German new car sales are no longer Teflon-coated. New car sales in Deutschland were down 5 percent in July, Germany’s Kraftfahrtbundesamt reports. (Read More…)
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GM posted better quarterly numbers today than analysts expected. Instead of jumping on the news, the GM share is down at the time of this typing? Why? Analysts and financial reporters quickly caught on to an old trick that has an air of despair: GM delayed spending into the next quarter. Says Reuters: (Read More…)
On Tuesday, after I got home from photographing today’s Junkyard Find, I got to thinking about the ’68 D-100’s factory AM radio. It looked to be identical to the nonfunctional radio in my 1966 Dodge A100 project van. Maybe the one in the pickup still works, I thought, so I had to return yesterday to grab it. (Read More…)
What’s up this month at GM? Inventories of full-size trucks. What’s not? Sales of full-size trucks.
I’ve been finding quite a few vintage D-Series Dodge pickups in Denver-area self-service junkyards lately, which reminds me that I’ve spent too long ignoring Detroit pickups of the 1960s and 1970s in this series. I see them, but (unless an old truck has a GMC V6 and a bunch of ancient Deadhead stickers) I usually don’t photograph them. So, the Dodges: I shared this ’74 D-200 Club Cab and this ’73 D-100 Adventurer last week, and now we’ve got a ’68 Adventurer that shares quite a few components with my ’66 A-100 van. (Read More…)
This is a follow up to a couple of recent TTAC posts that touched on how and why the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild, a youth competition sponsored by General Motors which produced a number of top flight car designers, was ended in 1968. After my first post, which wondered if any girls participated because most of the promotional material was targeted at boys, I was contacted by Richard Earl, the grandson of Harley Earl, who founded GM’s styling department and ran it for over three decades. Richard Earl provided me with a quote from Irv Rybicki, one of Harley Earl’s successors as head of GM Design, that claimed that it was racism and sexism on the part of GM brass that ended the Guild.
First the guy called. Then his wife. Then the repo driver.
The truck had been out in front of their house for nearly a half hour. Lights flashing. Neighbors peeved, and humiliation aplenty.
“Steve, I can get both cars. What do you want me to do?”
When I go to a first-rate car show, collection or museum, I often vacillate between “but of course” and “what a surprise”. There are cars that you know that you’re going to see, cars that naturally belong in that environment, and then there are unexpected but undeniably special cars that turn out to be one of the highlights of the event for you. The Concours of America at St. John’s, formerly the Meadow Brook Concours, is not only at the pinnacle of Detroit area car events but it’s also a world-class event, in the rank of the Amelia Island and Pebble Beach shows. The 2012 CoA was held last Sunday and as expected there were plenty of “of course” moments, but also a few very pleasant surprises, including this McLaren M1B, what I consider the ultimate anti-trailer queen.
Starting with the redesigned 2013 Accord, Honda will introduce its new, ultra-efficient/more powerful Earth Dreams engine lineup. And it’s far from the most silly moniker attached to automotive technology.
Note to readers: The apple may fall near the tree, but sometimes it rolls a bit before it comes to a stop. As a kid growing up in and around Detroit, I couldn’t wait to get my driver’s license when I turned 16. My twentysomething younger daughter Tova, on the other hand, only today got her first learner’s permit. When she jokingly suggested that I write about our trip to the Secretary of State’s office, it occurred to me that it fit right in with Derek Kreindler’s Generation Why series exploring the current crop of young adults who seem less likely to drive (or buy) cars than their parents and grandparents. I returned her jocular suggestion with a serious one of my own, asking her to share her thoughts on the experience with you.
My text message was half-serious. “Dad,” I typed with my thumbs, “You should write an article about this for TTAC.” (Read More…)
They called the market correctly, but they did bet on the wrong horses. Bloomberg polled the usual assemblage of analysts regarding the final tally of July new car sales, and the analysts did not disappoint when it came to the overall market. On average, they nailed the July SAAR of 14.1 million. When it came to the Detroit 3, they were way too optimistic. And it just so happens that the chief car analyst of Germany’s largest bank is the winner of this month’s Grade the Analysts. (Read More…)
This makes Hugo Chavez happy: GM wants to more than double its production in the Caribbean worker’s paradise of Venezuela. At least that’s what Chavez told Reuters: (Read More…)
Toyota has decided to increase global production this year by about 300,000 units, The Nikkei [sub] reports, as usual for the Nikkei without quoting sources. If this is true, then it would bring global production numbers for Toyota and Lexus close to 9 million for the year. With Daihatsu and Hino, that number would be around 10 million. That is too high for GM to reach. (Read More…)
Used cars give automobile buyers the best possible bang for the buck– except when they don’t. As a professional dealer, I could tell you stories of used car calamities that would make public transportation seem like the only sensible option. Tales of stitched together death traps that looked as new as the day both cars were born. Cars with supposedly clean registration papers that turned out to be hotter than Peachtree Street in mid-August. Instead, I’m going to tell you how to buy a used car without getting your proverbial clock cleaned.
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