This week we are looking for two answers. One, the make and year of the featured car (the seats are not original, don’t let that throw you). Two, what does this picture foretell about tomorrow’s Curbside Classic? Good luck!
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While French workers take hostages, French companies do a little extortion: “PSA Peugeot Citroën has warned that its 2009 operating loss could reach €2bn if France does not renew its cash-for-bangers scheme, due to expire later this year,” the Financial Times reports. Without “cash-for-bangers,” as the Brits call their clunker culling program, Peugeot will scale down fourth-quarter production, anticipating an utterly awful 2010. Jobs will be lost, red ink will be all over the place. The FT rightly assumes that PSA’s “mutterings may be intended to press the French government to continue the plan.” Can the French possibly say non?
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Motor Trend‘s Angus MacKenzie recently got some seat time in the new Shelby GT500, and calls it “a pretty impressive piece — fast, loud, and blessed with the best steering ever in an American Car.” “But,” writes MacKenzie, “the thing that annoys me most about the GT500 — about the whole 2010 Mustang range, for that matter — is the live rear axle. It’s the wrong technology, done for the wrong reasons; emblematic of the cynical ‘near enough is good enough’ attitude from Motown management that helped drive Detroit’s automakers into a ditch.” And thereby restarted a squabble that makes the global warming debate look like a lover’s spat.
Ford may “just say ‘no’” to TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) money that puts them under the control of the PTFOA (Presidential Task Force on Automobiles), but the other wise acronym-aversive automaker doesn’t mind bellying up to the DoE’s (Department of Energy) bailout buffet. Bloomberg‘s mysterious “people familiar with the plans” say Ford, Nissan and Tesla will all dine upon loans from the “original” bailout package: the $25 billion feast created by the 2007 energy bill. The loans were intended to “help automakers boost fleetwide fuel economy.” In February, the DoE said they’d received 75 applications, totaling $38 billion. According to Bloomies, Ford, Nissan and Tesla are the first to get the handouts loans.
Workers of French parts maker Raquet held three leading managers hostage at the Monthermé factory in the Ardennes. The workers called the kidnapping a protest against cutting 73 of a total of 187 jobs. After the leader of their prefecture agreed to talks, the managers were released shaken, but unharmed. Automobilwoche [sub] says that this kind of hostage taking has become commonplace in France since the onset of carmageddon. The kidnappings receive a Gallic shrug-off: “This barely elicits a reaction anymore amongst the populace.”
Kids, don’t try this at home.
The Detroit News covers the report by the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute (because TRI texts are behind a password lock). Authors Walter McManus and Ron Kleinbaum write,
Story after story frames the issue of a struggling industry that will not survive tough fuel economy standards. However, there is substantial evidence that the domestic auto industry has ignored customers’ demands for fuel economy, and has consistently undervalued the impact of fuel economy on their profit potential.
Plus,
Our view is that GM is still not prepared to change enough, fast enough to achieve the transformation it needs to make.
Go on . . .
And we don’t care. Again. Still. If there’s a more nebulous concept out there than “initial quality,” we’re not aware of it. Check minus.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) has fired-up its Cash4Clunkers website. I would have thought the bill’s nickname would have been ideal for the job, but then I’m not a public servant. And so the feds present its brand new website with a new name: CARS (Car Allowance Rebate System). Definitely a case of not leaving well enough alone. To wit: a button on cars.gov asking “How will CARS work”. Apropos of nothing, the site also has a strange FAQ: “I don’t drive an American car but I would like to trade in my old car for a newer, more fuel efficient one. Is this program only for American cars?” Now why would anyone think that? More CARS after the jump.
There’s a nasty, drag-out fight going on between current Tesla Chairman and CEO Elon Musk and his predecessor, Martin Eberhard, over who deserves credit for birthing the electric roadster. Musk has posted a lengthy defense of his position at the Tesla Motors blog, and according to him, Eberhard is the bad guy. Lots of e-mails attached. Ugly stuff.
“With progressed Saturn in a partile (exact to the degree and minute of arc) opposition with the GM Sun, the company’s day of reckoning has come. According to news reports, General Motors will send termination notices to 1,100 of its car dealers, about 20% of its 6,000 U.S. dealerships. The transit of Pluto in 2010 in square to the GM Sun will allow the company to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy and to rebuild and reinvent itself.”
Of course, if you read mountainastrologer.com regularly, you knew this a month ago! Hey, and 2010 is just months away! I’m feeling better already!
In an interview with gm-volt.com, The General’s global product honcho, John Lauckner, reveals the impossible: the Volt is somehow under-budget. According to Lauckner, “. . . were [sic] very pleased that were [sic] on time on target and under budget.” After all, “you can’t ask for more than that when your running a program the size of the Volt and with the amount of technology that we’re [See? It’s not that hard] designing developing and implementing largely on the fly.” Yes, but what does “under budget” mean when you’re talking about a $40K bailout-baby green halo car?
On Thursday the bipartisan leadership of the US House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee introduced its $500 billion blueprint for federal transportation programs over the next six years. In addition to creating new rail and transit subsidies, the proposal introduces new roadblocks for state looking to convert existing free roads into toll roads. Committee Chairman James L. Oberstar (D-Minnesota) and Ranking Member John L. Mica (R-Florida) agreed that legislative consideration of the proposal should move forward this Wednesday. Oberstar’s proposal represents a 53 percent increase in spending over the previous authorization level and will require significant increases in revenue generated. Oberstar lashed out at a suggestion from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood that Congress should hold off on action so that the expected vote on raising gas taxes would be delayed until after the midterm congressional elections.
The daily podcasts keep coming, as Farago and Niedermeyer learn that the Chrysler Sebring replacement is screwed, Bob Lutz should keep quiet and that the Germans care about our energy independence. Plus the usual daily reminder that this is a car website.
“A new order is emerging where the Detroit companies may no longer be the volume leaders in their home market,” says GT’s Kim Rodriguez in a release [via PRNewswire] which spins the news as an opportunity for US suppliers. The upshot is that even if the Detroit firms return to profitability by 2012 (hello, Vegas?), suppliers will have to diversify because expansion in US production is coming from the transplants. VW and BMW plan on doubling their US production capacity in that timeframe (to 1m units) while Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai will collectively add another million units. GT expects other firms to add another 200,000 units of production to the US mix by 2012 as well. Meanwhile, Chrysler and GM are shuttering plants and shedding capacity while taxpayers bail them out in the name of the “American automotive industry and manufacturing base.”
TTAC’s not the only one wondering when Toyota will stop acting like GM. Last February, none other than 84-year-old honorary chairman Shoichiro Toyoda (grandson of the company founder) upbraided 400 Toyota executives by asking them the same thing. “A person familiar with the meeting” told Bloomberg that Toyoda started out by asking lame-duck president Katsuaki Watanabe, “How many times have you made a mistake?” Then he went on to accuse the group of chasing sales and profits and letting Toyota emulate GM and Chrysler by becoming “addicted” to big cars and trucks while ignoring “the customers’ need to save money.”
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