The longer the decision over the fate of Opel drags on, the messier it gets. Last week, three parties handed in their bids: Magna, RHJ, BAIC. Later in the week, BAIC was kicked out of the race. Remaining: RHJ, darling of GM, and Magna, darling of everybody else. Then, more facts surfaced. They didn’t endear the bidders to the decision-makers. Not at all.
Archives are the foundation of historical research. Without access to primary material—be it documents, photographs, financial statements, engineering or test reports—historians lack the building blocks necessary to write the chronicles that inform our understanding of the past and illuminate the future. To their credit, America’s automakers have gone to great lengths and expense to preserve and protect the historical documents which chronicle and define their existence. Until recently. As Chrysler and GM plunged into bankruptcy, they turned their back on their own heritage, and destroyed a priceless part of our collective past.
From Will GM’s Story Have a Hero? by our friends at the New York Times:
When asked at an early meeting to discuss G.M.’s culture, he gave what some members of the task force described as a long, meandering answer, concluding: “I’ve been here 25 years. This is the only culture I know.” However, Mr. Henderson quickly added that he was determined to change it.
I have nothing against the Toyota Prius. It’s the car’s mystique that irks me. You know what I’m talking about: the whole “Toyota Pious” thing. As someone who’s read rational reports from Prius-owning TAC commentators, as a pistonhead who understands that there’s more to driving a Ferrari than beauty and performance, I swear I’m OK with the hybrid’s PC mantle. But the Prius’s high MPG numbers and green street cred tends to stifle the debate on some important points.
Earlier today, I spoke with Jim Dollinger (a.k.a. Buickman). The TTAC commentator was deeply rattled. Jimbo reported that GM had put the squeeze on the dealer for which he sells. “They’re clever,” he said. “But they made it clear to the dealer that their franchise was in danger if I didn’t shut down GeneralWatch.com.” I told Dollinger to let it go. In fact, I called him back and recommended that he let GM go. Give up his quixotic quest to save GM and find some more lucrative, less splenetic line of work, or at least another carmaker to represent. Nope. Ten minutes ago, I received one of his e-mail alerts. “Today General Motors threatened my dealer. Now I have to decide between keeping my job and running GeneralWatch.com.” I e-mailed him back, “Are you sure you want to go public with this?” Suffice it to say, Dollinger’s terse reply signified his assent. So there you have it: same old GM. In other words, knowing both Buickman and GM, I believe him. Your tax money hard at work.
No big deal. Just $650m net income over the last three months. That’s almost double what analysts expected, and comes despite an 11 percent drop in global sales (not including affiliates). Hyundai’s worldwide market share hit five percent for the first time though, with US share up over 1 percent in the last year. 56 percent sales growth in China didn’t hurt either. Forget the Genesis, Hyundai’s financial news is going to be what stirs up the competitors’ boardrooms.
When columnist Daniel Howes at the Detroit News gets pissed off enough at GM to write anything other than “we shall see what we shall see,” you know the former bankrupt is doing something very, very wrong. The object of Danny’s ire: the lack of fresh faces at The New GM. “To read the announcement of GM’s new nine-person executive committee, the promotions and the retirements, as I did minutes after it was made public, is to hear the faint strains of Talking Heads singing ‘same as it ever was, same as it ever was’ and to hear more wailing about the chronically clueless GM.” Mind you, Howes isn’t calling GM chronically clueless (that’s our job). He’s angry that “the feds’ pay-and-bonus restrictions essentially make it impossible for CEO Fritz Henderson to woo outside talent for inside jobs.” Woo-hoo! Howes is on the money; out in the real world, $500K doesn’t buy you a reasonable Human Resources manager. But hey, did someone forget the GM stands for Government Motors?
As promised in today’s podcast, here’s a teaser image of the forthcoming Audi A8 (courtesy of Top Gear‘s blog).
Three days before launch, the Department of Transportation has finally released the rules [PDF] for car dealers participating in the federal Cash for Clunkers program. Dealers must disable the trade-in’s engine [official powerplant-killing technique after the jump] and then send the clunker to an approved salvage auction or an authorized disposal company, which will kill, crush and destroy (not to mention recycle) the remaining bits. The doc also contains a word to the wise: “The CARS Act specifies that while many parts of the trade-in vehicle are permitted to be removed and sold, in the end the residual vehicle, including the engine block, must be crushed or shredded. Therefore, the trade-in value of the vehicle is not likely to exceed its scrap value. Purchasers should not expect to receive the same trade-in value as they might if the vehicle were to remain on the road.” I wonder how many consumers will make that calculation, or how many dealers will help them in that regard.
Fifty billion dollars. That’s how much money the United States taxpayer has plowed into General Motors. Back when this terrifying teat-sucking started, Michigan Representative Debbie Stabenow told the country that the bridge loans (as they were called at the time) were about “jobs, jobs, jobs.” To say the rhetoric justifying/sustaining GM’s giga-suckle has shifted would be like saying Pontiac’s prospects have dimmed. Now it’s all about “returning the taxpayer’s investment.” If that means withdrawing a contract from Stillwater Mining (a Montana outfit that provides New GM with platinum and palladium for catalytic converters) and endangering 1300 American jobs, to paraphrase the GM spokesman on this NPR report, tough shit. Nice thought, but does GM risk a serious consumer/taxpayer backlash as the federally-supported automaker turns its back on the US economy? Apparently not. (Witness the lack of interest in our story about federal stimulus money going to Mexican car factories.) Not yet, anyway. Meanwhile, what’s your take? Does America’s nationalized automaker have any obligation to support US jobs?
[Thanks to PeteMoran for the heads-up.]
One of the enduring lessons of the car game is that good vehicles don’t always sell well. As a car writer who took on news analysis before ever getting manufacturer-sponsored time behind the wheel, this lesson can’t help but tinge my impressions of a road test. So when my first weeklong tester arrived in the form of a Q7 TDI, I felt no desire to justify Audi’s decision to bring the thing to market. After all, by any reasonable analysis, the brand built by Quattro wagons should have been the primary beneficiary of America’s SUV craze. Or, at least its worst enemy. Instead the Q7 showed up for the party fashionably dressed but fashionably late. And very few wanted to buy it. With the high price of luxo ute party fuel already killing the festive vibes, is switching to a new drink enough to make Audi’s SUV sales party like its 1999?
[Thanks to starlightmica for the link]
I drove an Overfinch Range Rover once. Scared the NSFW out of me. I also shot skeet with a Holland & Holland Royal Over-and-Under. Now that was easy. From the press release:
Based on either the 5.0 litre 503 bhp Supercharged or TDV8 versions of the new 2010 MY car, the Holland & Holland Overfinch features a raft of enhancements that make it unmistakably something very special.
Daryl Greatrex, Managing Director of Holland & Holland, said, “Holland & Holland is globally synonymous with both luxury and supreme functionality. To look at, to handle and shoot with a Holland & Holland is to appreciate 174 years of using the best craftsmanship and technology to make things work supremely well and look even better. It’s ten years since we had a Holland & Holland Range Rover and we decided that working with Overfinch was the only way to do it this time.”
Earlier this week, J.D. Power gave the automotive world a new score to ponder: the Vehicle Launch Index (VLI). This addition to the survey giant’s quality canon aims to measure how well manufacturers launch new or redesigned models. It’s a worthy endeavor; a new model’s success in its first few months often predicts its long-term sales and profitability. But what do these new J.D. Power scores tell us? In the immortal words of Jeff Spicoli: I don’t know.
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