A bit of bittersweet news for the GM crowd: the General is hard at work on a new platform for large RWD cars, dubbed “Omega”, and a Cadillac variant of that car is well underway. But a potential flagship sedan, ala the Ciel concept car, won’t make it.
Mired in the same overcapacity crisis as the rest of Europe’s auto makers, the founding family of PSA is reportedly willing to give up control of the company that owns Peugeot and Citroen in exchange for a fresh infusion of capital from GM, which currently owns 7 percent of PSA.
Ontario is home to a number of auto plants, both import and domestic, union and non-union, as well as numerous suppliers. None of them are so tightly intertwined as General Motors is with the town of Oshawa, about 40 miles from Toronto (though, as any area resident will tell you, it’s really 2 hours away, thanks to our horrendously inadequate infrastructure). For nearly a century, GM has been building cars in Oshawa in one form or another, as the plant has established a reputation as one of GM’s best, consistently building high quality cars, trucks and crossovers over the decades. But that tradition may be coming to a close by 2016.
Roger Penske talks with recent Indy 500 winner Tony Kanaan as Jim Campbell (L), head of performance and motorsports for GM, and Mark Reuss (R), GM president for North America, look on.
Sometimes things just work out. I probably would have gone to the media luncheon for the Chevrolet Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix yesterday anyway but when I saw that Roger Penske was one of the people who’d be there, along with Indy 500 winner Tony Kanaan and other Indycar, Grand Am Rolex and Pirelli Challenge series drivers, as well Jim Campbell and Mark Reuss from GM, I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to ask Penske a question that’s been on my mind. Just about every time there’s some kind of high level executive position around Detroit that’s unfilled or about to go unfilled, Penske’s name comes up as a suggestion. Not everything he touches succeeds, (c.f. smart cars in the U.S.) so he doesn’t have a complete Midas touch, but most of his ventures have done well, some exceptionally so. You can’t say that he’s not a competent manager of businesses and people or that he hasn’t succeeded in some highly competitive situations. I wanted to know if Roger was willing to take the highest profile executive position in Detroit. (Read More…)
The wraps have finally been taken off from the refreshed 2014 Chevrolet Malibu, and it…looks pretty much the same as the last one, though GM assures us that there have been real changes made.
The most famous Holden product to ever wear a Buick badge is the Chinese-market Park Avenue, a car that Buick dealers inexplicably rejected. But back in the mid-1990s, GM apparently planned to use the VT Commodore architecture as the basis for a new Buick sedan, previewed in the XP2000 concept above.
Fisker is worth around 200 Karmas at retail. “A team including former General Motors Co executive Bob Lutz and China’s largest parts maker is looking to buy Fisker Automotive for $20 million, a fraction of the “green” car company’s estimated worth almost a year and a half ago,” Reuters says. (Read More…)
Detroit area teens looking for a summer job can now get a paid internship with GM, and will recieve education, training and service projects to carry out over the summer. Sure beats my prior summer jobs as a carnival barker (I’m not kidding).
Following in the footsteps of Spanish bank Santander, GM Financial announced that it would enter the prime lending market in 2014.
Our beloved Ed Niedermeyer is back in the Wall Street Journal with another op-ed, entitled “Welcome To General Tso’s Motors”. I’m sure you can all figure out the gist of it. Check it out here. Anti-GM-bias police, grab your defibrillators.
We don’t get enough good questions from the readers, and it’s a damn shame. Reader Steve Hofer sent us a great one via email; what if Elon Musk was running General Motors?
Companies – or so they say – pay their executives the big bucks to keep them from leaving, or, in corporate-speak to “retain” them. In the case of GM CEO Dan Akerson, they pay him more because he will leave. Nasty people will say “to make him leave.” (Read More…)
News of GM potentially exporting cars from China to the United States in the near future has some wondering if the General will be the first OEM to sell Chinese made cars in the United States. One can have a diverse array of opinions on the political, social and economic impact of such a move, but from a product standpoint, it may not be such a bad thing.
Now that Chevrolet has revised their EPA mileage estimate for the Chevrolet Cruze Diesel, from 42 mpg to 46 mpg, we need to revise our own estimates.
GM and Ford will be working together to bring 9 and 10 speed transmissions to market. Reuters reports that the two companies will jointly develop the gearboxes for both front and rear-drive applications, and expect to use them in cars, trucks and SUVs.
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