“In Europe, Lancia is an undersized, underdeveloped brand, with nothing bigger than the Delta. Chrysler, which has a true global reach, has nothing smaller. Put them together and you have a full line-up,” is the short version of Sergio Marchionne’s plans for the Chrysler and Lancia brands. The surprising bit [via Autocar]: “we could see the two converge as early as the end of the year.” For Americans this means that some of the holes in Chrysler’s lineup could be plugged up by rebadged Lancias along the lines of the Delta shown at the Chrysler stand at the Detroit Auto Show. And hey, who are we to say no to all-new Chrysler products? Goodness knows the brand needs something new besides special edition lipstick on the same old pigs. There’s only one hitch…
Starting this week, the fine citizens of Quebec will be required to take 24 hours of theory and 15 hours of practical driving instruction before getting their driver’s licenses. According to CTV, the provincial government has capped the expense of courses at $825 in order to prevent the cost from becoming too onerous of a burden on new licensees. Still, even in Canadian dollars that’s no chump change. And as instinctive as it is for me to resist this kind of regulation of personal mobility, mandatory driving instruction is common in much of the developing world (i.e. Europe). Moreover, the next time I’m on the interstate having an aneurysm over rampant on-road incompetence (let alone lane etiquette), I’ll approach the idea with a lot less libertarian zeal. Still, unless Ray LaHood (or Oprah?) gets more traction in the War on Distracted Driving, I don’t see the idea catching on in the US. Especially at the prices that Quebec is talking about. Do you think mandatory driver education is a reasonable option in these car-crazed United States?
Shortly after GM’s bankruptcy, we wondered why so many people were still trading “old GM” stock. After all, old GM stock is in a liquidation company with no chance of ever emerging from bankruptcy. In order to clear up any confusion, the SEC forced GM Liquidation (then GMGMQ) to change its ticker to MTLQQ. Apparently that didn’t work. CNN Money reports:
On Jan. 11, the first day of the big auto show in Detroit, about 41.6 million shares of MTLQQ exchanged hands. To put that in perspective, that’s more than the volume of Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) and IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) combined that day.
Holy fiduciary responsibility, Batman! The report goes on to note that MTLQQ is the ninth most-researched stock of 2010 at CNN Money, beating stocks like Microsoft and ExxonMobile. TTAC has expressed skepticism in the past about GM’s forthcoming IPO on silly grounds like the firm’s lack of profit, turmoil in overseas divisions, weak sales and questionable strategy. Frankly, this news makes us question whether any of these things matter. If a 70 cent (but worthless) stock in a company that has no bearing on New GM can rack up that kind of trading volume, clearly there are some unfathomable dynamics at play. Maybe a $60b GM IPO market cap is possible after all!
In case you were wondering, Ed Whitacre’s assessment that the Volt will “make a margin” at a price point “in the low 30s” is the GM Chairman/CEO’s second big lie in as many weeks. Well, lie might be a bit harsh. Gross and willful misrepresentation is probably more accurate. GreenCarReports‘ John Voelcker got in touch with a GM spokesman who confirms what we all pretty much knew from the get go: GM “has not officially announced final Volt pricing, a price in the low 30’s after a $7,500 tax credit is in the range of possibilities.” In other words, we’re back to the same old $40k-ish number that GM execs have been throwing around for ages. Unless GM is talking about the electric-only (non-range-extended) Volt that Bob Lutz recently confirmed. But what about the margin thing?
Truck marketing is so out of ideas. Despite a few hesitant signs that the old “bigger, stronger, butcher” paradigm might be giving way to less primitive appeals to consumers, GM’s Tom Stephens has dragged truck marketing back to the stone age, issueing the following challenge to Ford [via Pickuptrucks.com].
You’re going to love our new diesel Duramax engine in the new Heavy Duty. You know what I want to do to prove it? I want to take our truck and Ford’s [new Super Duty] and chain them together back -to-back. Then I want to have them pull against each other. I know our truck will beat theirs.
Pickuptrucks.com has passed the memo on to Ford, in hopes of spawning a “V-Series Challenge”-type media stunt. Too bad it will never happen. When the trucks are evenly-matched, these contests tend to come down to driver skill, timing and luck. And what would that prove? Note to GM: if you want to market your trucks in wholly unoriginal ways, leave reality out of it and just make an ad showing your truck kicking the other trucks asses or mocking owners of competing brands. You know, the way the good lord intended trucks to be marketed. These guys have it figured out.
What, you thought Ray LaHood’s war on distracted driving would be limited to a lot of hot air, a do-nothing summit and a ban on federal employees text messaging in federal vehicles? Yeah, so did we. Turns out that the position of Transportation Secretary leaves plenty of time for windmill tilting, as the WSJ reports LaHood is back on his old hobbyhorse. The SecTrans is pushing for the federal ban on texting while driving, and he’s back to the old double-nickel strategy: deny federal highway funding to states that refuse to pass local bans on texting while driving. Which is certainly better than some of the more Patriot Act-esque enforcement methods LaHood had been considering. Still, didn’t the mess that was the distracted driving summit convince LaHood that it’s impossible to legislate against stupidity, especially when there’s such a lucrative business in perpetuating said stupidity? Guess not.
There’s a lot happening in the world of cars these days, but few stories are as compelling as the emergence of two rival US-based firms created by two former bosses of the Chinese automaker Brilliance. At face value, both Hybrid Kinetic Motors and Greentech Auto are little more than visa scams: neither attempts to hide the fact that their fundraising plans involve a US Visa program (EB-5) which allows citizenship to foreign nationals who invest a half-million bucks in an American business. For additional scam warning points, both firms purport to use mythical hybrid engines and plan factories with annual capacities of a million units. But as easy as it is to simply write these firms as Chinese visa hucksters grifting the good folks of such towns as Tunica, Mississippi and Bay Minette, Alabama, they keep showing up in the news with stories that predecessors like ZAP would have given their stock-price-boosting-press releases for. To wit: the latest news that Alabama hopeful Hybrid Kinetic Motors has signed a half-billion dollar deal with Italdesign-Giugiaro, the largest order in the famed design house’s 42-year history.
The Standard Of The World meets cold reality, as the prominent Detroit-area Cadillac dealer, Dalgleish Cadillac, calls it a night. The Detroit News, which eulogizes the dealership “with bitterness, hope and history bound together,” reports that the Dalgleish Cadillac building will become a high-tech business incubator run by Wayne State University’s Tech Town.
Grand news for owners of 1999 model year and later Pontiacs! Buick-GMC GM Brian Sweeney tells Automotive News [sub] that “one of our most important tasks is keeping [Pontiac owners] in the database and keeping them as service customers until such a time that the Buick portfolio has developed fully.” The plan: send owners of 1999 model-year and later Pontiacs coupons for free tire rotations and oil changes. GM sales boss Susan Docherty has spoken about the importance of these “free agents,” or GM buyers orphaned by the cutting of their brands. As well she should: it’s more cost effective for any business to keep existing buyers than win over new ones. But is it free oil change easy? If GM thinks it can make Buick believers out of the jilted Pontiac faithful, what does it say about the cynicism with which it approaches branding? Once again, GM’s need to build lost Pontiac volume for the Buick-GMC dealer net leads to the willful suspension of common sense.
Smart’s new President, former Saturn overseer/undertaker Jill Lajdziak, knows how the dying brand thing works. With Smart sales down a (barely) Chrysler-beating 41 percent on the year, the Penske-owned Smart USA is teaming up with Daimler Financial Services (Smart vehicles are produced by Daimler in Europe) for a good-old captive lease deal right out the old GM playbook. According to Automotive News [sub], Smart is offering
a 36-month lease for $169 a month, $999 down, a $595 acquisition fee and the first month’s payment due at the time of the lease.
That’s a lot more realistic than the the old deal they were offering ($3k down, $200/month) but we’re still talking about a 10k miles-per-year lease. On a car makes a Yaris seem luxurious, overpowered and confidence-inspiring. Incidentally, were you aware that the Smart ForTwo was first introduced way back in 1998? The more you know!
With the economy desperately looking for signs that a bottom has been reached, news that Fisker has raised $115m in new funding might indicate that (if nothing else) the money markets are back to their good old speculative selves. At least it might if there weren’t so many darn extenuating circumstances. On the one hand, Fisker seems like the kind of business that has little business attracting much, well, business. Its $90k+ Karma brings little more to the table than some competition for Tesla in the EV-glamor-bauble segment, and like Tesla it’s trying to leverage its first model into ever cheaper, higher-volume vehicles. So why are VC firms giving Fisker the time of day?
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