Separated at birth

We are in receipt of complaints that question our assertion that former Volkswagen executive and future Opel CEO Karl-Thomas Neumann “looks like an ostrich.”

Recently released documents show that he indeed does.

Go get them, tiger!

So far, Steve Girsky, dispatched on a mission impossible to Deutschland to clean up Opel, has been dancing like a butterfly, no stinging involved. Apart from targeted leaks, and an announcement to stop making cars in Opel’s Bochum plant after 2016, which really did not surprise anyone, there were no big dispatches about the heroics of Steve the hatchet man, who was sent to the Old Country to stick it to the socialist metalworker Nazis. Today, and most likely after increasingly impatient prodding from Detroit, Steve took his gloves off, and a swing at some 20,000 unionized workers in Germany.

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GM’s troubled European daughter Opel finally will get a more permanent CEO.  As rumored since last year, it is the former Volkswagen manager Karl-Thomas Neumann.  German Automobilwoche [sub] expects Neumann to be confirmed by Opel’s supervisory board on January 31. Read More >

Shaved head: Works council chief Uwe Hück. Needs new suit: Mayor Fritz Kuhn. Regulation Volkswagen white hair: Porsche CEO Matthias Müller

One would think that a card carrying environmentalist visits Porsche’s plant in Zuffenhausen only for picketing purposes, or as a target for bags with paint or worse. Today, Porsche was visited by a card-carrying environmentalist, and by Stuttgart’s mayor. The two are the same. The usually deeply conservative Stuttgart, home of  Daimler and Porsche, elected  Fritz Kuhn, member of the Green Party, as its mayor.  Mainly because the other candidate Sebastian Turner was a disaster, along with being an adman who is not without criticism in his own ranks. But I digress. Anyway, His Green Honor was at Porsche today. Read More >

Volkswagen has ended the year on a strong note. Shrugging off the troubles at home in Europe, Volkswagen increased its global group sales by a respectable 20.7 percent in December of 2012, bringing its global group sales for the year above the 9 million mark at an 11.2% increase compared to 2011. Read More >

The French government is pushing PSA Peugeot Citroen to buy Opel, says Le Monde, which claims to have its information from sources at the French Finance Ministry and in the entourage of France’s  President Francois Hollande. Buying moribund Opel would  allow PSA to stand up to “ogre Volkswagen”  which  “has chosen to eliminate PSA,” as an informant told the Paris paper.
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The German car market ended the year with a bang – to the chin. Germany had shrugged-off the European contagion for most of the year, but in December, sales sagged by an unfestive 16.4 percent. Read More >

Sold!

GM’s Opel took another step towards a possible bankruptcy. Opel sold six European facilities to the American mother , says the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.  The real estate includes an engine plant in Hungary, a development center in Turin, Italy, a factory in Gliwice, Poland, a transmission plant in Austria, and other “activities” in the UK and Russia, the paper says. The FAZ received a “no comment” from Opel, but no denial. Opel is not rolling in money, despite the sale. Read More >

The alliance between GM and PSA is beginning to show concrete results – not just yet, but at least they decided to work on them. In a joint press release, GM and PSA announced that they will jointly work on what they call “three common vehicle platform development projects.”  Meaning cars.  Finally. Read More >

It’s a new tradition at the storied Mini brand: Each car show gets its own dedicated Mini. Swatch tried it with the Swatch car, but could not pull it off.  Now, BMW’s Mini is doing it with great success: At the inside, the same movement. At the outside, ever changing designs. Collect all colors!. Of course, Mini won’t break tradition at the Detroit Auto Show, and it will bring you: The John Cooper Works Paceman.
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Infiniti’s often discussed future premium compact model will be built at Nissan’s UK plant in Sunderland, Nissan says. It was previously announced that the new Infiniti will “share a platform developed with Mercedes. Read More >

Wendelin Wiedeking, former Porsche CEO turned pizza baker, will have to defend himself in criminal court. Along with his former CFO Holger Härter, Wiedeking has been indicted in Stuttgart.  This follows a three year probe by the public prosecutor in Stuttgart which had been looking into market manipulation and illegal disclosure of insider information.  Only the market manipulation charge survived. Read More >

If you are an automaker, and you know that something can blow up and poison your customers, then you are in deep trouble if you put that stuff in your cars. In Germany, you are in in deep Scheiss if you don’t. Daimler may have to pay high fines if it continues using an old refrigerant in 2013, instead of the new HFO-1234yf, of which Daimler says it can fry and kill you. If Daimler continues to resist, it may lose the European type certification for the A and B Class. Which could kill the company. Read More >

Opel will remain a money draining leak in the mother ship for the foreseeable future. This is one conclusion after reading an interview given by Opel’s interim CEO Thomas Sedran to Germany’s Wirtschaftswoche. Another conclusion would be that Opel needs a chief.

Sedran is “sure that we will be profitable by mid-decade,” but this is an easy claim for any Opel CEO. Even non-interim chiefs of Opel have a very short shelf life. The plans revealed by the former management consultant (Roland Berger, Alix Partners) don’t sound like Opel will be profitable in this century. Read More >

Volkswagen is making most of its profits with pricey Audis, but it is looking towards making volume with low cost cars. Plans for a budget-brand, reported at TTAC in October, are “entscheidungsreif”,  ready for a decision as they say in Wolfsburg. In January, Volkswagen’s board could give its go-ahead. Read More >