By Thursday, GM wants to have a definite deal with the Opel unions at least that’s the deadline Steve Girsky has set. The parties are further apart than Dems and Reps over the sequester. Steve Girsky wanted the unions to agree that Opel’s toolmaking, prototype building and central production planning will be outsourced, or moved to GM’s plant in Gliwice, Poland, Der Spiegel says. The unions are rightly horrified. (Read More…)
Check her rear
Not only will GM’s OnStar switch from the allegedly ultra-reliable and most dense Verizon network to the allegedly not-so reliable and not-so-dense AT &T network, as Reuters reports. It will also “make each of its cars an Internet hotspot with a high-speed broadband connection,” as Automotive News has it. (Read More…)
“Dieter Zetsche is lucky that he can stay for three more years,” writes Der Spiegel in Germany. The labor side of Daimler’s Supervisory Board had demanded Dr. Z’s head, the magazine writes. After long debates with Daimler’s Supervisory Board Chairman Manfred Bischoff, a compromise was found. (Read More…)
It is very simple: Stay civil.
Commenters can say anything on TTAC, as long as it is said in a civilized way. It’s not what one says on TTAC that can attract a ban, only how comments are made. Rudeness, bullying, name calling can quickly lead to a permanent bannage. (Read More…)
Jalopnik is making a big do about “NISSAN’S NISMO IS PLANNING A BIG ANNOUNCEMENT ON MONDAY.” And the Jalops wonder: “What could it be?” It might be the start of a large multinational co-operative project between Jalopnik and TTAC. Or not. (Read More…)
American automakers keep complaining about the allegedly closed Japanese market where just about nobody wants their big brutes since … the last world war. The Japanese market is full, it has too much local capacity, and it is getting smaller by the day. At the same time, Detroit does not seem to have its ear on the ground in a much bigger market close-by: China. Despite being in China in full strength, Detroit hasn’t capitalized on a huge trend in the Middle Kingdom: Pickups for urban cowboys. According to Chinacartimes, money is left on the table for Chinese who are ready to cash in. (Read More…)
The story about fake taxi parts did not surprise me at all. “Police busts fake parts scam” is a fixed part of the standard repertoire of the auto industry theater troupe. That play is longer running than Les Miserables, it definitely made more money than the Phantom of the Opera. The play is a clever sham to separate you from your money, and I helped write the script.
Chrysler sure knows how to get the attention of the autoblogosphere. It’s not just that they send out pictures of a new car, along with a titillating come-on embargo. Oh, no: They do it not one, but several better. TTAC is in receipt of a Chrysler-internal email, along with userid and password to a site where secret pictures of the Jeep Cherokee are stored, along with the admonition that “anything you have heard or seen is still embargoed, until the day of the reveal, Wed., March 27 (at 12:01 am EST).” What do we do now? (Read More…)
Do you want to set a new world record and get you name into the Guinness Book? Nothing easier than that. Simply build a billboard with more than 183,024 LEDs and measuring over 28.0 meters in length and 6.2 meters in height, thereby exceeding a surface area of 174 sqm, and the world record for the largest illuminated advertising sign (indoors) will be yours. Until you do that, the record holder will be Nissan. (Read More…)
Winterkorn gets honorary PhD. He deserves it
Despite a severe contraction of its European home market, Volkswagen today announced record earnings for 2012. The group delivered an after tax profit of €21.9 billion ($28.9 billion) up from €15.8 billion ($20.9 billion) in the preceding year. (Read More…)
It is unusual that the supervisory board of a large German corporation denies the dearest wishes of its Management. If the board does not like a wish, the wish usually won’t be rendered in the first place, the tight community of executive assistants will see to it. It would be most unusual that the board denies the wish of its CEO to run the company for another five years. Daimler’s board did the impossible: It denied Dieter Zetsche’s wish for another five-year contract, and gave Dr. Z. three years to get Daimler’s house in order. It’s a mission impossible. The mustachioed will sit out his career as a fall guy. (Read More…)
As a retired operative of the auto propaganda community, I watched the schoolyard brawl between Tesla’s Elon Musk and the New York Time’s John Broder with detached interest. I won’t re-hash it again. Unless you live in a monastery in Tibet, and your Samsung Note 2 was impounded, because you were caught masturbating to Google image search, it was impossible to escape the fallout from the war of tweets, blogs, and counter-tweets. To this day, bullets and barbs still ricochet through the Internet. Only hours ago, Musk was still seen tweeting about an “impressively out of touch NYT auto editor,” while the world at large is utterly confused. And that is the true tragedy. This after-action report is dedicated to the victims.
Toyota will make in the neighborhood of 10 million units this year, but plans on a big push for 2014 that will propel it way beyond the 10 million mark. (Read More…)
Li Shufu, Chairman Geely
Two months ago, we wrote that Geely will pour $11 billion into a development program for the next generation Volvos, and that half of that money would go to Sweden. Our commentariat did not quite buy that and said that the technology will go to China. Right they were. (Read More…)
As a worldly American and car nut, on one of your world travels, there will be a time when you fall in love with a car in a foreign land. The crush on that thing will be so big that you will want to take the irresistible beauty home with you. Just ask Sajeev or Frau Murilee.
My advice: Resist that urge at all cost. Trust me, it is easier to import a new wife from Pago-Pago to America than to bring-in a lightly used Euro-spec Porsche from Zuffenhausen. There is one man who wants to change all that: A man with the initials B.S. petitioned the White House to liberalize the immigration rules for used cars. No, it’s not THAT BS. (Read More…)
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