Everyone knows that automobiles are changing. The more curmudgeonly of us might even suspect that the glamor and freedom that once defined cars is fading fast. Heightening this paranoia is a design studio (via Core77) by Google smartphone designers Maaike Eversand and Mike Simonian depicting their vision for the future of cars: the Autonomobile. At this year’s Detroit Auto Show, Mike and Maaike came to the realization that “today’s car industry is brainwashed by its own car culture, with its obsession for speed, styling and fantasy. The car business has become one of repackaging, steering people’s focus towards style and a narrow definition of performance, not on our true needs.” And what, pray tell, are our true needs? “Most cars on the road today can go 120 mph. Why? The reality is that cars are mostly used at moderate speeds and for sitting in traffic. It’s time to look at performance in a new way.”
Curbside Classics takes you back to 1971 for a virtual comparison test of six small cars, based (and partly borrowed) from a C/D test.
If you were going to a speed-dating event, and were thirty-three years older than all the “competition”, you might be forgiven for wanting some quick cosmetic surgery. But if the result was a reverse Michael Jackson, you’d damn well better hope that your “experience” and “build”, and other timeless qualities are still in demand. Otherwise, your days finding willing partners/buyers are numbered, like this 1971 VW Super Beetle.
You may not be familiar with H.R. 2743. The Automobile Dealer Economic Rights Restoration Act of 2009 tells New Chrysler and New GM that they “may not deprive an automobile dealer of its economic rights and shall honor those rights as they existed, for Chrysler LLC dealers, prior to the commencement of the bankruptcy case by Chrysler LLC on April 30, 2009, and for General Motors Corp. dealers, prior to the commencement of the bankruptcy case by General Motors Corp. on June 1, 2009, including the dealer’s rights to recourse under State law.” In other words, it would reverse New ChryCo’s and New GM’s dealer cutbacks—or at least force Uncle Sam to spend taxpayer billions to dump them. The bill is doomed. But that’s not stopping GM from asking its post-cull dealers to show their fealty and help twist the knife into their former colleagues. Text of the “loyalty oath” after the jump. [thanks to you-know-who-you-are]
There are many great reasons to be happy to be a Baby Boomer. We may be getting old but we misspent our youth in some great decades. We had the iconic cars and lots of drive-ins for a custom fit with an increasingly relaxed moral code. We only had AM radio, but it played some of the best music ever heard in a car. But mostly we (or at least I) had Tom McCahill.
Today’s discovery: a double-black 1992 Lincoln Mark VII with just 73,000 miles. It’s not perfect—some of the electrical gadgets don’t work any more, there’s some rust on the front fenders, the clearcoat has burned through in places and the paint underneath is fading. The biggest concern is a broken front passenger seat; the power part is fine, but the seatback is lying flat and will not stand up. I am unsure how to fix this, or even if it can be done in a way that will make it safe for passengers. And for reasons that will be readily apparent to anyone who read about my Thunderbird, I am leery of Ford automatics of this vintage. Is the one in the Lincoln any better than the one in the ‘Bird?
So how long before New GM fires Uncle Fritz? In the most pragmatic of all possible worlds, where the Presidential Task Force on Automobiles (PTFOA) looked out for the taxpayers’ $50 billion as if it were their own—Fritz wouldn’t even BE GM’s CEO. Henderson would have been defenestrated along with Rick Wagoner. You know: the ex-CEO who groomed Henderson as his replacement. (How hard is it to connect those dots?) Henderson has assured his place in The Peter Principle Hall of Fame, capping his career as the PTFOA’s toady. And now, best case, he should follow Old GM onto the scrap heap of history. Not a chance.
TTAC’s Best & Brightest strike again! GM’s monthly sales since 2004 only went up today, and already the rich bounty of raw data is yielding fruit. Like this graph of GM’s sales by brand since 2004 by commenter j_slez. Some pictures are worth thousands of words.
TTAC Commentator bumpy ii is nothing if not persistent. When the member of TTAC’s Best and Brightest bumped into the most recent U.S. new car sales figures (June), he was determined to get all trendy on us. And so . . . Click here for a look back at the sales stats for every Toyota model back to January ’04. If another one of our OCD, I mean, B&B wants to share some statistical analysis, or put this into a more visual form, bring it on. As always, your editorial support is most appreciated. [farago@ttac.com] Next up: same thing, Old GM.
TTAC commentator bumpy ii now blesses us with Old GM new car sales data bounteousness. Click here for the Best and Brightest’s data dump. There’s lots to be gleaned from this raw data, but the one thing we know for sure: no matter how many of what GM sold over the last five years, they didn’t take in more money than they spent. Will New GM reverse the curse? If I was a gambling man unencumbered by my journalistic oath of independence, I’d short the stock. Oh wait . . .
“I think it’ll go very quickly, and Congress may have to revisit it in the fall… 250,000 vehicles isn’t enough… We think there’ll be additional phases of this… It’ll probably evolve.”
Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers Prez Dave McCurdy on the CARS scheme in Automotive News [sub]. McCurdy acknowledged that greater improvements in fuel efficiency might be required for a future Senate compromise. Apparently McCurdy believes Senate won’t play ball “if it’s just a truck program for people buying F-150s“. What could have given him that impression?
In fairness, the Aveo hatch is easier to watch crashing (Both EuroNCAP). Easier on the eyes in general, in the case of the first-gen hatch. Still, who’s up for tasting some brave manouever Baruth-style in one of these? And no, this isn’t a Euro ringer. This IIHS Aveo test is just as scary. You’re a brave man, Jack.
So much for the bailout leading to a compact/alt-energy über alles approach. The newly reconstituted Chrysler has lost its A/B segment (compact, city car) vehicle line chief and will be cutting nearly half of its Global Electric Motors (GEM) dealers. Of course, Chrysler’s A/B segment vehicle lines are empty at the moment, and aren’t likely to be filled with anything beyond cynical Fiat rebadges. Is that why Andreas Schell, who came to Chrysler with the Daimler merger, is leaving? Chrysler spokesfolks tell Automotive News [sub] only that they knew Schell “has left the company but didn’t know where he is heading.” Meanwhile, Chrysler is culling 64 of its 150 GEM dealers because “many of the rejected GEM dealers failed to sell more than a handful of GEM cars [er, Neighborhood Electric Vehicles, actually] in the past 12 to 24 months or longer… The debtors have determined that the GEM dealership agreements are neither necessary nor valuable to their estates and should be rejected.” Of course, perhaps the problem isn’t so much the dealers as the vehicles… but good luck getting a judge to rule that way. In any case, the one GEM dealer that the Freep spoke to was glad to see the GEMs go, saying they never sold regularly or particularly profitably.
Cars.com tackles the tough question of domestic content in its latest “American Made Index,” and comes away with a surprising result: Toyota’s Camry is the most “American” car on the market. Of course, making these distinctions in a global industry is fraught with difficulty. Though percentage of domestic parts content is tracked by the NHTSA for American Automobile Labeling Act compliance (PDF), those numbers count US and Canadian parts as being “domestic”. So Cars.com has created its own list which requires US assembly, at least 75 percent US-sourced parts content, and factors in sales numbers because “they correlate to the number of U.S. autoworkers employed to build any given model and to build the parts that go into those same cars.” Taking out vehicles that are being canceled with no clear replacement, the following vehicles make up their top ten “most American” automobiles.
For years GM’s inventory levels have been a major cause for concern. Falling market share lead to overproduction which lead to incentive addiction and falling profitability as GM tried to help its dealers clear their lots. But now that GM has cut production to the bone during its bankruptcy, dealers are beginning to complain to Automotive News [sub] that “right-sizing” is leaving them short on crucial truck and CUV models. GM’s summer shutdown ends on the 13th of July, but a rolling restart means some production won’t come back online until August. In the meantime . . .
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