Wheels Weekly (WW) has the heads-up on Ingolstadt’s claim that the LED headlights adorning the front of their uber-R8 are good for Mother Earth. The blogger-in-chief’s prose sounds a bit like the flanking English translation in a German airplane magazine, but he nails it in the incredulity department. “Now as times are tough for manufacturers, every little selling point are scavenged and placed under a magnifying glass looking to woo any sort of buyers they can gather, pretty much the case with this Audi R8 V10, we’re abit loss [sic] reading an entire page of press release which had nothing to do with Nurburgring records or skidpad figures, rather, boasting about its all LED headlamp, how much CO2 it saves.” It’s not an entire page of greenery, and I’m a big fan of incrementalism. And a car nerd. But it is strange world where Audi’s Head of the “Light and Visibility Department” trumpets CO2 savings. [excerpt after the jump]
Posts By: Robert Farago
TTAC Used Car specialist Steven Lang swears eBay’s “completed items” section is the most accurate indication of any given vehicle’s “real” market value. I have no reason to doubt him. But trolling the auction site for the quirky whips or celebrity cast-offs– the brother of the drummer of the Cars’ modded Monte Carlo– is a practice I find tedious both in execution and end result. OK, Autoblog has a keen eye and more patience that I can muster. And I’ve promised TTAC’s Best and Brightest a better mix of automobiles and politics. So I put on my websuit and surfed a few of my favorite car porn sites on your behalf. My first NEFOTD is this little beauty. The duPont Registry provides provenance: “This car was judged Best in Show at the 2003 ACD National in 2003, and then went on to win at Pebble Beach in 2004. It was restored by La Vine in Florida at a cost of over several hundered [sic] thousand dollars. The car was far ahead of its time with front wheel drive, pre-selector 4 speed transmission, stunning styling and a supercharged 8 cylinder motor developing 175hp. The car had been stored for many years before being restored to its present condition. Only 688 Supercharged Cords were made in all models at a cost of over $3000.00, a 37 Chev sold for $415.00.” If you want a classic car, you can do no better than to buy someone else’s prize-winning restoration (for pennies on the dollar). Anyway, eat your heart out eBay.
In The Incredibles, as Syndrome is about the vanquish Mr. I, the fan-gone-bad pauses to explain his actions. As he does so, our hero counter-attacks. “You caught me monologuing!” Syndrome chides himself. And it’s true: monologues place their creator in a particularly vulnerable spot. If he or she can’t sustain the listener’s interest, there’s no one– absolutely no one— else to blame. And like the shock and awe-meisters who attacked Iraq, brother, I know what it’s like to bomb. Still, in cyberspace no one sells ice cream. Ba-doom-boom. But seriously folks, I’ll get that damn headset Monday, and resume podcasting with one of our regular cast of characters. And I’ll start phoning newsmakers to get the inside dope on the dopey things going down in Motown, and elsewhere. Meanwhile, an experiment, if you will. If you won’t, I hear you. Er, feel you. Um… understand.
The New York Times entered the irony-free zone this morning, with an op ed entitled “GM’s Secret Success.” WTF? Is one of the Gray Lady’s ambassadors about to call GM’s descent into bankruptcy and subsequent raid on the public purse a “success”? Nah. The author of the forthcoming tome “Why G.M. Matters: Inside the Race to Transform an American Icon” wants you to know that GM CEO Rick Wagoner is a genius interruptus. “In reality, Mr. Wagoner has presided over the most sweeping transformation of G.M. since the 1920s,” William J. Holstein opines. “He has reversed management’s long practice of meekly going along with the demands of the United Auto Workers, notably with a deal to transfer health care costs to a union-controlled trust over the next two years.” Ah, a tour of an alternate reality. Cool. But why stop there? Why indeed.
It’s one thing to pay lip service to a brand. It’s another to be it’s slave. I’ve got no problem wearing that yoke. As Bob Dylan opined during his Jews for Jesus phase, you gotta serve somebody. So when I put the idea of a GM and Chrysler boycott to TTAC’s Best and Brightest, I was ready, willing and able to receive blowback. I may have invented this brand, but you, dear readers, own it. As the “are you out of your fucking mind” comments piled up (preserved for posterity), I was overwhelmed by your passion, logic and common sense. Clearly, a GM/Chrysler boycott is/was/would be a big mistake: a brand extension that would weaken TTAC’s core remit. And we can’t have that. So I have abandoned the idea. I apologize for going off the deep end, and thank you for resetting my moral and marketing compass. And yes, there will be more car stuff. In fact, I’m going to test a brace of Lexus SUVs later today, Or maybe the IS-F, just to remind myself that a good brand takes joy in what it does best, and leaves the rest of the market to itself.
The federal government buys GMAC and the MSM says huzzah! The credit taps are slowly starting to reopen! Meanwhile, on the front lines, the same scum-bags who helped cause this economic crisis by pushing people into cars (and houses) they couldn’t afford are busy reinventing the same wheel that came off before. In other words, predatory lending is back (did it ever leave?). And it’s bad! The Orange County Register lifts up the rock to reveals the slugs underneath (now with federal backing). In Q & A format, no less.
I’m sorry. I know. I should move on. I’d like to move on. But the more I read about the federal government’s $6b “investment” in troubled auto and mortgage lender GMAC, the more deranged the deal becomes. Fans of this series (?) will know that Uncle Sugar now effectively owns GMAC. If I were the head of Ford or Toyota or Honda’s lending unit, I would be mighty pissed. As a journalist, I find the cloak of secrecy surrounding the arrangement, from the timing of the Fed’s pre-approval for GMAC to morph into a bank, to the fine print of how this is all supposed to work. A regulatory filing unearthed by Forbes reveals that GMAC has “amended,” but not canceled, its exclusivity agreement with GM. “Purportedly, GM may now offer incentives such as low-interest loans through other financial outfits with increasing flexibility over the next 24 months. While the filing seemed to imply that private competition may be entering the government-backed lender’s universe, both the auto manufactorer and its banker seemed to indicate that nothing material had changed and the two had only altered their pact to satisfy the Federal Reserve’s demands.” Oh, that’s alright then. Or is it?
Yes, I’m a cynical bastard. I didn’t get where I am today– happily marooned on an island of incredulity– by taking what I’m told at face value. Now I know for a fact that there are shenanigans aplenty within the rarified world of high end automobile restoration, collecting and competing. Counterfeits, insurance scams, forgeries, kited checks, lies, deceit, deception, conspiracies by so-called experts– it’s like the fine art world only someone gets a prize at the end. So when I read of a “barn find” of 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalante, allegedly garaged by a surgeon since 1960, my BS detector went off. Now I’m not saying it is anything other than what the Reuters and The Daily Mail says it is: a rare and wonderful car owned by eccentric aviator/doctor stored in a Newcastle “lock up.” But the whole story seems somehow… pat. And there’s this: “The car was originally owned by the first president of the British Racing Drivers’ Club Earl Howe. ‘I have known of this Bugatti for a number of years and, like a select group of others, hadn’t dared divulge its whereabouts to anyone,’ James Knight, head of Bonhams’ motoring department, said in a statement. ‘It is absolutely one of the last great barn discoveries.'” So how can it be a “discovery” (a.k.a. barn find) if Knight already knew where it was? And square that with this: “Media reports said it could fetch up to six million pounds ($8.7 million) when it is auctioned at Bonhams‘ [emphasis added] Retromobile sale in Paris on February 7, which would make it the most expensive car to go under the hammer.”
Department of Energy “retooling loans” – $25b
GM and Chrysler “bridging loans” – $17.4b
U.S. Treasury “investment”in GMAC – $5b
U.S. Treasury supplement to GM for GMAC – $1b
TOTAL – $48.4b
United Auto Workers’ (UAW) boss Big Ron Gettelfinger pops his head above the PR parapet every now and again to defend his members’ right to the wages and benefits that they’ve negotiated from Detroit’s failing automakers. But in the main, the UAW’s Big Cheese remains tight-lipped about the finer points of the union’s contract, strategy, golf course, JOBS bank, election process, internal dissent, balloting procedures, etc. (not to mention embezzlement and corruption). So when The Detroit News offered Ronny G unedited space within their precious pages, you’d hardly expect anything other than broad strokes (so to speak). You know: Wall Street vs. Main Street, investing in America; that sort of thing. One exception: Ron takes on the “myth” that UAW work rules rule the rotting roost. “According to the Harbour Report — the standard for measuring auto plant productivity — all 10 of the most efficient plants in North America are union plants. Union workers get the job done in less hours per vehicle than the competition. For example, according to 2008 Harbour data, it takes UAW members in Kansas City just over 19 hours to assemble a Ford F-series pick-up. It takes more than 32 hours to assemble the Toyota Tundra, a similar vehicle, at a non-union plant in Princeton, Indiana.”
Yesterday, I called Autoblog (AB) to task for blogging pistonhead paraphernalia without disclosing whether they received swag for their efforts. AB jeffe Damon Lavrinc revealed his team follows AOL’s strict policy: no freebies and return any review items post post. So I removed my post. And now I’ve found Michael Banovsky’s over-punctuated, redundantly-named blog Cars, Culture, and Etc. Banovsky asserts that he’s not on the gravy train, and when he is, he donates the resulting air miles to Doctors Without Borders (perhaps there’s a Barnes and Noble nearby?). Underneath the post, Carkeys.ca’s Kevin “Crash” Corrigan defends pocketing payola. “Whilst I applaud you for donating your air miles to charity, I think that I should say something from the flip side of the coin. Unlike the print guys, us web-based journos are rarely given ‘expensive’ gifts. In nearly 5 years of writing, the most pricey gift that I have received is a toy car. In fact, I’ve been given a few of them (Approx 6-7). Now I collect models cars, as do probably most most of us car guys, so that’s quite nice. On the other hand, does anyone truly believe that any of us could be brought off with a $10-30 model car?? Let’s look at this from another angle…I worked in the building trade for several years, and every year we were given bottles of booze from the suppliers. My father who owned a large company and often received crates of the stuff!”
Print is so dead. How anyone could expect a magazine with a two-month lead time to compete with the internet on the news front? It’s like pitting a semaphore line against G3 cell service. In case they don’t know it, the buff book’s business model is as dead as the carmakers’ they support. And while we await the car mag medium’s reinvention and rebirth (U.S. Evo please), we get to admire their attempts to remain au courant. I mean, poor todd lassa. Not only is the Motor Trend scribe’s name chronically under capitalized, but he also had to decide whether or not Red Ink Rick Wagoner would still be at the helm of GM in January 2009. What are the odds, eh? Unfortunately, todd erred on the side of common sense.
Ever since one-time (and one time only) TTAC contributor Gary Witzenburg’s column appeared on Autobloggreen (ABG), we’ve been asking huh? Witzenberg is the Detroit apologist’s apologist; he wears his mountainous shoulder chip on his sleeve as a badge of honor. I guess Gazza lured ABG into giving him a job with promises to reveal “the truth” behind GM’s failed EV-1 program; during whose short and unhappy life the divine Mr. W served as GM spinmeister. That “truth” turned out to be, you guessed it, an apologist’s perspective. Since the series, which runs directly counter to the “Who Killed the Electric Car?” meme that ABG’s base holds sacred, Witzenburg has resumed his relentless campaign against the barbarians outside the gates of Fortress Detroit. This week’s magnum opus could well be his swan song, and quite the article it is too. If ever you wanted a round-up of all Motown’s mainstream defenders’ spurious arguments in favor of Detroit and its $64b and counting call on the public purse, well, here it is. I won’t bother to quote from Gary’s work, as we’ve skewered every one of these sacred [to him] cows before. Suffice it to say, it’s only a matter of time before Gary and ABG part company. He is a gas guzzler amongst hybrids, if you know what I mean.
Sales is one of the few professions where employees must maintain a positive attitude– no matter what. John Candy’s curtain ring sales in the movie “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” exemplifies this “never say die even when you’re dying” job requirement. Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” is the excruciatingly pathetic flip-side. MLive gives us sample of latter day unfettered optimism. “‘Traffic started picking up with the announcement that GM had the loan money,’ said Bob Johnson, new car sales manager at McDonald Pontiac, Cadillac, GMC Truck, 5155 State in Saginaw Township. ‘Then they came back with the GMAC rates. People are starting to loosen their belts.'” ML pauses for a quick reality check: “The Detroit automakers are trying to weather the biggest automobile sales slump in more than 26 years. Forecasts for December range near 10 million and actual sales could prove the lowest since August 1982.” And then we’re off for another spin around fantasyland. “Savvy buyers know the kind of deals available, said Rob Roy, news car sales manager at Draper Chevrolet, Dodge, Toyota, 4200 Bay in Saginaw Township. ‘They’re aware of the incentives,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t matter what brought them in. Business has been good since (Dec.) 26th.'” For which part of the biz, Bob? Chevrolet, Dodge, Toyota or all three? Not specified. More of the same after the jump, plus doom and gloom and things go boom– in Bloomberg’s blog!
“For many of these employees, mass transportation may add hours to their travel schedule.” Shock horror! Is The New York Times defending private transportation over public? Maybe. And you sure gotta look for it; the statement is buried in the middle of Michael Barbaro’s story about Big Apple Mayor Bloomberg’s latest executive fiat, “ordering city agencies like the police, parks and health departments to give up nearly 700 city-owned cars, a cherished perk for their workers.” (I think Barbaro added that last bit.) Hizzoner’s beancounters reckon the move will save the City $20m over two years. The Gray Lady says that an indeterminate number of the vehicles being shipped off to the worst resale market since the Paleolithic Era will be Toyota Priora. In fact, “The city estimates that most of the cars have a resale value of about $2,000 at auction.” Despite the aforementioned loss of bureaucratic efficiency and a depreciation hit that makes John Gotti look like social worker, the paper welcomes the move. Kinda. “It would help blunt criticism that City Hall practices a form of vehicular hypocrisy, telling ordinary New Yorkers to use mass transportation while at times clogging the streets with its own city-issued cars.” Amen. I think.
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