Automotive News [sub] reports that GM’s dealers will have recourse in state courts for claims involving product-liability, warranties, compliance with lemon laws, privacy/no call laws, and environmental and tax laws. Termination disputes are to be handled by GM’s bankruptcy court, however. “We didn’t get everything we wanted,” admits Colorado Attorney General John Suthers. “But the new GM will be fully subject to state regulation.” Suthers and Nebraska AG Jon Bruning negotiated the agreement with GM on behalf of 43 other states. Already-culled dealers are the virgins in the volcano, unless their The Automobile Dealer Economic Rights Restoration Act of 2009 passes. But The General is still alive, and the dealers that survived the cull still have to do business with it. Or at least sue it. Some must die that others may live and litigate.
Commenter j_slez (who compiled GM and Toyota monthly sales since 2004 for us already) writes:
I saw the call for a log-scale GM plot, and since the change only took a minute I threw that together, even though I’m not a fan of it personally. It does help separate the lower-selling brands. Part of the point of the original is that they’re all low-selling. I replaced Pontiac with all of the “Old GM” brands – it doesn’t make much difference really.
Then I did Toyota. They’ve got a bit of a dive themselves of late.
Rumors surrounding a possible Buick Theta-based CUV are being amplified by rumors that the Saturn VUE plug-in hybrid will make it to market under a different brand. GM’s Tom Stephens confirms to Reuters that a plug-in ute will be available in 2011 (as planned), just under a different brand name. With rumors of a hybrid powertrain in the works for the forthcoming LaCrosse, green may be yet another new attribute for the brand confusion that is Buick. “We’ve got a strategy that says there are no silver bullets,” as Stephens says, curiously ignoring the Volt. “We need all of this.” Which, in a nutshell, is the attitude that is destroying Buick…
Last week, the city of Thornton, Colorado decided to drop the idea of installing red light cameras—after spending more than a year attempting to make the idea work. In the end, the city council was unable to arrive at an acceptable guarantee that, no matter what, the program would make money. A directive handed down by city leaders last year explained the primary objective. “Council’s explicit expectation was that the total costs to operate a Photo Red Light Enforcement system, including service, equipment and city staff costs, were to be equal to or less than the fines received from operating the system, thus resulting in no cost for the city to implement,” a November 2008 memo from the city manager explained.
But will it be accepted? As reported yesterday, China’s BAIC has handed in a better offer for Opel. This gave everybody a reason to pause. Magna called off a board meeting that had been scheduled to give the go-ahead for Opel. GM and the German government are reading intently what BAIC proposes. BAIC proposes export of Opels to China. For a while, at least. Read More >
Everyone knows that automobiles are changing. The more curmudgeonly of us might even suspect that the glamor and freedom that once defined cars is fading fast. Heightening this paranoia is a design studio (via Core77) by Google smartphone designers Maaike Eversand and Mike Simonian depicting their vision for the future of cars: the Autonomobile. At this year’s Detroit Auto Show, Mike and Maaike came to the realization that “today’s car industry is brainwashed by its own car culture, with its obsession for speed, styling and fantasy. The car business has become one of repackaging, steering people’s focus towards style and a narrow definition of performance, not on our true needs.” And what, pray tell, are our true needs? “Most cars on the road today can go 120 mph. Why? The reality is that cars are mostly used at moderate speeds and for sitting in traffic. It’s time to look at performance in a new way.”
You may not be familiar with H.R. 2743. The Automobile Dealer Economic Rights Restoration Act of 2009 tells New Chrysler and New GM that they “may not deprive an automobile dealer of its economic rights and shall honor those rights as they existed, for Chrysler LLC dealers, prior to the commencement of the bankruptcy case by Chrysler LLC on April 30, 2009, and for General Motors Corp. dealers, prior to the commencement of the bankruptcy case by General Motors Corp. on June 1, 2009, including the dealer’s rights to recourse under State law.” In other words, it would reverse New ChryCo’s and New GM’s dealer cutbacks—or at least force Uncle Sam to spend taxpayer billions to dump them. The bill is doomed. But that’s not stopping GM from asking its post-cull dealers to show their fealty and help twist the knife into their former colleagues. Text of the “loyalty oath” after the jump. [thanks to you-know-who-you-are]
Today’s discovery: a double-black 1992 Lincoln Mark VII with just 73,000 miles. It’s not perfect—some of the electrical gadgets don’t work any more, there’s some rust on the front fenders, the clearcoat has burned through in places and the paint underneath is fading. The biggest concern is a broken front passenger seat; the power part is fine, but the seatback is lying flat and will not stand up. I am unsure how to fix this, or even if it can be done in a way that will make it safe for passengers. And for reasons that will be readily apparent to anyone who read about my Thunderbird, I am leery of Ford automatics of this vintage. Is the one in the Lincoln any better than the one in the ‘Bird?
TTAC’s Best & Brightest strike again! GM’s monthly sales since 2004 only went up today, and already the rich bounty of raw data is yielding fruit. Like this graph of GM’s sales by brand since 2004 by commenter j_slez. Some pictures are worth thousands of words.
TTAC Commentator bumpy ii is nothing if not persistent. When the member of TTAC’s Best and Brightest bumped into the most recent U.S. new car sales figures (June), he was determined to get all trendy on us. And so . . . Click here for a look back at the sales stats for every Toyota model back to January ’04. If another one of our OCD, I mean, B&B wants to share some statistical analysis, or put this into a more visual form, bring it on. As always, your editorial support is most appreciated. [farago@ttac.com] Next up: same thing, Old GM.
TTAC commentator bumpy ii now blesses us with Old GM new car sales data bounteousness. Click here for the Best and Brightest’s data dump. There’s lots to be gleaned from this raw data, but the one thing we know for sure: no matter how many of what GM sold over the last five years, they didn’t take in more money than they spent. Will New GM reverse the curse? If I was a gambling man unencumbered by my journalistic oath of independence, I’d short the stock. Oh wait . . .
“I think it’ll go very quickly, and Congress may have to revisit it in the fall… 250,000 vehicles isn’t enough… We think there’ll be additional phases of this… It’ll probably evolve.”
Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers Prez Dave McCurdy on the CARS scheme in Automotive News [sub]. McCurdy acknowledged that greater improvements in fuel efficiency might be required for a future Senate compromise. Apparently McCurdy believes Senate won’t play ball “if it’s just a truck program for people buying F-150s“. What could have given him that impression?
In fairness, the Aveo hatch is easier to watch crashing (Both EuroNCAP). Easier on the eyes in general, in the case of the first-gen hatch. Still, who’s up for tasting some brave manouever Baruth-style in one of these? And no, this isn’t a Euro ringer. This IIHS Aveo test is just as scary. You’re a brave man, Jack.
So much for the bailout leading to a compact/alt-energy über alles approach. The newly reconstituted Chrysler has lost its A/B segment (compact, city car) vehicle line chief and will be cutting nearly half of its Global Electric Motors (GEM) dealers. Of course, Chrysler’s A/B segment vehicle lines are empty at the moment, and aren’t likely to be filled with anything beyond cynical Fiat rebadges. Is that why Andreas Schell, who came to Chrysler with the Daimler merger, is leaving? Chrysler spokesfolks tell Automotive News [sub] only that they knew Schell “has left the company but didn’t know where he is heading.” Meanwhile, Chrysler is culling 64 of its 150 GEM dealers because “many of the rejected GEM dealers failed to sell more than a handful of GEM cars [er, Neighborhood Electric Vehicles, actually] in the past 12 to 24 months or longer… The debtors have determined that the GEM dealership agreements are neither necessary nor valuable to their estates and should be rejected.” Of course, perhaps the problem isn’t so much the dealers as the vehicles… but good luck getting a judge to rule that way. In any case, the one GEM dealer that the Freep spoke to was glad to see the GEMs go, saying they never sold regularly or particularly profitably.
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