TTAC Commentator supaman writes:
Hey Sajeev,
Don’t have to say how much you and the B&B have helped me in the past with auto-related inquiries. Anyway, you need more material? Well here’s more. Up to perhaps a week ago, everything was fine on my STEED. I haven’t been using the A/C much because the weather has been much cooler but then it started to warm up. Got in the car to leave work and turned on the A/C to cool the car a bit and….nothing. Read More >
Some forecasters expected Japan’s appetite for new cars to drop by more than 20 percent in the last quarter after government incentives expired in September. So far, it is not happening. Sales of new cars, trucks and buses declined a minuscule 0.4 percent in November. Elsewhere you may read that the market was down 3.3 percent, but they are not giving you the whole story. Sales of mini vehicles, or kei cars actually were up in November, pulling the market nearly completely out of minus territory. Read More >
1929 Packard Eight 745 Sport Phaeton owned by Richard & Linda Kughn – More photos here.
Not much more than a decade ago, the total worldwide market for the most expensive cars was in four figures. Then, not necessarily in chronological order, Ford bought Aston Martin, VW and BMW fought over the rights to the Rolls-Royce and Bentley brands, Fiat started taking its investment in Ferrari seriously and VW bought Lamborghini. Instead of operating as they had been, more or less boutique operations, those luxury marques were now expected to pay their keep. Also someone smart figured out that there were a lot more than just few thousand rich people in the world and that a $200,000 car is almost an impulse purchase to people who can afford a Gulfstream or a fourth home. For most of the years 1985-2001 Ferrari sold between 3,200 and 4,500 cars a year. Today, Ferrari alone makes about 7,000 cars a year. Read More >
Chrysler Thunderbolt and Newport Show Cars in the atrium of the Walter P. Chrysler Museum
I’m an unabashed booster of Detroit area institutions so it was with some sadness that I read that the Walter P. Chrysler Museum on the Chrysler campus in Auburn Hills will be closing to the public at the end of the year. Apparently admission fees and facility rentals were not sufficient to sustain continued operations.
A Detroit court found a former GM engineer and her husband guilty of conspiring to steal hybrid car trade secrets. Their lawyers unsuccessfully argued that there were no secrets to steal. Ed Niedermeyer had said that for years.
Timing the market is a tricky matter. There are people who urge the Canadian government to dump its shares in GM at a considerable loss. And there are others who rather wait for the stock to go higher. Canada’s Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is in the second camp. Read More >
Opel is bleeding money and has to save at all costs. Opel hoped to share development of the next generation Insignia with PSA, but that was called off before it was even announced. According to German media reports, Opel engineers quickly developed a more cost effective solution: A head transplant. Read More >
TrueDelta has updated the stats from its Car Reliability Survey to cover through the end of September, 2012.
Elsewhere you’ll read that, for the 2013 Mazda CX-5, “first year reliability has been well above average.” We can’t tell you how the CX-5 performed during its first year, since the first few cars only arrived at dealers late last February (less than two months before that other survey was conducted). We can tell you that, in the seven months after the first Mazdas were delivered, few of them required repairs. Same conclusion, just an average of 3.5 months of data per car instead of a couple of weeks.
We came within a response or two of having a full result for the Scion FR-S and Subaru BRZ sports cars. Through the end of September they were looking better than average. But enough owners have recently reported problems with tail light condensation and a chirping fuel pump (the latter probably experienced in our press fleet pre-production car) that their score will worsen with future updates. If no further problems creep up they’ll have middling-to-poor scores for a few quarters, after which they could regain a better-than-average stat.
The government of Ontario is calling on the Canadian government to sell off its shares in GM, obtained as part of a bailout package for the automaker in 2009.
As part of its agreement with the CAW, Ford will open up 400 jobs to laid off workers from its Windsor and St. Thomas plants (aka the birthplace of our beloved Panther) – but with 885 potential applicants and 400 jobs, allocating them will be tricky.
The AAA asked the U.S. government to prohibit the sale of E15. Only about 5 percent of the 240 million light duty vehicles on U.S. roads today are approved by manufacturers to run on the gasoline that contains 15 percent alcohol, and the other 95 percent could be ruined by the wicked fuel, says the AAA. The industry agrees. Read More >
For years General Motors fought a rearguard action, asserting that its relatively big cam-in-block engines were at least as good as the “high tech” DOHC mills offered by “the Japanese.” Led by the buff books, freethinking pistonheads knew better. More power from a smaller displacement engine clearly indicated higher intelligence. Honda, smartest of all, extracted 270 horsepower from a 3.0-liter V6. The 1990 Corvette made do with 245 horsepower from a 5.7-liter V8. Two decades later, GM finally developed a 3.0-liter V6 with an NSX-like output, and without the Acura’s pricey titanium innards or need for premium fuel. The new engine took the place of a previous-generation 3.6. My response after sampling the then-new V6 in the similarly new GMC Terrain: “Perhaps the 3.6 will at least find its way into a future Denali variant?” Three years later, the future has arrived.
The European contagion claims another victim: The Amsterdam auto show, scheduled for next April, has been canceled, Reuters reports. The organizers could not find enough companies willing to show their wares – for a modest fee upwards from $ 1 million. Read More >
Ford and Mazda have been divorced ever since Ford cashed in its shares to finance a survival. Everywhere, except in China. In China, nothing goes without government approval, and because there was none, both Ford and Mazda had to continue their threesome with joint joint-venture partner Changan. An impending dissolution was announced several times. In August, Ford CEO Alan Mulally told reporters in Chongqing: “Ford and Mazda and their local Chinese partner Chongqing Changan have received approval from China’s central government to split their three-way, manufacturing and sales joint venture into two.” Got you! Not true. Now, it finally is. Read More >
Of course Chinese cars are all craptastic patent violations on wobbly wheels. But then, the same had been said about Japanese and later Korean cars. Can Chinese carmakers repeat what Japan and Korea have done? J.D. Power thinks they are rapidly improving. Read More >
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