With rumors of another GM executive shakeup flying thick and fast, we expected a downright miserable sales performance from The General in February. By the year-over-year numbers [full release here, sales numbers in PDF format here], there’s no such flow of red tape, as GM’s four “core brands” gained 32 percent and total sales (including Hummer, Pontiac, Saab and Saturn) were up 11.5 percent. But that’s in comparison to February of 2009, when GM’s sales were down 53 percent from the year earlier. In short, GM appears to have hit bottom in terms of volume, but it still has yet to recover to anything close to 2008 volume. Read More >
Motor Trend reports that former PT Cruiser stylist Brian Nesbitt has been relieved of his duties as the head of Cadillac, ending GM’s post-bankruptcy experiment of putting a stylist in charge of an entire division. But MT figures that Nesbitt’s ouster isn’t as simple as a failure to perform; according to their sources, the firing was political.
The shakeup has major implications for Bob Lutz’s future at GM. He hired Nesbitt away from Chrysler earlier last decade and made sure there was a place for the PT Cruiser designer at post-bankruptcy GM. Nesbitt’s departure would indicate Lutz’s role as one of three GM vice chairmen has diminished to almost nothing… Clearly, [recently-promoted sales boss and President of North American ops Mark Reuss] is putting his own team together, and it doesn’t include Nesbitt, who was posed as the aesthetic face of the Cadillac luxury division.
Meanwhile, at the Geneva Auto Salon, Bob Lutz confirmed that he is probably on the way out.
Mr Mehta and Lang, I’m writing in for my non-tech savvy parents who are starting to look for a “new” car. I say new with quotes because only one of the choices is actually a brand new car. Background wise it’s simple, my parents are in their 50s and I am 17, both of my parents work, typical stuff etc. We have three cars, a 2000 Hyundai Elantra Wagon, which despite my mother driving it like an Integra- yes it’s a five speed- has been bulletproof to us, a 1989 GMC pickup and a 1999 Chevy Metro whose auto trans is starting to clunk out. Thus, the need for another car. I should add that I, the 17 year old, will most likely NOT be driving said new car, as I have my eyes set on an 80s Acura Legend. This is an import-biased comparison, helped by the fact that GM and Chrysler don’t offer manual transmissions in their family sedans and you can’t say the F(ord) word near either of my parents. (Don’t tell me to try and break that grip, I already tried!) Toyota’s declining quality and recalls have scared them away from that brand, hence no Camrys or used Lexus in this list. The main choices we’ve been looking at are:
Yesterday I asked our Best and Brightest if congress should hear testimony from former Toyota lawyer Dimitrios Biller. The lack of unqualified endorsements mirrored my own skepticism about the testimony of a guy who has sued Toyota several times, and today it seems that congress may just agree. When the House Oversight Committee wrote Toyota’s Yoshimi Inaba asking for a response to Biller’s accusations, it attached several of Biller’s apparently damning documents to its letter [PDF of original letter and attached Biller documents here]. But, as the Detroit News reports, the letter has been reposted without the attached Biller documents after Toyota claimed they violated attorney-client privilege (the alleged internal memos all have non-disclosure requests attached). Senate hearings on the Toyota recall have just started, and are available at Cspan.org.
We at TTAC, (well, me, only) have said that since everyone is raining a storm down on Toyota other recalls are slipping by without equal scrutiny. So when I read this article, I thought it fair, in the interests of journalism, to blog it. Not because of who it is, but the reasoning around it.
GM throws in the towel. And throws a lot of (your, well, our) money after Opel. GM will invest a total of €1.9b into the German patient, says Das Handelsblatt today after talking to Bob Lutz. Nick Reilly confirmed the message today, and said the money can flow as paid in capital and loans from the mother-ship. It finally dawned on GM that European governments are just stringing them along until Opel runs out of money – again. Read More >
With all the dramasurroundingAlfa Romeo’s future, it’s heartening to see that the brand is still taking the time to work on core competencies like the emotional drop-top two-seater. Nobody knows for sure if Alfa will survive past the end of this year, but if they do, this is probably how they should celebrate. Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has been urging Alfa to “find religion,” and soon… happily, the 2uettottanta Concept sure looks like the work of true believers. With just a little Pontiac Solstice thrown in for good measure.
Toyota was listening closely to the “revolving doors” talk at last week’s hearings.
In today’s Senate committee hearing, Toyota will announce that former U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater has come on board to lead Toyota’s new quality panel of independent experts, reports The Nikkei [sub] this morning.
Slater was Bill Clinton’s LaHood. He since joined the lobbying firm Patton Boggs and became a partner in James Lee Witt Associates, a risk management firm headed by former FEMA head James Lee Witt.
German car buyers boycotted the showrooms in February. Sales crashed to the tune of 29.8 percent. This according to the German car importers association VDIK via Das Autohaus [sub]. The number is not the official number (yet) but the VDIK is usually reliable. Only 195,000 new cars changed hands, compared to 278,000 in February last year.
Germany is in the vise grips of a huge hangover from the cash-for-clunkers Abwrackprämien-orgy of 2009. In February 2009, the program was launched, and sales started to take off by 21 percent. Sales reached a 40 percent apogee in June. Compared to these numbers, the coming months will look absolutely awful. Small cars and subminiature vehicles, the big gainers of the Abwrackprämie, crashed the most. Read More >
The Wankel rotary engine returns to its native land at last. Since the NSU Ro 80 went out of production in 1977, Mazda has been the keeper of the flame. But Audi has announced that it will show an A1 e-tron concept at the Geneva show this week, and the pug-in will feature a single-rotor Wankel range extender (gen set). Rotaries and micro-turbines have often been suggested as the ultimate range extenders due to their compact size and low weight. Read More >
Hybrid cars may be green, but are they dangerous? According to Israel’s of Environmental Protection, this may be the case. A research committee funded by the ministry studied radiation from hybrid vehicles over the course of the last nine months, found ‘surplus’ radiation in some models sold in Israel and worldwide, reports Israel’s The Marker. Read More >
Who’s afraid of the 2016 CAFE standardramp-up? Not the gas-electric hybrid Porsche 918 Spyder Concept. With 0-60 in 3.2 seconds from a racing-derived V8, and an extra 218 hp of electric power, the 918 Spyder could theoretically get 78 mpg, according to Porsche [full release at Egmcartech]. Just try not to think what all that racing-derived goodness would cost new.
Tomorrow the Senate will be taking its shot at the Toyota scandal, with hearings scheduled before the Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation. Giving testimony will be three Toyota executives including Yoshimi Inaba, NHTSA Administrator David Strickland and Clarence Ditlow of the Ralph Nader-founded Center for Auto Safety. Conspicuously absent from the list is Dimitrios Biller, the former Toyota lawyer who claims that Toyota hid documents related to vehicle design from discovery in several suits against the automaker. The House Oversight Committee has reviewed a number of Toyota communications courtesy of Biller, and a letter from chairman Ed Towns (D-NY) demands that Toyota answer Biller’s charges [Towns’ letter and Biller documents in PDF format here, courtesy of DetNews]. By invoking Biller’s charges, Towns has dragged yet another witness into the fray whose story raises more questions than it answers [one of Biller’s several suits against Toyota can be found here.] And yet, probably because of his complex backstory] there are no plans for Biller to testify under oath before congress. Should he, or does his testimony just cloud the picture even further?
„Itai!“ Or rather, „tong!“ Ouch, that hurts: Toyota boss Akio Toyoda bowed deeply to 300 reporters assembled in Beijing, and to 1.3b Chinese who could watch the drama live on national TV. Four times in one hour, Toyota’s chief “apologized to customers in China for the company’s quality problems and emphasized the significance of the nation’s fast-growing market to his company,” as Shanghai Daily has it. There must be nothing more painful for an upstanding Japanese captain of industry than to bow deeply in front of the Chinese. But as they say in China: „bú tòng bù qiáng.” No pain, no gain. Even more astonishing: Read More >
Recent Comments