If it sounds too good to be true, it’s on the internet. While there may be some benefit to the services offered by parkingticket.com, imaking paying/fighting a New York City parking ticket easier (and charging a fee for it) is a far cry from saying that you’re going to pay people to stick it to The Man. Why in God’s name would anyone do that– unless they were told by their neighbor’s dog that traffic wardens are the anti-Christ? (And we all know how that turned out.) Needless to say, the press release making this bold claim is utterly silent on this issue, saying only that “‘The City has hired 793 new ticket agents but the public doesn’t have the time to fight every unfair ticket. Because we want them to fight every unfair ticket and to make sure it’s worth people’s time we are going to pay them,’ says Glen Bolofsky, President of parkingticket.com.” So, over to the website and on to the fine print. “Parkingticket.com agrees to guarantee that Customer’s parking ticket will be dismissed or reduced and Customer agrees to pay a fee to parkingticket.com, hereinafter known as the Guaranteed Dismissal Fee, equal to half the price of the savings, which is equal to the original parking ticket base fine plus any accrued penalties, fines, interest or related charges.” So I’m thinking that, in this case, “getting paid” means a discount on the standard fee. [Subject to more fine print after the jump.] Memo to Glen: plenty of people were born on a Tuesday, but the ones that were born last Tuesday aren’t old enough to get a New York City parking ticket. Yet.
Posts By: Robert Farago
Once again, The Detroit News is giving free reign to D2.8 boosters to boost the D2.8 and, by extension, themselves. Today, we get an epistle from Congressman John Dingell (D-Dearborn), who feels obligated to come clean about his role in “enabling” Motown’s hometown heroes’ self-destruction and, perhaps, Uncle Sugar’s $33.4b “take the money and run it the way you always have” auto bailout buffet. (That’s excluding GMAC.) “Americans are angry about what has happened to our country. No one seems to be willing to take responsibility. I will take some. I should have held the automotive companies more accountable for their actions, or inactions, over the years. My colleagues voted to make another member, who views the auto industry in a much different way than I do, the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. I find that some members voted against me because I was perceived to be sympathetic to the auto industry.” Translation: if loving you was wrong, I don’t want to be wrong. And I still love you. “I don’t regret fighting for millions of Americans who work in the auto industry, even if that fight might have hurt me. I will fight for those workers, the UAW and others in the industry until they kick me out of this place.” They? I know democracy is a difficult concept for a politician who’s been in Washington since 1955, but shouldn’t that be YOU, as in Michigan voters? Anyway, things are going to be different now…
At first glance, this makes no sense: the head of the United Auto Workers (UAW) telling the world that GM and Chrysler are done feasting at the bailout buffet. “If we can get by without more money, that’s what we want to do,” Big Ron Gettelfinger told Automotive News [AN, sub] in an interview at Solidarity House. And if I could convince my Lexus dealer to give me a new IS-F with a handstand, that’s what I’d want to do. Clearly, Ron Gettelfinger is promising someone a rose garden– while he’s painted the ailing automakers into a corner. Ish. First, this is what car salesman call an “if then” close. Second, Ron told AN that “how well the money holds out will depend on sales volume this year.” Gettelfinger is hopeful that “sales will not dip more than 1 million units below 2008’s depressed 13.1 million.” So, IF U.S. new car sales DON’T dip below 12.1m per year, THEN GM and Chrysler recover without any more federal funding? Nonsense. Make no mistake: Ron’s statement is part of a calculated plan to avoid making any concessions during the federally-mandated negotiations to reduce his members’ pay and benefits. In other words, the UAW doesn’t need to make concessions because everything’s going to be alright. It is, in fact, Ron’s opening gambit. And it’s not bad. But shame on AN for swallowing the union boss’s bait; hook, line and sinker. I mean, what is this…
You may recall that TTAC reacted to the plethora of top ten automotve lists proliferating on the web by running a list of the ten best cupholders. Now that Forbes Autos has gone to the big cache in the sky, the number of top ten lists-makers has dropped significantly. But they’re still out there, somewhere. And they’re still annoying. All-Stars? Pretty much says it all. So we turn again, from the ridiculous to the sublimely ridiculous. We ask you, our Best and Brightest to name the best Heating Ventilating and Air Conditioning (HVAC) controls of any car sold in America as new. Please send an email with a jpeg to robert.farago@thetruthaboutcars.com. Put “HVAC” in the subject bar. In the body of the email, please write your screen nic, which car’s climate controls I’m gazing upon and why they deserve to be honored as one of the ten best HVACuees. The winners will be chosen by Eddy and myself through the usual arbitrary process. Thanks for your help.
A TTAC commentator who wishes to remain anonymous raises a good point about Chrysler’s sales: “imagine Chrysler’s sales last month if ex-employees didn’t ‘buy’ their cars with Chrysler’s money. People who took the buyouts all got a free car as well. You know how people will ask… would you take a Chrysler car for free? (well, you still gotta pay the tax since Uncle Sam hates freebies). The answer is a resounding Yes! Because you can still flip the car for another brand and come out ahead after all the taxes. Anyway, approximately 5,000 of those Chrysler sales last month were paid for with Chrysler’s own money. Most were Wranglers, Grand Cherokees, and LX cars since those vehicles let you extract the most value out of your ‘free’ car.”
If a fish had brains and saw someone holding a shotgun, would it choose to swim in a barrel? Why then would Mike Accavitti, director-Dodge marketing, say this to Ward’s Dealer Business, which has all the sales data on everything. “Accavitti notes the ’09 Ram, which he describes as Chrysler’s ‘bread and butter,’ is grabbing more market share than its ’08 predecessor. Since the October sales launch to mark the ’09 model year, the Ram owned 4.1% of the light-duty truck market, an increase of 0.2 share points over the ’08 model year, according to Ward’s data.” Yes, well, the article was written before December’s sales results; where Ram sales tanked by 48 percent vs. last year, down 31 percent for the year. I wonder how much that market they own now. In any case, it appears Dodge blew the launch.
The post-apocalyptic analysis of December’s sales results continues, as pundits and producers attempt to make sense of the crater that’s replaced the U.S. new car market. Obviously, the situation will have the greatest impact on the Chrysler and GM. The domestic automakers have just finished their first suckle on Uncle Sugar’s taxpayer teat, with GM auguring-in for its second go mid-month. And both companies face a congressional grilling when they return for more money in March. So, what to do? What to do? For answers to that question, for the manufacturers’ spin, we turn to their unofficial mouthpiece, The Detroit News. “Auto sales skid: Recovery rests on stimulus” starts with good news! “After barely making it through the worst year for auto sales since 1992, Detroit’s Big Three expect consumer demand to remain very weak in the first half of 2009 but begin to recover in the second half.” I’d like to point out that a general “sales” recovery does not necessarily mean Chrysler or GM’s recovery. But that would kind of ruin the flow, if you know what I mean. To wit…
Carscoop! is breaking European brochure pics of the 2009 Insight, Honda’s rival to the Toyota Prius, the gas – electric hyrbid that’s gone from hero to zero [percent financing] in less than six months. Coincidentally enough (if only just), the Priusalike makes its appearance a few days before the denuded Detroit Auto Show (“Now with 100 percent less Nissan“). That’s where the 2010 Prius also makes its debut. Unfortunately, we only get the pics from Honda brochure; the text would have provided welcome insight into the Insight’s marketing angle. Will HoMoCo promote the Insight on price or performance? The green hot rod angle is not entirely inconceivable; the now extinct Accord hybrid was the fastest of its breed. Carscoop! has three pictures of the Insight’s speedo; at 20, 24 and 42mph. So, no, then.
Crap. You know, I went to Coachmen Industries website to check for a list of RVs. The RV site didn’t some up. Just kept on a spinning, then timed out. And I saw that the main site was all about pre-fab housing. But I thought, oh well, the RV site’s down. But as bluecon points out in a comment below, Coachmen Industries is out of the RV business as of Boxing Day. Doh! But at least TTAC’s Best and Brightest spotted my lack of reportorial due diligence and properly revealed willingness to take Edmunds and Autoblog’s posts at face value. My bad. Lesson learned. And according to previously stated policy, I will not take this post down. Well, not the headline and the comments. The text is toast, ’cause there are limits to my prostration. And props to Warren, ’cause, as Kurt pointed out, this kind of housing is sure to find favor in the coming months and years ahead. Never a truer word was spoken in jest. Oh, and Buffett already owns an RV maker– that bought Coachmen’s assets.
Automotive News [sub]: “The magazine normally recommends cars in its April issue. But it singled out eight Detroit 3 vehicles early because consumers may be concerned about reliability while General Motors and Chrysler LLC seek federal assistance, said David Champion, the magazine’s chief car tester. ‘We’re only about halfway through our testing, so it’s not a complete list,’ he said. ‘But because of the public interest, we thought it would be useful.”” Huh? Since when is it Consumer Reports’ job to allay consumer fears about the reliability of the products produced by a small group of automakers, especially in response to an industry-wide event? In other words, why the special treatment? Even if it’s all about catering to a public need– remembering that Consumer Reports is a non-profit organization and there is no statistical data to support this position– CR’s special issue increases the psychological polarization between domestic and import-branded vehicles. And that’s not a good thing– for the domestics. If nothing else, the D2.8’s abject inability to identify the difference between quality relative to each other and quality compared to the wider car market has contributed to their failure. Anyway, the “winners” in the gallery below and/or after the jump.
The United States new car market is dead in the water. Sales are down 36 percent across the board. Carmakers selling (or not) in The Land of the Free could stop production for a month– at least– without threatening to reduce inventory levels to demand. Only, of course, they can’t. The car business works best when every part of the fabrication process, from mining iron ore to slapping on the Monroney sticker, is flowing simultaneously. Stopping and starting production is a bitch. And expensive. What’s more (LOTS more), fixed costs like equipment amortization and labor don’t go away. So carmakers are powerless, and bleeding out. The strong ones have lots of blood and relatively small wounds. The big ones had no platelets to begin with, and the arterial spray is like a Las Vegas fountain. One thing is for sure: it’s a great time to buy a car! Of course, it’ll be even better next month. And the month after that. And the month after that. If you feel sorry for the carmakers, a simple question: why? Isn’t it better for all concerned when the customer is King?
Unintentionally, obviously. As in the Ford employees are on the clock and off gallivanting around at the same time. Anyway, watching this Rescue4 (WDIV) TV investigation, you can almost hear the station’s Program Director. “Jesus Christ! Jesus H. Christ! You can’t air that! Union bosses getting paid for working while they’re, what, getting haircuts and shopping for booze? Oh wait. This IS good. Hmmm. OK. Kiss their ass. Ford, I mean. A lot. Talk about the turnaround. What’s that electronic thing called? Stink? Slinky? Whatever. And make sure you say that most Ford workers don’t do this. Get the Harbour report guy. THEN screw ’em. Hehehehe.” The screwees in question: “six-figure” union chairman Jim Modzalewski and “union security rep” Ron Seroka. If you think this is an isolated incident, chances are you’re too good for this world.
“With outstanding resale value and a strong lineup, Acura will be in an excellent position when the automobile market begins its recovery.” Which can’t come soon enough for Honda’s up market (mid-market?) brand, which saw sales sink by 39.3 percent. The situation is so dire– or the PR department so clever– that the company isn’t providing the usual chart showing December ’07 vs. December ’08 sales broken down by vehicle, and stats for year-to-date comparisons. All they’ll tell us is the headline number and “in its second full month of sales, the all-new 2009 TL performance luxury sedan remained Acura’s sales leader for November with 3,160 vehicles sold… The all-new 2009 TSX sports sedan recorded sales of 1,712 for the month, with year-to-date sales reaching 29,694 units. The MDX luxury SUV was Acura’s best-selling light truck, with sales of 2,101, while the RDX crossover SUV tallied 681 units.”
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