Steve Rattner recently surrendered his position as the head of The Presidential Task Force on Automobiles (PTFOA). Seems Steve-a-rino must attend to a little mess down in The Empire State. More specifically, NY AG Andrew Cuomo suspects that Rattner’s Quadrangle Group paid a $1.1 million bribe to political consultant Hank Morris to secure megabucks from the New York Pension Board. The Treasury Department immediately spun Rattner’s resignation as a normal part of the PTFOA’s new role as Chrysler and GM’s more silent partner: “Steve’s decision to leave is the first step in a planned scaledown of the task force and there will of course be more departures in the future. It was always part of the plan to downsize once Chrysler and GM emerged from bankruptcy.” So how many other bureaucrats on the [now] 24-member PTFOA have left government employ? None. Meanwhile . . .
This week’s Your Shitty Economy (YSE)™ Car of the Week: the 2005 Lotus Elise. Somewhere along the line responsibility took over your life, leaving no room in the garage for fifty-thousand dollar track toys. It’s amazing how five years and $5,000 a year in depreciation can help rationalize the need for a weekend toy. Let’s face it, the street legal go kart Elise isn’t good for much else. The ride will make your STI feel like a Town Car. And the noise? Even if the radio (if it has one) isn’t capable of drowning out the engine, who cares? Pop the top and let the wind rush and exhaust notes assault your senses. If you are flexible enough to make it into the driver’s seat the purity of it all will overwhelm you. Don’t even think of using the word luxury in its presence. Want to talk numbers?
On Monday, July 20, 2009, GM Europe accepts the last and final bids for Opel. Really. Definitely. They mean it. GM will evaluate the bids, choose a favorite, and then go on an arduous show-and-tell tour: Germany’s central government needs to be convinced, the states where Opel has plants need to be convinced, European countries where Opel has plants need to be convinced, the EU Commission needs to give its approval. The US government needs to be consulted. And then it’s up to the trustees to say “Ja” or “Nein.” So what will it be?
After every paper in Germany, and soon thereafter most on the globe had reported the ouster of Wendelin Wiedeking as Porsche CEO, his chairman Wolfgang Porsche belatedly came to his rescue: Friday evening, Wolfgang Porsche, chairman of the Porsche supervisory board, said that this is all wrong. In Germany’s fat weekend-editions, the denial is mentioned only in passing. Nobody seems to buy it.
What makes headlines is that Volkswagen might be first to fire Wiedeking. As representative of the 51 percent Porsche owns in VW, Wiedeking sits on VW’s supervisory board. It will meet on July 23, coincidentally when the Porsche supervisory board meets, and likewise coincidentally, both boards meet in Stuttgart. That makes it easier for two people: Ferdinand Piech is the chairman of the Volkswagen board, he also sits on the Porsche board. Wiedeking needs to report to his Porsche board, but he also needs to attend the Volkswagen board meeting.
I’ve been monitoring the Association of British Drivers (ABD) for some time. I’ve refrained from reporting on their longstanding assault of the UK’s transportation policies, based (as it so often is) on their deep skepticism about anthropogenic global warming (AGW). TTAC’s Best and Brightest tend to get a bit “enervated” about AGW, and I didn’t want to add fuel to the fire (and thus raise global temperatures). But WTH. We haven’t had a good punch-up on this topic in some time. So I’m letting loose the dogs of war. On yer bikes, boys!
The imposition of more taxes and restrictions is the real agenda behind computer modelled climate alarmism via the unjustified demonization of CO2.
What is Susan Docherty smoking? At the unveiling of the new Buick LaCrosse, the VP of Buick, Pontiac and GMC (which one of these things is not like the other) told Bloomberg that GM aims to keep a “75-day to 90-day” supply of the model on dealer lots. A 60-day supply is considered ideal. But, apparently, a 15 to 30-day overage would be OK, ’cause the supply would be “consistent with similar premium models such as Honda Motor Co.’s Acura TL.” And there we were thinking the LaCrosse was aimed at something in the Lexus portfolio (48-day supply). Docherty’s comparison to the Acura TL is, shall we say, invidious. The TL is a dog, with a 100-day supply on the ground. Also worth noting: Acura dealers have a 62-day supply of RLs and a 32-day supply of the TSX. And if you figure-in Acura’s SUVs, the wayward Honda brand’s total dealer inventory represents a 58-day supply.
New GM starts . . . when, exactly? [Thanks to TTAC Fan for the link. Blog post courtesy camaro5.com]
Can we get a master list going of all the things people found wrong with the car that QA missed? Let’s keep the list down to just the facts. One of the more common issues found is loose bolts that hold back some type of fluid (ex: oil). I’ll try and go through the posts and edit this post adding everyone’s item making a master list people can print out to take with them and have checked out before they take the ride home. Should help everyone and I hope everyone can chime in here. Especially those that have their ride already and experience problems. Also, pls correct me if I have any mistakes in the list. Thanks.
Also note: This list is mainly a checklist for things wrong that a dealer can immediately fix. A broke transmission or bad driveshaft from dropping the hammer on this beast is something that they won’t know until it actually happens. Thank you for submitting all your issues.
Well, we called it . . . new incentive sheets this morning, and already they are being corrected because GM’s own website verification software is wrong.
Check out this email from GM to dealers . . .
“Please be advised that the new Employee Bonus Cash was NOT intended to be compatible with the outboarded APR’s. We are now in the process of getting this corrected to make it not compatible with outboarded APR. Please advise that currently VIN Lookup shows that the two are compatible, however they are in fact not. A formal communication is forthcoming, but wanted to pass this along as I’ve already had a few inquiries.”
Imagine you called a customer when the sheets came out; by the time they arrived at the store, you had to explain that the deal wasn’t available.
If car nuts have learned anything over the last decade, it’s that few categories are easier to stereotype than the hybrid car driver (thanks, South Park!). But how accurate are these images we carry of hybrid drivers as left lane-clogging, smug eco-weenies? A couple of recent reports indicate that we still have much to learn about our high-mileage friends. For example, TheCarConnection reports on a study which shows that hybrid drivers drive more than average, receive more moving violations, and incur more collision costs. And if that isn’t surprising enough, consider an online poll showing that hybrid drivers don’t even care about the environment.
OK, not exactly the same. GM’s CEO Fritz Henderson will earn $1.26 million this year, according to New GM SEC filings obtained by the Freep. That’s 27 percent less than he earned in 2008, but a whole lot more than the $1/year that ousted CEO Rick Wagoner was forced to accept. CFO Ray Young will earn $720,000, a 15 percent pay cut. GM’s controller Nicholas Cyprus will take home $522,000, which is eight percent less than he earned last year. Board members will earn $200,000 as a base retainer, plus, if applicable, $10,000 for service as a chair of any board committee; $20,000 for service on the audit committee, and $150,000 as board chairman. That’s unchanged from pre-bailout levels, before GM’s board was also forced to take $1/year as a bailout condition. In other words, the Iaccoca act of the last nine months was just that: an act. Because paying executives is more important than paying back taxpayers. Meanwhile, AutoObserver notes that the executives in charge of winding down old GM will be making $835/hr and $555/hr. Good times.
Like most people under the age of 40, I never read car magazines. Actually that’s not true. I’ve been stealing copies of Auto Motor und Sport from my dad for years. Even after its long trip across the Atlantic, the anal-retentive German’s anal-retentive car magazine still manages to scoop the American mags on many of the most compelling industry developments. But the real draw is the mag’s road testing, which really confirms every stereotype of Teutonic attention to detail. No metric is too mundane to be measured, graphed and scored… think Consumer Reports for people who actually like cars and think OCD medication is for the weak. On the other side of the equation is evo magazine, which is hands-down the best enthusiast-oriented car magazine.
Note: this video showed a salesman pretending not to understand a Spanish speaking customer. It was removed after someone sent the dealer principal the link to TTAC. His mea culpa comment is below.
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