Gimmicky sales techniques are tough. On the one hand, Hyundai’s 10 year warranty and Assurance buy-back program have helped it become one of the fastest-growing auto brands in the country. On the other, Chrysler’s free gas giveaway, “lifetime guarantee” and its latest, the “regret-free purchase” offer, have all come and gone without materially moving the needle for the beleaguered automaker. In fact, cars.com reports that just 21 buyers opted for the option of returning their Chrysler within 60 days instead of a financing deal. Which makes sense: people buy Chryslers because they’re cheap and they offer lots of incentives. If we’re honest, the option of returning a car because it is of lower quality than the competition shouldn’t really appeal to deal-minded consumers. Which is why only Ram now offers the “regret-free” deal, while the rest of Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge’s nameplates have loaded back up on incentives. It’s clearly what brings the customers in.
Category: News Blog
Sometimes we forget that Toyota Motor Corp. is a member of a huge keiretsu (conglomerate). Well, The Nikkei [sub] reminds us that a “Toyota Motor Corp. affiliated trading house will obtain artificially raised juvenile fish about 6cm long from the university’s fishery lab in Wakayama Prefecture.” Juvenile fish? Read More >
Today Hammer Time brings you its guide to commonly-used auto auction phrases and their translations.
Car Dealer – “You can have it if you want it.”
Translation – “I know you’re going to run the bid up anyhow. So go ahead and *%&#$&! take it.”
Car Dealer – “This car is a bad boy.”
Translation – It drinks. It smokes. Some day soon it will be hanging out with the other bad boys at the neighborhood junkyard.
While reading the responses to a recent BMWBLOG posting by Josh Lewis, I noted that one of the posters had put together a very interesting comparison of the BMW M3 and the Porsche 911. To put it mildly, somebody’s gone Kirstie Alley while somebody else has stayed Goldie Hawn:
If you exist outside the fast-paced world of the automotive branding community, you might believe that the point of car brands is to sell cars. Needless to say, you’d be wrong. The big buzzword around car brands, particularly the more niche and eco-friendly brands is “mobility.” As in “we must leverage our brand values to provide a broad-based mobility strategy for the cities of the future.” Or, to put it into layman’s terms, “screw cars, we gotta start building scooters.”
Police officers in the commonwealth of Virginia can track the movements of motorists with secretly installed satellite tracking devices on their own authority, the state court of appeals ruled Tuesday. On February 1, 2008, Fairfax County police had attached a GPS tracking device to the work van of David L. Foltz, Jr based on a hunch that Foltz may have been involved in a series of crimes. The officers did not bother obtaining a warrant or asking the permission of the company that owned the van. The department used such devices on 159 such occasions between 2005 and 2007 but no policy guidelines were ever drafted to govern their use. Using a magnet and tape, an officer stuck the GPS unit under the van’s bumper while it was parked on a public street.
I had a beer and a pizza yesterday night with Ash Sutcliffe of China Car Times (us expat car bloggers need to stick together) and he swore on a stack of bibles that he had seen the resurrection of the Chrysler Sebring over at Beijing Auto. But it won’t be a Sebring. Read More >
India’s population is right up there with neighboring China. Only a few hundred million less, nobody really knows. In car sales, India dwarfs against China. In 2009, Indians bought 1.43m units, compared to 13.6m units bought by the Chinese. Nevertheless, the market is growing, the potential is huge, and sales are at a record high. Monthly car sales in India surged to an all-time high in August, climbing 33 percent to 160,794 cars. That according to data issued by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), and reported in The Nikkei [sub]. August sales outpaced July’s record of 158,674 cars. Read More >
Remember that old saying, “What’s good for GM is good for America”? Well it seems that the UK is developing a similar ethos. “What’s good for Ford is good for the UK”. Now, this isn’t some arrogant Ford executive trying to brainwash the UK public that buying their cars is their public duty. There really is a good reason behind this. Honestly. Read More >
Close your eyes and think of China. I bet many of you still see seas of people with straw hats riding bicycles. J.P. Morgan and J.D. Power see a sea of luxury cars. Millions of them. Read More >
Ray LaHood is great, isn’t he? When that big nasty corporation, Toyota, was building those awful machines that were murdering people and their children in their sleep in the middle of the night, he urged everyone to “stop driving your Toyotas” (Ford also had a problem with unintended acceleration, but LaHood couldn’t go after them with the same vigor as he was busy dealing holding “Toyota’s feet to the fire” at the time). His useful piece of advice led to a calm and controlled recall and gave people the courage to come forward and give their horror stories of how their Toyotas went all “HAL” on them. Then came allegations that Ray and the NHTSA were suppressing a report that confirmed it wasn’t the cars but driver error. Well, Ray knew he was being stabbed in the back but you can’t keep a good man quiet for long… Read More >
Progress! It took all the way to the second guess to reveal the identity of the Mitsubishi van. Congratulations yoribe1. Well, it can’t get much worse than that. And I give a pretty distinctive item to look at. Let’s see what happens.
To hype its forthcoming Leaf electric car, Nissan has reached for the most manipulative imagery in the green marketing playbook: the Polar Bear. They’re cute, they’re cuddly, and because their icy habitat is being destroyed by regular cars, they will hug you if you buy an EV. Meanwhile, the causes, trajectory, and impacts of global climate change (not to mention its possible solutions) remain extremely abstract and far-away when compared to the political and economic ramifications of global oil undersupply. Too bad market failures and geopolitical instability aren’t as emotionally manipulative as those fuzzy bear guys…
Digging through the finances of a company as large as GM is never an easy task, especially when the balance book in question was recently wiped clean in a bailout-bankruptcy. Luckily, Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Weil has the chops to do the task justice, and he’s come up with a fascinating insight: through the power of an accounting tool known as “Goodwill,” Weil claims that GM has juiced its assets and liabilities during its “fresh start.” He notes with TTACian zeal:
It’s as if a $30.2 billion asset suddenly materialized out of thin air. In the upside-down world that is GM’s balance sheet, that’s exactly what happened.
The short version: GM undervalued some assets and overvalued some liabilities during its “fresh start.” The scary result: improvement in GM’s performance and creditworthiness could actually lead to writedowns on its Goodwill… which is currently The General’s largest non-current asset. Oh yes, and without that $30.2b in Goodwill, GM would have about an equity value of -$6.3b. Welcome to the new General Motors…
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