By Bertel Schmitt
July 5, 2009
We left
the first chapter of this episode with BS at the southern tip of Spain. He had to produce a launch movie for the Audi 80. He had run out of time, luck, and most embarrassingly, he had run out of film. BS was in deep dung. What will happen to him? Will he finish the mission? Or will he and his bunch of mad men rot in a Spanish cell? Join us today for parte dos, part two of the great Spanish spectacle ….
Editorial: Autobiography Of BS ©: How I Nearly Blew The Audi 80 Launch. Parte Dos.
editorial continued »
Posted in Autobiography Of BS | Editorials | 10 comments 
By Edward Niedermeyer
July 1, 2009
In the wake of JD Powers'
Initial Quality Survey, several other lesser-known awards are giving OEMs a whole new reason to cobble together a press release touting their top place, improvement or mere presence in one of these meaningless satisfaction surveys. And why not? It's summer, and things (sales, in specific) are slow. And the award fandango is win-win. The awards allow OEMs to ridiculously inflate the importance of their results, while publicizing the research firms that created the awards. Case in point, the Dodge Ram.
Editorial: The Truth About Car Awards
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Posted in Car Buying Tips | Editorials | Sales and Marketing | 15 comments
By Robert Farago
July 1, 2009
General Motors is launching a fourth of July sale: "Buy and Say Goodbye." From July 1 to July 6, the bankrupt automaker's offering 0% financing for up to 72 months on "most" of its dead brand walking Pontiac models and "some other vehicles." More specifically, "select 2009 and 2010 vehicles in dealer stock including Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra regular, extended and crew cab light-duty pickups; Chevrolet Suburban and GMC Yukon XL SUVs; Chevrolet Impala; and the Pontiac models: Vibe, G3, G5, G6 and G8." But wait! There's more! "Many other vehicles will have reduced rate financing of 0 percent for up to 60 months for well-qualified buyers. A full list of current offers, conditions, and eligible vehicles, is available at:
http://www.gm.com/shop/currentoffers/." Not
yet it isn't. So that's number six on our list of reasons why this sale is dumber than toast. Counting down . . .
Editorial: GM Zombie Watch 9: GM Announces “Buy and Say Goodbye” Sale
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Posted in Editorials | General Motors Zombie Watch | 40 comments
By Paul Niedermeyer
June 30, 2009
Curbside Classics takes you back to 1971 for a virtual comparison test of six small cars, based on (and partly borrowed) from a C/D test. Please don't spoil the outcome, if you know it (the suspense has been building for over 30 years).
Was a car ever born with the odds so stacked against it? Its name is defined as "a small gnome held to be responsible for malfunction of equipment". Its design was penned on an air-sickness bag during a (bumpy?) flight. It carries almost 60% of its weight over the front wheels despite being RWD. Its steering has six turns lock to lock. And it looks exactly like what it is: a perfectly normal-looking sedan that had its rear end amputated by a cleaver. The Gremlin would have had to create a pretty major malfunction in my PC (and C/D's typewriters) for it not to end dead last.
Curbside Classic: 1971 Small Cars Comparison: Number 6—AMC Gremlin
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Posted in Curbside Classics | Editorials | 56 comments
By Jim Sutherland
June 30, 2009
In general, today's cars don't put us in mortal peril (by themselves) or strand us miles from home. They don't require any special driving or mechanical skills. As always, progress has come at a cost: it's eliminated the character-building experiences that helped guys of my g-g-g-generation become "car guys." Yup, I come from a time without cell phones, G.P.S. navigation, OnStar, and vehicles that can breeze through 100,000 miles with little to no fear of meltdown. A time when cars offered a shorter shelf but more human - machine interaction. When car guys could look under the hood, see a problem and correct it. On the spot. I'm not bragging, so don't put me down. Not yet, anyway.
Editorial: The Importance of Being Stranded
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Posted in Editorials | Nostalgia | 45 comments
By Jehovah Johnson
June 29, 2009
The most definitive difference between Chrysler’s swift conversion from Old to New Chrysler and the General’s "reinvention": the element of surprise. Or lack thereof. The General's list of creditors on GM’s court filing (dealers, parts manufactures, advertising media, bondholders, et al.) are all painfully aware of what happens when "The Fix" is in. They now know what it means when The President of the United States promises the public that “we will get this done in a swift and expeditious manner." Forewarned is forearmed. And there's another crucial difference between Fiatsler's transformation and the plans for Government Motors: the GM dealer body is a wealthier, more connected group of businessmen than the Chrysler dealer body. In other words, "Old" GM may not go so quietly into that good night.
Editorial: GM Chapter 7?
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Posted in Editorials | Industry | 20 comments
By Bertel Schmitt
June 28, 2009
You know what I loved most about car advertising? There was never a shortage of money to play with. I'm no longer tracking these things, but in 2007, GM spent $3 billion on what we call "measured media" alone. Measured media is defined as television, print, and outdoor advertising. The unmeasured expenses, what's called "below the line," in the vernacular, are usually just as huge, maybe bigger. Above and below the line, GM must have spent the GDP of Mongolia on advertising.
Volkswagen's budget resembled the GDP of a much smaller country, but I thoroughly enjoyed helping them to put it to good use. Sometimes, the money was thoroughly wasted. This was one of these times . . .
Editorial: Autobiography of BS ©: How I Nearly Blew the Audi 80 Launch
editorial continued »
Posted in Autobiography Of BS | Editorials | 26 comments
By Bertel Schmitt
June 28, 2009
A week ago, we predicted that Volkswagen, buoyed by stellar numbers,
would soon swat nuisance Wiedeking once and for all. It didn't take long. Ferdinand Piech, chairman of the supervisory board of Volkswagen and co-owner of Porsche, pulled out a big gun and put it to the head of Wendelin Wiedeking, CEO of Porsche (and theoretically Piech's employee). Piech said (we are paraphrasing in the interest of brevity): "Say uncle by Monday. Or you're dead." Nice family.
Editorial: Volkswagen’s Piech Blackmails Porsche’s Wiedeking: Deal by Monday or Die
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Posted in Editorials | Industry | 21 comments
By Daniel J. Stern
June 27, 2009
What color should rear turn signals be? Last Autumn, NHTSA released
tentative findings that amber ("yellow") rear turn signals are up to 28 percent more effective than red ones, depending on the type of crash. Now they've released
preliminary findings that vehicles with amber rear indicators are overall 5.3 percent less likely to be hit from behind than otherwise-identical vehicles with red ones. The benefit compares, says the report, to the enduring 4.3 percent crash avoidance benefit of the center 3rd brake light (CHMSL) mandated in 1986. This tippytoeing through the tulips with tentative and preliminary findings seems more than a little precious. Amber rear signals are required in Europe, the UK, Australia, Japan, China, and virtually the entire rest of the industrialized world outside North America; red ones have been banned for thirty-five to fifty years.
The Truth About Turn Signals
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Posted in Editorials | Safety | 75 comments
By Robert Farago
June 25, 2009
Communist witch hunters called Americans who supported the battle against Francisco Franco before World War II "premature anti-fascists." In other words, they were right for the wrong reasons. There's a lot of that going around these days. For example, Chrysler and GM's claim that they need to cull dealers is spot on. But trimming overheads, as the automakers claim, ain't it. [see: number three after the jump]. By the same token, it's also true that New GM is doomed to failure. But not for the seven reasons that
Seeking Alpha sets forth. Still, Jason Mathew's analysis is worth a closer look . . .
Editorial: General Motors Zombie Watch 8: “7 Reasons Why The New GM Might File for Bankruptcy”
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Posted in Editorials | General Motors Zombie Watch | 22 comments
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