Automotive News reports that GM CEO Rick Wagoner tagged-along with 69 other working stiffs to hear President Barack Obama put his entire hope-and-change spiel in a single, pre-written sentence.
“We must build this recovery on a foundation that lasts — on a 21st Century infrastructure and a green economy with lower health care costs that creates millions of new jobs and new industries; on schools that prepare our children to compete and thrive; on businesses that are free to invest in the next big idea or breakthrough discovery,” Obama said in remarks released by the White House.
Uh-oh. Isn’t that whole “next big thing” thing the thing that allowed GM to avoid making the hard decisions that would have prevented its $30 gazillion dollar call on the public purse?
As someone who lived in the UK for 18 years, I was shocked to discover that Philadelphia’s mayor is named Nutter. Michael Nutter. I’m sorry, but the chances of anyone of that name being elected to public office in The Land of Hope and Glory are less than the chances that GM and Chrysler will pay back their federal loans early. OK, ever. So, anyway, WHYY reports on Mayor Nutter’s attempts to curb a good chunk of the the city’s taxpayer-funded fleet. Literally.
All recessions recede. Eventually. In the case of this recession, it may be the car driving us out of the economic bog. Pent up demand could soon stoke the car market and relieve the general dearth of demand putting downward pressure on the economy. You can see it in our turnover ratio: the total number of registered vehicles in the U.S. divided by the sales rate. As of this quarter it’s 23.9 percent. That’s the highest ever, because it’s ridiculous. Americans are not planning to replace their vehicles once a generation. It can’t be done. My father tried it and the salt-covered roads of upstate New York put holes in that plan. Rust always wins.
Say you’re a small electric car maker in bankruptcy restructuring. You have no current production, you’ve only ever built a couple thousand street-legal cars and you’re operating on $6M in interim financing. With credit markets in turmoil and the car biz taking a beating, what’s a game changer to do? Luckily for you, the various governments of the United States seem to have acquired the reputation of being run by the kind of people PT Barnum would have loved. And as Autoweek reports, this opportunity has even the tiniest mice in global auto game warming up their vocal cords, hoping to pull off an American taxpayer-assisted roar.
Automotive News [sub] reports that GM spin-off supplier Delphi has received approval from bankruptcy court to cut benefits to 15k non-union retirees. The ruling will save Delphi an estimated $70M per year, improving the chances Delphi will end its nearly 3.5-year sojourn in Chapter 11 restructuring. GM has been helping generously towards that end, having offered to buy Delphi’s steering component business for an undisclosed sum and funneled hundreds of millions to its crucial supplier. Or quasi-independent division. Or whatever Delphi really is to GM. The full text of the order in question is here (pdf). It’s long, so check out a few highlights after the jump.
As a web-savvy car enthusiast and budget autocrosser, I try to do a lot of reading before pulling the trigger on a big purchase. With a set of R-compounds now hitting the $800 mark, I want to make the most of my investment. The consensus seems to be that shaving tires can make them perform better and last longer, but I remain skeptical… The cynic in me suspects that shaving is just a way to reduce tire life and pad the shaver’s wallet to the tune of $10 a tire. Why couldn’t tire manufacturers just build tires “shaved” from the beginning, if there was a real advantage?
Martin Winterkorn, chief of Volkswagen, was asked by Automobilwoche [sub] who will be left standing when the big carmageddon—ooops—consolidation will finally be over. Here are his odds:
TTAC is the third most critical reviewers of automobiles, according to Motor Mouths, an ambitious project which seeks to aggregate and rate car reviews. With an average review score of 75.52, TTAC is the least forgiving non-print outlet that MM rates. Only Consumer Reports (70) and the Wall Street Journal (73.5) boast a more carmudgeonly average score of vehicles they review, with Automobile.com and the NY Times rounding out the top five. Of course, standardizing reviews is a tricky undertaking, making comparisons a bit of an apples-oranges exercise. Still, MM goes there, even comparing reviewers with owner feedback to create an index of “reviewer credibility.” Sadly, TTAC reviewers don’t rate in the top three “most credible,” but since MM has only been around to gather owner feedback since February, we’ll give it some time. Not that we’d necessarily expect to replace the LA Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Dan Neil at the top of that list.
The Detroit News reports that GM told the Presidential Task Force on Autos (or at least the two guys who went to Detroit on a Volt junket) that the zombie automaker won’t be needing the previously requested $2B federal “advance.” GM requested the money last month to get them to the end of this month—when they’ll need another $16.6B federal “loan.” Oh, and please note that the $16.6B—on top of the $13.4B previously loaned, not including a share of the $25B Department of Energy retooling loans, or the $1B loan to prop-up GMAC—STILL includes the $2B that GM says they don’t need. You know, now. For another couple of weeks. Did I mention GM’s $2.6B request for April? Funny how all these billions get confused in my mind. So, how come the deferral? Bad planning? No, good! “This development reflects the acceleration of GM’s company-wide cost reduction efforts as well as pro-active deferrals of spending previously anticipated in January and February,” the automaker said in a statement. So, they’re cutting they’re way to prosperity. As if.
A post at the former Tesla PR chief’s personal blog recounts the debate inside Tesla over where to manufacturer the firm’s WhiteStar sedan. Siry describes grappling with the tradeoffs between a reasonable price and skeptical public perceptions of Chinese cars. “The part causing the most conflict,” writes Siry, “was that it was clear in the world of consumer electronics and chip manufacturing that low cost manufacturing had been achieved while also maintaining the highest standards in quality. Why couldn’t this be the same case for automobiles?” After all, he argues, your iPhone is designed in California but built in China—and nobody confuses it with a purely Chinese product. Pointing to the Volt’s projected $40K price point for a Cruze-based compact/mid, Siry argues that cost is too important to phasing EVs into the market to be ignored. And that firms like his former employer will pay the price for not taking advantage of China’s opportunities.
God I hate car awards—except for ours, of course. Nine times out of ten, the fix is in. The tenth time, the methodology is Claritin clear anti-matter. Well, at least ForbesAutos isn’t making those stupid “10 Best Cars in Which To Perform a Bris” lists anymore. Anyway, here’s KBB’s most recent contribution to the genre, which names Cadillac as the Best Comfort Food—I mean, brand. And Toyota scoops the award for Least Exciting Brand That Everyone Buys Anyway Probably Because It IS So Boring (i.e., Best Value Brand). Full list after you contemplate the ability of the English language to obfuscate while pretending to offer specificity.
The 2009 Brand Image Awards, presented to the top brands in 10 categories, are based on consumer automotive perception data from Kelley Blue Book Market Research’s Brand Watch study. Brand Watch is an online brand perception tracking study tapping into 12,000+ in-market new-vehicle shoppers annually on Kelley Blue Book’s kbb.com. The highly comprehensive Brand Watch report provides a detailed look at in-market new-vehicle shoppers’ perceptions of brands, and important factors driving their purchase decisions while they are in the midst of the shopping process. The results of an entire year of Brand Watch research and consumer opinions determine the 2009 Kelley Blue Book Brand Image Award winners.
Apologists for business-as-usual in the car game often took to blaming unnaturally high gas prices for last year’s trends towards smaller car sales and fewer vehicle miles traveled. When gas prices go back down, went the argument, Americans will go right back to buying thirsty SUVs and Crossovers and driving more miles. Not true, it seems. The New York Times reports that vehicle miles traveled (VMT) has declined for 14 months in a row now, despite the fact that gas prices are now hovering at about half of their peak levels from last June. “When the decline in American driving was first identified in late 2007, fuel prices were beginning to increase. The prevailing wisdom at the time was that the drop was due to increased fuel prices,” says Doug Hecox of the Federal Highway Administration which monitors traffic on America’s roads. The FHA estimates that VMT has declined by 115 billion miles in the period between November 2007 and December 2008.
When the new MINI was born, someone in BMW’s marketing department decided to make it a caps lock affair. As I opined at thetruthaboutgrammar.com, MINI was a stupid, artsy, doomed, graphical mandate. Yes, it differentiated the Bimmer-derived MINI from the much-beloved BMC rust-bucket, Mini. But no one other than designer glasses-wearing car execs gave a damn, really. The MINI sold, and sold well, for reasons entirely unrelated to typography (one presumes). Und now we have the battery-operated MINI, which gives Munich’s marketing mavens a chance to redeem themselves. I mean, eMINI is an Apple-scented slam dunk, a move that would easily justify the original, bone-headed, all-caps affectation. But noooooo. BMW goes for MINI E. How long, pray tell. does one hold the “eee” sound at the end? Anyone remember The Man With Two Brains? Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr. MINI E is like that. Only not so funny.
Obviously, I don’t have an statistical data on Ferrari crashes. Neither, I suspect, does the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA); they don’t tend to compile stats on marques that sell in the hundreds. But as someone who spends his days floating through the autoblogosphere, I’ve noticed a number of halved Ferraris. We have the famous Enzo crash on the PCH, and now this, a fatal accident involving the mixed martial artist/TapOut clothing designer artist known as “The Mask.” So I clicked on over to wreckedexotics.com to search for more anecdotal evidence. While there are a number of Ferraris with fire-vaporized back ends (that’s where the engine is), I didn’t find a trove of demi-Ferraris. To defend my access to all those Ferrari press junkets (as if), I’ll posit that ANY car would break in two if it happened to hit something immovable side-on at a high rate of speed. In fact, it could very well be a good thing, providing you’re ahead of the fissure, as the cleaving process dissipates lethal energy. The question is, is that true?
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