Bertone took a beating! Someone else might have handed a beating out! Subaru’s on fire, Vipers are cold as ice!
And You Thought The Residuals On The Volvo 780 Coupe Had Them Set 4 Lyfe, Yo:
Michael Robinson, the last design director for Bertone, no longer wants to talk about the company. “Having turned the page, I can’t afford to be dragged into this Valley of Tears,” he says in a text message responding to a request for comment. “The real perpetrators should be hung on a tree.”
Oh, Michael! Plants are hung, people are hanged! And it’s the Vale Of Tears; the Valley Of Tears is probably a place in “Game Of Thrones”. No wonder he’s upset, however: Stile Bertone is bankrupt. Not to be confused with Bertone Cento, which actually owns the name and logo, or Bertone Design, which has a license to use the “Bertone” name on non-automotive design. This is the original design house. Despite picking up new business, they’ve accumulated debt faster than they’ve received payment. It’s anybody’s guess what will happen next.
For The American Dude: Subaru’s always had a fractious relationship with its dealers, but now the company is sounding the alarm in earnest. Subaru’s Yasuyuki Yoshinaga is troubled that the automaker’s third-from-DFL place in JD Power’s dealer-satisfaction ratings will cause all their new customers to not return to the dealer. Best of luck, Subaru: in this business, the last mile is always the hardest. But if you’re looking for intelligent dealer principals to steer the script, I’d recommend starting with this guy.
This Time, The Name Of The Publication Is Literally Appropriate: Crain’s Detroit published an unusually long list of stuff happening to various super-important people in Detroit. See if you can find the Easter Egg in the long list. This is like one of those OKCupid profiles where the goiter doesn’t get mentioned until paragraph 11, right after the list of life-changing short stories and favorite ways to use Sriracha. The first person to find the hidden news will receive a free TTAC T-shirt. The second person will receive NOTHING.
This Always Trails Slowdowns In The Independent Drywall Contractor Business By Exactly Three Months: Production of the SRT Viper has been idled again. It’s a damned shame because the current Viper is a brilliant automobile and deserves consideration by anyone who is in the market for a V10-powered, track-focused, Viper.
Like There Aren’t Ten Articles A Day With That Stupid Title: Jalopnik‘s Patrick George caught the Detroit Free Press running “sponsored content” without identifying it as such. His article on the top forced the Free Press to admit the post was “human error”, which usually means “we didn’t think we were going to get caught.” When pressed for comment, leading automotive PR people offered TTAC a free trip to Europe in the new Bentley Mulsanne GTCSCS, the new convertible that’s already making waves among the rich and famous. Why not buy one today?
“Alleged domestic disturbance,” huh.
You’d think he could have kept that out of there. Might be strategic.
@brenschluss
No, more like obligatory.
An “impartial” press is expected to report on the foibles of its staff and management, if for no other reason than to demonstrate that it is “impartial.”
As to where it’s done, well, that’s not quite so obligatory …
Too bad about the Viper. Seemingly 90% of commenters on TTAC would love to have one, but they only buy cars well-used!
Tough bunch. Too bad.
I beg to differ. 90% of TTAC commenters want a VW diesel wagon with MT.
But your final conclusion is spot on, they only want that wagon as used car.
I think just for all car forum commenters, manufacturers should actually produce used cars.
“I think just for all car forum commenters, manufacturers should actually produce used cars.”
Now THAT comment cracks me up! What a concept: pre-stained seats, worn carpet & pedal pads, faded clearcoat, iffy sound system, windows that may or may not work, etc. The list goes on.
Why not? Levis hit the market with pre-washed jeans, then manufactured worn-out jeans complete with holes in the knees and elsewhere, et al.
Suckers…I mean customers bought them in droves.
Two things, first off there are some new cars with bad carpet and pedals, iffy sound systems, bad paint and windows that may or may not work.
Also, some manufacturers do sell used cars. GM sells “evaluation” vehicles to employees and I’m sure other companies do as well.
They could just claim production of 50k extra vehicles per year and produce the old model (with theoretically-fully-amortized development and depreciated tooling) 5 years after they quit making it with slightly lower-quality materials, 15k miles straight from the factory on the clock, always in brown, always with a manual, always diesel, only wagons, and lease them for peanuts to poor people in rural areas for 5-7k miles, then ship them to the city and make huge profits selling a low-mileage CPO to internet buyers that will only take used brown diesel wagons with manual transmissions. Since diesels lose so little resale value, they could probably make decent profits this way.
The problem, of course, is that they’d rapidly saturate the market. You could probably only pull it off once every decade or so. It’d probably be more profitable and easier to just build old Miatas the same way…
“Valley of Tears” is from the prayer Hail Holy Queen. Both Vale and Valley are correct usages.
clutch post, bro.
I’d rather pound nails through my d1ck than read Crain’s Detroit.
Ouch
My guess on the true hidden gem in crains was this:
” Consumer satisfaction in the first three months of 2014 took one of the biggest quarterly drops in the 20-year history of the University of Michigan-created American Customer Satisfaction Index, falling 0.8 percent from a score of 76.8 to 76.2 on the 100-point scale.”
Seems like a historical dip in consumer satisfaction deserves a deeper dive.
I understand you think that Mr. Conyers should have had to follow the petition process like anyone else who wanted to be on the ballot, but how do you expect him to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of rules and regulations coming out of Lansing and Washington DC? It’s a simple oversight, since it’s his seat by birthright, anyway, as clear as the Buckinghamshire riding belongs to the family Fortescue. He’d have to hire a lawyer to tell him what to do, anyway, and nobody likes paying lawyers, epecially when you have a domestic disturbance.
Glad to see at least somebody understands the way things work in 21st Century America.
I’m sure there is a joke to be made about the man whose slogan was “nobody beats Fretter” having passed away, but it’s just too early in the a.m. for me to make it.
“I’ll give you five pounds of coffee if I can’t beat your best deal!”
KC Crain is not having a good week!
Methinks this one was the most important.
• Novi-based Cooper-Standard Automotive Inc. agreed to sell its thermal and emissions product line to Halla Visteon Climate Control Corp.