Ford's May sales sank 16 percent overall. The number is the result of a 24 percent decline in truck and van sales with a whopping 44 percent drop in SUV sales. Fortunately, The Blue Oval Boyz had good showing on the car side. Fusion sales climbed 27 percent while the Focus ascended by 53 percent. Even though retail sales of cars were up 20 percent, when you factor in a drop in fleet sales (sales to rental companies down 30 percent), overall car sales were up only four percent. The big question, though, is if the F-150 is still the overall sales champ? Sales of the perennial best-seller were down 30.6 percent against last May and are down 18.7 percent year to date. Did it fall far enough for Toyota Camry to pull into the top spot? We'll let you know when all the sales numbers are in.
Posts By: Frank Williams
As you can imagine, GM's decision to close their Oshawa truck assembly plant in Ontario, Canada doesn't set well with the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW). "It's nothing short of betrayal," CAW Oshawa branch president Chris Buckley told Reuters. "General Motors is going to produce our truck in Mexico and the United States. That's absolutely disgusting." If he's looking for the real betrayal, he should think back to the contract negotiations in May, when CAW president Buzz Hargrove took a hard line stance against contract concessions, making Canada the most expensive place in North America to assemble cars. Or recall Buzz' statement that "It's my last set of negotiations and my legacy is not going to be that the sons and daughters of current workers that were hired over 20 years ago are going to come in at the same rate in 2008 as their parents did in '86 or '87." It now looks like Buzz' legacy will be unemployed sons and daughters of current workers thanks to his inflexibility driving production out of Canada and back to the lower-paid hands of the UAW and Mexican auto workers. Just sayin'.
Not only does GM want the U.S. taxpayer and the Chinese government to subsidize development and sale of the Volt, now they're reaching into Michigan taxpayers' pockets to subsidize the production. GM insists they want to produce their electric-gas wundercar in Detroit to show how much they support the city and state– but only if the city and state support them by giving them tax breaks. The Detroit News reports GM met with the Detroit City Council yesterday to discuss their plans for the Volt. But no one will say just what kind of extortion "tax incentives" they demanded are seeking. With the magical year 2010 just a short time away, it seems to me they need to stop their fund-raising activities and get on with aligning their webbed-footed waterfowl. That is, if they really do plan on getting the Volt to the market in 2010. Otherwise, they can just keep on playing "poor poor pitiful me" and blame production delays on the government.
Toyota and Honda want to drive down then total cost of ownership of their hybrids. Autobloggreen reports that the Japanese automakers are dropping the price of replacement batteries for their hybrids, from stroke-inducing to somewhat painful. Replacement batteries for the Honda Insight are now $1,968, down from $3,400. Toyota lowered the cost of the Prius' power pack from $5.5k to a mere $3k. (Or you could buy them for $550 on eBay.) Still, though, the hybrid manufacturers are keen to stress the fact that battery replacement isn't a common procedure. Honda brags that they've replaced fewer than 200 battery packs out of warranty, out of 100k hybrids on the road. Toyota says their post-warranty replacement rate is 0.003 percent. What I want to see, though, is what their replacement rate is during the warranty period. I'm sure it won't approach GM's rate after their problems they had with Cobasys batteries. But you know they're all doing it. What they're not saying is how often.
Last week, we told you the EPA had certificated the Aveo-based Pontiac G3. We posited it would hit Pontiac showrooms in the U.S. next year. Now Automotive News [sub] is thinking the same thing, citing "dealer sources" who say it's true– even though many Pontiac Buick/Pontiac/GMC dealers say they didn't ask for the car. Nor do they want it. Interestingly, several Pontiac executives found out the EPA had certified the G3 over the Memorial Day weekend, about the same time we did. Like it or not, GM needs to raise its CAFE averages in a hurry and adding something small, cheap and based on an existing car is the easiest way to do it. It just isn't the best way.
It's officially official and completely complete. Ford has finalized the sale of Land Rover and Jaguar to Tata Motors. And boy are they not excited! In fact, the last sentence of the terse, four paragraph press release reads exactly like a rejection letter: "Ford Motor Company wishes the Jaguar Land Rover management team, its employees and the new owners every success for the future." Automotive News [sub] reveals that David Smith is the new boss of the two former Ford-owned rejects millstones automakers. "Smith is Jaguar and Land Rover's chief financial officer. He has been the company's acting CEO since the April 20 death of CEO Geoff Polites." So, steady as she goes? Yeah right. Anyone want to make any guesses on how long it'll be before we start seeing Tata's influence on the model lineup and the "Jaguar Land Rover management team?" Or they move production from Merrye Olde England to India? Meanwhile, Detroit's profit-drunk SUV party is now, officially over.
GM's plans to sell 27k light hybrid vehicles this year have hit a snag. They've had to use one third of the battery packsearmarked for new car production to replace leaking battery packs in their 2007 model year mild hybrids. Automotive News [sub] reports the leaking nickel-metal hydride batteries, made by Cobasys, caused the hybrid system to shut down; the vehicles still ran in gas-only mode. A123-Cobasys is one of the companies developing the lithium-ion batteries for the Volt and plug-in hybrid Vue. If they can't build NiMH batteries that work, the more complex LiIon batteries could be something of a… challenge.
Apparently the GMC dealer unknown writer posting on the Commercial Auto Dealers web site had a change of heart about hybrids. After warning everyone about the dangers of driving a too-quiet, electromagnetic-field-generating deathtrap, now he wants everyone to know that "GMC is the leader in hybrid vehicles if you're looking for trucks or full-sized SUVs." He goes on to brag "during the first quarter of 2008, the automaker sold nearly 850 hybrid vehicles and about 80 percent of those were large trucks." I'm assuming by "the automaker" he means GM, not GMC division, as the only hybrids GMC sells are monstrous Yukons and pickups. So let's see… they sold a total of 850 hybrids in three months. That works out to an average of what, 293 hybrids per month, 234 of which were trucks? In the month of April, Toyota sold twenty-one thousand Priora. Not fair, you say? Ok, let's look just at trucks. Try 1,624 Lexus RX 400h's. Or 2,578 Highlander Hybrids. Ford even sold 1,682 Escape Hybrids. If, as he claims (citing Eric Fedeva without identifying exactly who he is or why what he said is important), "GMC is going to be a serious contender in the hybrid market in the next few years," someone at GM better get serious and produce a full hybrid the average buyer can afford. Oh, and that won't bombard its hapless passengers with the "type of magnetic field [that] has been linked to leukemia in children."
GM's suicidal robot may be joined by his unemployed brothers before long. The automotive sales slump is not only affecting flesh and blood workers, but also those of the cybernetic persuasion. Automotive News [sub] reports that North American orders for production robots dropped 34 percent in the first quarter of this year compared with the same time last year. While the auto industry normally places about two-thirds of the total orders for industrial robots, sales this year only amount to a little over half. Ake Lindqvist, VP at ABB Robotics takes a "don't worry, be happy" view of the downturn. "We know Chrysler's new management has held back on previous planned investments until they have sorted out internal things, but it will come." He also expects Ford, BMW and Hyundai to make "major robotics investments" toward the end of the year and into next year. The latter two I can see, as they're building new plants or expanding existing ones, but Ford? And Chrysler? Somehow it doesn't seem that companies that are selling off assets, stiffing their suppliers, firing thousands of workers or drastically cutting production will be investing millions in new equipment they may never use.
In their latest commercials Subaru tells us that dumping a junk car in the wilderness or driving a car you can't see out of equate to some strange form of love. The first shows some environmentally-challenged dufus driving two days to take his old Forester to "Subaru heaven," which consists of a spot somewhere in an otherwise pristine wilderness area where other Subaru owners have abandoned their worn-out rides. There, apparently, they sit until they rust to pieces, releasing their various petrochemical-based fluids and toxic metals into the environment instead of being responsibly recycled and reused. The other shows someone who must come from the same genetic pool as that guy because he refuses to wash his Outback, claiming it's a "badge of honor" and that he'll "let the universe take care of it." He'd better hope the universe is taking car of him when he pulls out in front of that bus or runs over that motorcycle in the lane next to him because his windows are so nasty he can't see what's around him. And this comes from a company that not long ago bragged about how their factory is a wildlife preserve and how safe their cars are. Maybe they just don't expect their customers to share their "values."
Our Man Berkowitz loved the Ford Flex. He waxed eloquent about the interior, the looks, how it rides and way (he's heard) it drives. However, as Ford points out in their latest press release, there's one major feature he overlooked: "It's the world's first trouser- and dress-friendly vehicle." Yes, dry cleaners across the country are dreading the debut of the Flex because "the Flex team engineered into Ford's newest crossover a concealed rocker panel" that "minimizes your clothes' exposure to the elements." And since "some dry cleaners charg(e) as much as $10 to launder a pair of slacks," owners reap "immediate and tangible benefit" from driving this $30k "alternative people mover." Justin, I'm so disappointed in you for not bringing this ground-breaking design element to our attention. Must. Do. Better.
As has been pointed out here many times, there are lies, damn lies and statistics. And depending on which statistics you're looking at, they can be used to support whatever you want to say. For example, Ford is number three in sales. Or Honda, depending on which statistic you're looking at. As far as total sales year to date are concerned, FoMoCo (781,791) is still solidly in third place, after GM (1,058,014) and Toyota (789,447) while Chrysler's staked out forth place (601,622) and Honda's trailing in fifth (487,642). However, Automotive News reports that if you factor out low-profit fleet sales, Honda moves to third and Ford drops to fourth. That's because retail sales make up only 65 percent of Ford's total sales and Honda's fleet sales are negligible. So Honda's retail number remains unchanged while Ford's drops to approximately 421k. So who's really number three? We report, you decide.
Truck buyers shouldn't feel like eco-pariahs just because they want to use huge trucks as commuter cars or SUVs as grocery-getters. An unknown writer on Commercial Auto Dealers' GMC Truck Dealer blog wants you to know that hybrids aren't "really that much better for us than trucks." He/she warns you hybrids make you drowsy because "with their quiet motors and lack of exhaust noise, you can't hardly [sic] tell the car is on" which "could be a problem for people who want to drive at night or even during the day after a long shift at work." And if the risk of pandemic narcolepsy isn't enough to scare Prius owners back into a professional-grade Sierra 3500 Dually, "the electricity that the car uses to operate the vehicle isn't good for our health either." So while hybrid drivers are microwaving their tender parts, you can "just smile and walk away secure in the fact that you won't be subject to the same potentially harmful electromagnetic fields that they encounter every day." The anonymous writer concludes "if you want that large truck or SUV, don't hesitate to visit your local GMC truck dealer." And don't worry about $4/gallon gasoline. After all, what's a $136 fill-up compared to the peace of mind that hearing your engine and exhaust noise can bring?
The Volt cheerleaders at GM-Volt.com have given The General a chance to explain away the controversy over CEO Rick Wagoner's $30k price pledge on their new plug-in gas electric hybrid Volt. And the spinmeisters have grabbed it with both hands. "I now have official confirmation [from] GM spokesperson David Darovitz that 'there was an unfortunate misunderstanding that resulted in inaccurate information published,'" Dr. Lyle Dennis faithfully reports. "He also went on to say 'we are not in the position to speculate on the retail pricing of the Chevrolet Volt.'" Not after that debacle, you're not. Anyway, Dr. D. provides a helpful update on GM's efforts to use your tax dollars to help the Volt compete with the Toyota Prius. "Last week a new bill called HR 6049 was passed again by the house, allowing $5000 in plug-in tax credits for a car like the Volt with a 16 kwh battery. It allows $3000 as a base plus $200 per kwh over 5 kwh up to a maximum of an additional $2000. It may soon go before the Senate." Although volt.com's blog post on this misunderstanding displays a roll call of Senators who championed/shot down the last attempt at same, so that Volt supporters may lobby on behalf of a Volt subsidy, members of TTAC's B&B who wish to email their senators to oppose this legislation might find the list equally helpful. That said, Dr. Dennis didn't link the list to the Senators' email. Oops!
It seems GM has a new seven-seater van under development, based on the global Delta platform. It'll have to be pretty generic to meet the expectations of the global market while representing the values and design philosophy of at least three different brands. Expect the new car to be badged a Chevrolet, Opel/Vauxhall and Euro-Chevy (GM-Daewoo) but don't expect to see it in the U.S. This "born to be badge engineered" design doesn't leave that much room for a seductive personality or a strong character. But as long as humans are still organized in families and have pets and stuff to carry around, there's still a significant market for the MPVs (i.e. minivans). My rendering represents the Chevrolet version, tailored after carparazzi photographs taken so far. Sliding doors in the rear and a classic monospace body are no surprises. I wish I could render a gorgeous car, but we are seeking the truth here and this time it ain't that pretty at all.
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