Thanks to stringent libel laws and gag orders, they used to do this crap all the time in the UK: run a media story about another media story without telling you what was in the original media story. In this case, it’s an pro-Detroit, anti-Toyota viral email that’s grabbed the attention of The Detroit Free Press‘ numero uno propagandist, Mark Phelan. The columnist is incensed– incensed I tell you– that someone is making the right case for Motown’s teat suckle using spin and, gasp, twisting facts. And just in case this amateur apologist needs some helpful hints, Phelan’s lede takes a shot at a certain southern senator. “With friends like these, who needs Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby? Shelby, of course, became the public face of contempt for Detroit’s automakers with his staunch opposition to congressional aid. Some of the Detroit Three’s would-be supporters may now inadvertently further damage the industry’s cause. There’s a slick viral ad making rounds by e-mail that attempts to defend Detroit’s automakers by showing that foreign brands aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Riddled with distortions and lies, it could do more harm than good.” So spill sister! Some quotes please. Only one, but it’s a doozy.
Posts By: Robert Farago
I’m sorry to keep harping-on about this. But I am flabbergasted by Fortress Detroit’s reaction to the bailout. Today’s the day that GM and Chrysler actually get their checks. And today’s the day that the doyenne of Motown media Keith Crain continues his incessant, indignant whining. The headline of his Automotive News [sub] column asks “Does it matter anymore?” Intriguing. Does what matter anymore? The $60b or so Uncle Sam’s pissing away to sustain a brace of unsustainable automakers? That would, of course, make sense. As the Brits might say, those of you looking for sense should look away now. “Across the globe, governments are reaching out to help their auto companies survive. Other governments are giving assistance without any of the theatrics that the Detroit 3 had to endure to get bridge loans. And General Motors and Chrysler will be required to return to Washington for more hearings so all the politicians can have more TV time, which they find invaluable.” Yeah, ain’t democracy a drag? There’s more of Crain’s paranoid passive aggressive paternalistic pandering after the jump…
OK, so I’ve changed the video. Doctor V-8 pointed out that the Avalate conversion debuted back in the 1940’s. The new video raises a more interesting question: why make these things even more powerful? Why not you say? Yes, I know: God bless America. If Corvette modifiers didn’t exist, Massachusetts wouldn’t have a warehouse Italian restaurant chain called Vinny T’s. And a damn fine spaghetti vongole they make too. Still, you gotta wonder. What’s with the gloomy music? Didn’t muscle cars come of age with Doo-Wop? Just sayin’.
According to Denmark’s Børsen.dk, “General Motors is now giving Saab Automobile 3-Months To Find Buyer, in discussing this with Eric Geers, Global Communications for Saab Automobile AB in Sweden.” Hüsker Dü? That’s the same three month deadline when GM returns, pre-pubescent Mark Lester-style, to Congress– or just the President of the United States, as is the way of things these days. The Danish report is semi-confirmed by a previous CNNMoney report on GM’s Marketing Maven’s pep talk to dealers. “LaNeve said the auto maker expects to announce significant developments in efforts to sell its Saab and Hummer brands by the end of March 2009.” So, who would buy Saab in this sales climate? And what if they don’t sell the brand? What then? Well, I suppose they could always slip the closing cost into the receipts submitted to Uncle Sugar on the day…
Previously, on “We Can Confabulate the Managerial Incompetence Behind Motown’s Meltdown and Federal Cash Grab by Raising Issues About Race, Regionality, Class and (it’s coming) Religion,” we saw how the Detroit News encouraged hometown supporters to boycott the South (provided, presumably, those supporters aren’t in the South). I was laboring under the impression that we’d could tick the race thing of the list as well, as African American automotive carmudgeon Warren Brown had previously postulated that Detroit deserved the bailout bucks by dint of its contribution to the creation of America’s black middle class. But I guess The DetN couldn’t resist adding fuel to the pyre. “Auto woes rock black work force” makes the case that Detroit’s tough times are tougher on blacks than white folks. And here’s proof:
Even as we await word on whether GMAC lives or dies, it’s increasingly clear that GM is using the lender as a hit man to decimate its dealers. Bloomberg clues us in on the motivation: “A U.S. dealership glut is damping the retailers’ profits, crimping spending on marketing, facilities and vehicles, GM and Chrysler say. GM set a goal of closing 1,750 showrooms, or 27 percent, over four years while Chrysler said it wants to thin its 3,300 dealerships, without setting a target… ‘In a number of states there’s these very elaborate procedures that you have to go through to shut dealerships,’ University of Chicago law professor Douglas Baird said in an interview. ‘In some states you just can’t do it at all.'” Philly.com shows us that GM has the means: “A half-dozen trailers rolled up to Eckenhoff Cadillac Buick Pontiac GMC in Jenkintown bright and early and wiped the lot clean of $8.4 million in inventory – Hummers, Cadillacs and all… GMAC, the beleaguered financing arm of General Motors Corp., had called the loan that had enabled Scott Eckenhoff to stock new and used vehicles. Big trailers carted away the collateral from a Big Three retailer that had been hanging on by a thread.” Opportunity? The current Motown meltdown. My question: what the Hell is GMAC going to do with all that inventory? Put another way, who’s going to bury the bodies? [thanks to Stein X. Leikanger for the tip!]
Automotive News [sub] ain’t committing themselves on this one, using typography to highlight that this is a list of ten small cars that could be coming our way. But they’re right to flag these cars as potential U.S. imports. When the U.S./world economy recovers, the price of gas is sure to ascend. Yes, when. Remember: automakers need to plan on a five-year timeline. To NOT plan for a recovery would be a mistake. And, as Detroit should have learned at least once in the last twenty years, any full-line carmaker worth more than $3b should not place all its eggs in a single vehicular basket. It’s an interesting list, but wouldn’t you really rather have a full-size Honda Accord or Toyota Corolla or, well, anything? And of course, I don’t mean you in the Chervolet Camaro sense. I mean you, as in 100k+ units per year. Or, put another way, how many competitors does the MINI need?
GMAC. Bank or bust? We still don’t know. As we’ve reported at least twice previously, if the troubled lender failed to make the leap to hyper-suckle by Friday at 11:59 pm (i.e. get investors to swap out enough debt for equity to morph into a bank and scarf $6.3b or so from the Trouble Asset Relief Program, and a bunch more as federally secured debt), then the whole house of cards known as the domestic auto industry will come crashing down. Automotive News [sub] reports that GM spinmeister Gina Proia said the company expects to put out the results of the debt-for-equity swap in “the near term.” Let’s call that option C. Option A? GMAC did the deed but remained tight-lipped for the last two days because majority owners Cerberus never met a cloak of invisibility they didn’t wrap around their operation like Christo covering the Arc de Triomphe. After all, this is the same privately-held company that owns Chrysler, which expects Uncle Sugar to “lend” it $4b, despite the fact that we don’t know how Cerberus paid for it in the first place and/or who owns the paper on what now, after the sale and (presumably) deep borrowing against assets. And now, option B…
“Politicians and pundits always like simple answers. Unfortunately simple answers, as appealing as they are, are usually wrong. Life is inherently messy and complicated, which is something die-hard conservatives and liberal politicians never seem to understand.” Uh, OK. That’s the coda to an article by Joseph Szcesny. ToMoCo’s rise the top of the global pile and Detroit’s plummet into the depths of bankruptcy (in all but name) inspired the Oakland Press scribe to chastise all and sundry on a mid-winter Sunday. Be that as it may, it’s certainly true that “Toyota Motor Corp. is very likely to replace General Motors Corp. as the world’s largest automaker next month once all the sales for the 2008 are finally totaled up by both companies. Toyota is also expected to emerge for the first as the best selling brand in the U.S. for the first time ever, beating out both Chevrolet and Ford.” In fact, on the world stage, this is a repeat performance. Last year, GM used weasel words to cast aspersions on Toyota’s claim to the world’s largest automaker crown (GM added a minority joint venture in China to their global totals). At the time, GM CEO Rick Wagoner said the title wasn’t important; profits were. You can almost hear Red Ink Rick’s Szcesny-like refrain. Hey! Life’s complicated.
Yup, it’s deja vu all over again, as New York Times star columnist and flat earther Thomas L. Friedman once again echoes the Gray Lady’s conviction that a federal gas tax is a good thing. No surprise there. In case you didn’t realize it, Friedman has no problem telling people what to do with their national economies. In fact, it’s clear he feels what was once called noblesse oblige. “I’ve wracked my brain trying to think of ways to retool America around clean-power technologies without a price signal — i.e., a tax — and there are no effective ones. (Toughening energy-effiency [sic] regulations alone won’t do it.) Without a higher gas tax or carbon tax, Obama will lack the leverage to drive critical pieces of his foreign and domestic agendas.” You want him to tax that gas. You need him to tax that gas. “Today’s financial crisis is Obama’s 9/11. The public is ready to be mobilized. Obama is coming in with enormous popularity. This is his best window of opportunity to impose a gas tax. And he could make it painless: offset the gas tax by lowering payroll taxes, or phase it in over two years at 10 cents a month.” And then Tom trots out the “H” word, and you just know someone somewhere is gonna pay.
Well, at least their hometown media. Our hypermiling pal Sam “Is there a draft out here?” Abuelsamid at Autoblog linked me to the straw that broke this camel’s back: a Christmas Eve column by The Detroit News’ John McCormick. “Maybe it’s time to turn the tables on the South” the title proclaims, proving that prevarication is the first refuge of a journalistic scoundrel. “The unnecessarily long and painful path toward the approval of government bridging loans for General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC has exposed a new threat to Detroit. It’s one that Michigan consumers may want to keep in mind as they consider their expenditures, vacation options and even retirement plans.” Breathe Farago. Gentlemen, you won. You got your money. I’m sorry if you found the $66.2b raid on the public purse was a bit… tedious. And embarrassing. But you want to start a boycott? You do realize you’re going back to Uncle Sugar in March, right? Southerners buy a lot of your trucks, yes? Maybe it would be best to just shut the Hell up and be glad that President Bush felt free to ride roughshod over the United States Congress (not to mention the U.S. Constitution). But no. Insult added to injury after the jump.
Automobile.blog.com offers its readers some car-related trivia for the holidays. There’s some pretty good stuff: “The Monumental Axis in Brazil is the world’s widest road and can accommodate 160 cars side-by-side at a given time.” But the list lacks what the National Enquirer’s editors call a “Hey Martha!” And any pistonhead who doesn’t know that “The Dodge Neon is sold in Europe under the brand name Chrysler Neon” is forgiven for not knowing OR caring. So I’m tasking TTAC’s Best and Brightest to offer more challenging, obscure and entertaining automotive factoids. I’ll start with an easy one (at least for the car historians amongst us): In 1951, a new car was launched whose maker claimed it was so frugal that “every third mile was free.” Hint: it had a supersonic engine. Hint two: new pic.
Yada yada yada. “And then out of nowhere came the ZR1, which has a supercharged V8 that manages to be both docile and extraordinarily savage all at the same time. I’ve been trying to think of a dog that pulls off a similar trick, but there isn’t one. And anyway, this car is not a dog.
“Oh, it’s not built very well. After just three days in my care, the boot lock disintegrated and the keyless go system refused to acknowledge the keys were in the car, but I didn’t mind because there is simply no other car that looks this good, goes this fast – in a straight line and around corners – and that most of the time bumbles about like a forgetful uncle. And when you throw in the price tag of just £106,690 – lots for a Corvette but modest next to a similarly powerful Ferrari – the case for the defence can sit down and put up its feet knowing that the prosecutor simply has nowhere to go.
It is an epic car and I’m only sad that unless the healthcare and pensions company that makes it can be turned around, it will be the last of the breed.”
“Larry Hall is the editor of Northwest Auto News Service and a freelance journalist based in Olympia, Wash. For more than 20 years, he’s covered the automotive industry for numerous trade journals, newspapers and business publications.” Who? The what? A Google search on “NWA” reveals plenty of interesting links, from Northwest Airlines to Niggaz with Attitude, The National Wrestling Alliance and The National Weather Association (“promoting excellence in operational meteorology and related activities”). A search of “Northwest Auto News Service” reveals… nothing. Which is sort of strange, as this attribution comes from MSN Autos’ review of the GMC Sierra Hybrid. Turns out ole Lar’ works for Newcartestdrive.com, the most corrupt group of automotive journalists money can buy. So that pretty much tells you all you need to know about MSN’s review of the GMC Sierra Hybrid. They love it! O.K., a taste… “Unlike Tahoe Hybrids I’ve driven [Ed: they made more than one?], this pickup could never reach the mid-20 mph range in electric-only operation. As for running just four cylinders at 50, 55 and 60 mph, unlike the Tahoe, it would do so only for very short times. Engineers are still calibrating the control system that optimizes the transmission for best performance and economy, and I was told this was an anomaly to the specific vehicle I drove.” And I love the strapline: “With a little practice, this pickup can go 500 miles between fill-ups.” Practice makes perfect, eh Larry?
One evening, whilst dining at a Turkish restaurant in Mayfair, I watched my server nearly trip over another waiter’s leg. (The staff member whose appendage had caused the offense was kneeling by the desert cart.) The burly fellow who’d almost lost his balance looked at his compatriot with dagger-filled eyes. Waiter number two stared straight back. “Yes. I am trying to kill you,” he said with deadpan earnestness. Reading Scott Burgess’ review of the Shelby GT500KR, it seems pretty clear that the 540hp ‘Stang is equally intent on eliminating its driver. Which is to say not intentionally, but what difference does that make? “The 2008 Ford Shelby GT500 King of the Road scares me,” Burgess admits from the git-go. “The first ‘incident’ occurred along Gibraltar Road when I started to pass a minivan poking its way up the same straightaway. With no oncoming traffic and the lane open, I dropped the six-speed manual into third and kicked out to the left. The moment I mashed the pedal to the floor and listened to that supercharged whirl come from under the hood, the SVT light on the speedometer lit up and the back end of the KR jumped to the left and shuddered — full power, full torque ripping through the rear axle. ‘Oh, sassafras’ — that’s paraphrased — blurted out of my mouth.” Incident number two after the jump.
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