Because any day in Hanoi without a traffic fatality is a good one. Just outside of Hanoi’s Daewoo Hotel (the hotel of choice for both international conferences and visiting despots) is this large, prominently displayed billboard. In addition to the running count of traffic accidents and fatalities, levels of key pollutants are represented by animated faces with corresponding levels of positive emotions. Carbon levels, for example, got a big smiley while Sulfur Dioxide levels elicited a more ambivalent emotional animation. Good thing the principle wasn’t applied to the traffic fatality count.
GM’s new CEO took to the airwaves on Sunday. If industry watchers had any doubts that Fritz Henderson is cut from the same cloth as his discredited, defenestrated predecessor, Henderson’s appearance on Meet The Press removed them. Like Rick Wagoner before him, Henderson’s facile, vague and evasive responses—re: the epic train wreck known as General Motors—revealed the full genius of the Talking Heads’ lyricists. “You’re talking a lot, but you’re not saying anything,” David Gregory forgot to interject. Alternatively, we could make this Churchillian: Never have so few said so little about so much. Even so, OMG.
While other companies, from the Michelin man to Fiat, Renault and Daihatsu, say bu hao (no good) to the Shanghai Auto Show in late April and stay at home, Chrysler is obstinate. They’ll be there, come hell or the PTFOA (Presidential Task Force on Automobiles). Chrysler has no plans to quit the Chinese market and it will join the upcoming Auto Shanghai 2009 late April despite the great pressure it is facing in the U.S., Gasgoo writes. Today’s distinguished BS medal with oak leaf cluster-NSFW goes to this fine example of Chinese chutzpa:
I consider the Wrecked Exotics website something of a public service: warning supercar owners that money does not immortality make. OK, you can’t really call exotic car owners “the public.” So how about this: the site may convince supercar owners to drive more carefully, which could stop them from smashing the obscure objects of our desire, reducing the number of supercars available for sale. (Plan for success I say.) Alternatively, Wrecked Exotics could be seen as particularly nasty car porn: supercar snuff snaps. Any way you look at it, the majority of these 47 photos of hard core horror stories do NOT involve supercar slammage. It’s mainstream carnage, plain and simple. And all of them are damn hard to look at. You have been warned.
The Wall Street Journal and CNBC are reporting that sweet little ‘ole Saab Automobile AB—one of the many motors that is General—has not one, not two, but twenty, count ’em twenty, suitors at the door. GM expects to part with the Swedish car-maker before the end of June. The Vanersborg district court has agreed to extend a period of protection from creditors in order to give it more time to restructure. No creditors objected so Saab now has until May 20 to find a new stranger on who’s kindness she can rely. Saab lost about $370M in 2008 and predicts similar luck this year. Court-appointed administrator Guy Lofalk said, in a court filling, “During the reorganization Saab plans to begin negotiations with creditors on writing down the company’s non-prioritized debts by about 75 percent.” With that, Saab expects a positive cash flow in 2011 on production of 150k cars. Of course, no one is naming any of the supposed twenty interested parties. The Swedish bureaucrat in charge of Saab, Joran Hagglund, said he believes Saab has three to five “serious” suitors. GM says these things need to be secret. So keep it under your hat, will ya?
Ad Age only lists GM and Chrysler’s ad spend for all of ’08, before the ailing American automakers bellied-up to the federal bailout buffet. But the writing’s on the wall for a number of media who depend on the two teat sucklers for ad cash. The carmakers’ $3B ’08 combined ad spend has already been slashed. When Chrysler and GM go Tango Uniform, well, there’s a black hole out there with their name on it. At risk ’08 ad bucks: Car and Driver ($20.6M from GM), Automobile ($15.4M from GM), Motor Trend ($6.1M from Chrysler). If you’re wondering why the buff books’ reviewers treat GM and Chrysler products with kid gloves, I’ve just shown you the money. And here’s a pdf charting the ch-ch-ch-changes from 2007 to 2008, in terms of the two automakers’ percentage of the buff books’ total ad take [NB: ’07 was a very good year, for small town dealers, with perfume in their hair, until they came undone.] Steve Parr, president of Source Interlink Media, is non-plussed, allegedly.
I currently drive a 2001 BMW 525it (Touring) which has been a pleasure to drive. Unfortunately the repair costs are starting to drive me crazy and leading me to consider replacing it with something newer, warrantied, and more reliable. The budget allows for approximately $25K CDN total on either a new or gently-used car.
The requirements are that it must be a hatchback/wagon, must be a manual, and should be able to seat 6′ passengers in the back seat. I’ve racked my brain trying to think of a suitable replacement, the leading contender at the moment is a VW Rabbit, although I’m less than impressed by the 5-cylinder lump under the hood. I did have high hopes for the Mazda3 Sport but after trying it out I was less than impressed. So any suggestions, or should I just keep funding my mechanic’s kids’ university education?
Well, you didn’t really expect the Presidential Task Force on Automobiles (PTFOA) to highlight and delete GM’s electric/gas Hail Mary Chevy Volt without a bit of bailout-scented blowback, did you? As TTAC hath foretold since the artist once known as the world’s most profitable corporation latched onto Uncle Sam’s bounteous breasts, GM’s now a political football. While the PTFOA correctly identified the Volt as a four-wheeled turkey—expensive, unproven and late— its green-tinged supporters are legion. Bloomberg’s “person” provides the heads-up that the PTFOA’s death knell was actually a call to arms for those who resurrect the electric car.
[written by TTAC commentator FreedMike] I’ve been shopping these two cars (much to the annoyance of the local BMW and Infiniti dealers, but, hey, it’s MY 40 large, not YOURS, so I’ll be picky if I wanna be). So I’m VERY familiar with them. I don’t know why TTAC’s comparison was between the 324-hp G37 and a 328 that gives up about 100 HP. The G37 will eat the 328 for lunch. The real comparison is between the G37 and the 335.
In his first piece for TTAC, our former celeb contributor Brock Yates noted that “until the underlying economics of private transportation changes . . . economies will be saddled with the private automobile, whether they like it or not.” Here in Hanoi, that truism holds up . . . only you’d need to replace “private automobile” with “Honda Wave.” Though four-wheeled transportation is clearly picking up pace here (more to come on the quirk and diversity of said transport to come), the Vietnamese could no more imagine Hanoi without a crush of sub-200cc scoots than an American could imagine commuting on a camel. What’s a developing (or overdeveloped, for that matter) economy to do?
We know that Hollywood scriptwriters and their stuntmen enablers rely on the “fact” that cars explode. But do they? The NY Daily News reports that an SUV exploded after being struck by an OOC Benz in Benzonhurst. Just kidding—which I shouldn’t do as a dog died in this accident. Well, not IN the accident . . . And I know: the Element isn’t really an SUV (more like a box-shaped wheelchair). And we only have the News’ word that “The Honda exploded on impact, and flames shot from the engine before engulfing most of the vehicle.” Oh, did I forget “witnesses said”? My bad. So I’m interested in your expert opinion on cars, gasoline and ka-boomery. What’s the real deal here? Do we really have to worry about fleeing an accident before a careless cigarette ignites that trickling trail of gas?
I get Twitter: it’s stalker heaven. Those who love to stalk, stalk. Those who benefit from stalking, get stalked. And those who aspire to being stalked pretend they’re being stalked. Given the onanistic undertones to this e-symbioses [sic], I’m not sure if tweeting at Twitter makes me a twat. It’s a question that leaves me pondering the possibility that my level of twatedness is independent of my tweeter (etc.). Meanwhile, I’m using Twitter as a kind of RSS feed with ‘tude tags. In addition, I’ll continue to tweet teases to tantalize TTAC’s, uh, readers. Oh, and I got the Skype thing happening. So podcasts are back. As I mentioned before, there will be some big news next month in terms of functionality. For now, a big shout out to Bertel for his contributions to the cause, and our regular writers for feeding the beast from the goodness of their heart and the ducts of their spleen. (Any tweeting advice is most appreciated.)
SCHIEFFER: Well, let me take, for example, two of the people your hear a lot about, and one is Citibank and the other is — is Bank of America.
Should the CEOs of those institutions be worried that they may face the same fate as Rick Wagoner did if their performance does not improve?
GEITHNER: Bob, what I’ll say is this. When, in the future — or I’ll just say, if, in the future, banks need exceptional assistance in order to get through this, then we’ll make sure that assistance comes with conditions, not just to protect the tax payer but to make sure this is the kind of restructuring necessary for them to emerge stronger.
And where that requires a change of management of the board, we’ll do that.
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