With VW wading into the budget roadster segment with its forthcoming BlueSport mid-engine roadster, it seems that Kia wants in on the action as well. Reports are surfacing in Europe and the US that the Korean automaker is making good on Peter Schreyer’s threats, and is developing its first roadster since it bought up the tooling and IP for Lotus’s front-drive Elan, which it sold in Korea between 1996 and 1999.
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Despite deep skepticism about the value of Saab’s latest “alliance” with the Chinese dealer group PangDa, it seems that the Swedish automaker will restart production next Wednesday. SaabsUnited translates a DI.se report
“I expect the plant to begin production on Wednesday of next week since they’ve come to the Saab on Tuesday this week,” said Gunnar Brunius, Purchasing and Production Manager at Saab Automobile to DI.
On Tuesday, he initiates the process of agreeing with Saab’s 800 suppliers so that they start to deliver the components again after a six-week shutdowns.
The major suppliers, including IAC, Sweden, Plastal and car seat manufacturer Lear, are invited to personal meetings, while many other contacts are handled through e-mail.
Saab will reportedly restart production at a rate of 230-240 cars per day, but first it will have to pay off suppliers. We’ll see if that actually gets accomplished before we take this report too seriously, especially since CEO Victor Muller has admitted that negotiations with suppliers could take “several weeks.” But, Muller tells Saab employees that “we will never give up,” so who knows how long Saab’s death throes could last.
As Steve Rattner described in his book “Overhaul,” the Presidential Auto Task Force very nearly decided not to rescue Chrysler, with the decision coming down to a single vote. Now, it seems, that with Chrysler blaming the “shyster” interest rates on its government loans for its lack of profitability, Chrysler’s viability now depends on rounding up a “lender of second to last resort.” And, according to the latest reports, that rescue-of-a-rescue effort is still very much hanging in the balance as well. If CEO Sergio Marchionne thought the government’s loan terms were “shyster”-ish, he was clearly in need of some context from Wall Street… and he doesn’t seem to be liking it.
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There’s an old saying that goes something like: “money talks and bullshit walks.” We don’t necessarily subscribe to it completely here at TTAC, where words pay the bills, but you have to admit that no amount of talk could make the same impact as news that GM’s CEO Dan Akerson has dropped nearly $1m of his own money on GM’s underperforming stock. I bring this up because, for the first time ever, you can now buy CARZ, which in addition to being an awful Sir Mix-A-Lot song is the first-ever auto industry index fund. Specifically:
CARZ is designed to track a basket of reputable car makers in the United States and rest of the globe. The fund’s 30 holdings present as a who’s who of the car industry, with Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Honda and Toyota comprising the top five positions. Together, these and the rest of CARZ’s top 10 holdings represent close to 60% of its assets
But, while it’s one thing for a CEO to bet on his own company (or anyone to bet on any company they believe in), investing in the industry at large is a very different gamble. Which raises an interesting question: having destroyed billions of dollars of value in recent decades, and proved itself to be vulnerable to all kinds of unpredictable events in the shorter term (think: recalls, credit crunches and and tsunamis), is the auto industry as a whole really worth gambling on? I’m not sure I’m entirely convinced…
“Building on the well-received 911 Carrera GTS with its extra power, visual panache and extensive extras for an attractive price, Porsche today announced the 911 Carrera 4 GTS.”
“The extra all-weather performance, visual muscle and standard equipment of the 911 Carrera 4 GTS comes at an attractive price. On sale this fall, the 911 Carrera 4 GTS Coupe will be available in the US at a base MSRP price of $110,200 while the 911 Carrera 4 GTS Cabriolet will be priced at $120,100.”
Not even Hyundai mentions “attractive pricing” so often in their press releases. Click the jump for the details and a much better way to spend your money.
As the graph above [via NHTSA’s latest CAFE data, in PDF here] shows, passenger car fleet economy has actually leveled off after a brief spike in recent years. Possibly even more surprising is the fact that imports spent a portion of the last decade actually beating the imports in passenger car economy after a 20+ year slide in import CAFE performance [more long-term fuel economy charts here]. These trends illustrate that the sides in the emerging “Battle of 62 MPG” may not as easy to characterize as you might think… as does a new hint from NHTSA about the shape of future CAFE increases. According to the Detroit News, NHTSA is signaling that
it is researching the impact of raising fuel efficiency in the 2 percent to 7 percent annual range.
The agency said it has “tentatively concluded” that 7 percent annual increases is the maximum that is technically feasible.
Before it sets a requirement, NHTSA must take into account a number of factors, including the costs of the regulation and safety impacts.
NHTSA and the Environmental Protection Agency said previously they are working together on 3 percent to 6 percent annual increases.
The high end of that range would result in the much-discussed 62 MPG by 2025 standard, an achievement the government insists would only cost as much as $3,500 per vehicle. The industry points to cost estimates closer to $10,000 per vehicle for that level of CAFE increase. The battle continues…
Facebook has spoken, ladies and gentlemen, and it has decided that the automobile formerly known as “Mustang V6 Performance Package” shall be known as the “Mustang Mayhem V6”. Be sure to tell your insurance adjuster. I suppose “Ford ‘Blood In Tha Streetz’ V6” was taken.
As fate would have it, we have a “Mayhem” in the metaphorical TTAC garage right now, and it’s leaving for the twisty “Shenandoah” course at Summit Point where we drove its V8 equivalent last year. I’ve only driven it thirty-four miles so far, but I’m smitten already. This is a fast, if not particularly furious, budget ponycar and when you consider that it costs $25,995, the case only gets stronger.
If only Ford didn’t have a little problem… and, naturally, it involves China.
Saab has started paying suppliers again (although production hasn’t restarted yet), and CEO Victor Muller is once again all popped-collar confidence as he dismisses the “speed bump” that he blames on negative publicity. But behind Mueller’s yacht-club breeziness and talk of “true Saabs,” major changes are afoot in Saab’s business model. Saab’s deal with Hawtai, the product of a desperate search for support in the midst of a liquidity crisis, has changed how Muller sees the global car business, and as a result he’s shopping what may be Saab’s last meaningful asset: Western dealerships. Muller explains his thinking to Automotive News [sub]
We laughed when the Japanese came. We laughed when the Koreans came. But we will not be laughing when the Chinese come. The Chinese are like a steamroller. It took 67 years to build up our dealer network. It is the biggest asset not on our asset sheet, and these guys buy into it for free. If they make the proper cars, can you image how much simpler it will be to push product through the distribution network that is already there? It is like a railway network that is already there.
Bertel and I have a running bet about whether the first actual Chinese import to the US (not a converted glider) will be a Chinese brand or one of the western brands… but it’s not much of a bet because neither of us can ever commit to picking one brand that seems most likely to bust America’s Chinese car cherry, and our “bets” change on a weekly basis. In any case, though, think it’s safe to say that neither of us saw Saab as playing much of a role in any of the scenarios we’ve discussed.
Ford is tooling up for what is likely to be a tough UAW contract negotiation in light of its return to hefty profits. And in hopes of shifting the conversation from its strong financial performance, Ford is highlighting the fact that it still pays $8 more per hour than its competition. Of course, there has been improvement, as Ford notes at its fordahead.com website
Ford’s average hourly cost per employee for wages and benefits in the U.S. reached about $75 per hour in 2007, prior to the negotiation of a new national contract. By negotiating an agreement with the UAW that year, and by adding modifications in 2009, we were able to substantially improve the competitiveness of our labor costs. Had we not reached this agreement, our average hourly wage rate would have remained simply unsustainable — and utterly uncompetitive — and Ford would not be in a position to create new jobs or bring new work into our U.S. plants.
But Ford has only itself to blame for some of those higher labor costs, as some $2/hour of its labor cost disadvantage is a result of its record-high profit-sharing checks, according to the DetNews. And, says Ford, once new “second tier” hires enter the Ford workforce, it expects wages rates to drop to parity with the transplants. In short, Ford is making the case to stay the course, working through existing contract changes to get to parity with the transplants. But given the fact that Ford is already making hefty profits, don’t expect the UAW to simply roll over. The battle lines have been drawn… but nobody knows how the conflict will actually play out.
How many Civics could a Honda make, if a Honda could make Civics? Here’s a hint: “half as many” would be too optimistic a guess. Honda has warned its dealers to expect “severe shortages” in supply of the new 2012 model, and virtually every other Honda model will have the same availability issues until later this year. Toyota’s in the same boat.
What does this mean for TTACers who want to buy a Japanese-brand car?
Mother Nature appears to have issues with the auto industry. First, a once in a millennium tsunami crippled Japanese automakers and suppliers for most of the year. Now, the most powerful long-track tornado in US history hit automakers in Alabama. Read More >
The rumors were all correct: Porsche is selling a GT3 RS 4.0. The weight: 2,998 lbs. The juice: 500 horsepower from a four-liter version of the venerable old GT1 engine.
The price: hold on to your hats.
So Saab had called an all hands meeting for today. 3,700 employees attended with great expectations or knots in their stomachs. This could have been the first day of a great future or the last of Saab. Instead …. Read More >
TTAC has always taken pride in its outsider status, and we’ve taken pains to cover the industry from a safe distance in order to continually bring a fresh perspective to developments. As a result, we’re not always on the same page as trends in the industry at large, which tends to be far more given to wild optimism than the average TTAC analysis. But, based on a new study by Booz & Company [PDF], it seems that the “carpocalypse” of recent years has driven the industry to a more TTAC-esque pessimism. According to responses by executives at both OEMs and suppliers, the industry generally feels that the bailout was either a missed opportunity or it didn’t do enough to address fundamental weaknesses… and as a result, executives see challenges ahead.
The Detroit Free Press reports, almost giddily, that GM will almost certainly replace Toyota as the world’s largest automaker by volume this year, as tsunami-related production problems will continue to plague the Japanese automaker. The graph above, by IHS Global Insight [via AutoObserver], shows that the impacts of the tsunami will continue to be felt well into next year, and that Japanese production will likely fall permanently by around 15%. Toyota’s full-year production could be cut by around 20%, possibly bumping the automaker to the third position in the global volume race, after GM and VW.
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