When Toyota announced their share purchase / NUMMI deal with Tesla, the greenies rejoiced, the skeptics said it’s just an elegant way to unload NUMMI. Toyota said they are mildly interested in Tesla, in a venture capital kind of way. As in: here is some money and a factory we no longer need. Would be great if something comes of it. Well, they will actually build a car together. Not the Model S as many thought. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s build a prototype first. (Read More…)
We’ve been pretty hard on Cadillac’s decision to replace its aging DTS/STS “flagships” with the stretched-Epsilon XTS, shown in concept form at this year’s NYIAS. We reckon Cadillac needs a true S-Class competitor (as opposed to a glorified Buick LaCrosse) to be taken seriously as a world-class luxury brand… and it turns out that Ed Whitacre agrees. C&D reports:
Cadillac fans will be thrilled to hear that Ed Whitacre himself has instructed the brand to build a true, full-size flagship above both the CTS and the upcoming XTS. The car has not been clearly defined yet. The Zeta platform (Holden Commodore, Chevrolet Camaro, etc.) is heavy and dated, and therefore the flagship is more likely be built on a stretched version of the CTS’s Sigma platform.
The CBC reports that:
Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty said Friday his government will wait to see how General Motors prices its public share offering before deciding whether to sell its stake in the company.
McGuinty said the government needs to be “patient” and sell at the most profitable time.
The Canadian and Ontario governments own about 12 percent of GM. The US Treasury, which owns about 60 percent of GM has said that it expects to sell “some” of its GM stake during the IPO, which is expected to occur by the end of this year. In short, as Ken Elias predicts, GM won’t stop being “Government Motors” after it goes public. No matter how emphatically Ed Whitacre declares victory.
Slate‘s Robert Bryce reckons so. With ethanol producers and blenders bouncing off the ethanol “blend wall” and into bankruptcy court, Bryce figures
Now the industry is counting on a president beleaguered by the made-for-TV crisis in the Gulf of Mexico to help it out. And he appears ready to do just that. On April 28, six days after the Deepwater Horizon rig sank, President Obama visited an ethanol plant in Missouri and declared that “there shouldn’t be any doubt that renewable, homegrown fuels are a key part of our strategy for a clean-energy future.” Obama also said, “I didn’t just discover the merits of biofuels like ethanol when I first hopped on the campaign bus.”
The strongest indication that an ethanol bailout is imminent came last Friday when Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (former governor of Iowa, the nation’s biggest ethanol-producing state) said, “I’m very confident that we’re going to see an increase in the blend rate.”
Suburban municipalities are infuriated by the Cook County, Illinois Board of Commissioners’ plan to install unwanted red light cameras in their towns. On June 2, the board voted 10 to 3 to approve contracts with two vendors to begin installing cameras at thirty intersections on county roads throughout suburban Cook County. More and more municipalities are now pushing back. The Schaumburg Village Board voted unanimously Tuesday to pass an ordinance prohibiting the county from erecting red light cameras within their city limits without the town’s consent.
Thomas Olesen wrote in to request a May 2010 brand volume chart. His wish just came true. Your wildest US-market auto sales questions can be answered too, if you just send your request to editors@ttac.com.
Handling [GM’s] IPO assignment is something of a vanity project for the Wall Street banks, given the relatively small fees the banks will earn through the process. One person familiar with the offering said that the banks may earn less than 1% of the overall deal. At a valuation of $10 billion, that would equal a total fee pool of $100 million.
The Wall Street Journal [sub]’s take on the forthcoming GM IPO. Persons anonymous tell The Journal that Morgan Stanley and JPMorganChase are the frontrunners in the vanity project sweepstakes. But as charitable as the one-percent arrangement seems, the Wall Street mavens have their work cut out for them…
I could bore you all with the long story of how I ended up in the check-cashing business — it involved an attack with a broomstick and a coffee mug — but instead we will simply join the action in medias res some time in 1996. I am standing on the used-car lot outside Welsh […]
Spyker, proud new owner of SAAB, is overwhelmed. Victor Muller is looking at what’s on his plate and is having an anxiety attack. “How will I ever get that done?” (And with what money?) Spyker needs serious help. (Read More…)
So, this was all about new markets where the Chevrolet brand is relatively unknown. In other words, the markets where consumers are just as likely to call their Chevrolet a “ChevWoo” or “Daewoo” as a “Chevy.” The reality is that nothing hurts the Chevrolet brand abroad more than the continued existence of the Daewoo brand… by comparison the use of a familiar nickname is a minor issue. And what is going to be easier for a non-English-speaker to say, Chevrolet or Chevy? Anyway, based on the harried, apologetic tone in this video, it’s pretty clear that GM would rather this controversy had never started. So why did the new ad boys feel like dropping “Chevy” was so important?
Whenever sales in China come up, there is an echo somewhere: “Sure, but are they making money?” “Name the average transaction cost in China.” “Profits? Everbody know profits can’t be taken out of China.” Thanks for your concern, but Nissan doesn’t have these worries. (Read More…)
The remote Goto Islands in the East China Sea, about 60 miles west off the port city of Nagasaki are turning into the world’s laboratory for massive EV deployment. The islands used to be known for heir unspoiled nature and their old churches. Soon, they’ll be know as the island of EVs. That because of a large-scale pilot project that began on the islands in April. (Read More…)
Europe’s Euro 5 emissions standard has already killed off Mazda’s RX-8; is it any wonder that the Impreza STI is running scared? Autocar reports that the next-gen STI, due sometime in 2012 will not offer another version of the 2.0 turbocharged gas engines that have powered the car since it got a reputation for bargain thrills. Instead, a two-liter turbodiesel is likely to be the main engine on offer, as Subaru strives to keep the STI grunty without blowing its emissions limits.
Good night, sweet luxo-barge. After nearly 10 years in production, the 430’s sales have fallen from about 14k in its first several years on sale to 720 units last year and about 2k units the year before that. Which, for a rather ungainly and quite expensive boulevardier, is not half bad at all. It will never be a car that enjoys enthusiast or collector cachet, but cougars and their plastic surgeons alike appreciate its smooth power, anonymously ostentatious looks, and old-school personal luxury coupe style. In short, it’s been the closest thing to an old-school Buick Riviera on the US market in decades. And as of July it will be gone forever.
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