Which means importing this 415 hp, 415 lb-ft, AWD Ford FPV F6 E from Australia is a bad idea, too. Right?
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Posts By: Edward Niedermeyer
The Ssangyong Riot is not a new South Korean compact car. 500 fired workers and 33,000 liters of flammable fluids are creating an explosive mix in a Ssangyong factory in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. The factory was raided by police commandos today, although the paint shop (a.k.a. structure fire waiting to happen) has not yet been stormed. “Creditors agreed that it is better to liquidate assets of Ssangyong before the company’s asset value falls further,” head of SSsangyong’s creditor suppliers Choi Byeong-whoon tells the WSJ. Union spokesfolk acknowledge that a raid on the paint shop is coming, saying “we will respond to it, bracing ourselves for death.” Death before Rodius production. How fitting.
Wall Street Journal reports that GM will be allowed to carry-forward $16 billion in net losses from “Old GM,” creating a massive tax shelter. Normally this isn’t allowed to happen as the tax code has specific provisions to prevent firms from buying other firms strictly for their tax losses. Under normal conditions, tax losses die with the old firm when it completes its bankruptcy proceedings. Not so with GM, which sought preservation of tax losses as part and parcel of its 363 sale. “The result seems to retain the cake while eating it,” says Duke law professor Jeffrey Coyne. “They get to sell quickly and without the many procedural protections because this is not a plan. They get to keep the [net operating losses] using a provision that requires the transfer to happen as part of a plan.” And yet another hidden bailout sneaks through, unlikely to ever appear in a final accounting of the cost of rescuing GM.
1: Ford Focus
2: Toyota Corolla
3: Honda Civic
4: Toyota Prius
5: Toyota Camry
6: Ford Escape
7: Hyundai Elantra
8: Dodge Caliber
9: Honda Fit
10: Chevrolet Cobalt
[via CNN Money]
One takeaway: CARS is good because it gets people into more fuel efficient cars, but the highway fund is running out because people are driving more fuel efficient cars. Also, apparently bolstering Ford sales is a major rationale for extending C4C. Y’know, after the whole “taking CO2 out of the air” thing. Speaking of which, former clunker detractor Sen Dianne Feinstein is on board for an extension, telling Automotive News [sub] “the original intent of the clunkers program was to encourage people to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles, and the data so far tells us that’s exactly what’s happening,
The WSJ [sub] reports that $3.5 billion of GMAC’s nearly $4 billion in second quarter losses are the result of one-time reincorporation costs, however a significant government investment also helped hide the losses. And is leading GMAC towards full-on nationalization. Per the WSJ‘s report:
The Treasury Department said in May it would swap $884 million of its existing $5 billion preferred-stock investment for common stock, giving the U.S. government a 35.4% equity stake in the lender. This stake could increase to more than 50% if GMAC, amid potential mounting losses and meager capital levels, converted the government’s investments into common equity.
The loss also comes despite GMAC’s floating of $3.5 billion in bonds backed by the FDIC’s Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program. “As long as they can keep the federal government’s support in place, they’ll be in fine shape,” one bond-rater tells Bloomberg. “They’re a ward of the state.”
Hyundai and Subaru are beginning to be familiar faces near the top of the monthly “who’s losing least” numbers. Sure, everyone expected Hyundai to cash in on the clunker sales boomlet, but who’d have thought Subaru would log its best sales month ever? Tribeca was down for Subie, but everything else was up by 33 (Outback) to 41 (Impreza) percent. Forester is still the top dog though, at 7,574 units. That’s almost as much volume as Hyundai‘s Accent (+13 percent), which was part of the expected Hyundai clunker boom along with Elantra (+30 percent) and Sonata (+17 percent). Santa Fe barely moved at 6,793 units, but the Genesis is anemic at 2,015. Volkswagen sales fell just over one percent, buffered by TDI sales that made up 30 percent of total deliveries. 80 percent of Jetta Sportwagons and 40 percent of Jetta sedans are being chosen with oil-burner engines. Otherwise, VW sales look dreary. Nissan‘s sales (-25 percent) are distinctly “meh,” with only the Rogue (+4 percent), Versa (-2 percent) and Cube (3,293) looking remotely assertive.
Toyota‘s Yaris and Corolla models did not receive much in the way of a sales boost from the government’s cash for clunkers program, recording 36 percent and 14 percent declines respectively. Nor did Honda‘s Fit, which slid 28 percent to 8,876. Prius, however, did. America’s hybrid grew its sales by 30 percent compared to last July. It also creamed Honda’s competing Insight, 19,173 to 2,295. Prius alone now sells as well as Buick, Cadillac and Saturn combined. Hail to the king, baby.
Although GM’s sales are down nearly 20 percent compared to last July’s poor showing, your federally-owned General Motors is staying upbeat. More accurately, Mark LaNeve wants to keep his job (and, logically, the government cheese flowing).
Our performance is being driven by the outstanding products in our core Chevrolet, GMC, Cadillac and Buick brands. While still challenging, the market is firming and GM sales are still tracking ahead of what we projected in our reinvention plan. In July we are projecting our retail market share to exceed our year-ago performance. From great new products, like our Cadillac SRX and CTS Sport Wagon, Chevrolet Camaro and Equinox, to attractive financing and new leasing opportunities and to the Cash-for-Clunkers program that helps reduce the cost to buy a new vehicle — customers have unprecedented opportunities to get into a new GM car or truck. We anticipate an additional sales lift in August if Congress approves more funding for the wildly-popular Cash-For-Clunkers economic recovery program.
This is “sip Bacardi like it’s your birthday” news in Chryslerland. Seriously, big up yourselves, ChryCo. Single-digit declines in the house (if only when compared to last summer’s dismal showing)! Having paraphrased the monthly press release, let’s get down to the numbers, shall we?
Automotive News [sub] dug deep for its latest piece on the Volt project, a sprawling opus which fills in a number of the missing pieces in TTAC’s own Volt Birth Watch. From the birth of the concept (“I was getting so pissed off about reading about how the wonderful, far-sighted Toyota is the only one who understands technology”) to its design (“Within 15 minutes, [John Lauckner] had the vehicle basically laid out”) GM’s Bob Lutz takes us inside GM’s moonshot. So what’s the view like from that tin can now, Major Bob?
Ford’s press release (PDF) makes no bones about the source of relatively high demand for its products. “The U.S. government’s Car Allowance Rebate System (“Cash for Clunkers”) enabled Ford to post the first sales increase of any major manufacturer in 2009,” is the word from Dearborn. And though Ford’s year-on-year sales for July did climb by 2.4 percent, July marks the first such increase since November 2007. Most of that growth came from Ford’s more fuel-efficient vehicles, as Fusion/Milan was up 66/60 percent, Escape/Mariner up 94/71 percent, Focus up 44 percent and Ranger up 65 percent. So, government-stimulated models aside, how are things looking for the Blue Oval Boyz?
So I’m hearing that some of y’all may feel that Cash for Clunkers is your opportunity to to trade up. Your chance to lose the clutch and make a run for the hands-free hype of automatic transmission technology. To which I say, NSFW please. That clutch stood by you. That clutch was your friend. The ability to change your own gears was the only thing that kept you from driving that Tercel off a cliff out of sheer boredom. And now you think that just because you’re upgrading to an Elantra, a slushbox is suddenly more befitting your station in life? Yo, that logic is the sodium silicate of the mind. So if your clunker had a manual transmission, pour out a bottle of Synchromax for the departed. And if you replaced it with a CVT, you better watch your back.
Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood is feeling expansive. And why wouldn’t he? The man’s got the hottest stimulus on the block this summer. And even though there might be more C4C deals than money left in the program, LaHood wants to keep the sodium silicate flowing. Even though the Senate still hasn’t approved more money. “We will continue the program until we see what the Senate does, and I believe the Senate will pass this,” LaHood boasts to Automotive News [sub]. Does this mean there is definitely still money available for the deals that LaHood personally guarantees through Tuesday? Not necessarily. This is much more of a way of putting pressure on the Senate to approve another $2 billion. And LaHood’s play for more money hasn’t convinced everyone. “I take the secretary at his word, but we still urge dealers to use caution when doing cash-for-clunkers transactions,” say NADA spokesfolk. Because appointed officials aren’t actually in charge of appropriations, no matter how quickly they can make a billion bucks disappear. Unless LaHood cares to put up his $191K salary towards getting Americans into a new Cobalt.
1)The red line represents Google searches for “NHTSA,” the blue line represents searches for “Clunker.” And we wonder why they weren’t ready.
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