GM spokesfolks confirm to Automotive News[sub] that the deadline to submit bids for the General Motors asset sale has passed. And surprise! Nobody has taken on the Treasury in the 363 sale’s bidding process. Sorry, America. But AP Services LLC, an affiliate of AlixPartners is having its $58.9 million in fees contested by the US Bankruptcy Trustee. In addition to a $20 million retainer and $16 million for services provided in May, AP Services stands to receive another $13 million upon the completion of the Section 363 sale. As RF’s General Motors Zombie Watch 7 reports, the consulting firm also “seeks a discretionary fee of an unknown but potentially unlimited amount that will be determined” at the sole discretion of GM. The US Trustee is also objecting to the $46.6 million in fees paid to Evercore Group LLC, another GM restructuring consultant.
The Chevrolet Volt’s engineering team has given journos seat time in development mules. While this proves that the Volt exists, no car hack has been allowed to put the most important metrics to the test: range and recharge times. In fact, the makers of GM’s plug-in hybrid Hail Mary haven’t allowed a single scribe to drive the car in “range-extended mode.” For the euphemistically averse, that’s the bit where the Volt switches from battery operation to gasoline-powered battery operation. Writing in the Irish Times, automotive correspondent Chelsea Sexton (I’m female!) tried to rectify this sin of omission. She encountered little of CEO Fritz Henderson’s stack-o-bibles promise of transparency. In fact, this is genuinely funny stuff, in a “there goes a billion dollars of my tax money despite the PTFOA’s pre-C11 assertion that the Volt is a waste of money” kinda way.
Hydrogen-fueled propulsion has been the Next Big Thing since the 1970s. Recently, it has also been assigned to the past, at least by US Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who said, “We’re going to be moving away from hydrogen-fuel cells for vehicles.” Thus, hydrogen propulsion seems to be one of those things that are everywhere in the time-space continuum except in the present. Some hydrofans are refusing to give up, though. VW’s evil genius boss of bosses, Ferdinand Piëch, has a nephew, Sebastian Piëch, who is a grandson of Ferdinand Porsche. Seb seems to be a smart, rich guy who speaks four languages, has an engineering and marketing background and lives in Shanghai and Tokyo. He’s a big name among big names at Riversimple, an alternative-car company which recently presented its first car in London. If Piëch had a monkey-man slogan, it’d be “ideas, ideas, ideas.”
Dr. Lyle J. Dennis of GM-volt.com fame has a pronouncement for his flock: “I have seen the electric car promised land.” Dr. D is referring to his visit to “the pre-production operations (PPO) facility at a time where the first genuine Chevy Volts, called integration vehicles (IVers) were being assembled.” (There’s a joke in there somewhere about an IV drip, but it’s not for me to make it.) Unfortunately, Fritz Henderson’s sworn promise of transparency doesn’t apply to photographs of Volt mule assembly, ’cause God knows what Toyota what might do with the information revealed by snapshots of the process. But Dennis is nothing if not sycophantic—I mean resourceful. He offers the EV faithful this shot of “the actual garage door the first Volts will drive off into the world through.” Ending a sentence with a preposition is not something up with which TTAC would put, but we appreciate Dennis’, uh, zeal. “And so without any doubt [yea verily] the Volt has truly been born and its arrival into public production for launch in November 2010 appears at this point an absolute certainty.” Appears to be an absolute certainty, indeed.
Taxpayers will foot the bill for efforts to promote the tolling of roads throughout Texas after Governor Rick Perry (R) vetoed legislation that would have reined in public relations efforts at the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). Only one member of the entire legislature voted against the proposed bill that would have amended existing law to clarify that pro-tolling advertising campaigns could no longer be bankrolled with state funds. “This section does not authorize the department to engage in marketing, advertising, or other activities for the purpose of influencing public opinion about the use of toll roads or the use of tolls as a financial mechanism,” House Bill 2142 stated.
I just put my 1992 Ford Thunderbird (V-6, stripper, ex-rental car) on craigslist, but I don’t know if I can really bring myself to part with it.
The automatic transmission is dying for the second time. Leaking badly, hesitates before going into gear, tries to downshift from fourth to third at 50-55mph, makes a weird sound that I can’t even describe except to say that it sounds like something is spinning way faster than it should. Its latest trick is a neat one: sometimes the whole front end will shudder while turning at low speed.
Is there any hope for the patient? Can the automatic be salvaged, or is a manual transplant possible? Practical? Sane?
Chrysler Group LLC, the company built out of the alleged morsels of the old Chrysler has a problem: In order to make new cars it needs to have the old tools. A lot of those tools are at parts makers who are sitting on unpaid bills, old bankrupt Chrysler stuck them with. Payback for unpaid bills being a bitch, the parts makers don’t want to give up the tools. Read More >
Autoweek figures that the “dramatic decline in diesel fuel price” is what’s causing VW and Mercedes diesel sales to increase as a percentage of total sales in recent months. But only VW’s Jetta, and M-B’s ML, GL and R Classes have diesel options to take advantage of the mini-boom. To be fair, though, not many would have predicted a year ago that Jetta diesel sales would approach 4k units per month (3,862 in May). But will it last?
TTAC just got a call from the Department of Transportation (DOT). The agency in charge of implementing the Cash for Clunkers program gave us a heads-up that the Car Allowance Rebate System is already attracting “unauthorized identity appropriation.” To wit: cashforclunkersheadquarters.com and cashforguzzlers.net, which sucker surfers into “pre-registering” for the program. “There are a number of people out there who are implying that dealers and/or consumers need to register with them to be eligible for the CARS program,” DOT spokesman Rae Tyson reveals, leaving aside questions about what these sites may do with the information. “This is completely untrue.”
A state Senate committee will vote today on whether to gut an anti-speed trap law that has protected California drivers for the past seventy-six years. Assembly Bill 564, introduced by Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-Pasadena), exempts his home city from the statute that now requires any jurisdiction using radar on a road receiving federal aid to use engineering safety studies to establish speed limits. The exemption for Pasadena passed the state Assembly by a 51-17 vote last month. With a tightening budget, Pasadena officials hope to be the first jurisdiction to permit police officers to wield radar guns on roads with radically lowered speed limits. According to the Senate’s own analysis, Pasadena’s primary purpose is increasing the number of traffic tickets issued, not safety.
GM’s North American VP for quality, Rick Spina, latches on to the latest JD Power IQS with a blog post at Fastlane titled “What Quality Gap?” and a webchat inviting every pissed-off GM owner to bitch about their quality problems.
For all the naysayers out there … get this … in the J.D. Power & Associates 2009 Initial Quality Study, Cadillac, our flagship brand, improved by 19 percent since last year’s study and comes in third, just behind Lexus and Porsche. That’s pretty darn good considering brands typically improve around 5 percent a year. And Chevy, our volume leader, eliminates the quality gap to join company with very competitive import brands like Honda and Toyota. Simply put, the quality gap is history.
Hi Sajeev, I own a 2002 Honda Civic Si Coupe 5spd. It has almost 140,000KM on it and I am trying to keep it in good health out of warranty. Recently I decided to go through all my service receipts to see what has been done so far to the car. I noticed (shockingly) that the manual transmission fluid has not yet been changed. There is a side note in the service guide to do this every 96,000KM or 36 months. But this service isn’t part of their regular A,B,C,D and E type service packages. Nobody in the service department EVER reminded me about this while owning the car. Furthermore, when I called my Honda dealer to ask about its importance, the service advisor put me on hold for several minutes to get second opinions.
“They’re on you day and night. Their oversight is just too extreme. That’s why our 10-year loan, we paid it back in three years. We couldn’t stand the government. The bureaucracy kills you.”
Als der Sauerkrautfresser der TTAC Mannschaft (der ausgerechnet in Peking wohnt) wurde ich gebeten, den Gewinner des Wasistdasverteufeltstedeutscheautowort-Wettbewerbs zu wählen. Ach, Entschuldigung, die Macht der Gewohnheit. Nun denn . . .
As the resident Kraut at TTAC (who resides in Beijing) I was asked to pick the winner of the German phrase contest, in which the most deserving contestant would walk away with his very own copy of the Taschenwörterbuch der Kraftfahrzeugtechnik.
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