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Transportation RSS FeedsTailfins and vertical tail-lamps - Cadillac doesn't do tailfins these days, but there are some intriguing exterior design idents like vertical tail-lamps and the very distinctive grille and face. I found myself liking the look and feel of the CTS earlier today when I drove it. There's a nice job inside, too. The car's not bad at all though the ride was a bit choppy in the 3.6L compared with the 2.7L (they have different suspension set-ups - but while the 2.7L gives a firmer ride, the 3.6L engine is better at moving what is a fairly heavy lump of metal). Anyway, the car's basically a good job. But that's half the story. The much-needed diesel is still a year away. And how many potential customers are out there in Britain for Cadillac and a high-end car like the CTS? When I spoke to Jonathan Nash, he acknowledged that timing isn't ideal, what with the credit crunch and all. But GM seems keen to press on and get the product out there. How long will it take for people who 'want s...Feed Source: www.just-auto.com Cadillac CTS - I am heading out to a country hotel this evening where GM is hosting a Cadillac CTS event. There's a presentation and dinner and an opportunity to drive the car tomorrow and speak to the designer. Must be tough for GM's UK people. It's not exactly a brand that is flying, the CTS flagship finally arrives in RHD (requiring investment) and then you launch as the credit crunch bites (and used car residuals go through the floor, along with house prices). But there it is guys. Now go sell. Actually, the volumes look pretty cautious, so maybe it's not quite as big an ask as it sounds.THE EDITOR'S INTERVIEW: Jonathan Nash, MD Saab GB and GM UK's Caddy man... Natural gas? - I see Larry Burns has flown a kite for natural gas on GM's corporate blog. It opens yet another avenue for discussion and there's nothing wrong with that, in principle. Let's get the debates going, no stone left unturned. And there are serious reserves of the stuff in North America.
One thing occurs though. Surely at some point a single vision has to be grabbed with quite a bit of commitment, total commitment even, the strategy for the future crystal clear to all concerned. Will the potential outcomes be better if everyone works and focusses on one goal or several? It's a question of how far you spread your resources. But there are horses to be backed and at some point, someone has to say - that's where we're going with most of our investment resources in the long-term (maybe not unlike Carlos Ghosn and his electric car vision).
If the range-extended Volt is to be the car that eventually saves GM and sends us into a greener and cleaner future (kind of how so... 'Hypermiling' - With the high cost of petrol these days, there's no shortage of advice on how to adjust the old driving style to minimise fuel consumption and make the pennies go further. And some people are really going for it. 'Hypermiling' is something I have come across and here are over a hundred tips 105 fuel saving tips... GM's Q2 nasties - There's an old joke about the banks having you by the short and curlies if you owe them a few thousand bucks. They will pile on the interest charges and won't want to listen too much to your griping if you don't like that. Tough love, they might say, as they rack up the profit on your account and the fat banker gets even fatter.
But if you owe the equivalent of a small country's GNP, then they have to engage with you in more friendly terms lest you start defaulting on payback or go bankrupt and fail to repay the principal. There will be coffee and biscuits on the table when you go in for a chat about debt rescheduling.
I was reminded of that last week when GM announced a whopping 15.5 billion dollar loss for the second quarter. For all the talk of one-time charges, that's a staggering figure.
Is GM therefore heading for the buffers and out of business - or at least into Chapter 11 on its US operations? It's not that simple. GM is still doing fine outside of Nort... Wasn't Segway there first? - What are they thinking at Toyota? Do they want to take Segway out or have they come up with something that's not going to look out of place with the kids at the skatepark? This 'Winglet' is more than a little bit bizarre if you ask me. The small one looks highly portable, but why not walk? If you have trouble walking you might not feel too safe on one of those! Or is it simply a novelty fun thing? It certainly doesn't look as robust as a Segway which comes with bigger wheels and a large flat standing platform. In terms of R&D and what comes out the other end, I was more impressed today with the promise of Nissan's ECO pedal.
... Scrap annual road tax and stick it all on fuel - The UK government's car tax proposals that are designed to encourage car buyers to gravitate towards smaller and greener cars that will incur a much lower annual 'road tax' charge look worryingly crude to me.
A crude tax on your vehicle is fine if it is simple to understand and fairly small. You just pay it and move on. But suddenly, things are getting a lot more complex and even relatively innocuous looking cars come out very badly on the calculations in terms of proposed taxation increases.
This won't be popular with the typically hard-pressed family already being squeezed on household bills and then discovering that the government has decided the family transport is killing the planet.
If a tax comes across as fair and in everyone's interests, most people will accept it. This one doesn't look all that well thought out. Stick and carrot on vehicle purchase to encourage people to go for smaller cars is fine, but it's a question of how much sti... Downtime - Apologies to anyone experiencing difficulties accessing just-auto earlier today. Maybe someone somewhere searched for Google on Google, but whatever the reason, there was some sort of disruption to Internet service in the whole of the local area. We have all had a cup of tea and had some refreshingly interesting conversations with each other. ... An ignoramus writes - Contrary to popular belief just-auto's editor is not some kind of all-knowing oracle when it comes to the history of the auto industry - or anything else come to think of it. Don't get me wrong: I'm not totally ignorant and uneducated. I occasionally read books, watch non-fiction stuff on TV and have even got an honours degree to my name (an economics major with some political theory). All kinds of stuff is stored and jumbled up in my head in no particular order.
I can tell you, for example, the formula for solving quadratic equations and know how to do long multiplication because I learnt those things and they stuck. I was also recently able to impress some colleagues in a trivia quiz that I knew that the capital city of Brazil is not Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo - it is in fact Brasilia. Impressive, eh? But we all have a few gaps in our personal knowledge banks don't we?
I came across one such gap in my company knowledge yesterday&... Dresden Bentleys - A Bentley not made in England wouldn't have a great deal of cachet would it? If 'Made in England' is a core brand value, it might be seen as a faux Bentley, not quite the real McCoy. But if the numbers made in Dresden were small and the end-product was indistinguishable from the real thing, then there might be a slightly bizarre interest in them, as there would be in a rare postage stamp that was a second.
Anyway, that's what Bentley's Ulrich Eichhorn told Mark Bursa. But he wouldn't be keen on making too many Bentleys outside of the UK. Strange old world we live in, eh? The Dresden Bentleys are identified by VIN numbers.
The German-British connection here caused a few misbehaving neurons in what passes for my memory to recall a rather eyebrow raising item that we had on just-auto a few years' back. Ah, the great British workers - they really put the Great in GB. I wonder if the workers on the Dresden Bentleys left a hidden signature of some... Anyone for higher car prices? - I walked past a used car lot yesterday and it looked very much like a buyers' market - especially for the larger cars. The 'bargains' reflect current economic realities. Big cars come with big running costs (not just thirstier engines, but increasingly punitive taxes in Europe). And at this point in the economic cycle consumers aren't exactly in the mood to spend, in any case.
Across the auto industry managing cost, especially in manufacturing, is a big issue. If your raw materials are going up in price there's not a lot you can do about that. It's the laws of supply and demand at work on steel and energy inputs. Squeezing your suppliers on price and encouraging them to make productivity gains can only take you so far. And the same goes for your own productivity gains. There are limits to what can be achieved.
Last week Volkswagen announced some pretty good financial results. They're about as good as could reasonably have been expected and our financial analyst, Rob Go... Romania automotive conference - There is a fair bit going on in Romania's auto industry these days. We recently had a colourful feature from Mark 'Coolbear' Bursa that neatly interweaved developments at Dacia with the country's recent history.
A conference firm, WBR, has been in touch with me over an event, AutoRomania08 (below link) that's coming up which does actually look quite good in terms of the programme and speakers.
The Romanian prime minister is even opening the event - a clear sign of how strategically important the auto industry and its inward investment has become to the Romanian government.
Did you hear that the European Commission has suspended all funding for neighbouring Bulgaria because the money was being syphoned into the pockets of organised criminals?
I gather there are problems in Romania, too - though not as bad as Bulgaria - and it is also close to having penalties imposed by the E... Ford piles on the red ink - If 'firms in the motor industry are good at losing money, but not good at going bankrupt' as an equities analyst has just said, then maybe Ford can go to the top of the class after it's latest results. Whatever the reasons for the 'special items', the bottom line does look a little gruesome. As pessimism mounts over general market prospects for North America in 2009, a restructuring Ford and GM are acutely aware of the need to be credibly seen to have sufficient liquidity to ride out the hard times ahead and keep the Chapter 11 chatter down. Fine, and maybe Ford is keen to get the bad news behind it with some of these write downs.
But what if 2010 shapes up as a stinker, too? What's next to be cut and at what point are the cost cuts either building a scary looking deferred backlog of spending that will have to hit sometime or starting to impact the patient... ?6m sticker price at the London Show - London's Motor Show this week was quite a busy event for us (naturally) and it's a show that I find intriguing on a number of levels. For one thing, people seem quick to point out the deficiencies (and the Excel venue is indeed an a**e to get to, no doubt about that, whether driving or on public transport - it's in a grotty and sprawling part of east London that is being regenerated). And the press centre was a little overrun at times - some people could be seen working on the floor.
But then again Birmingham's NEC wasn't exactly perfect either and I don't understand the mentality of journalists who say it's not worth attending - especially British-based ones. There was certainly plenty to see, people to talk to, even if it wasn't dripping with big world premieres the way the A-list shows do.
One thing the organisers have been clever about is the timing. Late July is in the summer dead zone when little is going on auto show-wise - the big shows ar... London Motor Show - We have got a motor show on in London this week and it even looks like the weather is finally looking up here.
Is the London event a biggie? It's sizeable but no, it's not up there with the big shows and is still to become properly established in the automakers' diaries. A number of them are absent and I guess the current economic backdrop doesn't augur particularly well for consumer visits.
But this is only the second London show since moving the event from Birmingham. The first one could be claimed by the organisers to have been a modest success.
It will certainly be interesting to see how busy the show is this time around and see how much media coverage is generated. The London event perhaps needs more time to become established and generate a clear position in terms of the benefits it can bring to consumers and exhibitors alike.
I can see why people question the point of a motor show in the UK. We don't have the large immediate base of local indigenou... Continental and VW similarities - The style of the takeover bid for Conti by family-owned German bearings maker Schaeffller is a little bit reminiscent of the manner in which Porsche has got control of Volkswagen; it's a gradual affair in which a smaller company gets control of a much bigger one by taking advantage of a low share price. And it looks likely to succeed.
Is it a good or bad thing? Continental does much more than tyres. It sounds like Schaeffler is motivated chiefly by the electronics stuff that Conti does post-Siemens VDO acquisition. Maybe going private could be to Conti's advantage? But might Schaeffler be tempted to sell off the tyres division? Or would new owners want to add shareholder value in the long run? If the prospective new owners are following Porsche-VW they will see that the architect of that, Ferdinand Piech, is taking a long view, strategically - while also doing a good job of delivering value to shareholders, on both sides.&nbs... Al Gore's latest - Al Gore certainly knows how to make the news. He's just said that the US needs to do away with all forms of carbon-emitting electricity production within ten years (er, easier said than done). Yep, that will grab some attention. At least he should spark some serious debate about energy policy in the US and that's no bad thing in a run-up to a presidential election.
Must admit, I did like this line: "We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that has to change."
Just beware of politicians struggling to understand the energy problem or coming out with glib lines that they think will appeal to the populace. I actually would credit Gore with having done some work on the subject and to have developed his opinion as a result of that. He must know how difficult it would be to achieve what he is suggesting but wants to move the parameters of the debate in the US at this junctu... Making buildings look better - I recall that a few years ago there was an artist who covered landmark buildings with something like giant blankets. I think the Brandenberg Gate in Berlin was one. It made quite a visual impact.
Industrial buildings are often dull to look at. There is a brutal functional form thing going on and it's rare that an industrial building is pleasing on the eye.
I liked this draping thing going on at Ford in Germany. This could catch on, if the local authority planning regs allow it. I for one would favour anything that brightens up a grey industrial landscape.GERMANY: Honey, I shrink-wrapped the Fiesta factory... Be careful in the office - It's become very fashionable to mock the 'Health and Safety' culture, but if H&S procedures and systems can reduce accidents, that's no bad thing. Accidents can blow up out of nowhere.
I was talking to Mark Bursa earlier - he's been at the Farnborough Air Show this week turning his hand to producing copy for an aero publication. As he typed away, he noticed the bloke sat next to him was trying to adjust his chair. The seat and the seat 'chassis' had, unknowingly, become separated due to the failure of some component. As the poor chap moved the seat closer to the table, his fingers entered the gap between the flat bed you sit on and some metal that forms part of the structure. He then brought his whole weight down on the end of a finger that was duly sliced off, guillotine style.
Blood was gushing everywhere and Mr Bursa - who spent the rest of the day with blood on his shirt - rescued the tip and gamely took charge of&n... 'Bright greys' - Bright greys? Just come across a term that stuck while leafing through AM magazine. What does the Daihatsu brand say to you? An unfashionable marque that majors in dull but competitively priced small cars with Japanese kei-class roots (the Copen being a stylish exception to the dullards rule)? That's maybe a little harsh when you consider the recently introduced Materia model - a funky looking car that is turning a few heads.
But who is Daihatsu aiming its products at? Answer: bright greys and I'm not talking ETs. 'Bright greys' are the term used by Daihatsu UK chief Paul Tunnicliffe when talking about Daihatsu's relatively aged customer base. They are active and aspirational, he says. They shop at Waitrose (an upscale 'middle class' UK supermarket chain) and John Lewis (an also upscale department store) and holiday in Tuscany and France (not a caravan in Clacton). How does he know where they holiday? They write to him to expl... Copyright © 2008, Real Estate Investment Tips. All Rights Reserved. |