A UK court threw out a pair speed camera citations yesterday after a retired veteran police officer admitted on the stand that he falsified official documents used as proof that the tickets were mailed within statutory deadlines. The Southampton Crown Court concluded that it was an abuse of process for a Hampshire and Isle of Wight speed camera partnership employee to backdate documents. The employee said he was acting on direct orders from his superiors.
America and Canada have spent tens of billions in taxpayer money “saving” Chrysler and GM. During this Year of Living Parasitically, Toyota hasn’t said boo to a proverbial goose. This despite the fact that a non-governmental ChryCo Old GM Chapter 11/7 would have eliminated most of the North American market’s production over-capacity, setting the stage for a more rapid recovery. Politics, doncha know. Anyway, yesterday, sitting in a Volt prototype at a Toronto GM Chevrolet dealership, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty made an announcement. After July 10, 2010, customers plunking for plug-in hybrid and battery electric vehicles would be eligible for a $10,000 rebate. The car most likely to be so blessed: the Chevy Volt. But that’s not what really got Toyota’s goat. As the Leader-Post reports, “Mr. McGuinty said he wants one out of every 20 vehicles in Ontario to be electrically powered by 2020.”
TTAC Commentator and sometime author Niky Tamayo gives us insight into New GM’s new Carmaro’s tranny probs, thanks to this technical bulletin (first published on Camaro5.com).
And here I was giving people crap for complaining about weak Camaro gearboxes suggesting, in all likelihood, hoonery was the cause of failure. But when GM itself cites the torque handling capabilities of the Camaro transmission as being a gnat’s hair higher than the engine’s peak torque. Then you can’t help but wonder how many more will blow before the uprate the transmission. While GM is in no way obligated to build indestructible transmissions for street cars that it has to warranty, you’d think they’d either allow themselves a little more leeway in transmission strength, given the fact that anyone buying a V8 Camaro isn’t likely to NOT hoon the hell out of it, or program the traction control or launch control to limit torque on hard launches . . . y’know . . . just in case.
TTAC commentator Lerxst writes:
I’ve got a 2004 Honda Odyssey with approximately 96k miles on it. It has developed a condition where the steering wheel mounted radio controls do not act as expected (i.e. Volume up changes the track, Volume down makes the volume go up, etc., sometimes). The dealer tells me that it’s not grounded well deep in the steering column, and thanks to the Odyssey Club, I have found the TSB that covers this problem.
The dealer would like about $280 of my hard earned money to go in and fix it. American Honda won’t cover it through goodwill due to the mileage.
Car manufacturers are toast! At least, that’s what members of the Electric Vehicle (EV) religion believe. A car maker’s core business is engines—but engines are over, they say. It’s 1910 all over again, and internal-combustion cars are going the way of the horse-drawn carriage. But I say: Wrong! The electric Twingo I drove proves that there is more to making a good drive than just getting the propulsion stuff right.
As previously reported, the Th!ink EV was a disappointment: feckless, lightweight-feeling, stiff-legged, wobbly. A real let-down when you consider that it was specifically designed for the requirements of electric power. So it was with some skepticism that I took the helm of a Renault Twingo that MES-DEA (a Swiss company) had turned into an EV.
Want to handicap the bidding war for Opel (and German bailout money)? Then be careful in your choice of news sources.
Germany’s mass-market tabloid BILD today declares that “RHJ is in the lead” for Opel. Magna has only “slim chances” to win. BILD‘s supposed sources are in Berlin’s Ministry of Economics.
Also today, the Wall Street Journal writes: “Germany’s government sent a message to General Motors Co. on Wednesday: If GM sells its European car business to anyone other than Magna International Inc., then Germany might withdraw its offer of state aid.”
Wie bitte? Read More >
TTAC commentator cc-rider needs some help with his sister’s choice of whips:
Two-and-a-half years ago, my sister bought a 2003 Certified Pre-Owned Volvo XC 70 wagon for $22K, with 55,000 miles on the clock. She now owns the car, out of warranty, knocking on the big rollover (100k). The XC’s dash lights in the gauges and half the instruments don’t work. After charging her $275 for a useless computer reflash, the stealership says it’s the DIM module: a $1200 dash off repair. Oh, and the car needs new lower control arm bushings and sway bar end links. Roughly $2000 all in. Last month, sis spent about $2600 on all new tires, replacing the steering rack and fixing some other front end parts. She has two kids and a large dog, and likes to separate the three (i.e. three rows). She figures she can get $7k for the XC and put another $7k towards her next ride. She’s close to pulling the trigger on a new Acadia out of sheer anger with this Volvo. Should she get in touch with her inner Lang (bring the XC to a local Volvo mechanic and sort it out), buy a New GM appliance or look for a Professional Grade upgrade?
China’s Geely is expected to make a formal offer for Volvo within the next few days, if the Wall Street Journal is not mistaken. The offer “is anticipated to be around $2 billion.”
Geely is one of China’s top 10 passenger-car brands, it is also one of the China’s few independent companies, building cars without foreign joint venture partners. Industry watchers believe that Geely will export its models to the US or Europe within three to five years. To do this successfully, owning a Western brand with Western technology and a stable of safety-tested and homologated cars is indispensable. Geely is keenly aware of this. Says the WSJ:
Read More >
As those who have followed the Porsche-Piech soaps know, there will be an extraordinary meeting of the Porsche supervisory board next week on July 23. On the agenda: “Will we be saved by the Sheik of Qatar, or by the Sheik of Wolfsburg, or all of the above?” Any guesses?
Read More >
Facing a House vote tomorrow on legislation that would repeal GM and Chrysler’s dealer cuts, President Obama is urging congress to not interfere with his auto industry restructuring. Automotive News [sub] quotes an Obama statement calling the cull “a critical part of their overall restructuring to achieve long-term viability.” The Obama statement alleges that “it would set a dangerous precedent, potentially raising legal concerns, to intervene into a closed judicial bankruptcy proceeding on behalf of one particular group at this point.” Because intervention on behalf of one particular group may only be done during a bankruptcy, by the government. Rep Steven Latourette, one of the bill’s sponsors, predicted that his legislation would pass the House “by a wide margin.”
The California Supreme Court has entered a ruling allowing motorists accused of driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) to question the reliability of the breathalyzer machinery used to secure convictions. The decision, however, leaves room for the conviction of drivers even when the machine is proved unreliable. The high court recognized that a breath testing machine does not directly measure the alcohol content in a person’s bloodstream. Rather, the device estimates from a sample of breath how much alcohol might be present in the blood using a conversion factor called the “partition ratio.” California’s breathalyzer machines assume that the amount of alcohol in 2100 milliliters of breath is equal to the amount of alcohol in 1 milliliter of blood.
GM’s heads of public relations, Steve Harris, and research and development, Larry Burns, have announced their retirements today. Automotive News [sub] spins the move as a “shakeup,” but notes that Harris was already on a contract extension. Burns, meanwhile, is burned at the stake as a hydrogen advocate. Despite Burns’s $1b hydrogen initiative of 2002, “the goal of an economically viable fuel cell vehicle by 2010 foundered on the lack of a national hydrogen fueling system,” notes AN. And as goes the political system, so goes GM. Meanwhile, Group Vice President and General Counsel Bob Osborne also announced he was returning to private practice, while former president of North American operations, Troy Clarke, is still at GM with no job title.
Bloomberg has a piece that is chock full of analysts imploring Mitsu and Suzy to pack it up and leave the American market. Both firms rage, rage against the dying of the light, but the numbers are not pretty. Mitsubishi sales are down over 50 percent in the first half-year, continuing a slump that has gone uninterrupted since 2003. Suzuki is down a whopping 6o percent in the first half of 2009, and neither firm seems to have the products to turn the bad news around. Rumors of Suzuki’s Swift coming stateside, the Kizashi and an FWD version of the SX4 hatchback don’t seem to be the “consistent, sustained effort” that analysts say Suzuki needs. Mitsubishi President Osamu Masuko says “we will never give up the U.S. market,” but there’s little indication of what’s coming down the pipe, besides a $40k EV. Should these two stay and fight? Merge? Leave? What say you?
You know if The Freep acknowledges that union local desk jobs were “an icon of labor patronage, in which jobs were handed to friends of elected UAW officials,” it’s probably true. Now, over 400 UAW workers are being moved from these low-stress jobs to the factory floor, where their union bretheren will welcome hem back to the real world of auto assembly. “These people had cushy jobs,” says one worker at Chrysler’s Warren Truck Plant. “Some of them could use a taste of life on the floor to remind them we still make trucks around here.” Credit for cutting these “cushy jobs” goes to the PTFOA, which has been putting pressure on the UAW to reduce its costs and complexity. “The UAW had little choice but to agree,” explains a GM spokesperson. The savings from cutting these positions aren’t expected to be large, but the PTFOA and GM seem to agree that the symbolism is important. Certainly the UAW members who were already working the line agree. The only downside? Without the ability to hand out do-nothing desk jobs, being elected President of the local may become more difficult.
I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I’m an auto industry analyst only in the most general sense of the term. In other words, I know what I know and I know some people who know what I don’t know. As they know, I need a good three or four renditions of the same financial information before I can even begin to get a grip on its scope, scale and importance. To wit: one of Our Best and Brightest sent me this little tidbit—Chrysler Financial’s Auto Securitization Trust 2009-A—with some explanatory notes. I’m still not sure what to make of it. You? [thanks to you know who you are]
The key takeway is on Page S-10 where they summarize that the raised $1.263 billion uses $1.641 billion of aggregate principal balance of vehicle purchase receivables owed to ChryslerFinancial (77,730 cars).
Page S-20 is the most interesting… basically it breaks down the $1.641 billion by the APR range and amount of the loans that fall in those APR categories. They smartly left off the average term length conditions, so you cannot calculate the present value of those dollar amounts; and instead just have to take the aggregate principal balance future value.
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