Gosh, was it really just Monday that Bob Lutz was complaining about the pay problems round General Motors way? Automotive News [sub] reports that, in addition to hiring ousted CEO Fritz Henderson as a consultant, GM’s Chairman, CEO and VP for Rattlesnake Killin’ Ed Whitacre has been handed a compensation package including $1.7m in cash annually. Not to mention the $5.3 million in stock payable over three years starting in 2012, or the $2m in restricted stock. Sure, that’s not much compared to most Chariman/CEO types, but it’s not bad for a government teat-sucking, profitless wonder. Especially considering former CEO Fritz Henderson only made $950k in cash annually plus $4.2m in stock as CEO (he now makes $700k annualized as a 20 hour per month consultant). Ken Feinberg is slacking!
Posts By: Edward Niedermeyer
Because the man clearly knew how to turn The General around. Bob Lutz might not be getting paid enough for his taste, but as Henderson proves, it’s not the numbers on the check, it’s the amount of work you’re expected to do for them. Automotive News [sub] reports:
GM said it had hired Henderson yesterday as a consultant on a month-to-month basis, with the job to end some time this year. GM will pay Henderson $59,090 monthly to counsel GM on international operations. He will work about 20 hours per month and meet once a month with GM’s international president, Tim Lee, or one of his representatives.
Chrysler Group LLC has some serious faith in its planned Sebring “intervention,” as it has purchased the Sterling Heights Assembly Plant back from the estate of its bankrupt predecessor for $20m. According to the Detroit News, the move was necessary to secure $8.2m in local tax abatements, and as a result, the Sebring and Avenger will continue to be built there until 2012. But, warn ChryCo spokesfolks, “There is no commitment on the future of SHAP beyond 2012,” when the refreshed Sebring will finally be replaced by a new midsize sedan based on a Fiat platform.
Before you choose, remember, this Polo GTI won’t be coming to the United States when the nameplate arrives sometime next year. In fact, no three-door hatch is planned for America at all, since VW has decided to go the Echo route and only sell sedan-bodied Polos stateside. Well, with one exception…
Maisara Gad writes in from Egypt to register his unhappiness with a recently purchased Lifan 520 which blew its gearbox at 70 km/hr.
Do you Call this a car ? Since i got this JUNK and i have been allways in problems .. the car is full of problems .. check out the web site i started to let the world see how junk car you sell to the public.. i wouldnt stop showing every one this junk car
Yes, well it is a 20-year-old Citroen ZX with the latest in Chinese styling and interior work. With that kind of pedigree, it’s hard to have too many expectations. Still, Chinese automakers who thought that success in foreign markets is as easy as improving crash test videos on Youtube should take note.
Other, more enthusiast-oriented blogs have already cooed approvingly at the Hennessey Venom, which is set to debut in the next several months. We take note of it only because of how familiar its formula is. Take a lightweight British roadster, slap in a fire-breathing American V8 (in this case, a 1,000 hp twin-turbo version of the Corvette ZR1’s mill), destroying the donor car’s immaculate balance and creating something that rates higher on the gee-whiz-ain’t-it-cool meter than on any remotely utilitarian measure. Sound familiar? If it doesn’t now, it might in a few decades, when Hennessey unsuccessfully attempts to sue enthusiasts who build replicas of its entirely unoriginal supercar.
Do you want to believe? You’ll feel at home over at SaabsUnited.com, where the most incurable Saabtimists on the web are (still!) trying to turn their beloved brand around one comment-thread at a time. One current topic, “What to do about Saab dealer finance?” illustrates just one of the major problems facing Saab-Spyker. Other problems include, well, money. CEO Victor Muller has hinted that he’ll list the new Saab-Spyker’s shares in London and Stockholm, “to be closer to investors,” he says. Automotive News [sub] figures it’s because he needs money to develop the new model lines that have been “rumored.” At some point they might want to think about those dealer issues too. Meanwhile, Åke Svensson and Saab’s fourth quarter results epitomize the strained optimism we’ve been hearing for months now.
In the confusion of the recent Saab-Spyker deal, an interesting tidbit has flown beneath the radar until recently. Most industry news outlets [ourselves included] had reported that Spyker’s backing from Russia’s Conversbank had given GM intellectual property nightmares, and that the deal had gone through with backing from other corners. Not so, it turns out. Bloomberg [via BusinessWeek] reports that Alexander Antonov confirms his bank supplied the first $25m in payments to GM. A strange turn of events, considering Russian backing for Magna’s failed Opel bid (and GM’s attendant IP paranoia) was said to have scuttled the deal (and that didn’t even have Convers’s bizarre Chechen blood feud connection).
There is widespread public concern regarding reports of sudden unintended acceleration in Toyota motor vehicles. There appears to be growing public confusion regarding which vehicles may be affected and how people should respond. In short, the public is unsure as to what exactly the problem is, whether it is safe to drive their cars, or what they should do about it. To help clarify this situation, I am inviting you to testify…
House Oversight Committee Chair Edolphus Towns invites Akio Toyoda down to DC for an evening of under-oath testimony and light refreshments. According to the NY Times, Toyoda has said he “would consider” dancing the Potomac two-step “if he receives a formal invitation, which none of the committees have issued.” Consider yourself officially invited, Mr Toyoda. We’ll start making the popcorn.
Typically, the only reports on China’s BYD involve booming Chinese sales, unproven future products, and Warren Buffett’s investment in the battery and auto manufacturing conglomerate. But these don’t tell the whole story of how BYD has emerged from relative obscurity to publicly announcing that it intends to challenge Toyota to become the world’s top automaker by 2018. Chinese outlet Caixin [via GreenCarReports] attempts to shed some light on BYD and what it takes to rise to the top of China’s massive manufacturing industry, in a piece titled “How Manufacturing’s Mockingbird Sings.” The piece details BYD’s reliance on reverse engineering, the practice of stripping down competitor automobiles and components and copying them, and its extreme (even by Chinese standards) dependence on cheap labor.
There are changes afoot at Tata Motors’ Jaguar/Land Rover division, since CEO David Smith departed the company and former Tata CEO Ravi Kant stepped in temporarily. Smith likely left over planned cuts to JLR’s UK production capacity, and now that former Opel boss Carl-Peter Forster and BMW exec Ralf Speth have taken the reigns [via WSJ [sub]], there’s more cost-cutting afoot. Autocar reports that Jaguar Land Rover will downsize its range of architectures, from six to two, as greater platform-sharing both within and between the two marques is set to accelerate.
Diesel drivetrains have long been a crucial component to the European market’s forbidden-fruit appeal for American enthusiasts, ranking right up with station wagons and manual transmissions on the list of under-offered features in the American market. But there are signs now that Europe’s longtime infatuation with oil-burners might be drawing to a close (and not just for biodiesel). The Telegraph reports that Europe-wide diesel market share has fallen from 52 percent to 46 percent in the last 12 months, with the UK’s share dropping from about 43 percent to about 41 percent. Much of this trend is being driven by growth in the low-cost car segment, where the higher cost of diesels make them less competitive. Fears of higher repair costs for more complicated clean-diesel drivetrains and a relative undersupply of diesel fuel aren’t helping either. And just as diesel is faltering in its most important consumer market, the EU is eying a tax increase that Reuters UK says “could boost demand for gasoline at the expense of diesel.”
Fisker’s Karma won’t compete directly with Chevrolet’s Volt or Opel’s Ampera, but it will be the only other Extended Range Electric Vehicle (EREV) on the market when it goes on sale later this year. But GM isn’t taking the challenge laying down, showing this Opel “Flextreme” Concept as a vision of a Volt-based four-place coupe, a theoretical (and vaguely Lexus LF-A-inspired) challenge to Fisker’s EREV luxury four-door. Too bad Opel’s facing nearly as many challenges as Fisker is…
This one’s a bit of a golden oldie, but in light of the recent round of promotions at the Haus of Daimler (not to mention this video’s unintentionally prophetic tagline), it’s worth mentioning. Charges in the 6 year old SEC-DOJ investigations of what was then DaimlerChrysler may be settled by Daimler for “about $200 million” according to anonymous Bloomberg [via BusinessWeek] sources. The probe had looked into allegations that the German firm regularly bribed government officials in a number of jurisdictions (including Sadaam Hussein, in the Oil For Food scandal), the broad strokes of which the firm essentially admitted in 2005. Though Daimler announced that it would cooperate with investigators and that “several” employees were fired, details were never released. At least one whistleblower has alleged that knowledge of slush funds and bribery were known at the highest ranks in Daimler, and the ever-helpful NY Times notes that
As recently as 1997, the German government counted the bribes paid to foreigners by German companies as tax- deductible.
No wonder these guys promote from inside.
Well, the death of the Sebring name anyway. The Detroit Free Press reveals some of the first details about Chrysler’s all-important refresh of the Sebring/Avenger, a vehicle that CEO Sergio Marchionne recently admitted (in what was surely a Lutzie-award-worthy understatement) is “not the most loved car by car enthusiasts.” The biggest detail: it won’t be named Sebring. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, considering that the Sebring’s issues are less related to a tepid reaction from the enthusiast market, and have more to do with the fact that even the least car-literate Americans recognize the Sebring name as a symbol for all that is wrong with America’s auto industry.
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