Of course, that’s complete horseshit. You can no more reduce a “cool car” to a formula than you can pick a hit song by analyzing the notes. Certainly, if you’re looking for mainstream success, both car and song needs a “hook” or two and must work within a certain prescribed range (price, length). But it’s hard to take any survey on cool cars seriously when it’s conducted by people who push pencils for a living, based on a poll of “1,006 participants aged 17 to 28… randomly drawn from a panel of individuals who agreed to participate in online surveys.” Anyway, here goes nothing: “Deloitte’s survey discovered that the majority of Gen Y respondents felt a vehicle reflects a person’s style, status and values, and the factors named most often as among the top three reasons that a vehicle is cool were exterior styling, affordability and being environmentally friendly. Among survey respondents, 44 percent said exterior styling was the most important factor in selecting a vehicle, 40 percent said affordability and 35 percent said environmentally friendly. These statistics are important as they represent an opportunity for auto manufacturers and suppliers to be creative and turn their new business models into customized programs tailored to reach this diverse market.” See what I mean?
Category: News Blog
“‘The government loan was just in time,’ [Chrysler Co_president jim] Press said. ‘It’s kind of like if you were in college and you were at the last of the four years and you were kind of low on money and your parents put all that money back into the back account. ‘It’s good timing.’
“Press also joked about the federal loans when introducing other top executives at Chrysler as Sunday’s press event started.
“‘This is the guy that has the money, he’s got all the money,’ Press said in introducing Chrysler Chief Financial Officer Ron Kolka. ‘The government checks go right to Ron Kolka, so if anybody needs a loan, see Ron Kolka.'”
Hey Ron, can I borrow $1m? I’m just messing with you. No, but seriously. We could become an official supplier of Chrysler humor.
Seven days and I’ll be back in the United States, having bid my farewell to the Middle East (but knowing I will return). As the countdown commences, I eagerly anticipate driving something without a Toyota badge on it, and possibly buying something interesting with all the money I have saved eating government food (and some sand). These past many months I have pored over eBay, Autotrader, and mobile.de (German used car site, check it out, forbidden gems!). After looking at the multitudes of steel out there, I wondered something… what could I get that would have oodles of character, the shades of a future classic, and not cost too much. So I present, Seven Future Classics for the Depressed Economy:
Several of our Best and Brightest are not happy with the Nancy Pelosi-mobile post. Wolfx14 and y2dkcar protested that it highlights the inadvisability TTAC’s bailout– I mean, “federal bridge loans to Detroit”– coverage, both in terms of stance and quantity. I’m fully aware that there’s been a surfeit of bridge loan-related posts in the last 12 hours. And there’s no question that Eddy, myself and most of our writers believe that these are bridge loans to nowhere. In TTAC’s defense, the loans are a huge mistake. And there hasn’t been this much bridge playing since The Big 2.8’s execs flew into DC on their big ass jets to beg for billions. Still, we’ve been alternating money and car coverage pretty well since the last time the B&B upbraided us for out mondo-beration of the pols and execs feasting at Uncle Sugar’s bailout buffet. See? There I go again. Well, this IS the biggest story in American automotive history. And we HAVE been monitoring the situation before most people thought there WAS a situation. But I want to give you, our not-so-gentle readers, a chance to vent again on TTAC’s editorial choices. So let rip without [much] fear of deletion or amendment. Meanwhile, if anyone wants to write a[nother] pro-bailout diatribe, let me know (robert.farago@thetruthaboutcars.com). Thanks.
“Here in Michigan we have a problem: the automobile industry. Thanks to foreign competition and the doubtful management of the Big Three, the state’s economy is in serious trouble. Should we just sell the state to the Chinese? There is a history of this in Michigan – we once traded the city of Toledo to Ohio in exchange for the upper peninsula. So perhaps it would be a good idea. But what would be a good price?
Mrs J, Michigan”
This may not be news to you, TTAC’s Best and Brightest; or anyone who knows what happens when you take in less money than you spend (no matter who gives you the money). But The Detroit News presents the revelation that GM has already laid the groundwork for a larger federal “investment” than the $13.4b dumped into its coffers by February 15, before the whole “show us your new new new new new new new new turnaround plan” thing. “General Motors Corp.’s chief operating officer [Fritz Henderson] said Monday that the automaker has presented a worst-case scenario to Congress in which it would need more money than the $13.4 billion allocated by the Treasury Department.” To whom was this scenario presented? And why weren’t we, the people, the people paying the tab, told about it? The rest of the article talks about the “confusion” over government-mandated union concessions, but honestly, I’m left wondering what you call a tragi-comedy that borders on farce, and whether these guys will stop scamming us long enough for me to write about actual honest-to-God cars.
Hey, Reuters calls it the Detroit Auto Show. And it is an auto show in Detroit, no matter what the official organizers call it. And outside said event, United Auto Workers (UAW) employees protested the possibility that the union would comply with federal requirements on the $13.4b loan which saved GM from Chapter 11. “The group of some 50 or more workers marched up and down outside the conference center in chilly but sunny weather, chanting such slogans as “Bush says cut back, we say fight back” and holding signs including “No millionaire left behind” and “Out of a job yet? Keep buying foreign.” And what’s with the MSM insistence on repeating the myth that the UAW’s ’07 contract contained “landmark givebacks on wages and health benefits”? Anyway, “The concessions that Bush wants us to make [that we’re not going to make and will remove from the loan agreement with Obama’s help anyway] are just a slap in our faces,’ said Tammy Jones, a furnace worker at Chrysler’s Hamtramck axle plant in Detroit.”
The day after threatening to extend its production shutdown, Chrysler has officially announced it’s hitting-up Uncle Sugar for another $3b– on top of the $4b recently transferred to its account. At the same time, it’s asking for an as-yet-unspecified amount of U.S. Treasury “investment” in Chrysler Financial. As duly appointed guardians of the public trust, the Treasury Department “declined to discuss the talks.” “We’re in touch with the automakers and their financing sources and continue to evaluate their financing needs,” Treasury spokeswoman Brookly McLaughlin said on Sunday. Speaking to reporters at the don’t call it the Detroit Auto Show, ChryCo CEO Bob Nardelli was equally tight-lipped. According to The Detroit News, Boot ’em Bob refused to say how much Chrysler Financial was seeking, but said he hoped “it would provide the kind of support for us in a similar fashion that GMAC was able to provide to GM.” So, what, another six billion? By Friday? Before the automakers try and make the case that they can pay the money back? The raid on the public purse continues.
“My god, I hope that a [federally appointed, $17.4b loan guarding] car czar does not get into the product strategy of the companies,” Ford CEO Alan Mulally said at a dinner with journalists last night (our invite got lost in the mail again). “The product strategy has to be led by the companies.” Since when? Did Big Al miss the memo on the latest Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, and Congress decision to support California’s even higher tailpipe regs? Reading between the lines of his post-prandial pronouncements, perhaps not. “Mulally said he’s encouraged by president-elect Obama’s understanding of the challenges facing the industry. ‘I’ve been very pleased with the fact that it seems like he really understands that dealing the economy is a very, very high priority…. To have a policy where we’re trying to jam products out that people don’t want doesn’t make any sense at all.'” Very, very as in “can we talk about those federal standards again?” Very, very as in ditch CAFE for higher gas taxes? “We’re not presumptuous enough from the automobile industry frankly that we should lay out the energy strategy of the United States.” Shall we file that one under “beggars can’t be choosers” or “methinks he doth protest too much”?
The news is flying thick and fast out of Detroit this week, as the annual conclave at the don’t call it The Detroit Auto show puts hundreds of journalists in close proximity to corporate newsmakers and spinmeisters. Automotive News [AN, sub] is doing the do. First up: Toyota’s admission that its “Saved by Zero” didn’t save the automaker from a humiliating December; trucks sank by 50 percent and they lost critical U.S. market share. So ToMoCo’s reaching deeper into its deep pockets.”The shift that you’ll see in January from December is more consumer cash and less APR and lease support through our dealers,” Toyota USA Prez Jim Lentz told AN. Jimbo didn’t offer any specifics, but AN rightly points out that Priora are stacked up like cordwood. “One of the largest sellers of Priuses in the country, Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach now has about 70 on the lot that it can’t get rid of. ‘Any kind of Prius anybody wants — any color, any anything — I’ve got it,’ Stewart says. ‘And if I don’t have it I can get it because there are several hundred in the port. Dealers don’t want them.'” Note: “According to Edmunds.com, Toyota had the biggest percentage boost in incentive spending in December at an average $1,995 per sale. That was up 87 percent from what the brand spent in December 2007.” The implications of all this are pretty clear…
Plenty of industry watchers predicted that Chrysler wouldn’t restart production after the company extended its Christmas shutdown by two weeks, to January 19. As that date approaches, ChryCo’s CEO has let it be known that the ailing American automaker may not make autos again until… later. Bob Nardelli told reporters at the North American International Auto Show today that the company has a responsibility “to make sure we’re not jamming dealers” to buy cars. That’s not how Bill Rosado, owner of a Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep dealership in Milford, Pa., sees it. Bill told The Wall Street Journal that he’s actively resisting the company’s requests to add more stock to his already-crowded lot. “We’re not ordering any cars in spite of the pressure they give us. We are going to sit tight with what we have,” Mr. Rosado said. “We don’t see any peak coming up where all of a sudden Chryslers are going to be desired.” True dat.
Time to update “the future of car?” Yup. GM’s Car Czar has admitted that Pontiac has a new motto: “Pontiac is toast.” Automotive News [sub] reports that Bob Lutz has admitted that GM is trimming Pontiac’s line-up to five vehicles– if you count the Solstice hardtop as a separate model. Which we don’t. That leaves Pontiac with four vehicles: the doomed Australian-sourced G8, the G5, the Toyota co-production Vibe and the dead-in-the-water “we don’t need no stinkin’ trunk space” Solstice. Maximum Bob’s admission that Pontiac is being strategically reviewed to death comes hard on the heels of GM NA Prez Troy Clarke’s assertion that GM will “follow through with plans to shrink to four core brands.” That would be Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC; ditching HUMMER, Saab, Pontiac and… Saturn. “‘We’ve entered into a very, very open and candid dialogue with our Saturn retailers,” Clarke said. Saturn, launched 19 years ago, has been successful in terms of brand attributes, he said. But ‘it just hasn’t been a good business for us… We need some breakthrough options here. We can’t continue brands that have no prospect of earning their way.'” It took them how long to figure this out? And, by the way, whose fault is that?
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