An overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. WAS is being filed from Beijing until further notice.

GM/Opel ready to deal: As some kind of bankruptcy for GM becomes more likely by the minute, The General has signaled its readiness to consider some kind of a third party engagement in Opel. “If it makes sense and helps to make GM Europe and Opel successful, then the management is ready to entertain partnerships with or equity engagement of third parties,” GM Europe President, Carl-Peter Forster; Opel CEO, Hans Demant; and the Chairman of Opel’s Worker Council, Klaus Franz, said in a joint announcement, Automobilwoche [sub] reports. They did not elaborate whether this means an engagement by other manufacturers or an engagement by Germany’s state and central governments. In the meantime, Chancellor Angela Merkel is still waiting for Opel and GM to do their homework and hand in a viability plan: “Right now, the government cannot act because we don’t have the necessary concepts from Opel,” Frau Merkel said.

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Via Motorauthority come these first official images of Mercedes’ 2010 E-Class Coupe. Daimler claims a frontal Cd of .24 for its CLK replacement, “a figure that is comparable with cars like the Toyota Prius and upcoming Chevrolet Volt.” And as much as the romantic in me wants to believe that solid aerodynamics lend an innate beauty to a vehicle’s design, the three vehicles mentioned seem to make the opposite argument. What say you?

An overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. WAS is being filed from Beijing until further notice.

Hell, no, let us go: On Monday, GM’s European labor leaders called for GM to jettison their Opel/Vauxhall brand. According to Reuters, the unions would prefer an independent Opel/Vauxhall, rather than face what they called “potentially fatal cost-cutting.” A statement on the labor force’s website left no doubt that the long knives were out. “The spin-off of Opel/Vauxhall . . . and the spin-off of (Swedish brand) Saab is the only reasonable and feasible option for General Motors which would not destroy the European operations and its European assets and could avoid lawsuits.” German state and central governments appear to be supportive of the plan.

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Lithium-ion batteries are not yet a major source of automotive propulsion. Excluding the li-ion cells lingering within the $100k+ Tesla Roadster, not a single volume vehicle depends on the technology. Toyota has adopted a “go slow” policy on li-on cells re: their gas – electric Synergy Drive (most famously found inside the Prius). Sure, li-ion batteries will power Chevrolet’s electric – gas hybrid Volt. Eventually. And that’s no small point. At the moment, with gas prices at historic low levels, hybrids simply aren’t selling. Of course, nothing’s really selling. Except the idea that we need lots and lots of hybrids and that those hybrids will need lithium ion batteries and we better make sure we have enough lithium otherwise the vision of clean, gas-free personal transportation will disappear. And the New York Times can’t have that, now can it?

Earlier this week, The Times set the autoblogosphere abuzz with a look at Bolivia’s bounteous lithium supply. According to the Times, the United States Geological Survey estimates Bolivia is home to some 5.4m tons of lithium. The U.S. soil supposedly contains “just” 410lk tons of lithium. Ladies and gentlemen of the politically aware persuasion, forget ye olde missile gap. Welcome to the “lithium gap.”

Francisco Quisbert is the leader of a group of salt gatherers and quinoa farmers who live near a giant salt flat. Quisbert’s fifteen minutes of fame arrived when a NYT reporter recorded him pronouncing “we know that Bolivia can become the Saudi Arabia of lithium.” If that wasn’t enough to raise the hackles of the friends of hybrids, Quisbert also played the class card. “We are poor. But we are not stupid peasants. The lithium may be Bolivia’s, but it is also our property.”

Yeah right. Meanwhile, back to the template Times’ readers know and love to hate: western exploitation. The head of Bolivia’s national– yes national– lithium mining company provided the necessary rhetoric. “The previous imperialist model of exploitation of our natural resources will never be repeated in Bolivia. Maybe there could be the possibility of foreigners accepted as minority partners, or better yet, as our clients.”

Bolivia’s President (and former Coca grower) Evo Morales is no stranger to the government-sanctioned expropriation technique commonly known as “nationalization.” Whether sending soldiers into BP’s local headquarters or nationalizing Brazil’s natural gas operations and then charging higher prices, Morales has made it clear that he believes natural resources belong to local indigenous peoples (even if they’re not as well compensated as, say, the Bolivian government and Morales-appointed representatives).  

Obviously, lithium commerce predates hybrid hopes. The battery industry has been buying lithium for well over a decade. And Bolivia’s reluctance to grant that industry grant unfettered access to its lithium predates its current leftist president. When right wing nationalists controlled the Bolivian government in the early 90s, advances by the American firm LithCo to secure supplies were thwarted. Unlike the early days of Saudi oil exploration, American firms are on the outside looking in.

The Times reports that Sumitomo, Mitsubishi and a French conglomerate headed by Vincent Bolloré have been trying to wrangle a lithium extraction deal with the Morales government. More recently, Reuters has reported that the Korean firm LG is trying to jump onto the Bolivian lithium bandwagon.

Morales is having none of it. Well, some. The companies’ opportunities are limited to investment in the government operation, which consists of a $6m pilot plant. Construction of a $250m lithium extraction plant is proceding at what The Guardian calls a “snails pace.”

According to Bolivia’s state mining director Freddy Beltran, “there haven’t been any developments (in the negotiations with Mitsubishi, Sumitomo or Bolloré). None of them has made a proposal including (the creation of a lithium) industry.”

Beltran’s kvetch: the three firms all want to export raw lithium. (Why does this sound familiar?) The Bolivian government wants them to develop a processing industry in-country.

Yes, well, the Bolivian government is likely to come to some kind of “arrangement” fairly soon. As one Bolivian economist puts it, “we have the most magnificent lithium reserves on the planet, but if we don’t step into the race now, we will lose this chance. The market will find other solutions for the world’s battery needs.”

Or other lithium supplies. The WSJ’s Environmental Capital blog (and Lithium Abundance blog) points out that increasing demand for lithium would increase exploration, which could turn up new reserves.  

What’s more, battery technology is hot (so to speak). With federal funding providing the match. Scientists are hot on the trail of alternative battery materials– from zinc-air to improved nickle-metal-hydrate. Meanwhile, China is pumping out lithium for its own booming battery sector.  

In short, despite the NYT geo-political paranoia, anyone worrying about the possibility of a Bolivian lithium embargo is wasting their energy.

An overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. WAS is being filed from Beijing until further notice.

European Carmageddon: “What, me worry?” Europe experienced the full brunt of carmageddon in January. Europeans bought 27 percent fewer cars in January than in the same month of the prior year. Only 958,500 cars hit Europe’s highways and myways, Das Autohaus reports. The German industry group VDA expects the trend to continue. Relatively benign losses were recorded in France (down 8 percent) and Germany (down 14 percent). The European basket cases are Spain (down 42 percent), Italy (down 33 percent) and UK (down 31 percent). Romania lost half of its new car sales.

Share or retire: Toyota will introduce work-sharing arrangements at assembly plants in the US and Britain in an effort to retain jobs after sharp production cuts at these facilities, the Nikkei [sub] writes. The move is expected to involve US factories in Indiana and Texas, which roll out large vehicles, as well as plants in the UK, including a facility that assembles midsize cars and subcompacts in the county of Derbyshire. Toyota plans to propose the work-sharing arrangements to workers at these facilities by the end of the month. Those that do not accept will be allowed to apply for early retirement.
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An overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. WAS is being filed from Beijing until further notice.

HUMMER sold to China? General Motors Corp., working to sell assets to help keep $13.4b in US loans, has drawn interest in its HUMMER brand from a Chinese company and a private-equity firm, says Bloomberg [via Gasgoo]. The pace of negotiations has intensified in the past few weeks, said the people, who wouldn’t name the suitors and asked not to be identified because the discussions are private (so there). More meetings are scheduled this week. According to Bloomberg, “unloading the sport-utility vehicle unit would move GM closer to the goal of showing its future viability to the U.S. Treasury by Feb. 17. If the biggest US automaker can’t prove its ability to return to profit, it could be told to give up the loans or use the cash for a government-funded bankruptcy.” Dennis Virag, president of Automotive Consulting Group in Ann Arbor, Michigan, estimates Hummer might fetch $100m or less.

Fallout in Japan: The major production cuts being implemented by Japan’s carmakers are beginning to seriously hurt the finances of their parts suppliers, the Nikkei [sub] writes. Autoparts suppliers and other firms in the industry employ a total 670k workers in Japan, nearly four times as many as those working at domestic carmakers. Says the Nikkei: “If many of them fail, the industry itself could become unsustainable.”

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GM’s ex-Vice Chairman of Global Product Development left on a sour note. Bob Lutz claimed America is a nation that hates its own auto industry. It’s a remarkably nasty remark that’s almost as paranoid as it is insensitive. But not quite. The truth is much more specific and the other way around: GM executives hated their own customers. Why else would they have treated them with such contempt, selling them non-competitive products and inflicting such abysmal dealer service? (Heard the news?) Never mind. GM has built some tremendous enthusiasts’ cars: Corvette, G8, CTS and more. And now, the U.S. auto industry in general is about to experience a convulsive, cataclysmic change. Is that a good thing?

Where the future of automobiles is concerned, we, the American consumer, have become hostage to fortune. In any hostage or abuse situation, there will be some victims who come to identify with their captors. It’s no surprise, then, that some enthusiasts have reacted to the industry’s impending collapse by adopting the words, attitudes and beliefs of our “captors” in the worlds of finance, business and government.

Across the Internet, even here among the B&B, people are responding to this crisis, not as enthusiasts, but as craven cowards who believe that appeasement of, and identification with, those captors will somehow “save us” from what lies ahead. In doing so, these people are not only betraying their fellow enthusiasts, they are ignoring their own self-interest in favor of ephemeral, dimly understood goals.

Consider, if you will, the oft-repeated canard that “cutting brands, product variety, and dealership presence is a good thing.” For whom, exactly? Every time a manufacturer cuts a brand, thousands of enthusiasts are denied the chance to buy the car they really want. You may not have been an Oldsmobile fan, but somebody was, and that person can no longer purchase a new Oldsmobile.

Here on TTAC and elsewhere, pistonheads are ruthlessly cheering-on the death of Pontiac.  But what about the people who have driven and loved Pontiacs all their lives? Are “they” less important than “we” are? Are we superior to them because we don’t like ribbed lower-body panels or superfluous eyeball vents?

When our favorite brand, whether it be Porsche, Lexus, or Hyundai, falls under the knife in the future, will we find it as ironically amusing as the death of “the excitement company”? Where has our empathy for fellow enthusiasts gone?

What about cutting product? The business press applauded when Chrysler cut the Dodge Magnum from its lineup, but why did we?  How can reducing choice be a good thing? Sure, it may make business sense, at least according to the wizards of Wall Street. But who here values a number on a balance sheet more than a rip-snorting, tire-smoking Magnum SRT-8? I continually read members of the B&B talking about how a particular product needs to be “put to death.” Where’s the fun in that?

Here’s another slice of reality for you: when dealership counts dwindle, the customer suffers. The primary reason Honda and Toyota hold retail price levels better than the Detroit competition isn’t the excellence of the product. Rather, it’s the lack of intra-dealer competition, plain and simple. When dealers compete, to paraphrase the TV ad, you win.

I cannot think of any reason for anyone outside Wall Street to want a reduction in operating dealers. Trust me on this: unless you have a seven-figure investment in an auto company, you stand to gain more personally from saving money on a new car than you do from some stock-price bump resulting from closed doors at your local Ford store.

The facile response to every concern I’ve raised above is always “Toyota.” Toyota doesn’t maintain superfluous brands. (Except, um, Scion.) Toyota doesn’t pamper enthusiasts with money-losing models. Toyota doesn’t have enough dealers to result in bare-knuckle newspaper-ad price wars. Toyota holds its nose, curbs its enthusiasm, and sells more cars than anyone else in the world, primarily to people who hate cars.

Unless you’re a major Toyota stockholder, however, this doesn’t help you one bit. The companies that do go out of their way to connect with you, the automotive enthusiast . . . well, they may be irrationally exuberant, they may not always show a nine-figure profit, and once every so often they may require a helping hand. But they are on our side.

The bankers don’t care about cars; they care about money. The government, in general, hates automobiles and everything they represent. The mainstream media finds automotive enthusiasm to be amusing at best and despicable at worst. Who’s on our side? Who’s trying to provide exciting cars at affordable prices?

Answer that question for yourself, honestly, and then see if it doesn’t affect your attitude towards everything from gas tax to the much-derided bailout. Stop being ashamed, stop loving your tormentors and aping their discourse. The future those people envision—an endless series of identical, zero-impact crapwagons shuffling in a low-speed line down a carpool lane to nowhere—may be good for business, but it’s bad for us.

An overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. WAS is being filed from Beijing until further notice.

Japanese bondage: Toyota plans to procure 100 billion yen or so by issuing about 50 billion yen each in five- and 10-year straight bonds as early as this month, the Nikkei [sub]. The issuance of straight bonds will be the automaker’s first since September 2002. The rating on Toyota’s long-term debt has been downgraded by both Moody’s Investors Service Inc. and Standard & Poor’s, each by one notch from the highest grade. This sets Toyota apart from other automakers who are treated by banks like lepers.

Nissan going for greener pastures: Nissan’s Carlos Ghosn talked up plans for mass-producing electric cars in the U.S., Europe and China, the Nikkei [sub] reports. Chief Operating Officer Toshiyuki Shiga admits that he would like to see Nissan’s electric cars made in Japan. But with the financial crisis crimping Nissan’s ability to raise capital, the US and Europe, which have introduced subsidies for environmentally friendly cars, are more attractive venues. Nissan would be the first Japanese automaker to apply for the US government’s 25 billion dollar program of low-interest loans to develop green cars.
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As the maximum era draws to an end at GM, there’s no shortage of praise for the Bob Lutz-led product turnaround. Cars like the CTS, Lambda CUVs and the Chevy Malibu are said to represent a new day in quality and design for the General. And without a doubt, they are all consistently better cars than GM has made for years. But for all their accolades and fawning reviews, these vehicles actually represent a relatively small fraction of GM’s offerings. Though marketing executives wail from the Renaissance Center that consumers aren’t understanding the alleged sea change in GM products, there are still more GM vehicles you can ignore (to borrow GM’s marketing phrase) than you can’t. Automotive atavisms occupy GM’s entire lineup, but the contrast between Chevrolet’s D-segment offerings, the Malibu and Impala tells the whole story. And it isn’t pretty.

It’s no coincidence that the Malibu is, above all others, the poster child for a GM turnaround. Its clean styling and high-quality interior give it an edge in the first impressions game that GM hasn’t enjoyed in decades. More importantly, it brings an impression of actual effort to the crucial mid-sized segment, a category that was long ago ceded to the CamCord legions by such W-bodied luminaries as, well, the Lumina.

But the W-body and its parts bin of horrors lives on. Though the “Malibu Classic” has gone to the great rental lot in the sky, the Impala remains a rolling reminder of a time when the term “GM midsized” meant cheap, bland and unreliable. GM’s current fleet queen boasts a shake, rattle and roll interior, with all the aesthetic delights of a cheap pocket calculator. And let’s not even discuss the old-school wallow that the Impala calls handling. Place the Impala and the Malibu side-by-side and the contrast in impressions couldn’t be greater.

And yet, the Impala sells far better than the perception gap-changing ‘bu. In fact, the Impala is by far GM’s best selling car, with 265,840 sales last year. That’s more than the entire Pontiac car lineup, and nearly the volume of Saturn, Buick and Cadillac cars put together. The Malibu is well behind with 178,253 units sold last year, despite relentless hype and giant ad budgets.

Of course, none of this should come as much surprise to the experienced GM watcher. It is, after all, a long-standing GM tradition to offer long-outdated models as a cheap fleet sale booster. But not only is GM supposedly trying to cut back on fleet sales, unlike the Classic before it the Impala actually sells at retail too. Oh yeah, and GM has been propping up Malibu sales with fleet deals as well.

So while publicly denouncing fleet sales, GM is keeping its fleet queen in the public eye by keeping the roomier Impala’s retail price relatively close to its marquee Malibu. So when shoppers arrive at a Chevrolet dealership to look at the mid-sized offerings, both sides of General Motors are there to see: the sleek (but snug) Malibu or the roomy but dismally old-school Impala. And if you work with the best fleet percentages we have for 2008 (about 50 percent of Impala sales and about 33 percent of Malibu sales went to fleets), it turns out that more people are buying Impalas, even at retail.

This raises a number of interesting questions about the value of GM’s supposed product-led turnaround. If the Impala sells better than the Malibu at retail, despite its aged underpinnings and staid looks, was Bob Lutz’s enormous paycheck and frequent outbursts worth the investment? Class-competitive styling, interiors and platforms cost a considerable amount of money, and based on the numbers it seems that loyal GM customers aren’t particularly swayed by them. For all its accolades, the Malibu looks to be not only less popular than its fleet-flooding cousin but less profitable too.

And so we arrive at the real question: why do GM customers seem to prefer the aged and uncompetitive Impala to its acclaimed Malibu? In his hilarious address to the White House Press Club, Stephen Colbert quipped that President Bush’s 30 percent approval rating meant that though the metaphorical glass is only two-thirds empty, the last third is usually backwash. And the implication that Bush’s constituency represents all the ugly stereotypes of American culture also applies to GM’s midsized predicament. After decades of foisting uncompetitive cars on the American public, choosy shoppers no longer even consider GM a source for high quality vehicles, a fact proven by KBB’s 2008 “most researched” list.

And as long as Impalas and Malibus share lot space, GM’s cries of “perception gap” will continue, as the brand image is confused by two such divergent approaches to the midsized segment. The Malibu is fighting an uphill battle to convince now-loyal Toyota and Honda customers that the bowtie brand can offer quality, and sales momentum isn’t helping. And with GM pricing a fleet version of the Malibu considerably cheaper than the Impala, it’s also only a matter of time before that model loses its luster to the fleet residuals curse. And since its sales and profitability are already worse, the damage has already been done.

An overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. WAS is being filed from Beijing until further notice.

Nissan’s no-hitter: After announcing an expected loss in the current fiscal, Nissan will suspend corporate sports activities, including its standout baseball team, the Nikkei [sub] reports. Nissan’s ball club, which was founded in 1959, has won corporate championships and produced a string of professional baseball players. Also to be sidelined is Nissan’s table tennis team, which also dates back to 1959. Its most recent stint atop the winner’s podium occurred in 2007. The table tennis and track and field teams will be disbanded at the end of next month. All eyes are on Toyota and whether they will ditch their vastly more expensive F1 team. The rumor mill says they will stick with it for the now.

Nissan goes for green green: Nissan has applied for low-interest loans being offered under a US government program aimed at promoting the development of environment-friendly cars, the Nikkei [sub] says. This is the first time a Japanese carmaker has applied for the 25-billion-dollar program. One of the conditions for qualifying for the federal loan program is that the applicant has been operating facilities in the US for an extended period of time. Nissan intends to apply for similar aid programs for developing environment-friendly vehicles in Europe and China.

Cheaper hooch: One of the many problems of bio-ethanol is that it’s expensive to make. Toyota, Nippon Oil, Mitsubishi Heavy and three other firms will jointly develop technologies to produce cellulosic ethanol from nonfood plants. By bringing together their know-how in such fields as plant cultivation, glycation and fermentation, they hope to develop a comprehensive production system and bring down production costs to around 40 yen ($0.44) per liter by 2015, says the Nikkei [sub].
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An overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. WAS is being filed from Beijing until further notice.

Nissan sees red: Nissan cut its earnings outlook, saying it now expects a consolidated net loss of 265 billion yen for the year ending March 31, the Nikkei [sub] writes. The automaker earlier forecast a net profit of 160 billion yen, down 67 percent from the previous term. Nissan downgraded its sales outlook to a 23 percent fall. The carmaker also projects an operating loss of 180 billion yen, tumbling into the red for the first time in 14 years, in a sharp reversal from the 270 billion yen profit, down 66 percent. Nissan will cut 20,000 jobs in Japan and abroad by the end of March 2010, bringing the total payroll down to 215,000 employees. This is the first loss since fiscal 1999 when current President Carlos Ghosn became chief operating officer after Nissan formed an alliance with France’s Renault.

India keeps going down: India’s domestic car sales fell for the fourth straight month in January. Sales fell 3.2 percent in January, the Nikkei [sub] reports. They were down 7 percent in December, 19 percent in November, 6.6 percent in October, 4.4 percent in August, and 1.7 percent in July. Only in September 2008, sales rose 2.8 percent.
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Rolls-Royce used to advertise the fact that their cars were so quiet that the loudest sound you heard was the [analog] clock ticking on the dash. Who said the British don’t do hyperbole? As a quiet car connoisseur, I’d have to say a Clinton-era Cadillac provided the quietest ride I’d ever experienced; if the time was one of peace and prosperity, then so was the car. Nowadays, automakers are telling us that their cars are quiet, or at least quieter than ever before. I’m not buying it. A number of recent drives have been notable for their aural uncouthness. So I set out to find the truth about automotive sonic signatures. Has nostalgia dimmed my memory (if not my hearing)? Is progress on the noise suppression front been less impressive than industry propaganda would have you believe?

The German buff book Auto, Motor und Sport recently opened its archives to tightwads. I’ve spent a few hours perusing the decibel stats. To save space, the table I’ve compiled only deals with interior noise at about 80 mph (130 km/h). It’s a civilized speed (at least here in Germany) at which one would want to be able to hold a civilized conversation, even with a back-seat passenger.

Car and model year Interior noise in dB(A) at 80.78 MPH

1995 BMW 728i 66

1995 BMW 523i 66

2003 BMW 730i 66

2009 BMW 330d 68

2009 Mercedes C350 CGI 68

2009 Renault Megane dCI 69

1996 Mercedes C280 69

2008 Mercedes C250 CDI 69

1996 Citroen XM V6 69

1995 Audi A6 2.8 69

2006 Mercedes E220 CDI 69

2006 BMW 520d 69

2000 Ford Mondeo 2.016V 69

2009 Ford Mondeo 2.5 Titanium S 70

2006 Audi A6 2.7 TDI 70

1996 Mercedes E230 T 71

2003 Toyota Camry 2.2 71

2009 Toyota Auris 2.0 D-4D 71

1995 Honda Civic 1.5i VTEC-E 72

2009 Honda Civic 2.2i-CTDi 72

2002 VW Golf 1.9 TDI 72

2009 VW Golf 2.0 TDI 72

2009 Opel Astra 1.9 CDTi 72

1996 Opel Astra 1.6 16V 73

2003 Toyota Corolla Compact 1.4 73

2009 Porsche Carrera 73

1995 VW Golf Cabrio 1.9TDI 73

1996 Ford Mondeo 1.8GT 73

1995 VW Golf CL 1.6 74

1995 Mercedes E230 74

2000 Toyota Corolla 1.6 76

2009 Ford Ka 76

1996 Renault Megane 2.0 16v 76

In some market segments (e.g., executive cars), you have to ask: where’s the progress? What, for instance, has BMW been doing since 1995? Most cars have gotten much heavier. You think that the extra heft might include some extra soundproofing. But plenty of today;s lumbering leviathans are hardly quieter than their sprightlier predecessors. What does Mercedes expect us to think about zero improvement for the C-Class in twelve years?

VW’s press release for its newest Golf calls it “the quietest Volkswagen Golf since the model series began” characterized by “first-class acoustic properties.” Yes, “a special sound-damping film in the windshield reduces driving noises, as does the newly developed seal design on the doors and side window guides.”

Significantly less wind noise is generated by the outside mirrors due to their new shape. Furthermore, special modifications were made to better isolate the engine and passenger compartments from one another acoustically. Quiet rolling tires and new engine bearings round out the noise reduction program.

Empirically, the new Golf offers an improvement of 2 dB in three car generations and thirteen years.

Small cars have gotten much better, though. Corollas and Renaults used to be noisy boxes. Intense competition in the compact field seems to be working its magic. The Auris (the more-advanced, Euro-market Corolla) is a quite soothing small car, and the Megane’s low level of noise is a marvel.

Really small cars, like the Fiat Panda or the Ford Ka, are still noisy, and are thus for me un-purchasable vehicles, since they (driven quickly) generate a clamor louder than Occupational Noise Exposure standards would allow.

A noise level of 70 dB(A) seems to be hard to crack in cars for regular folks. But this is, to my mind, a pretty tolerable loudness, unreachable a few decades ago.

You’d think with advanced computer firepower, more precise manufacturing tolerances, double-lip door seals and multi-laminate windows, cars would generally be much quieter than in the 1990s. Why aren’t they? Remember one dirty secret of the car industry: usually, each successive generation of a car is cheaper to manufacture. Cost-cutting means that progress is slow—unless the market actively demands progress.

Or unless the car maker is genuinely forward-thinking. In terms of quietness, the only revolutionary car in recent years may be the Lexus LS 600h, which claims 60db at 60MPH.

On the other hand, where are the technical advancements we’ve been waiting for? Active noise cancellation, once seen as the answer to all things cacophonous and found in Honda’s cylinder de-activating Odyssey minivan, seems to be a pipe dream. This despite the fact that BOSE et al. have been promoting its benefits for years, and Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute says it’s working on a useful system.

And what about a microphone-based, user-friendly and effective interior intercom? I’m tired of shouting at back-seat passengers (although it can be useful in the case of children, dogs and back-seat drivers). A car that used electronics to help you converse with everybody on board, without raising your voice: now, that’s something that would lead me to a showroom, and to ponder a purchase.

An overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. WAS is being filed from Tokyo this week. There will be no WAS on Sunday while we re-locate to Beijing.

Isuzu sees red: Isuzu posted net losses for the October-December quarter due to weak domestic truck sales, a stronger yen and higher material costs, the Nikkei [sub] reports. Net losses were ¥11.7b in the three months ended Dec. 31, down from a profit of ¥24.4b a year earlier. Sales dropped 21 percent to ¥340.4b in the quarter, down from ¥430b a year ago. On an operating basis, Isuzu lost ¥1.6b, compared with a ¥28b profit in the quarter a year before. For the full fiscal year ending March, Isuzu lowered its outlook to a loss of ¥15b.

Yen for govt. yen: Japanese auto makers are scrambling to raise cash before the end of the fiscal year in March, the Nikkei [sub] says. Nissan is considering applying for the low-interest funds, Isuzu said Friday that it may do the same to raise several tens of billions of yen. Mitsubishi Motors is also considering tapping the Japanese government program.
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Toyota will end their fiscal year ending in March badly bruised. Financial Times reports that ToMoCo’s losses will be three times larger than previously forecast. The worst industry slump in decades has put a painful crimp in an amazing run. Last year, Toyota earned a record operating profit of $30b. In the same year, they became officially the world’s largest automaker, a title many had said should have been given to Toyota a year before. In November 2008, Toyota still projected a profit of $6.6b. Then, carmageddon caught up with them.

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An overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. WAS is being filed from Tokyo this week.

Geely doesn’t want Volvo: China’s largest privately owned carmaker Geely has denied reports that it is acquiring the Volvo car unit from Ford Motor Co, China Daily reports. Ford has also approached Chery Automobile Co and Chongqing Changan Automobile Co. Li Chunbo, an analyst with CITIC Securities Co in Beijing, said when a Chinese enterprise attempts to acquire a foreign rival it has to consider how it will benefit from the deal and whether it is capable of dealing with the purchased unit. “When you compare the market value of Geely and Volvo, you will ask how can Geely raise enough money to buy the European car brand,” he said. If this goes on much longer, not much money may be needed.

La bella clunker culleria: Italy is hopping on the European clunker culling bandwagon. Italian consumers will be given six months to go out and buy a new car under a “strong package” of incentives that Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right government expects to approve today, Financial Times reports. The package would provide possibly up to €1,500 a car, to exchange models at least 10 years old for new, relatively small cars. The government would also provide credit guarantees to banks to finance purchases. The incentives are not limited to Italian cars, but the conditions attached—small capacity and least polluting—“would clearly favor Fiat,” the FT says. Protectionism, with style . . . .
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