While reading through some of our analysis of Chrysler’s five-year plan, you may have found yourself wondering “what did the Pentastar boyz do to convince you of their company’s viability plan besides flash PowerPoint slides at you for seven hours?” To fully comply with TTAC’s stringent disclosure standards, we present Chrysler’s material compensation for the seven hours that auto journalists most wish they had back.
What a charming title for an automotive advice column: “Queen of the Road.” No, it doesn’t appear in a Utah newspaper. But the California curmudgeon is as credulous as the spiritual descendants of the talking salamander. His/her reader posits: “I drive daily on westbound Highway 24 through Lafayette, usually in the early evening. On several occasions, as I pass by the Lafayette BART station, my little Volkswagen Jetta seems to lose power. I push on the accelerator but the car doesn’t respond, quite a nerve-racking experience in the middle of evening rush hour. I’ve found that if I downshift and accelerate, power is restored and I continue on my way.” The Queen’s edict: “It’s indeed possible that a magnetic field or radio frequency interference affected your car’s computer and caused the car to stall.,” as the LA Police’s investigation into an EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) remote car disabler almost seems to prove. And there’s history here, dammit! “When the computers were first installed, in the 1980s and 1990s, cars would pull up at intersections and when the signs changed from ‘Walk’ to ‘Don’t Walk,’ their trunks would pop open. The cars’ trunk releases were picking up the radio frequencies from the ‘Walk’ sign.” Who knew? Now what?
OK, your insurer might be. You’ll be fine though.
One month ago DARTZ presented uberluxury armored car with whale penis interior – PROMBRON’ (ex.RussoBaltique), lot of people name this car as DARTZ.KOMBAT. As the world’s resonance was very huge and DARTZ got lot of angry e-mails from Greenpeace, WWF and also Pamela Anderson, DARTZ make strong decision to stop their plans regarding such interior.“We have no any ideas to kill the whale or something like that. All we want – to make just luxury car. Real luxury car which will be world number one car. Our brand was started at 1869 when in Riga was opened Coach Factory or Russo Baltiysky Vagonnij Zavod – PBVZ, and first products was luxury train coaches. At 1907 was made a decision to open Car Department, and at 1909 first car left factory – the name of this car was RussoBalt. This was luxury and sport cars. At 1911 specially for Monaco Rally car got french style name – RussoBaltique. At 1912 factory made world first 4 x 4 wheel drive car, and at 1914 – armored car. All we want to unite luxury and armoring traditions of RussoBalt factory in one car, which brand celebrated 100 years now. At 1922 RussoBalt was renamed to PROMBRON’ (ex.RussoBalt).
An NHTSA report [PDF] on the “Incidence of Pedestrian and Bicyclist Crashes by Hybrid Electric Passenger Vehicles,” concludes that hybrid-electrics (HEVs) have a higher incidence rate of pedestrian and bicyclist crashes than do internal combustion-only (ICE) vehicles in certain scenarios. And based on the report’s conclusions, it looks like the relative silence of hybrids running in electric-only mode is to blame for the higher accident numbers.
. . . pedestrian and bicyclist crashes involving both HEVs and ICE vehicles commonly occurred on roadways, in zones with low speed limits, during daytime and in clear weather, with higher incidence rates for HEVs when compared to ICE vehicles. A variety of crash factors were examined to determine the relative incidence rates of HEVs versus ICE vehicles in a range of crash scenarios. For one group of scenarios, those in which a vehicle is slowing or stopping, backing up, or entering or leaving a parking space, a statistically significant effect was found due to engine type. The HEV was two times more likely to be involved in a pedestrian crash in these situations than was an ICE vehicle. Vehicle maneuvers such as slowing or stopping, backing up, or entering or leaving a parking space, were grouped in one category based on that these maneuvers are potentially have occurred at very low speeds where the difference between the sound levels produced by the hybrid versus ICE vehicle is the greatest.
Magna and Sberbank want their money back. Everything they had so far invested into Opel needs to come back from GM, says Das Autohaus in Germany.” We are in negotiations with GM and we hope that we don’t have to go to court “, said Sberbank boss German Gref. “If all else fails, we’ll defend our position in a court of law.“ Gref did not name any sums. Magna also wants their money back. Magna’s Siegfried Wolf said “it is a considerable sum.”
The German government also wants to have their loan back before it will entertain any further discussions. The loan is due by end of November.
As car guy moments go, spending three hours at the GM Heritage Center with Jaguar’s Chief Designer Ian Callum is about as good as it gets. In fact, I thought I had taken twice as many pictures as I had. Check back later for a full write-up of my interview with Ian, in which we learn (among many other things) that the designer of such vehicles as the Aston Martin DB7 is surprisingly obsessed with classic American cars.
Gag. And sigh. I’d kinda hoped that New York Times would stay away from the FoMoCo-flavored Kool-Aid long enough to see the potential drawbacks to the automaker’s inflatable seat belt idea. Or at least provide a reasonably coherent and comprehensive argument for the overarching supposition that the brand’s dedication to passenger safety supersedes that of its rivals. But no. The original PR-release-based article in the Business section raises but one red flag: “Just 6 percent of respondents chose safety as their top priority.” And then the Freakonomics column—an endlessly self-aggrandizing advertisement masquerading as editorial—dumps a pound of sugar on the proceedings. “In SuperFreakonomics, we tell the story of how Robert Strange McNamara, an outsider at the Ford Motor Co., led the charge the put seat belts in automobiles at Ford. It was not a popular decision within the company nor with the public; pushing for a safety device in a car did a bit too good of a job of reminding people that cars could be quite unsafe. But McNamara got his way. Over time (a long time, it turned out), the seat belt won widespread adoption, saving roughly 250,000 lives in the U.S. alone since 1975 . . . Back in the day, Henry Ford II wasn’t crazy about McNamara’s seat-belt obsession. ‘McNamara is selling safety,’ he said, “but Chevrolet is selling cars.'” What does that tell you? The media’s hidden love affair with Ford continues apace.
WreckedExotics.com heads off the reservation to offer some discarded not to say abandoned Rolls Royce parts. Apparently the bits “Was [sic] removed from an undamaged Phantom to make a custom body. It includes the trunk lid with hinges and trunk liner, rear window, rear quarter windows, interior rear quarter C-pillar trim with wood and mirrors. The roof extends to just behind the sun roof but also includes the complete sun roof.” If I was BMW, I’d buy these items and crush them, stat. And what, dear God, happened to the donor car? Inquiring minds (with strong stomachs) want to know.
We do have the ability, if it’s necessary, to provide support directly, but again that’s only if necessary… We are able to run a global business
GM CEO Fritz Henderson in the Detroit Free Press, explaining that GM is allowed to spend US -government bailout money on overseas operations, in this case, Opel. According to the Freep’s paraphrase of Henderson, “the terms of the prebankruptcy loans and the new government financing are different.” So why did GM insist just weeks ago that it wasn’t allowed to spend US taxpayer money on a $413m Daewoo rescue? Has GM been shuffling bailout cash to mismanaged overseas operations? Or would an Opel rescue mark the first time this had happened? In any case, wasn’t GM saved to prevent disaster in the US economy rather than stop job loss overseas? The unintended consequences of bailout keep marching on… and so will our search for answers to these questions.
Opel’s union boss and chief thorn-in-the-side for GM’s attempt at regaining control of its European division, Klaus Franz, recently met with CEO Fritz Henderson and is telling German media that “Henderson agrees that Opel should be led back to its traditional strengths in Europe, with a high level of independence and autonomy within the GM organization.” But Franz is looking for more than kind words from Fritz, namely a future Opel share offering. “This way, GM can prove that it’s serious about Opel’s independence,” Franz tells RTL. Franz and Opel’s employees want a complete business plan along the lines of the one they’ve been negotiating for the past year and a half. Meanwhile, GM has also said that it will pay back the remaining €600m ($900m) worth of German government’s bridge loans by the end of the month. Between the Moody’s report that GM needs $8.5b to turn Opel around and the division’s continued desire for independence, a solution to the situation won’t be easy or cheap. It may be in GM’s strategic interests to keep Opel under its wing, but to what extent and at what cost?
Voters in Denver, Colorado last Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure that would have forced police to impound cars whenever a driver failed to produce a driver’s license. The measure was designed to expand a 2008 impound ordinance in a way that would have increased pressure on illegal immigrants. “They are responsible for about half of the fatal accidents and, of course, they are uninsured,” initiative sponsor Daniel Hayes argued. “Illegal aliens, like all unlicensed drivers, will be towed just as a domestic driver under suspension or revocation.”
I don’t know how they did it. Nobody’s crazy about a Mercury. Suzuki is still a one niche car company, and most Mitsubishis look like Chryslers that were drawn by stoned orangutans. Does anyone want a Volvo? No, you can’t have one made before 1995. How about a Dodge? A Ram? A Tonka? Oh, you think Chrysler WILL survive the year. I beg to differ. Speaking of which, who wants to bet that GM pulls the plug on one more brand before 2010 is done. Any bets? Any five brands will do . . .
After GM announced that they would keep Opel after all, they boasted that “the GM plan entails total restructuring expenses of about €3 billion, significantly lower than all bids submitted as part of the investor solicitation.” After hearing the statement, industry insiders snickered that €3B would be “hardly realistic.”
Now, credit rating agency Moody’s confirms that GM either made that number up, or they lied. Not even close, says Moody’s.
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The Chinese government had announced earlier this year that it wants to “encourage” its more than 100 automakers (nobody is quite sure how many there really are) to consolidate. The goal: Make China’s industry more competitive with foreign rivals. Beijing wants to see four big ones and four smaller ones. Unsaid: the remaining 90-odd carmakers should look for other employment.
To lead by example, the Chinese government just initiated one of the largest merger deals in the Chinese auto industry. Easy for them to do: The government owns both companies.
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