China’s red-hot growth numbers are coming down to earth. Which doesn’t mean that the Chinese are stopping to buy cars. We are now getting into a territory where previous year sales increases were so insane that any more outrageous growth would simply be certifiable. In July 2009, sales in China had exploded by 70 percent. A month later, in August 2009, sales nearly doubled from a year earlier. Any growth that betters these numbers is amazing. (Read More…)

Did we say last Thursday that the sale of Volvo from Ford to Geely „could close as soon as next week?” Did I believe it? Did I live in Chine for six years? Honestly, there was an element of surprise when, this Beijing afternoon, my inbox made that noise and there was an email from Ford, titled “Ford Motor Company Completes Sale of Volvo to Geely.” The deal is closed. Volvo is Chinese. (Read More…)

Last week, the big news coming out of Ford was that the new Lincoln MKZ would be available with a hybrid drivetrain as a no-cost option. With Mercury on its way out, and Lincoln struggling to carve out a niche in the luxury space, that move made a certain amount of sense at the time. What we didn’t know until today is that the “free” hybrid option on the MKZ was only Ford’s opening salvo on the status quo of automotive drivetrain option pricing. Today, with the 2011 Explorer dominating the news cycle, Ford has announced its latest head-scratcher: making the four-cylinder “Ecoboost” engine option more expensive than the more powerful standard V6. Yes, really.

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As we roll along towards tomorrow’s social-media-focused reveal of the 2011 Explorer, I thought we’d take one last time to discuss the old trucks and their general merits. It’s possible to argue that the Explorer has provided quality transport for millions of American families; it’s also possible to cast the vehicle in the role of villain, with its victims being those same families, the environment, and the shape of the American auto market.

I’ll make both arguments below, and then I’d like to hear your opinion.

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During the 1970’s and 1980’s everyone (mainly, the United States) thought that Japan would rule the world, economically speaking. At its peak, the Nikkei Dow stood at 38,957.44. Brands like “Zenith” and “RCA” made way for new brands like “Sony” and “Panasonic”. General Motors feared Japanese cars so much, they set up “Saturn” to fight them off. The UK government flirted with Toyota, Honda and Nissan to build their factories in the UK. Yep, the Japanese were the original rising dragon. Then came the 1990’s, and it all imploded. Since then, Japan was never quite the same. They were still strong, but manageable. While Japan got cut down to size, their car industry stayed strong. They still carried on taking market share in North America away from the domestics. Despite the Japanese prospering in North America, it wasn’t reciprocal. American car makers, and, indeed, many of our B&B, believe that Japan has a closed car market and has tariffs on imported cars. Our resident German has talked about the subject many times and successfully managed not to have an aneurysm over it (though he may have turned to drink) [ED: He did not.] Well, if Japan does have a closed car market, nobody told Ford. (Read More…)

Ford Motor Company has announced its second-quarter results for 2010, and the company says it earned $2.6b over the last three months on $2.9b in operating profit before special items. In a departure from the typical model for domestic automakers, Ford’s growth was largely driven by improvement in North American results: Ford earned $1.9b in pre-tax operating profits in North America after boosting its Ford brand to the top spot in the American market over the first six months of 2010. Ford earned $31.3b in Q2 revenue, a $4.5b improvement over Q2 2009 (a $7.4b improvement excluding Volvo). Ford’s operating cash flow improved by $2.6b despite ending the quarter with $21.9b in cash, a $3.4b drop since the end of Q1. However, that drop in cash-on-hand was the result of a $3.8b debt reduction, and Ford figures its total automotive liquidity (including all credit facilities) is $25.4b. Automotive debt was reduced by about $7b, to $27.3b, the result of both the UAW Retiree Medical Benefit trust buydown and a $3b repayment of a revolving credit line. The shutdown of Mercury has reportedly cost Ford about $229m so far, and Ford expects that amount to equal slightly under half of the total cost of eliminating the brand.

Ford’s results aren’t very surprising given the fact that it Ford brand outsold all other brands over the first half of 2010, but the healthy profit shows that a rumored dependence on fleet sales wasn’t enough of a factor to weaken Ford’s financial results. Though debt levels remain high and its overseas performance remains weak, Ford has proven once again that it’s the healthiest American automaker… if only in terms of its North American market performance.

Full financial release in PDF format here, Q2 results presentation slides in PDF format here, Ford Credit results in PDF format here

This is a continuation: part one is here.

After leaving the studio in St. Louis Saturday night, I found myself with the luxury of having absolutely nothing to do until one o’clock the following day. My guitars were locked up, I’d left my laptop at home, and I didn’t have so much as a magazine to read. This was not by accident. Sometimes it’s important to have no plans, to deliberately encounter what I think of as a “null state”.

The Transit Connect and I wandered past Forest Park, where just a few blocks separate gated-off private streets and boarded-up low-income housing. The white panel van is welcome everywhere; it is universally recognized as a vehicle driven by the service class. I waved at a security guard who silently swung a huge wrought-iron barrier out of the way and let me into his deliberately isolated neighborhood. Twenty minutes later, two vicious-looking men in a street full of broken-down cars and idle observers stopped their hand-waving disagreement to let me through. I am nobody in particular. I am here to fix, install, adjust, clean.

The invisibility conferred upon me by this little van made me think of all the times I had felt invisible in my youth, cleaning tables in restaurants, working on construction sites, bagging groceries. I realized that I could stop and sleep anywhere, that this van could come to a halt in an industrial-center parking lot or out in front of the largest home in St. Louis. This was freedom: I am nobody, and I have nothing to do.

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This is not a review of the Transit Connect. That’s coming next month courtesy of another TTAC writer. This is a story about childhood, loneliness, obsession, friendship, the Gateway Arch and its ridiculous security humiliations, and what happens when four old white guys play a Rage Against The Machine song in a state-of-the-art studio. You’ve been warned.

There’s this company, you see, called St. Louis Music. If you’ve ever heard of Dan Armstrong, Ampeg, or Crate, you’ve heard of “SLM”. They used to make good stuff, and they made a lot of it in the United States. During the Seventies, the product quality of many US-made items was in the toilet. The Big Two of American guitars, Gibson and Fender, seemed to be engaged in a war where the prize was bankruptcy and the weapons were crap guitars, high prices, indifferent corporate ownership, and refusal to listen to their dealers.

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On Friday Ford announced [via Automotive News [sub]] that it had reached an amicable resolution to a long-standing dispute over hybrid drivetrain technology with Paice, a company that claims to have invented technology crucial to the operation of hybrid powerplants. Ford uses the disputed technology  in its Fusion Hybrid and Escape Hybrid vehicles, and it will likely pay royalties to Paice as a result of the settlement, although Ford refuses to give any details on the agreement. Toyota is also locked in a legal dispute with Paice, after a judge ordered Toyota to pay Paice royalties for hybrid models it sells in the US. Toyota continues to litigate an International Trade Commission complaint by Paice aimed at barring the sale of Toyota hybrids in the US. [UPDATE: Toyota has just announced [via BusinessWeek that it has settled with Paice as well, effectively bringing years of controversy to a close. Details of the settlement have not been made clear, but Paice’s Alex Severinsky says that this vindicates his long-standing claim to being the inventor of modern hybrid drivetrains.

Reviving a legendary nameplate inevitably invites comparisons. As is often the case, those for the new 2010 Ford Taurus SHO have not been favorable. Judging from reviews, forum postings, and (I’ll predict) the comments below, the 2010 lacks whatever made the original legendary. Well, I drove the original SHO back in 1989. And now I’ve driven the 2010 for a week. For better or worse, the similarities outweigh the differences. So, what’s missing in the SHO’s revival?

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Wasn’t Ford proud of not having stuffed themselves from the Great American Bailout Buffet? That didn’t stop them from (quietly) asking the Germans for money. And the answer is … (Read More…)

We’ve devoted considerable bandwidth here at TTAC to the inevitable conflict between Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood’s campaign against distracted driving and the ever-increasing array of distractions offered by popular in-car electronic systems like Ford’s SYNC. While automakers are forever striving to offer more and more connectivity, politicians are waking to the realization that these systems prevent drivers from focusing on their driving. And now, it appears, Ford is finally getting on the same page as the pols. The DetNews reports that SYNC-equipped 2011 Fords will come with a “do not disturb” feature that

locks out capabilities “not relevant to the task of driving while the vehicle is in motion.” Ford also is barring any action that requires typing on a keypad and limiting lists of navigation and phone choices to fewer entries — like phone contacts or recent phone calls.

With this pre-emptive strike, Ford is trying to protect a system it says helps sell cars from regulation as a dangerous in-car distraction. Will a “do not disturb” button really help prevent accidents? Ford had better hope so, and it had better hope the data comes in looking mighty conclusive. Otherwise, systems like SYNC could find themselves on the wrong side of Washington DC in the near future.

The European Commission concluded that the sale of Volvo to China’s Geely would not significantly impede competition in Europe (well, that would have been a stretch), and approved the transaction, says Reuters. (Read More…)

Suzuki, Hyundai and Tata are the King Dongs (that WASN’T a spelling mistake, BTW) of India. Suzuki controls over half of the Indian car market. Hyundai and Tata have major chunks, too. Whatever is left is divided up amongst the smaller parties. But why have Indians put their rupees in the hands of Suzuki, Hyundai and Tata? National pride? Hardly. Suzuki and Hyundai come from a little further east. Nope. The reason is because they all excel in one thing. Small, cheap cars. The majority of Indians are relatively poor and don’t have much money to spend, so when they make a purchase as big as a car, it HAS to provide value (Indians LOVE a bargain as the video shows). If further proof were needed that India loves small, cheap cars, then this next story should put it beyond reasonable doubt. (Read More…)