I’m busy chasing the story about Comcast’s decision to pull the ad from the Ad Hoc Committee of Consumer Victims of GM and Chrysler re: the automakers’ attempts to walk away from safety-related claims against their “old” incarnations. I’ve got calls into the left coast lawyers who have first-hand knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the self-imposed censorship. Meanwhile, Sean Kane, the president of advocacy group Safety Research and Strategies (SRS), says the ad was pulled after a call from GM’s lawyers to Comcast. He also shared this pdf: Public Safety at Risk. “If GM is allowed to assign liability for its pre-New GM vehicles to old GM, it will remove the incentive for claimants to file,” Kane contends. “It would remove an important surveillance device for the NHTSA.”
A lot has been written about GM’s dysfunctional corporate culture, much of it here. Thanks to the mean meme, GM CEO Fritz Henderson has been forced to add a bizarre explanation of how a consummate GM insider can reform the sclerotic bureaucracy that vomited him forth. Up? Anyway, Fritz has been hard at it, deigning to dignify ex-Car Czar Bob Lutz’ in-house media mouthpiece (FastLane) with his presence. Yes, well, bully for him. But you have to wonder about the CEO’s promise to create a laser-like focus on New GM’s 34 (count ’em 34) nameplates when the company is creating and abandoning websites like a phishing scheme. Anyone remember GMNext?
Here’s the full text of the speech given by Akio Toyoda, the new president of Toyota Motor Corporation.
Thank you very much for coming today.
I was appointed president of Toyota Motor Corporation at the board of directors meeting held on June 23, following the Ordinary General Shareholders’ Meeting on the same day. In addition to my comments here today, our executive vice presidents will provide remarks on their areas of business.
The global automobile industry has been facing extreme hardships since the latter half of last year. As for Toyota, we ended the last fiscal year with an operating loss of 461 billion yen. We expect our losses to deepen this fiscal year, and so all of us in the new management team at Toyota feel like we are setting sail during a storm.
Since the birth of Toyota, the company’s philosophy has always been to “contribute to society.” The first article of the Toyoda Precepts, our original statement of purpose as a company in 1935, states that we must contribute to the development and welfare of each country we operate in by working together – regardless of individual position – in faithfully fulfilling our duties. In other words, we must manufacture high-quality vehicles for the benefit of society.
I started TTAC’s General Motors Death Watch in the summer of ’05, after the automaker pulled tens of millions of dollars in advertising from the LA Times. GM was pissed at a Dan Neil Pontiac review that called for an executive cull. While I’d been predicting bankruptcy for The General long before that point, the automaker’s bully-boy tactics against this country’s finest carmudgeon was the final straw. GM was free to pull its ads. And I was free to start the Death Watch. The rest, as they say, is history. Only maybe not so fast.
This interview raises some important questions. Is it me or does Alex Taylor sound like Sgt. Friday? What editor thought he could get away with using B-roll of a union worker with a sign referring to a “Golden Shower?” What kind of company has a CEO who can go his entire life without anyone daring to correct his pronunciation of “hubris?” Why would the CEO of GM point out out that “every one” of the company’s surviving 34 nameplates has to be a winner? I mean, what are the odds? And what’s with this: “We’ve lost a part of the population but [sotto voce] it’s not that large.” No complacency here. No, sir.
Eddy gave us the heads-up on Chevrolet Volt Vehicle Chief Engineer Andrew Farah’s party piece over at FastLane. Straight out of the gate, Farah’s not shooting straight on the all-important question of the Volt’s effective driving range. “Scott” asks Andy to compare the Volt to the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius non-plug-in hybrids. “Clearly I enjoyed the significantly longer EV distance that is available with the Volt. I had to drive quite some distance before the engine came on, even though I didn’t start with a full charge. By comparison, our chassis is much more sporty than either of the other vehicles.” Non-starter and a non-sequitur in the same comment; nicely played. And just when you thought it was safe to sit and spin, another e-interlocutor gets Andy to spill the beans.
Trying to find somewhere to voice my opinion about the fact that gm lost the lawsuit we had about our 07 Equinox. They are supposed to give us a replacement or 25,000 dollars but they know that they can get out of it with their bankruptcy. They want to try to buy us off with 6,500. This is not right. We had so many problems with the cobalt right before this but never held it against them. This is what we get for being loyal customers. I have had gm for the last 15 years and this is what I get. We just want the thing to run but even after 22 service visits and them having the vehicle for 63 days and it still doesn’t run. So we are in for 476 a month for 5 and a half years for a lawn ornament.
“Many commentators interpret this as a battle of egos, but that is a simplification of a much deeper human need to be attached to something meaningful that will persist long after you are gone from this Earth.”
—Ex-Tesla spinmeister and TTAC protagonist Darryl Siry on the cat fight between Martin Eberhard and Elon Musk
Communist witch hunters called Americans who supported the battle against Francisco Franco before World War II “premature anti-fascists.” In other words, they were right for the wrong reasons. There’s a lot of that going around these days. For example, Chrysler and GM’s claim that they need to cull dealers is spot on. But trimming overheads, as the automakers claim, ain’t it. [see: number three after the jump]. By the same token, it’s also true that New GM is doomed to failure. But not for the seven reasons that Seeking Alpha sets forth. Still, Jason Mathew’s analysis is worth a closer look . . .
By all accounts, the refreshed Ford Taurus is an excellent car. Easy-to-drive, economical, well-built, comfortable, capacious and handsome. As a sign of its pre-launch success, the vehicle’s critics are focusing on its sticker price. As a firm believer that something is worth exactly what someone will pay for it, it remains to be seen if Ford’s priced the refreshed Taurus out of the market. Meanwhile and in any case, Taurus Gen 6 won’t “save” Ford like the 1986 model. The 2010 Taurus may be a singular automobile, but it is not a signature automobile. To survive in today’s crowded, shrunken, hyper-competitive new car market, Ford needs vehicles that clearly differentiate the brand from the competition, and marketing to match. Ford recognizes the problem, but fails to rectify it.
We’ve said it before: both Chrysler and GM have been using GMAC as their “bag man”: withdrawing credit from dealers to kill them without messy political blowback. This despite the Small Business Administration’s new federal loan guarantee program for beleaguered car dealers. The Wall Street Journalreports that where the feds giveth, GMAC is still taking away. “GMAC LLC is suspending wholesale financing for certain Chrysler Group LLC dealers it considers to be too risky to lend to, GMAC and Chrysler confirmed Wednesday. The move could ultimately push more Chrysler dealers out of business and hurt the company’s ability to sell vehicles.” That last bit’s pretty funny—providing you’re not a Chrysler dealer. Anyway, the WSJ runs the numbers or at least tries . . .
You may have been wondering—as I have—why Chrysler Ford and GM are restarting production, given that sales are down by over 30 percent. The answer’s buried in a recent report from notre amis a Credit Suisse. To wit: “Much has been made over the last several weeks about the production increase that should take place from Q2 to Q3. Indeed we expect output to increase more than 50% sequentially at the Big 3, and about 27% for the industry. But most of this is being driven by underbuild relative to demand in Q2, such that inventories should be below normal by June 30.” I know what you’re thinking: has it really come to the point where I understand/care about this kind of Inside Baseball stuff? If the answer is [a secret] yes, welcome [again] to TTAC’s The Best and Brightest! Which also means you’ll be interested in the rest of the report . . .
Canada’s Derosiers Automotive Consultants had a think about the future of the North American new car market. You can read the results of their analysis here, for no money down, no money per month, for no months. To make a pretty pdf short, the Detroit Three still have “an inferior business model from most perspectives.” In fact, “[i]t is a huge leap of faith to believe that their strategy will work given historical precedent.” Uh-oh. “Unless the D-3 can turn around their market share losses then no amount of Government money can save all three of these companies. Best case is we end up with two Detroit based companies instead of three and there is a very real scenario where we end up with only one.” In other words, this could well be the most expensive game of musical chairs the Canadian and US government has ever played. OK, not ever. But in a long time.
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