports the New York Times. Rather than appoint a single individual (presumably of Romanov extraction) to administer the government handout, the President has ordered Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and chairman of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers, to lead a “Presidential Panel on the Auto Industry.” Or Presidential Auto Task Force. Or Presidential Task Force on Autos. Or something. Either way, it’s time to start spreading the inevitable blame around. After all, GM’s top dogs have evaded responsibility for decades of disaster by embracing complexity. And it’s just so much harder to burn a committee in effigy.
Now that GM’s Car Czar is slinking off into the sunset before his bankruptcy-proof pension becomes a bone of contention (“I’ll have to check with my accountant about that”), the man of Maximum is shooting off his mouth in the great Lutzian style. “My personal favorite would be to see Saturn survive and prosper,” GM’s vice chairman told Automotive News [sub], “But frankly, the reality is that that is probably not going to be the outcome.” Does this sound a bit like finding out you were dumped via a batch e-mail? AN somehow managed to find a doomed Saturn dealer (as they all are, now) who didn’t use expletives when hearing of the multimillion-dollars-per-year executive’s casual execution of the Rethink brand. “That really seals our fate,” said Lasser, owner of Saturn of Denville, Saturn of Mount Olive and Saturn of Livingston. “I think they knew this fact months ago, and they never shared it with us.” So who killed the non-electrifying cars?
‘There is nothing quite like it!’ Every enthusiast I know has that attitude towards their car. But rarely is it actually true. Platforms are shared. Engines and transmissions are modified and tossed into whatever else can accommodate them from a cost perspective. Compromises are made. Only sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes you can buy something so unique, so timeless, that you can appreciate it’s qualities even twenty or thirty years later. The Lexus SC400 is one of those rare, outstanding machines. Let’s start with the door hinge.
Word and music by John Rich. (Lyrics after the jump) The same singer-songwriter who delighted crowds with the deliciously, unintentionally ironic Raisin’ McCain. You know, for background.
An overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. WAS is being filed from Beijing until further notice.
German governments taking over Opel? The German states of Hesse and Thuringia are mulling plans for an engagement in an Opel company that has been separated from GM, Automobilwoche [sub] reports. The states are sites of major Opel factories. Both states would neither confirm nor deny the reports. “All we are saying is that we are engaged in a good discussion with the Berlin government and the other states that have Opel factories,” the speaker of the Hesse government said, somewhat sybillinicly.
Daimler and BMW to cooperate—whether they want to or not: The boards of both Daimler and BMW have issued clear directives to their rebellious troops to cooperate in alle areas which are invisible to the customers and which don’t touch the brand, Das Autohaus says. Until now, attempts to do same had been torpedoed by feuding engineers. Now “everything short of a merger or cross holdings is thinkable,” Autohaus says. Thinkable, yes. But will the piston heads in Stuttgart and Munich bury the hatchet?
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