One of the reasons that U.S. pistonheads pine for Euro-Fords: the performance variants. On this side of the pond, Ford has abandoned its SVT division. In mainland Europe, Ford continues to crank-out expertly tuned economy cars for budget-minded enthusiasts. The new Focus RS continues the tradition. AutoExpress reports that Ford Austria has leaked performance details for the upcoming Focus RS, “and they’re just as shocking as its lurid green paint job!” (Forgive the hypersonic tail waggging. That’s the way AutoExpress rolls.) The Express pegs the front wheel drive RS at 296bhp. “Ford is adamant that, thanks to its revolutionary ‘RevoKnuckle’ suspension, the RS will have no problems putting power to the tarmac.” Yes, well, no knuckle dragger this. The RS will sprint from 0 – 60mph in 5.9 seconds, and on to a top speed of 164mph. The Boys from the Blue Oval Boys are pricing the RS at £33k in Austria, and an estimate £25k in The Land of Hope and Glory.
Category: News Blog
Back when we TTAC didn’t have Ronnie Schreiber doggedly defending the D2.8, I contacted former GM PR spinmeister Gary Witzenburg to post an ed on the pro-Motown perspective. Big mistake. Despite– or because of– his exposure to our Best and Brightest, Gary went off the rails faster than the Polar Express. Other than an ex-girlfriend, he remains the only person I’ve ever blocked from my email. Let’s just say the man has “anger issues.” Actually, let’s not. Let’s revel in his vituperation and wonder if Autobloggreen is regretting letting him into their compound. “Here is what I’ll bet those long-suffering auto CEOs wanted to say, but couldn’t: You ignorant morons! How dare you accuse us of building cars nobody wants? We sold 8.5 million vehicles in the US last year and millions more around the world. GM still handily outsells Toyota here, Ford outsells Honda and Nissan, and Chrysler sells more than Nissan and Hyundai combined. How many of our new cars have you driven lately?” Personally, I think Gazza should have gone for the post-modern, hat tip to SNL approach, and begun with “Jane you ignorant slut.” More highlights from Gary’s take on “How to Win Friends and Influence People” after the jump.
WHAT: Chrysler LLC President and Vice Chairman Jim Press will meet with more than 50 Maryland Port Authority employees and Maryland officials in a Town Hall to discuss Chrysler’s and all domestic automakers’ impact on the U.S. trade industry.
Chrysler is the largest exporter for the Port of Baltimore, and Port employees will have the opportunity to pledge their support for legislation to provide temporary financial assistance to the American auto industry.
Chrysler President and Vice Chairman Jim Press will discuss highlights of Chrysler’s plan for future success, as well as share details about other similar rallies across the Unites States. The Town Hall also is a chance for Port employees to voice their opinions about what Congress and the general public should know about the deep impact the auto industry has on the local Baltimore community.
WHO:
Jim Press, President and Vice Chairman, Chrysler LLC
Steve Rand, President & Chief Executive Officer, AMPORTS, Inc.
More than 50 Maryland Port Authority employees
WHEN: Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2008, from 10 – 11 a.m.
WHERE:
AMPORTS ATC Terminal
2908 Childs Street
Baltimore, MD 21226
(443) 923-2100
There are two ways to look at this. First, Ford CEO Alan Mulally “gets it.” He understands that he screwed the PR pooch when he flew into Washington to beg for bailout billions in a big ass corporate jet. Alternatively, someone somewhere needs to get a grip. The guy gets $25m a year, Ford burned its way through $7.7b during the last financial quarter, FoMoCo wants at least that much from your taxes in addition to its share of the $25b already allocated for retooling and we’re worrying about his travel arrangements? Yup. So, Big Al’s driving from Motown to The Big Sleazy. And down the rabbit hole we go. “Ford spokesman Mike Moran said Monday that Mulally will make the roughly 500-mile trip on the road in an undisclosed Ford vehicle,” The Detroit News reports. “Moran declined to say if Mulally would actually be behind the wheel, but noted that Mulally does have a license to drive.” Help me out here. Is Detroit News scribe David “Love Ya” Shepardson being sarcastic? Or is he actually trying to reassure readers that the head of The Ford Motor Company can drive a car? For once, Autoblog gets its right, focusing on whether or not Mulally will be driving a Focus for 10 hours straight (assuming Big Al doesn’t get high). Oh wait; Autoblog’s “WEBAD” (What Exactly Would Big Al Drive) poll doesn’t list the econobox amongst its vehicular choices. Never mind.
On November 23, the U.S. Treasury announced it had “invested” $20b in Citigroup in addition to “protection against the possibility of unusually large losses” on $306b in bad debt. Just one week after receiving support from U.S. taxpayers, Citigroup announced it will spend $10b to acquire a debt-laden Spanish toll road group. Citi Infrastructure Partners will hand over $3.6b in cash and assume $6.3b in debt from Sacyr Vallehermoso, the parent company of the Intinere Infraestructuras toll road group. Itinere operates 32 toll roads in Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Portugal, Spain and Ireland. Another twelve concessions are under construction. Sacyr today issued a statement to Spanish investors noting that the company succeeded in offloading 37 percent of its total debt to the U.S. firm. “With this transaction, the group reaps the value that Itinere accumulated for its mature concession assets and strengthens its financial situation by considerably reducing its indebtedness,” the statement explained.
Automotive News [sub] tells us that “The Senate Banking Committee has rescheduled its next hearing on ‘the state of the domestic automobile industry’ for Thursday, Dec. 4… The House Financial Services Committee has a similar hearing scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Friday, Dec. 5.” Once again, the news org fails to answer the one of journalism’s Holy Five: why? “No official explanation was immediately available for the postponement of the Senate hearing, originally set for Wednesday, Dec. 3. It is thought that lawmakers and their staffs want more time to review the Detroit 3 plans.” See how that works? Anyway, this smells bad. Our Ken Elias predicts that GM will file for bankruptcy the moment it becomes clear– if it does– that Congress has rejected their bailout request. By moving the hearing closer to the weekend, when the markets close, Congress could be engaged in a little pre-emptive damage control. Then again, that’s GM’s pattern. But could GM really convince Congress to cater to their PR whims? I am so not buying the idea that our legislators need more time to read the Big 2.8’s turnaround plans; if anything, Chrysler, Ford and GM need more time to prepare their plans. Or the pols themselves. Or maybe the automakers want November’s hideous sales results to sink in a bit (Deutsche Bank predicts a 45 percent drop for GM). You know; to “motivate” the masses. Politics. You gotta love it.
You already have Schadenfreude, Rucksack, Kindergarten, Fahrvergnügen. May I offer another useful German compound word? Verschlimmbesserung. Meaning: making something worse (in the process of trying to improve it). Car companies are good at Verschlimmbesserung, as proven by the Mitsubishi Colt.
Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking knows a thing or two about dealing with hedge funds. In fact his company’s relationship with the hedgies of the world has inspired more NSFW-bombs per TTAC headline than nearly any other topic. Anyway, The Guardian reports that Wiedeking tore into American automakers, singling out GM in particular for “openly threatening” the US government with bankruptcy for bailout bucks. Oh yeah, and “driving the industry to the brink of ruin.” Wiedeking went on to state that it could be only a matter of time before hedge funds took majority control of one of the US car manufacturers that had “inflicted damage on themselves with ruinous discounts and hugely subsidised leasing rates.” If that sounds familiar, it’s because Wiedeking was echoing a theory recently outlined by our own Ken Elias. We’ll be watching.
Recently, firms like Tesla have launched themselves into the public eye by trumpeting the meme that Silicone Valley’s innovation-driven culture will show the way for Detroit which remains mired in old-economy faults. And it’s a storyline that has yielded millions in venture capital and free media attention. The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman unintentionally brought this line of thinking to its point of absurdum by calling on Steve Jobs to “do national service and run a car company for a year.” But as our ongoing Tesla Death Watch consistently demonstrates, Silicon Valley automakers could still stand to learn a thing or two about, you know, actually producing cars from even Detroit’s most dismal. And then there’s this story from The San Jose Mercury detailling the extent to which Silicon Valley is dependent on business from Detroit. “As soon as the automotive industry coughs, a lot of other companies get a cold,” Gartner analyst Thilo Koslowski tells the Merc. “That includes companies in the semiconductor industry and that includes a lot in the Bay Area… It’s a relatively big market for them in Silicon Valley.”
Alfa Romeo has made the first North American delivery of its stunning 8C Competizione to uno dei più grandi collezionisti di automobili al mondo, Jimmy Glickenhaus. Because paying Fiat $3m to upgrade a million-dollar Enzo to 612 P4/5 spec buys you those little perks.
We gave Bond actor Daniel Craig a pass when he turned down the free Aston Martin of his choice as a perk for his silver screen Aston pimping. After all, London is one of the least driver-friendly city in the developed world, and as Craig put it “I live in London and it doesn’t make sense to drive an Aston Martin there. I’ve nowhere to park it.” And we bought his line, citing our own Adrian Imonti’s maxim that “driving in London just for fun is as sensible as rollerblading on the autobahn.” But, while we were defending Craig from the editorial assault of no less an authority than Pistonheads, 007 apparently went off the reservation and placed an order for a new Lotus Evora (while Aston burns). According to eGMCartech, Daniel Craig has joined half the celebrities on earth who are getting in line for the mid-engined 2+2. Other takers? London Mayor (and congestion charge slayer) Boris Johnson, Top Gear UK presenters Richard Hammond and James May, Craig;s Bond predecessor Pierce Brosnan, Jay Leno, Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay, supermodel Jodie Kidd, Beyoncé Knowles, Dave Grőhl, Kelly Rowland, George Clooney, Kevin Spacey, Patrick Dempsey and J-Lo. So this is clearly the “it” car of 2009, and apparently parking in London isn’t as big a deal as we thought. But wouldn’t you rather have an Aston for free?
Ever quick on the media-scene-defining draw, The New York Times is dubbing the auto industry bailout battle the cure for “campaign withdrawal.” Also known as the bitter, divisive battle, du jour. Or, to use the Grey Lady’s honeyed verbiage, “The crisis in the auto industry is helping to fill a void left by the end of the long presidential race. It has also rekindled debate over many of the big issues of the campaign. Arguments have touched on the environment, national security, American identity, small-town values, the role of government and, of course, the need for change.” Hell, SNL even did a skit about it. Anyway, the Times figures that the Battle Of Detroit is easier for middle America to understand than the acronym-laced cognitive hell of the Wall Street bailout, while offering the PR gaffes, emotionally-charged arguments and outright lies that make big media business out of political campaigns. So, how does this campaign break down? According to Alex Castellano, a media consultant for Mitt Romney, “The auto industry, of course, is the new McCain. The auto industry is old America. It’s stuck. It’s one thing we haven’t been able to move into the future.” Does that make Warren Brown the new Sarah Palin? And where the hell does that leave TTAC, who’s been banging the Detroit doom drum for nearly a decade? On second thought, we don’t want to know. We’re actually glad the election is over.
Since the first mutterings of an auto industry bailout, the idea has wrapped itself in unabashedly patriotic rhetoric. Now that the battle for the billions has been joined, this nationalist veneer is reaching near-self-parody levels of earnestness. All the while we’ve been arguing that saving American jobs and saving the Detroit Three in their current forms are mutually exclusive goals. As reality slowly becomes too real to ignore, directors, representatives and pundits are beginning to acknowledge this trade-off, although you might be surprised by how they’re playing. Or, if you’re as cynical as we are, not. The gameplan comes from Mark Phelan of the Detroit Free Press, who argues that to survive, Ford and GM must “must show a business plan that’s profitable at much lower sales volume and has upside flexibility to build more vehicles and for workers to make more money with overtime. This will require plant closures and layoffs.” At home, of course. Meanwhile, Phelan argues that “GM and Ford’s greatest assets are their worldwide facilities and capabilities…
If you think the U.S. auto market is bad, here’s something to cheer you up: it’s not as bad as Spain. November car sales are one half of their former self. Si, muchachos. According to Forbes, Iberian new car sales dipped by 49.6 percent. Explanation? In 2007, Spanish real estate cratered. Then, the country’s industry went anorexic. Spain now has the highest unemployment rate in Europe– 12.8 percent– and it’s expected to rise to 15 percent in 2009. That doesn’t bode well for Spain’s extremely shaky car industry, where another 50k citizens may go on the dole, pronto. Last week, the Spanish government announced a $1b package to resuscitate the nation’s car industry. With buyers on a general strike, it’s too little, too late. As far as brands go, in November VW was first, SEAT second, Ford third. For the year, Ford is leading before Peugeot and Citroen. Still, a perro flaco se le suben las pulgas.
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