Originally published by Brandt Rosenbusch, Curator to the Walter P. Chrysler Museum and Historical Collection Coordinator for Chrysler Group LLC, at Chrysler’s Corporate blog.
In my role as Archivist for Chrysler Group LLC, I can appreciate in-depth research followed by thoughtful conclusions, even when the opinions differ from my own.
The Detroit News reveals that GM has stopped paying dues to the End of Life Vehicle Solutions Corp., an industry group dedicated to the safe disposal of mercury switches in scrapped vehicles (some of the dangers of mercury pollution and toxicity here). GM had paid the group $700,000 to $1,000,000 annually to prevent mercury pollution from its switches, “a substantial portion of the program’s funding,” according to the DetN. But since declaring bankruptcy, the New GM seems to think that the approximately 18 million mercury switches in its pre-2000 vehicles are no longer its problem. New GM “has never produced vehicles with mercury switches and has no mercury switch responsibility under the terms of the bankruptcy court order,” say spokesfolks. And though technically the New GM is a not the same company that built cars with mercury switches, GM’s green image-building is radically at odds with this decision. With cash-for-clunkers keeping crushing yards humming, this is going to be one of the busiest years on record for the ELVSC. In short, the perfect time to lose a major funding source. You stay classy, GM!
Call it tall poppy syndrome. Even as the world’s largest automaker’s fell into the U.S. new car sales quagmire, Toyota’s critics slated the brand’s quality “issues.” The Detroit News [sub] reports that freshly-minted CEO Akio Toyoda has ticked all the boxes in his efforts to reassure his stakeholders (as opposed to steak holders) and say the right thing to everyone about everything. “Toyoda emphasized the company’s core principles, including the need to produce clean vehicles for the benefit of society. But, he said, ‘we must do it in a way that’s affordable to today’s customers.’ That is the key challenge for the industry, which is ‘at a point where we must re-invent the automobile.’ But Toyoda, a racing enthusiast, said one of his objectives as head of the company was to inject excitement into the lineup. He said Toyota planned to develop an affordable, fun-to-drive sports car in the next few years but did not elaborate.” So green, affordable, [somewhat] exciting, affordable and . . . what was that again? High quality. How come the DetN didn’t put that in a direct quote?
After the GSA and Nancy Pelosi’s office turned down TTAC’s request for a breakdown of the vehicles purchased under the Recovery Act’s Energy-Efficient Federal Motor Vehicle Fleet Procurement program, we went all FOIA. The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has now released the info to us (as it should, transparency for the program is promised here). We’ve published the list after the jump, formatting the data by model, number purchased, country of assembly and fuel economy. Exactly 11,319 of the 17,205 vehicles purchased were assembled in the USA. [NB: I’ve provided fuel economy numbers for base versions with automatic transmissions, as per typical fleet practice.]
Why did 44 percent of “nearly 1,700” CarGurus respondents prefer Pontiac to other leading discontinued GM brands? Beats me. Save Hummer and merge it with Chrysler’s “Peapod Mobility,” say I. Call it a monument to the industry. It’s the only way things could become any more, well, weird. The results of the survey were published onAd Age yesterday. And then today, while Fritz Henderson was performing his weekly new-media ablutions, he had to go and crush the dreams of (nearly) 7480 people. Ad Age’s Jean Halliday asked, “Why can’t Pontiac be sold? Why are you just eliminating it?” and Henderson replied, “we have had success in discussions with buyers re hummer, saab and saturn, but in the end we did not see the same potential to be honest for pontiac.” Ouch. To compound the weirdness, Henderson dismissed the notion that Pontiac’s G8 would be moved to another brand by saying, “I am not a fan of rebadging.” Unless it’s called “interbuildability.” Which would have, could have allowed the G8 to be a real American muscle car (no offense to the Aussies).
Ousted Tesla founder Martin Eberhart pens a paean to the blogosphere over at Tendo Communications‘ blog, arguing (among other things) that “blogging promotes transparency and builds credibility.”
“For blogging to ring true, it needs to be more than an exercise kept up for the sake of appearance. At Tesla, we began with my blog, which provided direct access to the company’s co-founder and CEO. From there, we expanded into a multi-channel approach until we had separate blogs for marketing/sales, engineering, and notable thought leaders/customers. So whether people had questions about the design of a component, the marketing of the Roadster, or what motivated folks to submit deposits, they could expect a straight answer right from the horse’s mouth.”
Unless your CEO happens to be a horse’s ass. Because if your CEO (Elon Musk) runs around spouting nonsense (via CNET) like “a Prius is not a true hybrid, really,” and “I’d like to take up some of [Detroit’s] manufacturing plants. When the mess gets sorted out I’d like to have a conversation with whoever’s in charge,” blogs and bloggers tend to not be so helpful in the “building credibility” department.
This spot (which cribs the Allman Brothers tune that gearheads will recognize as the Top Gear theme) is part of what AdAge describes as the repair chain’s effort to attract customers from closing dealerships. After all, the service department is often where the real money is made at dealerships, and the race to snag shuttered dealerships’ business is on. Automotive News [sub] reports that CarsDirect is even offering free 60-day online listings for any dealership that is going out of business. “We hope this offer helps dealers sell more cars as they work to stay in business and remain fixtures in their communities during the transition,” says CarsDirect VP Ken Potter. Not to mention a little free publicity that comes with the charitable territory. Meanwhile, how are GM and Chrysler shoring up their PR after the nasty dealer shutdown debacle? According to a WaPo analysis, Chrysler is emphasizing product competitivity (huh?) and GM is emphasizing restructuring (why?). So much for putting the best foot forward.
GM’s Fritz Henderson is trying on a paler shade of transparency over at ye olde Fastlane blog. With results that defy this blogger’s adjective collection. When asked whether the “new GM” should continue to employ the thousand authors of GM’s failure, Henderson replied with self-serving equivocation. “If I was starting a new company, which we are in fact, I would start with a blend of people that have been involved in winning businesses and outstanding people that learn from their failures. At least for me personally, I have been involved in both.” Well, isn’t that convenient? OK, Henderson, “what do you think is the most important change that needs to be made in GM’s corporate culture?” Modesty prevents even us from posting Henderson’s reply before the jump.
So reports the Detroit Free Press. For some perspective, The Center For Responsive Politics says GM spent $500,000 in the first three months of the year on independent lobbyists, compared with $2.8 million on its in-house lobbying corps. This “may cause some unique situations,” says to the president of the American League of Lobbyists. And that’s a hell of an understatement, considering that GM will soon be owned by a government led by a man who vowed to limit the influence of lobbyists in his administration. A GM spokesman declined to say whether the administration has given it guidance on lobbying activities.
Well, that’s how the Freep puts it. So will GM be leaving the toilet seat down? Will it apply for a separate credit card to pay for its extramarital liaisons? Will it be hiding its Playboy inside the latest Economist? Want to clear this up for us, CFO Ray Young? “As a privately held company, it’s likely we’re not going to disclose information except to the shareholders,” says Young. “We do not have to file all of the same documents that we do when we are a public company,” clarifies Chairman Kent Kresa. All of which creates more mind-benders than Will Shortz on a weeklong acid bender.
“Today,” writes GM CEO Fritz Henderson at his firm’s Fastlane Blog, “marks a defining moment in the history of General Motors.” And it’s true. GM has literally been skidding towards this day for decades. And though June 1, 2009 should have come years ago, it seems that there’s one possible benefit to its long, expensive delay. In this blog-driven year, GM knows that it can’t expect public largess without giving up some corporate privacy. That, or as a publicly-owned institution, GM is now subject to the Freedom Of Information Act. Either way, our tens of billions of tax dollars have bought American taxpayers an opportunity. An opportunity to webchat. Again.
The folks at Mashable love to measure buzz, twits and general internet exposure, and they’ve come up with a few graphs that show how the automakers are weathering the current unpleasantness. And they show that (by the numbers, anyway) Ford is the most new-media savvy of the American automakers. Which means that on the straightforward (and questionably effective) metrics, Ford comes out on top. Most Twitter followers. Most Twitter updates. Most Youtube video tags. Most Flickr photos. Stop me if you’re getting too excited. But despite the huge numerical advantages that Ford boasts in the YouTwitosphere, the most interesting fact is that Ford is the least-covered automaker in actual news stories but most-covered in blog posts. Which means a lot of Ford’s measurable popularity might be attributable to the lack of bad news about it in the mainstream media. Not taking a bailout probably helped, too. Either way, you can’t help but wonder what the benefit really is of most of this “new marketing.”
Remember the whole “we do not want to run the automakers” routine? Cue up the laugh track. President Obama’s PTFOA has intervened to halve Chrysler’s ad budget during its taxpayer-funded bankruptcy, reports Automotive News [sub]. Chrysler had requested $134 million for advertising during its alleged nine-week bankruptcy. That request was halved by the PTFOA because that body “believed that it was not feasible to not spend anything on marketing and advertising for fear of eroding the image of the brand,” says Chrysler Chapter 11 consultant, Robert Manzo, in court documents. We knew Chrysler’s DIP budget was being drawn up “in consultation with the Treasury,” but this is the first glimpse of a struggle between Chrysler management and its government paymasters.
Recent Comments