We knew that production of HUMMER H3 and H3Ts was continuing, as an unnamed fleet buyer has ordered the final batch of 849 units from GM’s Shreveport plant, but that’s not the only Zombie nameplate that GM just can’t seem to kill. Automotive News [sub] reports that 1,037 Saturn Outlooks were built last month “to utilize existing materials” according to GM spokesfolks. According to production stats published at GMI, about 3,000 Saturn Vues were also built in February at GM’s Ramos Arizpe plant in Mexico. Is GM having brand separation anxiety, or are zombie car nameplates as hard to kill as their undead namesakes?
The biggest storyline right now for America’s bailed-out automakers is how little they’ve been able to capitalize on Toyota’s stumbles. While Ford and Hyundai made hefty sales gains last month, both GM and Chrysler’s performances were distinctly unimproved by Toyota’s woes. And now that Toyota is launching major incentive packages to recover lost sales momentum, Detroit has no remaining incentive to not revert to the bad old practices of incentive dependence. With GM and Ford diving into the zero-percent war, Global Insight’s George Magliano tells Automotive News [sub]:
Incentives are going to be here into the third quarter. We’re not going to wean consumers off incentives any time soon. We’re stuck with it. They’re all jockeying for position… After clunkers everybody backed off incentives. Now they’re going to the whip again
Wonder how a formerly little known company called BYD can turn into a major player in the auto business and turn a record profit? Here is one of the reasons: BYD “has scrapped its highly publicized plan to mass-produce pure electric cars on the mainland by the middle of this year,” writes Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.
All they’ll make will be 100 E6 electric cars to be used as taxis in the city of Shenzhen, where BYD is based. Further development of the vehicles will depend on how that test fleet will be doing. Now that is one way to delay production. (Read More…)
Last week was an eventful one for Tata Motors. First, Daimler announced that it had completed selling off its 5.34% stake in the Indian automaker, for USD $422 million. Investors including Citibank and Tata Sons, the largest current Tata Motors stockholder, acquired the shares. Daimler explained the move by saying that it is now well enough established in India in terms of passenger and commercial vehicles, to no longer need an equity share in a local company. Daimler already builds CVs in Pune and its new CV plant in Chennai will go online in 2012. Daimler and Tata have a relationship that dates to 1954, when Tata started assembling Mercedes-Benz trucks. The two companies started local assembly of M-B cars in 1994 under the Telco joint venture.
There’s a powerful sense of urgency in getting this Curbside Classic written. It’s to document the remarkable horde of old Mercedes W123 diesels hereabouts, most of them proudly sporting a biodiesel sticker. But the biodiesel fad was already waning substantially when I shot this car a year ago. And since the $1/gallon federal subsidy for biodiesel disappeared with the new year, biodiesel itself is at risk of becoming a CC (canola classic?). Congress is currently considering a renewal, but regardless, Mercedes W123s will still be around. In fact they may well be the last internal combustion engine cars running long after Peak Oil is a distant warm and fuzzy memory. Without being uncharitable, these cars are the automotive cockroaches: they’ll eat the grease out of your dirty frying pan, and you can’t hardly kill them. (Read More…)
Faced with a $120 million budget deficit, West Virginia lawmakers are turning to school buses to bring in desperately needed revenue. The House of Delegates voted 98-0 Saturday to give final approval to House Bill 4223 which allows county school boards to deploy buses to issue $500 automated tickets. The proposal becomes law with the signature of Governor Joe Manchin (D).
“Every county board of education is hereby authorized to mount a camera on any school bus for the purpose of enforcing this section or for any other lawful purpose,” House Bill 4223 states.
Fritz Henderson was Mr Transition at General Motors, taking over when Wagoner was ousted by the Presidential task force, and losing the top spot when Ed Whitacre’s purges hit a fever pitch. So it’s not exactly surprising to find out that, in addition to his $3k/hr consulting gig at New GM, Henderson is also getting paid by Old GM’s wind-down firm AlixPartners. The Detroit News won’t spill the beans on compensation, let alone the nature of Henderson’s work as a consultant, but does note that AP has slurped down over $35m in fees since last year’s bankruptcy. AP’s reasons for hiring Henderson:
From time to time, AlixPartners contracts with experienced specialists to complement our existing team and to help us grow, and that’s our purpose in signing on Fritz Henderson as an independent contractor working on a part-time basis,
Fritz Henderson: because he was liquidating General Motors before it was cool. Meanwhile, is the volatility of contract consulting work really a good idea, given the Henderson family temperament?
From Jim Sikes (he only wants a new car), and Orange County ( no idea what they really want), to class action lawyers (they want billions), everybody wants to cash in on Toyota. Chinese Zhejiang Province’s doesn’t want to stand behind. Their commerce bureau and consumer protection committee called on Toyota to compensate drivers for costs stemming from its recall of faulty vehicles, reports The Nikkei [sub]. (Read More…)
Again, Renault and Daimler are reported to having a serious tête–à-tête that could lead to a formal marriage. According to the Financial Times, “Daimler and Renault are discussing acquiring mutual equity stakes as part of a possible alliance that would go beyond their current talks on small cars.” Their source? “Two people briefed on the matter.”
Stakes to be bought or swapped were likely to be smaller than 10 per cent. (Read More…)
European new car sales have fallen back to crisis levels. With many of the incentive programs withdrawn or phasing out, it’s back to reality. Reality is quite rough. Basically, Europe is back where it was in the carmageddon days of early 2009. The few bright spots are caused by on-going life support measures. Without government generosity, the European market place would be a wasteland.
New passenger car registrations in the EU increased by a mere 3 percent in February. Compared to the pre-crisis levels of February 2008, new car registrations decreased by 16 percent, reports the European Automobile Manufacturers Association ACEA. (Read More…)
Sorry about the lateness of tonight’s clue. You Easterners are probably in bed by now, but the left coasters will take up the slack. Speaking of slack, Loser guessed the Ford cop car on the first comment. That makes you a Winner! Hopefully, it won’t go quite so quickly tonight.
Or is it the other way around? Based on the latest readings from our official TTAC losing-the-plot-ometer, Porsche is still at least ten years away from matching this spectacular achievement in short-sighted brand narcissism.
GM earned some goodwill with dealers in recent weeks by reinstating over 600 dealers, most of them rural Cadillac stores. But as always, as soon as one grating issue in GM’s relations with its dealers is resolved, another one appears. Automotive News [sub] reports that GM is seeking five- and six-figure sums from what it terms “a very small” number of dealers who allegedly violated the terms of its Standards for Excellence Incentive program. This might be a relatively normal occurrence, if it weren’t made more complicated by GM’s recent bankruptcy. Because GM audited its dealers before bankruptcy, but didn’t act on the information until now, GM says that its penalties aren’t debatable, and that the normal audit process will not be available to dealers receiving the bills. (Read More…)
After early versions of the 2010 Mustang Convertible were caught crushing crash dummy heads, Ford re-worked its retro cruiser for a less “mind-blowing” crash test performance. If you’ve got a 2010 ‘stangvertible in mind, you might want to make sure it was built after December of last year.
Just as Toyota has coasted in recent years on a reputation built some time ago, Audi’s latest round of interior-cheapening has gone largely unremarked-upon in the motoring press. Sitting in the new A4, I don’t find myself thinking, as Motor Trend did, that its “high-quality materials and clean, attractive design continue to live up to Audi’s stellar reputation as the industry benchmark.” In fact, the interiors of nearly every current Audi (except the A8 and TT) strike me as cheap, disappointing and monumentally uninspired. In other words, the opposite of living up to Audi’s reputation.
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