Automotive News Europe [sub] spotted a new trend in Tokyo: Daredevil CEOs:

“On Nov. 27, Toyota boss Akio Toyoda wowed a crowd of spectators in Japan by racing through a lineup of Lexus LFA supercars in the new Toyota 86 sporty coupe. One day later, Honda CEO Takanobu Ito hopped on a Honda MotoGP racing motorcycle and blasted around the company’s Twin Ring Motegi racetrack.”

Actually, the industry rag should know that Akio Toyoda is an active racer, under the nome de plume “Morizou,” he races for Team Gazoo. He is also a feared testdriver.

Automotive News’ Tokyo correspondent Hans Greimel even scored a ride-along with Toyoda.

But what about Carlos Ghosn? We know that he privately drives a GT-R to go fast, and a Leaf to go shopping. So will there be any stunts from him? Automotive News Europe doesn’t know either:

 “No word yet on whether Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn plans to jump 10 buses in a Leaf, but don’t rule it out before the show wraps up Dec. 11.”

Fat chance. Ghosn left Tokyo and Yokohama right after the press days. Jump officially ruled out. When Ghosn wants to fly, he simply flaps his wings.

Jim Farley

On seeing Ford’s historic Highland Park plant. (He hadn’t previously viscerally connected with the domestic industry’s decline:)

“What a fucking mess.”

After moving to Ford and hearing a proposal for an ad campaign:

“What should we say? We’re getting close to Toyota? People don’t believe that shit.”

After the bailouts:

“Fuck GM. I hate them and their company and what they stand for. And I hate the way they’re succeeding. Ford is back because people trust us.”

Steve Feinberg

On his timing with Chrysler:

“We really fucked that up.”

Mark Fields

“Every assignment the [Ford] company gave me was a shitty situation that had to be fixed.”

On returning to take charge of North America, to his executives:

“This has the potential to be a fucking train wreck.”

Bill Ford

After someone suggested he come to the office less often, to give Mulally more space:

“That shit will happen when my name is not on the building.”

Steve Harris

On the lack of a unified manufacturer strategy in Washington:

“This is a shitty game plan.”

Bob Lutz

In a high-level GM strategy session post-Katrina:

“Up until six fucking months ago, people were clamoring for more and more SUVs and we couldn’t even keep up with demand!”

To Rick Wagoner on a potential GM-Chrysler merger:

“Rick, we can pick up all their assets but not the fixed costs. Shit, the first-year synergies alone are like $7 billion.”

On GM’s overly complicated program for grading all of its executives:

“Holy shit…these PMPs are not worth the fucking paper they are written on.”

On GM’s meetings, that Wagoner thrived on:

“arcane, sequential, orderly bullshit.”

On the government task force:

“[They assumed] everything was fucked up. Then the big surprise was how good our manufacturing, design, and engineering really was.”

Sergio Marchionne

First words on meeting Chrysler exec Tom LaSorda:

“I know who the fuck you are. Sit down. Let’s eat.”

On Chrysler:

“You have to be brutally honest with yourself. There’s nothing worse than bullshitting yourself into oblivion.”

To the UAW, during negotiations:

“Do you think I’m fucking stupid? We need to come up with a competitive wage rate and structure here.”

Jim Press

After cattle used to introduce the new Ram pickup started humping each other:

“This is fucking unbelievable. Why in the hell did we do that?”

Jason Vines

On learning that Daimler might sell Chrysler:

“What the fuck?”

On learning that Nardelli wanted to cut his Detroit auto show budget:

“You know what? Go fuck yourself. I’m going to quit. You [Deborah Meyer, marketing exec] and these lackeys like you are what’s wrong with this industry.”

Rick Wagoner

To the press at GM’s Christmas party:

“What do you expect me to say? That I don’t give a shit about [the workers]? That I feel like shit about closing plants? We don’t do this stuff because we like it. You want me to feel bad about it? Well, I feel bad.”

Jerry York

To Kirk Kerkorian, on Ford:

“They are so fucking far ahead of [GM] it’s not funny.”

On GM’s ever-smaller projected savings from an alliance with Renault-Nissan,

“What the fuck is the real number?”

Dieter Zetsche

On Bill Ford:

“He kept telling me how shitty his management team was. I am thinking, why would I want to take the job with this shitty management team?”

During a Chrysler internal product review:

“How shitty this quality is! How can we do work like this?”

After the UAW refuses to make concessions:

“I do not fucking believe this! What do we have to do to get what GM and Ford got? Lose $10 billion?”

After selling Chrysler:

“Of course I feel like shit. But I knew it was the only decision I could make [because of the UAW’s refusal].”

Almost without exception—that exception being ever-upbeat boy scout / Ford CEO Alan Mulally (who actually hugs Bill Ford when they first meet)—executives apparently talk like sailors. Okay, even Mulally. After giving a speech:

“You couldn’t tell that I was scared shitless?”

So it appears that Ed’s proposed movie would get slapped with an R rating if it kept the dialogue real.

Why the lack of creativity? Do auto executives know no expletives other than “fuck,” “shit,” and their most common derivations? Perhaps it’s the lack of name-calling. There are no assholes, bitches, cocks, or dicks (or worse) in the book. The best that Jim Press can work up after his new boss fires him:

“Sergio is truly from hell.”

Perhaps auto executives have all learned to hate the game not the playas?

The larger question: do these words mean anything special anymore? Or in 2011 would it be more noteworthy (and indicative of bowdlerization by the author) if the book’s quotations did not frequently include such words? Does their inclusion do anything more than provide evidence that the quotations are authentic?

A TTAC tipster sent us a Teknikens Värld  interview with Saab’s long-suffering would-be rescuer, Victor Muller, in which the eternal Saabtimist seems ready to admit defeat. In essence, he admits that GM is unlikely to ever approve a plan involving Chinese firms, that the Chinese firms are throwing “money into a black hole” and that all the previous plans are off the table. Of course, Muller does seem to think that some kind of rescue may yet be possible, but he admits

If I doze off Saab would disappear in an instant

If Muller is losing faith, and doesn’t even have a hairbrained scenario to hype, it seems that the end may well be near. But then, the whole rescue of Saab is beginning to be eclipsed by questions about Muller’s erstwhile partner, Vladimir Antonov, who was recently bailed out of British jail, where he was being held on charges of embezzlement and document forgery. But first, to the Muller interview…

The following is an interview titled “Muller Does Not Believe In Th Chinese”:

Victor Muller doubts that GM will ever accept a Chinese Saab business. According to him, Youngman, Pang Da and Guy Lofalk sabotaged the whole business when they went from the original plan. It says Muller in an exclusive interview with the Teknikens Värld.

On the way home from Britain hits Teknikens Värld Erik Gustafsson, an unusually outspoken Victor Muller. The gate at Heathrow Airport, the plane to Stockholm, he says frank about Saab’s situation.

- This is how it goes when you put his partner in the back, says Muller continues:

- The deal was long time and the arrangement with a Chinese shareholding of 54 per cent was approved. Then began administrator Guy Lofalk run government affairs, to persuade the Chinese to a 100-percent ownership stake and GM slammed on the brakes.

Late yesterday evening, Swedish time, had GM in Detroit, a further meeting on Saab’s future, but Victor Muller strongly doubt one acceptance.

- I understand GM fully, it is clear that they do not want to jeopardize its market in China. But right now I understand the other side is not why the Chinese continue to pump money into the company. As the situation is, it just means to put money into a black hole, without getting anything back. The relationship with GM is so damaged that they (Youngman and Pang Da) can not even go back to the original plan.

While he acknowledges that the situation is tough, he means that there is a solution. He can not tell you how it looks, but he promises to fight till the end.

- If I doze off Saab would disappear in an instant

Muller may still be fighting for Saab’s future, but as prosecutors unwind the Vladimir Antonov situation, Muller could soon be forced out of the process. After all, Muller is said to have a personal debt to Antonov of upwards of €100m, and it seems highly likely that Antonov was using Muller to launder funds embezzled from his Baltic banks. Antonov ‘s sports business has been placed into bankruptcy, and he has stepped down as Chairman of the British soccer team Portsmouth, reports ESPN. And Latvian officials seem to be clear on the Saab connection as well, as the Moscow Times reports

Latvian officials on Wednesday said about 100 million lats ($200 million) was stripped out of Latvyas Kraybank to fund Antonov’s investment projects, including the ill-fated Saab bid.

And the investigation is ongoing, as BBC reports that

[Lithuanian prosecutors] said they were investigating everything that might have links to criminal offences.

They added they would be taking “all the necessary steps” to freeze assets belonging to Mr Antonov and Mr Baranauskas.

It seems inevitable that this investigation will eventually catch up to Muller, at which point he’ll have to plead ignorance of Antonov’s alleged crimes. And even if Muller does escape prosecution, his ability to organize a deal to save Saab will be fundamentally compromised by his association with Antonov. And as Muller himself says,

If I doze off Saab would disappear in an instant

The countdown continues…

From the first part of this clip from Bob Lutz and Elon Musk’s recent appearance on the Charlie Rose, in which the two discuss “The CO2 Thing,” you might guess that the two are at odds with each other. After all, Bob’s the gruff, “Global Warming is Bullshit” type and Elon is the sensitive, change-the-world type. But by the end of this brief clip, the two industry mavericks are falling all over themselves with mutual admiration. But then, both have learned from the other (however indirectly) over the past few years: Lutz’s legacy of the Volt was in part motivated by Musk’s endeavor, and Musk himself has a lot more respect for Detroit’s “old school” manufacturing know-how now that his firm is actually trying to build its own cars in volume. It’s a study in contrasts watching these two iconoclasts from such separate worlds going at it… and yet you get the distinct impression that these two guys aren’t quite as different as you might think.

Watch the complete Musk-Lutz interview here.

Watch Lutz’s one-on-one interview here.

A week ago the president of OICA, Patrick Blain, ruffled some feathers on this side of the Atlantic by laying into the US auto industry with such bon mots as

If the American manufacturers had gone years ago to the government and said, ‘Listen, we have a huge project’ – electric cars, for instance, the government could at least have studied it. But they never tried.

Take the Chevrolet Volt (extended-range electric vehicle launched in 2010). Without government help, at least in the developmental stages in which certain economies of scale must be reached, it is too expensive. It’s just another example of the American industry being too late. They have missed many trends.

Because the sign of an innovative automaker is entanglement with the government… just ask Blain’s compatriots (and former colleagues) at Renault! Oh, and incidentally, Detroit did approach the government for help developing green cars back in the 1990s and managed to waste a cool billion dollars building three prototypes (see: PNGV). But there I go taking Blain at his word… when he’s already walking back his nonsensical comments.

Wards Auto was kind enough to give Monsieur Blain the opportunity to mitigate his unnecessarily inflammatory comments. Unsurprisingly, however, Blain’s walk-back is just as incomprehensible as his initial comments:

In a new auto world, with so many different power technologies (electric, hybrid, classical) things are getting more and more complex, and we must understand each auto world.

Every government, every nation has its own automotive culture. What I wanted to highlight is that manufacturers, with different technologies, gas prices, taxes, government incentives are all reducing, in a drastic way, (carbon-dioxide) emissions. That is definitely not what I explained. Some started sooner, some later, but they drive all in the same direction.

Apparently Blain’s volte-face came after the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which represents American-based automakers, entered “discussions” with Blain. Apparently it wasn’t hard to convince Blain that he was talking nonsense, but it seems to have been much more difficult to get him to actually start making sense. Meanwhile, Americans are now free to continue ignoring OICA as they have for decades.

The German business paper Handelsblatt reports that Mercedes-Benz USA CEO Ernst Lieb, a 36-year Daimler veteran, has been fired for “serious and repeated” violations of the company’s internal finance compliance rules. Per the Dow Jones [via FoxBusiness] translation,

Lieb is said to have remodeled his house in New York at the expense of Daimler and settled personal golf club contributions through the company, the executive is reported as saying.

Lieb has also been accused of providing favors at the company’s expense, such as renting cars in exchange for flight upgrades

In the words of one “longtime Daimler executive,”

Ernst was warned, but he has done it again

According to Handelsblatt, internal whistleblowers are likely responsible for Lieb’s firing, as Daimler’s new “zero tolerance” policy on such misconduct outweighed the loyalty felt for such a long-standing executive. But there will be consequences from Lieb’s firing, as the paper notes that Lieb had done much to repair shattered relations with Mercedes’ US dealers (sure enough, a planned dealer meeting has been canceled). But Daimler had to stand firm: six years ago, a similar issue arose when a German sales manager was found to have used company funds to renovate his house in Majorca. Now, at least, there’s no question as to where Daimler stands on the conduct of even its top executives.

Having had an unexpectedly action-packed couple of years as Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood  has had enough. The Chicago Tribune reports that

the Illinoisan who heads the U.S. Department of Transportation, said today that he is staying in that job for one term only and will not run for public office again.

And no wonder. LaHood has created controversy over his vehicle-tracking proposal, his Toyota comments, his agency’s database quality problems and private information-leaking, his quixotic “War On Distracted Driving” proposals and hypocrisies, weak grasp of safety data, endorsement of toll roads and more. No wonder the man wants out of government… but what comes next for LaHood?

Per the Trib,

He said he expected there will be some “wonderful opportunities” for him in the private sector when he leaves government.

Ah yes. For the bureaucrat’s true reward lies not in government, but in the revolving door to K Street. But wait, isn’t this the guy who once said

I think we should have the highest standard possible which would prohibit NHTSA employees from working for car manufacturers for a period of time

?

Just thought we should put that out there. Meanwhile, we’re gonna miss you Ray, you crazy, magnificent bastard!

Remember the video of Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn testing the quality of the new Hyundai i30? Thanks to Autobild, we’ve found a companion video from the Frankfurt Show, in which Winterkorn, along with VW Chairman Ferdinand Piech, gives the once-over to the new European-market Honda Civic. According to Autobild, Piech kept his nickname “Fugen-Ferdi” (Gap-Ferdi) relevant by checking the new Civic’s panel gaps. And, in contrast to the Hyundai video, the intelligible portions of Winterkorn’s commentary were less than entirely complimentary. The German magazine reports

A member of the VW entourage says that “(Honda) has had good role models.” But the big boss played down the praise for VW with a smile, and responded generously “they were once a role model for us.”

Note the use of the past tense, then contrast with Winterkorn’s reaction to the Hyundai. In just two videos you can see the balance of automotive power shifting…

After all, the plant had been there since 1975. What’s new? We soon should find out: Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn went on a full frontal attack against the high yen, threatened several times that Nissan and most of the Japanese industry would pack up and leave, and delivered an ultimatum: “If six months down the road we are still in this situation, then this will provoke a rethinking of our industrial strategy.”

The Kyushu plant was the perfect venue: It sits halfway between Yokohama and Shanghai. South Korea, the land of the cheap Won, is some 150 miles across the water.

The Nissan plant struts into the water like a huge ship that is ready to sail. Nearly half of Nissan’s Japanese production rolls off the lines in the Kyushu plant, and the lion’s share rolls right into huge car carriers, docked at Nissan’s private deep-water port. 57.4 percent sailed across the Pacific last year , and on to North America.

Soon, this port will see incoming traffic: As a first step to ward off high yen denominated costs, Nissan will increasingly import parts and components from South Korea and China.

Carlos Ghosn tried his best to make this choice palatable for local dignitaries and a sometimes fiercely nationalistic press:

“Importing from China does not automatically mean that we stop buying from our Japanese suppliers. Many Japanese companies have plants in China. What is better than Japanese supplier? It is Japanese suppliers with the benefit of competitive production.”

A few sentences later, it was no longer that clear-cut:

“We will also use our Japanese suppliers in China – or Chinese suppliers, and we will use Japanese or Korean suppliers from South Korea.”

In this case, the high yen makes the imported parts cheaper. But cheaper parts are not enough to withstand the “strong headwinds” that Ghosn mentions again and again as he winds up to the real topic of the day: the obscenely high yen.

“This exchange rate is abnormal.”

Ghosn says this again and again, as if we aren’t talking about foreign exchange, but something that belongs on a list of sex offenders.

“Two months ago, we were fighting the yen at 90, and we were asking for a more reasonable rate. Instead of the rate becoming more reasonable, then yen went to 85 against the dollar, and then 80, and now 77. Common sense tells us what we are seeing today is abnormal.”

After saying several times that the rate is deviant, Ghosn signals what will happen if the currency won’t go where it belongs: In the past, he had committed that a million cars will be built in Japan. That is less than a quarter of what Nissan makes worldwide. But even that will change if the Yen won’t get cheaper:

“This exchange rate is abnormal. If I thought that the exchange rate would remain the way it is today, there would be a lot of decisions made at Nissan today that would be unfavorable to locating car production in Japan. I don’t think this is sustainable for the economy, I don’t think it is sustainable for Japan, I don’t think it is sustainable for the industry. I know how much we are struggling, and how much our competition is struggling, and I don’t think it is going to last. The only question is how long the pain is going to be endured. We are still in the mood of saying that it is going to correct. We are making investment decisions based on faith. But if the exchange rate will remain at this level for a very long time, a lot of decisions will be reversed. We stick with one million cars in Japan because we believe in common sense and we believe that at the end of the day nothing abnormal will remain abnormal, and long-term trends will prevail.”

Ghosn wants to see this change fast:

“Given the choice, we stay in Japan, This is our home, this is our base. If we go, then because we are forced out. If in six months down the road we are still in this situation, then this will provoke a rethinking of our industrial strategy. Personally, I don’t think this will be the case – but  I may be wrong.”

Toyota finds itself in a much more precarious situation. Toyota makes nearly half of its global production in Japan, and committed to 3 million units made at home. Spokespeople at Toyota had no fresh comments and referred to past statements by their executives.

At the August 2 financial results press conference in Tokyo, TMC’s Senior Managing Officer Takahiko Ijichi said that 76 yen is extremely difficult and might exceed the limit for domestic production. He had mentioned the importation of parts, but was wary of the quality of the product Toyota gets from suppliers.  At the May 11 full year financial results conference, TMC’s CFO Ozawa said that Toyota could break even with 6.6 million units at 85 yen to the dollar.

Today, a dollar bought 76.5 yen, far away from what Toyota needs to make a profit, and far away from what Ghosn thinks is normal. Let’s pray it will change soon.

Once upon a time, this stuff was easy. When Jean Jennings needed a little extra pocket change all she had to do was… make an ad. Like this one, for the Silverado. Or this one, for Jeep (which I swear was still visible less than a year ago). Nowadays, however, you’ve got to be a little more careful about how you go about lending your “editorial credibility” to one of the brands you’re supposed to be covering rather than shilling for. So instead of the straight-up “Hi, I’m Jean Jennings, Editor-in-Chief of Automobile Magazine, and here’s why I love Chevy’s Silverado” pimpatorial of the past, you’ve got to layer on the irony, load up on non-car-related distractions (I’ve got it… a puppet!) and generally avoid the personal testimonial format as much as possible.

Yes, the pimpatorial game is becoming more subtle… another example: Motor Trend boss Angus Mackenzie’s Subaru-funded adventure of personal discovery that happened to be featured in both his magazine and Subaru’s Drive Magazine. But when it comes to crossing the line between editorial and advertising, isn’t more subtlety a bad thing? If the editor of a buff book is going to shill for a product or brand, wouldn’t you rather they just come out and do it so you can get on with ignoring conclusions to comparison tests like

Ford has unabashedly pandered to those of us who care about driving by designing an efficient, comfortable mainstream car that absolutely nails the finer points of steering feel, suspension tuning, and overall driver involvement. Our vote goes to the Focus.

? Ford has also “unabashedly pandered” to your E-I-C and her appreciation for fat checks… and even if your conclusions are correct, they should be ignored. I’m generally a fan of subtlety, but to paraphrase Homer Simpson, I like my beer cold, my meat red, and my sell-outs shameless.

Volkswagen will almost certainly finish the year as the second-largest automaker by volume… and if it wants to take the top spot, it will do so on sales, not acquisitions. Having gobbled an extraordinary number of acquisitions over the past several decades, including Bentley, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Italdesign and Karmann, VW’s monstrous appetite appears to be waning. And no wonder: the latest mouthful, a partnership with Suzuki, has gone sour and recent lustful glances at Alfa have drawn sassy rebukes from Fiat’s Sergio Marchionne. Accordingly, VW’s Chairman Ferdinand Piech tells Bloomberg [via AN [sub]] that no more acquisitions are planned and that

We’re big enough

Of course, this is also coming from the company that’s been struggling to swallow Porsche for the last several years. Once that deal is complete, we’ll check back on Herr Piech’s appetite. Because in an industry built on scale, you never know when hunger will strike…

After only 18 months on the job (and he did a good job) Carl-Peter Forster resigned his job as group CEO and managing director of  Tata Motors. In a press release, Tata cites “unavoidable personal circumstances”. The industry is scratching their combined heads: What are those reasons? Are they real, or the usual BS?

Tata should be pleased with Forster’s performance. During his watch, Tata’s profit shot up. In the fiscal year that ended 2011, Tata’s profits increased 300 percent, reports Automobilwoche [sub]. Jaguar and Land Rover are making money again. The Nano is still a basket case, but it was inherited by Forster. A Foster-child as opposed to a Forster-child.

Forster’s own statement does not bring more clarity:

“I deeply regret that my personal circumstances make it difficult for me to continue to perform the challenging duties of managing the thriving global activities of the Tata Motors Group with its main activities in India and the UK and increasingly in additional overseas markets.”

Son of a German diplomat, Forster was born in London, and raised in Athens and Bonn. After a successful career at BMW, Forster was appointed Chairman and Managing Director of Opel in April 2001. In June 2004, he became President of GM Europe. Forster did not agree with GM’s decision to not sell Opel to Magna and resigned 3 days after the announcement. 3 months later, he emerged as the CEO of Tata.

Forster will stay on as a non-executive director and board member of  Tata.

If you know how to successfully run a large car company, send your resume to Tata. Not only are they looking for a replacement of Forster, the hunt is still on for s successor of Chairman Ratan Tata who will soon turn 75.

Today’s resignation of Chrysler’s chairman and two other government-assigned directors was hardly a surprise, as now-Chairman and CEO Sergio Marchionne had signaled that changes were coming in the wake of Chrysler’s “payback” of government loans. In fact, Rebecca Lindland of IHS Automotive predicted that chairman Robert Kidder, as well as the other two departing directors would be the ones leaving, telling the Freep

Three of the five Chrysler board members who are government appointees — Kidder, Stuart Scott and George Gosbee — are members of investment advisory firms.

“Now, you kind of need to have people that have distinctive automotive industry experience verses financial expertise,” Lindland said.

But Lindland was only half-right. She picked the departing directors perfectly, but Marchionne didn’t replace them with even a hint of “distinctive automotive industry experience.” But not being a dyed-in-the-wool “automotive guy” himself, he apparently had some slightly different qualifications in mind…

The two new board members, Léo W. Houle and John B. Lanaway both come from communications firms (Bell Canada and McCann Erickson respectively), and they’re both Canadians… and there isn’t a day of automotive experience on either of the press-release-provided bios. And yet both show existing ties to Fiat Industrial, namely:

In 2006, Houle was elected a director of CNH, a world leader in the agricultural and construction equipment businesses that is a majority-owned subsidiary of Fiat Industrial S.p.A.

In 2006, Lanaway was elected a director of CNH, a world leader in the agricultural and construction equipment businesses that is a majority-owned subsidiary of Fiat Industrial S.p.A.

And that’s not all… these are guys Sergio trusts personally. Lanaway had been working at Deloitte and Touche for 12 years, working his way up to Client Services Manager, when a young (31) Sergio Marchionne showed up there in 1983 and began work as an accountant. Two years later, both men jumped to packaging firm Lawson Mardon Group, where Lanaway was VP for Financial Reporting and Control, and Marchionne was his Group Controller. Houle joined them in 1987, as Group VP for Human Resources, and within two years Lanaway had become Group VP and CFO. At that point (1989), Marchionne left Lawson Mardon for brief EVP and CFO stints at Glenex and Ackland, but was back at “The Lawson Group” as CFO by 1992. Two years later, Algroup bought Lawson, giving Houle and Marchionne a new ladder to climb up. Though Lanaway left for a tour of corporate America that included stints at several tech firms before landing at Ogilvy and then McCann, Houle became Algroup’s HR honcho, and Marchionne’s official resume from the 1994-2000 period reads

• 1994, Various positions of increasing responsibility until becoming Chief Executive Officer, Algroup

When the biopharmaceutical arm, known as Lonza Group was split off from the rest of the Group, Marchionne took it as his own while also running the inspection firm SGS. In 2003, Marchionne was elected to Fiat’s board, in 2004 he became CEO of Fiat SpA and in 2005 he became CEO of Fiat Group Automobiles. In 2006 he got the band back together by electing both Houle and Lanaway to the board of the Fiat subsidiary CNH, which he had just been named Chairman of.

You might be asking yourself what this all adds up to, and if you’ve been waiting for some dastardly theory or sinister implication, you’re going to be disappointed. Clearly Marchionne trusts these two men whom he worked with at a definitive stage of his career, both of whom he likely considers mentors as well as allies. What’s most interesting is that trust was clearly the overriding motivation for Marchionne’s decision. After all, Lindland picked exactly who would be leaving the board, but she got the reasons all wrong. Marchionne didn’t want the money men out or even the government out per se (two government appointees remain on the board)… he wanted his people in. And that’s just what he got. Now we get to find out if building an empire on personal trust will be as good for Chrysler as it is for Marchionne.

Reuters is widely considered the best in the business when it comes to the auto beat. They were that before Paul Ingrassia joined Reuters as Deputy Editor-in-Chief. That someone who won the Pulitzer-prize for his coverage of the turmoil at GM took the helm at Reuters only made their coverage better. Amongst the Tokyo auto press corps, Chang-Ran Kim of Reuters reigns supreme.

However, even the best journalists can become a bit territorial, and an aging TTAC blogger who air-drops into Tokyo every other month can become an irritant. After a little back and forth ribbing, we decided: “Let’s settle this like, well, persons.” And a grudge match was arranged:

Ran Kim of Reuters races BS of TTAC. Full race coverage after the jump ….

Immediate question: Race with what? The first idea was to use LFAs. Lexus provided a selection, 2 in black, 2 in white (probably to keep some quota).

Then we asked what would happen if something should happen to the $375,000 car. “No problem,” we were told. “Just buy a new one.” Did I mention that manufacturer largesse is very limited in Japan?

Then someone at Toyota said: “Why not go-karts?”

Great idea! Gazoo Racing volunteered to do race support and to provide the split second timing.

The grudge match promised world-wide attention, so Gazoo took the opportunity to show off some cars. This is the boss’s LFA in “24 hours Nürburgring” livery. He can afford it. If it breaks, they just build a new one.

A nice hot hatch concept. Not for sale.

The sports hybrid concept was ignored by Ran. Even the fake eyelashes could not impress. Ran focused on her race.

Driver’s meeting. Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco moonlights as Chief Referee and explains the course. He also shows the current course record: 13:644 seconds, achieved by a professional Gazoo driver.

This is the coveted trophy the winner of the grudge match will take home: A genuine Team Gazoo wristband! Akio Toyoda has one. The winner of the race will have one as well.

Time to suit up. Ran Kim gets a helmet …

… and race gloves.

BS is likewise outfitted. What did they say about a big head?

Pre-race briefing. Ran gets instructions from a Gazoo race driver.

Ran receives advice I did not get: “You want to win against that German guy? Attitude is everything!”

And Team Reuters is off!

Ran rearranges the track barriers a bit.

And she crosses the finish line at 13:480 seconds.

My time? 16:981. Ran brings home another win for Team Reuters. And did you notice that she even did beat Team Gazoo by a few fractions of a second?

The original car czar is headed back at General Motors, as the company announced today that it was officially retaining former Vice Chairman Bob Lutz as a Senior Advisor. The General’s press release notes

Lutz will be available to executives on a part-time consultancy basis effective immediately. He brings a wealth of experience built over the course of more than 40 years in the industry, including two stints at GM. He has also been a senior executive at Ford, Chrysler, BMW and was CEO of Exide Batteries.

Lutz has been providing advice to GM executives informally since retiring from the company in 2010.

I spent nearly three hours with Lutz last week, and he never mentioned a possible return to GM. He did, however, discuss his entire career, his experiences at Chrysler and GM, his product development philosophy and much, much more. You can read all about it starting on Tuesday, when we begin to publish content based on our interview.

The easy answer: desperation. More literally though, all three have recently employed the talents of hip hop producer Swizz Beatz in more or less desperate attempts to recapture some much-needed cool. Unfortunately for Lotus, the most recent employer of Mr Beatz, they’re not only getting “sloppy thirds,” but they have to actually share promotional space with Reebok, of all brands. So why did Lotus, a brand with loads of heritage and under-the-radar cool, hire a guy to pass along such brilliant advice as “the key is to infiltrate the market in a cool way” and “for a premium sportscar, they want the flash”? According to Lotus’s release (with video)

1. Like Group Lotus , he means business: He’s a risk taker with considerable credentials including music producer, rapper, designer AND painter.

2. Like our cars, he’s multi award winning: This year he shared a Grammy Award with Jay-Z.

3. Like Group Lotus he keeps good company: This man regularly works with the likes of Bono, Kanye West, Beyoncé and Alicia Keys.

Even if you think Lotus should avoid the “enthusiast trap,” this is a bad call. Having already pimped for Aston-Martin, Swizz’s automotive-sector cool has been spread thin… and does Lotus really want to be associated with his other comeback client, Reebok? The answer: no, but it’s already too late. Lotus was already putting the cool cart before the new product horse, and hiring a prominent and over-booked shill certainly won’t help.

With the luxury market defying sluggish economic conditions, Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche doesn’t want the upstarts at BMW and Audi to slip past it… which they are. Six months through 2011, the Mercedes brand found itself in third place among the German global luxury brands, at 610,531 units. A surging BMW captured 689,861 sales in the half, while Audi took second with 652,970. This, for Zetsche, is an unthinkable state of affairs.  In a letter to his employees, excerpted by Automotive News Europe [sub], Zetsche makes it clear that leadership in the luxury space is a Daimler birthright.

Some of our competitors are now growing faster and more profitably than we are. Granted, those are just snapshots in time and should not be overestimated. After all, many of our best new products are yet to come… In the long run we can’t be content to be in a “solid second” or even “third” place: We are Daimler – we should be far ahead of the pack! And if that requires something that we don’t currently have, then we’ll identify and develop it.

Enjoy your summer and refill your tanks. Because in the second half of this year we’re going to continue to play some hard offense!

In an extended interview with Fareed Zakaria this weekend, GM CEO Dan Akerson repudiated a lot of GM’s previous optimism about hydrogen fuel cell cars, saying

We’re looking at hydrogen fuel cells, which have no carbon emissions, zero. They’re very expensive now, but we’ve, just in the last two years, reduced the price of that technology by $100,000. The car is still too expensive and probably won’t be practical until the 2020-plus period, I don’t know. And then there’s the issue of infrastructure

The DetN points out that GM had previously said that it would have anywhere from 1,000 to “hundreds of thousands” of fuel cell cars on the road by 2010, and most recently said (in 2009) that the technology would be “commercialized” by 2015 and “cost-competitive” by 2020. So, if hydrogen is moving to the back burner, what’s moving up? Akerson revealed that

soon we’ll be introducing “bi-fuel” engines which can burn both compressed natural gas and liquid gasoline.

We’ve seen GM take early steps towards bringing a natural gas-powered car to the road, but this is the first sign from a top executive that a dual-fuel car is a certainty in GM’s near future. By talking down hugely expensive hydrogen cars and talking up cheap natural gas powerplants, Akerson sends a strong message that GM’s green car efforts are moving in a more pragmatic direction. Hit the jump for part two of the interview, in which Akerson talks gas tax and green cars.

SvD.se reports that Paul Akerlund, Saab’s former IF Metall (one of Sweden’s largest trade unions) representative and now Trollhättan Municipal Council Chairman, has called for the resignation of Saab CEO Victor Muller, saying

I do not think Victor Muller is a good president. He is an owner and a contractor, but he has not sufficient knowledge about how to manage production and development

And Akerlund is no city government busybody, but a longtime company insider who has been influential in Saab’s post-GM life. Having shepherded Saab through the challenges of the past two years, this is another grim sign that Saab is about to succumb to the realities that have dominated TTAC’s Saab coverage for years now. A commentary in SvD, titled “Thank Muller for Painful Bankruptcy” sums up the somber mood in Sweden:

[Saab] has been on artificial respiration for nearly two years. It is down now, and from all indications we can only conclude that the whole process was a painfully protracted bankruptcy. And we have only one person to thank for it.

[UPDATE: Fiat press release outlining the complete new management structure added]

The awaited consolidation of Fiat and Chrysler operations is complete, reports Bloomberg, and CEO Sergio Marchionne is taking the North American job for himself. Joining Marchionne at the top of the company’s new regionally-based divisions, are Gianni Coda, former head of purchasing at Fiat and now the boss of European, African and Middle East operation; Cledorvino Belini, erstwhile head of Fiat in Brazil is now in charge of all of South America; Michael Manley, previously boss of the Jeep brand, will be leading the firm’s effort Asia. These four regional bosses will be part of a 22-member “group executive council” which will manage all of Fiat and Chrysler’s operations. The details of the council’s makeup still haven’t been released, but the big news is well encapsulated by a quote from Gianluca Spina, chairman of the business school at Polytechnic University of Milan.

Marchionne’s decision to keep the role of overseeing the business in North America shows that the center of gravity of the combined entity will be in the U.S… The integration process is going extremely fast, as is Marchionne’s style.

Given all the questions about the national character of the new Fiat-Chrysler, Marchionne’s personal emphasis on the US market is a heartening sign. Meanwhile, another point that Marchionne seems to deserve credit for is keeping his team intact. Where GM has been shuffling and reshuffling its management since the bailout, Marchionne seems to be keeping a steady hand on Fiat-Chrysler’s human resources situation. Which is all the more surprising for the other bit of management news coming out of Chrysler this week…

The AP [via BusinessWeek] reveals what may have been the most interesting tidbit from Chrysler’s Q2 financial results analyst call earlier this week: the revelation that Chrysler’s new freedom from government pay restrictions (a condition of the bailout) does not mean there are plans to alter compensation.

QUESTION: Will your executives get across-the-board raises when you put the new management team in place?

MARCHIONNE: “No. I think that … you’re assuming that once we’re out of jail, that we’re going to start distributing cash indiscriminately to return to the old ways of sin,” he said. “We’re not going to do that. Obviously we want to remain competitive, but I think the industry itself has learned how to be much more cautious and judicious. I think we tend to follow that trend.”

[UPDATE: Fiat press release, detailing the full management structure follows]

FIAT PRESS RELEASE
Fiat Announces Key Appointments

Fiat S.p.A. is pleased to announce significant organizational changes effective September 1, 2011. As a result of the acquisition of majority ownership of Chrysler Group and consistent with the objective of enhancing the operational integration of Fiat S.p.A. and Chrysler Group, Fiat S.p.A. is today announcing the formation of a Group Executive Council, similar to the one that managed Fiat S.p.A. until the demerger of the Fiat Industrial activities.

The Group Executive Council (GEC) is the highest executive decision making body within Fiat outside of its Board of Directors1. It is responsible for reviewing the operating performance of the businesses, setting performance targets, making key strategic decisions and investments for the Group and sharing best practices, including the development and deployment of key human resources.

The GEC will have 4 main groupings.

The first is composed of 4 Regional Operations Groups for car manufacturing and sales, plus Parts and Service (MOPAR), Automotive Components (mainly Magneti Marelli) and Systems and Castings (Teksid and Comau). Each will be the responsibility of a Chief Operating Officer (COO) who will drive the organization via a regional Management Team (subject of a separate announcement prior to September 1, 2011). The COO’s are accountable for Profit and Loss of their region/business, the management of regional resources, including manufacturing and commercial activities.

The COO’s appointed to the GEC are as follows:

NAFTA (including Chrysler): Sergio Marchionne

Europe, Africa and Middle East: Gianni Coda

Latin America: Cledorvino Belini

Asia: Michael Manley

Parts and Service (MOPAR): Pietro Gorlier

Components (Magneti Marelli): Eugenio Razelli

Teksid/Comau: Riccardo Tarantini

The second grouping is reflective of the Group’s focus and emphasis on its brands. Each of the global or potentially global brands is represented in the GEC, and their responsibility will be to improve and develop an appropriate brand portfolio and to assist in the development of adequate commercial and marketing strategies in each of the Group’s operating regions.

The Brand Heads appointed to the GEC are as follows:

Fiat: Olivier Francois

Commercial Vehicles: Lorenzo Sistino

Alfa/Abarth/Maserati: Harald Wester

Lancia/Chrysler: Saad Chehab

Jeep: Michael Manley

Dodge: Reid Bigland

They will be supported by a Chief Creative Officer, Olivier Francois.

The third group is composed of industrial process leaders, who will drive consistency and rigor across the operating regions, and optimize the capital allocation choices the Group will face in the years to come.

Chief Technology Officer: Harald Wester

Design: Lorenzo Ramaciotti

Manufacturing Technology and Coordination: Stefan Ketter

Group Purchasing: Vilmar Fistarol

Quality: Doug Betts

Powertrain Coordinator: Bob Lee

Product Portfolio Management: Mark Chernoby

The final group is composed of support / corporate functions.

Business Development: Alfredo Altavilla

Fiat Services & Holdings: Alessandro Baldi

Chief Financial Officer: Richard Palmer

Chief Human Resource Officer: Linda Knoll

The GEC will utilize Alessandro Baldi as the Executive Coordinator.

“We have now reached the right moment to step on the accelerator of the Fiat-Chrysler integration” said Sergio Marchionne, Chief Executive of Fiat and Chrysler. “These appointments are the result of an extensive process of evaluation of the technical and leadership skills of the individuals who have been appointed to the GEC. But equally important is the fact that they reflect the multi-cultural geographically diverse nature of our businesses. We recognize in these leaders the future of Fiat-Chrysler as an efficient, multi-national competitor in a global automotive marketplace. It is a privilege for me to have the opportunity to lead this group of people and see them grow, to watch them as they transform challenge into success and into faith in themselves and what they can achieve.”

when speaking with old friends at Ford and GM, the level of mutual distaste for each other is very high…it seems to be getting personal. Lots of egos involved, [which] increases potential for short-sighted decision-making

At the time, I was willing to chalk up this animosity to the usual industry hyper-competitiveness (or at least a return to form after the lockstep mutual support of the bailout era), but it seems I should have paid more attention to our source’s concerns. As it turns out, the bad feelings between Detroit’s cross-town rivals has apparently gotten worse…

Jalopnik reveals that NYT auto reporter Bill Vlasic’s forthcoming book highlights just how uncivil the Ford-GM rivalry has become:

What [Ford marketing boss] Jim Farley really wanted to do was kick the daylights out of General Motors. “I’m going to beat Chevrolet on the head with bat,” he said with a slightly wicked smile. “And I’m going to enjoy it.” There was a saying going around Ford: GM was like the kid who was born on third base and yells out, “Hey Ma, I hit a triple!” Farley and his fellow Ford executives and workers were ready to rumble.

…This was like the glory days again — Ford versus GM, let the better car company win. “We’re going to beat on them, and it’s going to be fun,” said Farley. “F—- GM. I hate them and their company and what they stand for. And I hate the way they’re succeeding.”

Now I understand why people are forever accusing TTAC of “hating” one car company or another… it seems that behind a thin veneer of professional courtesy, the auto industry nurtures a viciously competitive streak that crosses into hatred and contempt for competitors. What a pity it is that competition isn’t enough any more, and that executives have to “hate what their competitors stands for” to motivate themselves. Isn’t taking pride in your own products and achievements enough?

Every time Sergio Marchionne makes the headlines, I half expect him to announce that he is not merely a mild-mannered accountant with a fondness for frump, but a mighty superhero, born to rescue failing automakers and the American and Italian ways of life. Having scored a sizable stake a bankruptcy-rinsed Chrysler for no money down, Marchionne has been ruling his Italian and American empires with resolute authority… and 50 direct reports. But Automotive News [sub] isn’t reporting that Marchionne spends his spare time in tights and a cape fighting Russian bandits and Italian labor unions… the word is that Sergio Marchionne is ready to delegate some authority. According to AN’s sources, Marchionne’s plans includes three basic planks:

• Create four regions — Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia-Pacific — each with a regional boss.
• Require brand bosses, who are powerful in the current organization, to work closely with the new regional bosses.
• Establish a new layer of management, tentatively dubbed the steering committee, that would help run Fiat and Chrysler.

But is this new structure really going to end what AN terms “the one-man Sergio show,” a routine of 18-hour days and “catching catnaps on the plane as he flies constantly between Turin and Detroit”? Will it really “help overworked Chrysler executives catch their breath and adopt a saner work rhythm,” as AN puts it? That question remains to be answered…

In a move that’s symbolic of Fiat-Chrysler’s new regional flavor, Marchionne will announce the new 25-member steering committe when Fiat’s board meets in Belo Horizonte, Brazil next week. The only other details about the restructuring are as follows:

During the past 40 days, the workaholic CEO has been selecting the 25 executives who will run the two automakers. Characteristically, he is keeping his own counsel. He is talking with candidates about joining the steering committee.

Below Marchionne, Fiat and Chrysler now are largely run by brand bosses. The new plan would create four regions with a boss for each. Brand CEOs are tentatively scheduled to report to the regional bosses and not to Marchionne.

Marchionne would lead the 25-person steering committee. The four regional bosses would sit on the panel with heads of functions such as engineering, purchasing and sales.

The sources expect Marchionne to choose roughly an equal number of Chrysler and Fiat executives to sit on the steering committee. Executives of Fiat Group subsidiaries also may sit on the committee.

Executives who do not get a seat on the steering committee will continue to lead their functions in the Fiat and Chrysler organizations.

There’s actually one more bit that’s especially interesting:

The committee could take some operating pressure off Marchionne. But 50 executives, split about evenly between Chrysler and Fiat, would still report directly to him. The new structure would create many dual reports: Regional executives in, say, purchasing would report to their boss on the steering committee and to Marchionne.

The bulk of this AN piece is spent making it seem like Marchionne singlehandedly keeps Chrysler afloat, and that the impetus for reform is to take some stress off of him. But if he has the same number of reports and is merely adding in another layer of management along with the confusion of dual reports, it’s hard to see what this accomplishes in terms of either efficiency of management or reducing Sergio’s workload. Which leaves only one motivation for the change, namely succession (a motivation that is sure to nurture the inevitable dual report-sparked infighting). So maybe Marchionne is a superhero after all… only his superpower is the ability to add a level of management while not reducing his reports and getting the media to report it as his company growing independent of its supernatural benefactor. The real question that none of this answers is how does Marchionne pull of his rescues of Fiat and Chrysler if even he has failed to rescue himself from his 50 reports?

When Fiat and the US government collaborated to bail out and restructure Chrysler, many hailed the news as nothing less than the rescue of the American auto industry. Though Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne became CEO of the Auburn Hills-based automaker, he maintained much of its management corps on the strength of brief interviews, only relieving a few key members of the old guard. But the debate over whether the rapidly-aligning Fiat-Chrysler is more Fiat or Chrysler is going to be resolved “pretty quickly” according to Marchionne, as Bloomberg reports that a unified management structure is in the works.

Marchionne is working on management changes as he steps up the integration of the two companies. He plans to merge the carmakers to reduce costs and achieve a target of more than 100 billion euros ($140 billion) in combined revenue by 2014. The executive said in May that the timing of a merger hasn’t been decided yet, adding that a combination isn’t likely this year.

But just as there was furor in Italy when Marchionne suggested that the unified Fiat-Chrysler could be headquartered in Detroit, the unified management structure could be yet another source of controversy. It will, after all, be the most direct signal yet as to whether Fiat-Chrysler is an Italian firm with global operations, an Italian-American alliance or a truly global firm. For one thing, unified management should force Marchionne to commit to a single headquarters for the group, reviving a controversy he temporarily cooled by fatuously suggesting there be four Fiat-Chrysler “headquarters,” in Turin, Detroit, Brasil and “Asia.” Having masterfully finessed the PR messaging transition from “rescue of an American automaker” to “wholly owned subsidiary” thus far, a unified management could bring up a lot of unresolved issues. In short, it’s a branding challenge that makes the Chrysler-Lancia transformation look like child’s play…

OK, so Toyoda-san didn’t so much introduce the new Camry as introduce its headlight. The good news is that the headlight looks like progress. The bad news is that most Americans were probably a bit distracted by the video’s spare production values and Mr Toyoda’s somewhat awkward demeanor (to protect you from your own hypocrisy, commentary on Toyoda-san’s accent will be moderated… unless you can post it in Japanese). Net-net though, Toyota can’t help but come across as an earnestly nerdy lot (led, as they are, by the king of the auto otaku), which fits their brand image well. And for all the talk about styling being the prime mover for consumers, and the necessity of emotion in design, if this new Camry is simply a fresher take on its earnestly nerdy predecessor, Toyota will have accomplished its mission. I’m beginning to wonder if Detroit’s intense dislike of Toyota isn’t simply because it’s the biggest Japanese competitor, but because Toyota’s leadership culture is the unassuming, unglamorous opposite of Detroit’s flamboyant tradition.