For decades, big corporate profits were blasted as a sign of greed, especially by unions. GM changed all that. When a sheep dipped GM, free of legacy finance costs, and not paying taxes due to losses a normal company would not have been able to carry over after a bankruptcy, declared a record $7.6 billion profit in 2011, chests of GM boosters swelled with pride, as if the profits had been theirs. A year later, there is $2.7 billion less to be proud of. GM’s European millstone, Opel, continues to drag the company down. Opel’s operative losses more than doubled to $1.8 billion for all of 2012. (Read More…)
Three years ago, at a groundbreaking ceremony for an LG Chem Battery plant in Holland, Michigan, President Obama promised that this and other pants will be “a boost to the economy in the entire region.” Instead, the plant has become an example for what is wrong with a state-directed command economy. It also is yet another chapter in the Chevrolet Volt debacle. (Read More…)
The U.S. transportation system is in danger of falling apart, and will take down the economy with it, Bill Shuster, chairman of the House of Representatives Transportation Committee, said today while Reuters was keeping notes: (Read More…)
BMWtook a break from the arduous job of creating new variations of its Mini, and went to a party. Even that was strictly business, Mini was the official partner of the Grammy after party at the Chateau Marmont, a hotel famous for its dead celebrities. (Read More…)
Toyota swept J.D. Power and Associates 2013 U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study with its Lexus brand on top and by earning seven segment awards—more than any other automaker in 2013. General Motors received four segment awards and had Buick in place 6 and Chevrolet barely above average, while Volkswagen is an also-ran. (Read More…)
A study by Hertz shows that one in three British men try to impress a date with hired or borrowed items, and that “cars and then clothing topped the list of the most frequently hired or borrowed objects,” as Hertz says in a press release.
Apparently, the effort is not wasted. Four out of 10 women agree that the car a person drives can make them more attractive, six out of ten agreed that a man’s outfit would impress them. Suits them right, so to speak. (Read More…)
An alleged environmental measure will land Russia in the court of the World Trade Organization, a club Russia had joined only in August. Importers have to pay a “recycling fee” of around 5 percent of a car’s sticker price, local makers do not. “Russia’s trading partners say the new levy is a purely protectionist play under the guise of environmental ‘recycling’,” Reuters writes. “The European Union Trade Commissioner, Karel de Gucht, has threatened to invoke the disputes procedure of the World Trade Organization.” (Read More…)
New York Times reporter John Broder told a harrowing story of a test drive from Delaware to Connecticut in a Tesla-supplied Model S. Broder wanted to review both the car and Tesla’s Supercharger stations along I95. The drive ended on a flatbed truck with a Model S that had run out of juice. The story landed Broder on Elon Musk’s shitlist. (Read More…)
The long simmering scandal around Porsche widens. Following a decision by prosecutors last December to charge former Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking, and his then finance chief Holger Härter with market manipulation, German prosecutors have extended a probe to all members of Porsche SE’s supervisory board. This includes Volkswagen’s chairman Ferdinand Piech and what reads like a family meeting of the Porsche clan. (Read More…)
For those who want a topless car that can render passengerettes truly topless, Volkswagen introduces the Golf R Cabriolet. The über-powered R models never were available as a ragtop, no it is. “Tremendous propulsive power” (so the press release) is generated by a 2.0-litre turbo TSI engine that develops 265hp. Maximum torque of 350NM (258 ft lb) is available from a low 2,500 rpm all the way to 5,000 rpm. (Read More…)
Alfa Romeo will outsell Fiat in the United States once the sporty brand gets a foothold in its new market, according to Peter Grady, head of network development for the Chrysler Group, in an interview Reuters. (Read More…)
In the world of dealer standards, it is usually the OEMs that write the standards, and it is the dealers who have to pay the usually steep bills. Occasionally, an OEM even is tempted to recoup the steep cost of developing a new corporate identity by marking up the signage sold to its dealers. Dealers hate it. Ford is doing something dealers will love: Ford will offer dollar-for-dollar matching funds to its 3,100 U.S. dealers to upgrade their shops, from new construction to improved digital programs, Ford executives told Reuters.(Read More…)
TTAC has been following Volkswagen’s new building block architecture for years. Now, it finally begins to sink in what it means. Suddenly, there are media reports more effusive than we ever dared. An article by Reuters compares Ulrich Hackenberg, Volkswagen’s father of the Modularer Querbaukasten MQB, with “the likes of Henry Ford, Alfred Sloan and Taiichi Ohno in the canon of auto industry pioneers.” The architecture, says Reuters “is helping power the German company to the top of the global sales charts several years ahead of its 2018 target. It could also make VW one of the most profitable carmakers in the world.” (Read More…)
Dan Sloan is tired. The head of Nissan’s Global Media Center in Yokohama got up at 6am this morning after days of not much sleep. Today is the day when Nissan’s third quarter earnings are to be announced to the press, and the world at large. It will be a long day of preparations for the big announcement in the late afternoon, and TTAC will be the fly on the wall. Or, as Sloan predicted, the fly in the ointment.
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