Back when GM was going through its recent bankruptcy bailout-related unpleasantness, Toyota’s Yasuhiko Ichihashi told the AP that “Toyota was only hoping for an overall recovery for the U.S. auto industry, including GM.” Months later, then-Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe even suggested that “it’s not something we would bring up on our own, and we don’t know enough about the restructuring plan, [but] if some talk about supporting GM comes up, we would like to consider it earnestly.” Now that Toyota is in a spot of PR trouble over its unintended acceleration woes, you might expect that GM would show the same class and tact that Toyota did just months ago… but you’d be wrong.

BMW is playing some PR roulette at the DC Auto Show [via Autoblog Green] with a “study” ostensibly proving that people who lease an electric MINI are “delighted” with the car. As if self-selection weren’t already an issue in a study of people who voluntarily spend $850 per month on a small hatchback, the 57 respondents (out of 450 MINI E guinea pigs) were (you guessed it) self-selected. Why the University of California Davis allows its name to appear on this blatant PR fabrication is difficult to fathom. Especially considering the MINI E rollout was a disaster, the product was compromised, and there are plenty of MINI E critics out there.

Former Tesla PR man Daryl Siry’s Wired.com Autopia columns are always good for some interesting insights on the EV world… as long as you take them with the grain of salt that Siry’s status as “advisor” to EV startup Coda Automotive demands. This week Siry has it in for the mass-market EV frontrunner, the Nissan Leaf, accusing its makers of “cutting corners” and “overpromising” range specs. According to Siry:

First, Nissan overpromised on the realistic range by consistently quoting a number tied to the most optimistic benchmark, the LA4 cycle. Drivers who stick to stop and go traffic on city streets in temperate climates may indeed consistently see 100 miles of range, but most drivers will see significantly less in a mix of city and highway driving. Driving in California, the country’s top market for electric vehicles, involves a lot of time on highways where the 65 mph speed limit is rarely observed. The LA4 cycle Nissan quotes mostly stay below 30 mph with one two-minute “sprint” at 55 mph every 22 minute cycle.

At the end of an excellent comment on the recent 1989 Camaro RS Curbside Classic, commenter carnick noted:

I remember reading an article at the time which interviewed both Roger Smith, and Toyoda-san, the head of Toyota at the time. Each was asked, ‘is your company in business to make cars, or to make money’? Smith answered, ‘of course, we are in business to make money’. Toyoda answered, ‘we are in business to make cars, and by making the best cars in the world, we will make money’. While Toyota has had its problems lately (they caught some GM virus), I think the general path both of those companies have taken over the past 30 years shows which strategy works best.

This is fantastic encapsulation of the different directions GM and Toyota have been heading over the past several decades, but it’s also a warning sign for Toyota. The company that rose to the top of the global auto industry by virtue of a laser-like focus on cars themselves is facing a flood of recalls and perceptions of declining quality… and it’s just come out with a PR website called “ Toyota Beyond Cars.” Coincidence?

In case you were wondering, Ed Whitacre’s assessment that the Volt will “make a margin” at a price point “in the low 30s” is the GM Chairman/CEO’s second big lie in as many weeks. Well, lie might be a bit harsh. Gross and willful misrepresentation is probably more accurate. GreenCarReports‘ John Voelcker got in touch with a GM spokesman who confirms what we all pretty much knew from the get go: GM “has not officially announced final Volt pricing, a price in the low 30’s after a $7,500 tax credit is in the range of possibilities.” In other words, we’re back to the same old $40k-ish number that GM execs have been throwing around for ages. Unless GM is talking about the electric-only (non-range-extended) Volt that Bob Lutz recently confirmed. But what about the margin thing?

Truck marketing is so out of ideas. Despite a few hesitant signs that the old “bigger, stronger, butcher” paradigm might be giving way to less primitive appeals to consumers, GM’s Tom Stephens has dragged truck marketing back to the stone age, issueing the following challenge to Ford [via Pickuptrucks.com].

You’re going to love our new diesel Duramax engine in the new Heavy Duty. You know what I want to do to prove it? I want to take our truck and Ford’s [new Super Duty] and chain them together back -to-back. Then I want to have them pull against each other. I know our truck will beat theirs.

Pickuptrucks.com has passed the memo on to Ford, in hopes of spawning a “V-Series Challenge”-type media stunt. Too bad it will never happen. When the trucks are evenly-matched, these contests tend to come down to driver skill, timing and luck. And what would that prove? Note to GM: if you want to market your trucks in wholly unoriginal ways, leave reality out of it and just make an ad showing your truck kicking the other trucks asses or mocking owners of competing brands. You know, the way the good lord intended trucks to be marketed. These guys have it figured out.

A strong team is only as good as its weakest link, particularly in the automotive industry. Treat your suppliers well and they’ll play fair by you. Try to screw them and they’ll collapse leaving you with serious production problems. Detroit ( Chrysler in particular) had the worst reputation for treating their suppliers badly, but the Pentastar brand now claims to be trying to change all that.

The gist of Sweet Pete DeLorenzo’s argument is that Chrysler has to do something to remind Americans that they still exist. Given the Chrysler’s inability thus far to articulate a vision for the Dodge brand post-Ram, this makes a certain amount of sense. With a new, well-respected ad agency, Dodge could use the Super Bowl’s giant stage to get back on the buying public’s radar. The problem with the plan lies in the one question that DeLorenzo fails to answer: why bring buyers into Dodge showrooms if there’s nothing there?

A large part of TTAC’s mission is pulling aside the curtain on the industry, exposing the humans behind the cars that make up our everyday lives. Automobiles have always reflected something of the individuals and cultures that created them, so it’s fascinating to see the different personalities that go into running the world’s automakers. Still, as paid executives, their performances are usually polished to a high sheen; the folks behind you favorite car blogs on the other hand, not so much. The interplay between the two is often as revealing as it is entertaining. Can’t get enough? The complete session is available at joelfeder.com.

Sort of. At least she might have if my esteemed fellow bloggers had let her get a word in edgewise. No wonder GM seems to have such a low opinion of the “well informed.”

Anyway, the clip’s money quote comes at 1:47, when Docherty lets out the classic Freudian slip: “the last competitive product I spent a couple of weeks in was the Acura TSX.” Whoops!

Apparently.

With the Japanese Yen hovering around the 91 to 1 U.S Dollar exchange rate, a bullish VW focusing on boosting their market share in North America and Ford rising up, Toyota are probably a bit depressed. Business Week reports that, for the second year in a row, Toyota have resigned themselves to the notion that their North American division will post a loss this fiscal year. This will, almost certainly, have a knock-on effect in Toyota’s ability to turn a profit in the North American market, even after more cost cutting. “The finance company is having a solid year, so if you include that it will be so much easier to say positive things,” Yoshimi Inaba, Toyota’s North American chief executive, told reporters in Detroit. “We are still trying hard to improve (sales and manufacturing operations).”

The Cadillac XTS Platinum Concept, which debuts today at the NAIAS, is a look at the new Cadillac flagship which goes into production in early 2012. The XTS’s brief is to replace the moribund DTS and STS sedans, a task that Cadillac desperately needs done properly if it wants to be taken seriously as a luxury competitor. So why is the XTS concept little more than a glorified Buick LaCrosse?

Having been told by the Secretary of Transportation that the Chrysler Group’s motley assortment of new trim level names, rebadged Lancias, decal-sporting special editions represents “the cutting edge of developing the kind of products that I think people in this country, and also in other countries, are really going to feel very favorable toward,” CEO Sergio Marchionne apparently thought enough had been said about his struggling bailout baby. As CBS reports, Marchionne suddenly canceled a 45-minute scheduled press availability before he had the chance to confirm LaHood’s astonishing opinion.

GM’s VP got a guest spot on Edmund’s Inside Line to promote his “to-do list for 2010.” The top two spots on the list are dedicated to Lutz’s resolution to “remain focused on the product above all else,” presumably because “stop repeating self” was cut by GM PR. But number three on Lutz’s list is of considerably more interest. Labeled “change minds,” Lutz uses the entry to defend the General’s “perception gap” hobbyhorse. You see, when GM accuses consumers of being too stupid to understand how great GM’s products are, they aren’t actually calling consumers stupid. In hopes of clearing up the confusion, Lutz does what any other savvy marketer would do: call the media stupid.

Let me digress for a moment and say that I’ve seen it written that GM’s marketing strategy is based on the fact that the consumer is too dumb to know what great vehicles it makes. I take huge issue with that. That’s an example of the media trying to ascribe some of the old GM arrogance where none exists.

In the first unique Chrysler brand spot since bankruptcy, America is referred to as ChryCo’s “traveling companion.” Which is a bit rich, considering the American people were generous enough to spend billions pulling the wreck that was Chrysler out of a ditch less than a year ago. Who knows, maybe the term “unwilling investors” didn’t play so well in the workshops, a possibility that might also explain why only a single modern Chrysler vehicle (the 300) is allowed to punctuate the ad’s gauzy nostalgia. In any case, notch up another Chrysler Group ad that says nothing about anything that might give one hope for the firm’s future. Ironically enough…

Sure, GM Sales and Marketing maven Susan Docherty is better at the webchat format than CEO Ed Whitacre (not to mention Mark “HOT DESIGN” Reuss). Docherty’s emoticon-free performance certainly beat Whitacre’s for sheer volume, but even when she’s talking a lot, Docherty isn’t really saying much of anything. Since GM is generally operating under radio though, today’s webchat is about all we have to go on for a taste of life in the RenCen as a turbulent year sweeps to an equally turbulent close. So let’s dig in, shall we?

Why does TTAC roll its eyes at every proclamation of change, rebirth and renewal from automakers, particularly of the Detroit-based variety? To put it in a single French phrase, dèjá vu. In an industry as cyclical as the automaking game, the latest downturn always takes place within recent memory of the last downturn. As a result, the promises of reinvention and renewed focus are still ringing in our ears by the time each new PR offensive rolls out. One can only hear so many pleas and promises before they all start running together, creating the permanent, inescapable sense that we’ve been here before and it didn’t work out. No better evidence for this phenomenon exists than this series of videos from the 1988 edition of GM’s perennial campaign of renewal (especially in part two). The music may have changed, but the beat goes on.

GM’s New CEO Ed Whitacre made his first appearance at the Fastlane blog in a webchat that represented the first access GM has given reporters to Whitacre. Needless to say, journalists do not like sharing their access with the general public, and they let GM know. Thedetroitbureau’s Paul Eisenstein asked “like many of my colleagues, I wonder when you will address us in the media directly, even if by telephone conference. To be honest, a webchat is quite a bit different and doesn’t carry the veracity of seeing or at least hearing you directly.” To which Whitacre responded:

Dear Paul,

I’ve been on the job for four days. I’ll do it as soon as I feel comfortable and have enough clear air and time. I promise we’ll talk soon.

No worries though. Whitacre didn’t actually say anything newsworthy.

GM’s board accepted Fritz Henderson’s resignation today, and its Chairman Ed Whitacre will serve as CEO until a replacement is found. A search for a new President/CEO will begin immediately. Whitacre took no questions, saying the day had been “hectic.” A spokesman said the resignation was a decision reached mutually by Fritz and the board, based on the company’s “current position.” The spokesman refused to answer further questions about the leadership change, prompting one journalist to ask why GM hadn’t simply issued a release, rather than calling a conference. “This is stupid,” he said. The spokesman revealed that the government “was notified after the board’s decision,” and referred questions of hiring practice to the federal paymaster, Kenneth Feinberg. Otherwise, there are no real answers coming out of today’s statement and brief question-and-evasion period. Whitacre’s statement is after the jump.

We didn’t want a big fleet of electric vehicles. We’re only just over two years or so away from the games and time is running out to create a viable network. Many of the vehicles will be used for around 18 hours a day. It’s hard graft, and we knew BMW could supply the vehicles to meet these demands.”

Paul Deighton, CEO of the London Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) explains to Autocar why the games won’t be relying on electric vehicles in 2012. Nissan had presented a bid to be the games’ official vehicle supplier which proposed using Leaf EVs for over half the planned fleet. A “small proportion” of BMW’s winning fleet proposal will be electric MINI Es, and all proposals were required to achieve a fleet average of 120g/km of CO2. But that hasn’t stopped Nissan from getting petulant.

“There is no other area in the field of human communications that is as rife with disinformation as the story on Chrysler quality,” then Chrysler President Bob Lutz once famously said. Some things never change. According to today’s Detroit News, Chrysler is claiming that they will be a (though not “the”) quality leader by the end of 2012. They (and many other auto makers) have made similar claims before. Sometimes they achieve these goals. More often they don’t. Chrysler’s chances?

CBS’ Marketwatch reports from Tokyo (or more accurately, blogs the Japanese Business Daily Nikkei’s reporting) that Toyota is going to change out accelerator pedals in US market vehicles in hopes of putting the issue behind them. “Toyota Motor Corp. will make changes to gas pedals in certain U.S. models under an agreement with the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, according to a published report, in response to accidents blamed on the accelerators getting stuck to the floor mats. Toyota still maintains that the vehicles are not actually defective. But to settle the potentially image-damaging issue, it will change the gas pedals so they are less likely to get stuck. The work will be handled through dealerships, Japanese business daily Nikkei reported Saturday.” Interestingly enough, nothing is said about non-US market vehicles.

If we’re learning anything from the twists and turns leading into GM’s Cadillac V-Series Challenge, it’s that a good stunt is hard to stage these days [unless you have access to China’s rich reserves of stunt drivers, as shown above]. Jaguar’s US PR boss Stuart Schorr has informed us that his firm’s legal and safety advisers have put the kibosh on the XF-R’s planned entry into the event. Because Jaguar was previously the only manufacturer to enter the race, the pullout leaves TTAC, Jalopnik and the New York Times’ Lawrence Ullrich without an OEM-backed ride. As a result, the media challengers (as we’re being called) will go mano-a-mano with Bob Lutz in… a CTS-V. Which makes the event a bit more of “may the best man win” than “may the best car win,” but then that’s not exactly our problem, is it? [Don’t miss the literal Chinese fire drill at 1:56]

Bob Lutz is, apparently. So is Jack Baruth. But will the “V-Series Challenge” prove anything? Not so much. Nobody will be surprised when a CTS-V sets the fastest lap time of the event (at the hands of GM’s test-driver John Heinricy), or if Lutz’s god-knows-how-many practice laps brings his lap time lower than his challengers’. As we’ve said before, GM has set the terms of a battle it is nearly incapable of losing… but what of the war? Who cares what your top-of-the-line sedan is (even if it’s amazing, which TTAC readily admits it is) when your point of entry is the Aveo? Oh, and how much profit does the CTS-V make? Still, we can’t say no to a few hot laps on someone else’s dime. Do you know what a membership to Monticello costs?

Cadillac has confirmed that TTAC’s very own Jack Baruth will be allowed to compete in Bob Lutz’s SuperSedan Shootout (also known as the Cadillac V Series Challenge). The race will consist of five hot laps in any production sedan, and will take place at the Monticello Motor Club in upstate New York. Sadly, because of the time-trial format, we will not be treated to awesome footage of Jack putting Maximum Bob into the wall with some trademark “avoidable contact.” Still, TTAC’s resident speed freak will have the opportunity to take on GM’s resident cranky old man (as well as other bloggers) in a face-off that’s been nine years of online confrontation in the making. The only problem at this point is that the bastards at Jalopnik have stolen our whip…

Thanks to KixStart for providing transcripts of the exchange on September sales that launched the current GM production goal controversy.Chris Russo, Credit Suisse:
“I noticed in the comments, in prepared remarks and [others], there’s an increased focus on market share from your company, which can be good but which can also be dangerous, is this a shift in tone at the company is gm, do we have to learn about industry pricing, is GM, not having learned the lessons of the … going after market share at the expense of profit and price? Is there a new regime here?”

Spats between automakers and the Detroit press are a rare thing. But spats between GM and the Detroit Free Press? Let’s just say few things last longer in this world than lapdogs that nip. So GM is going after the Freep with a spray bottle for daring to suggest that a 2.8m unit production plan for 2010 might be reminiscent of old, bad GM. Apparently the Freep only got it wrong on one point: unfounded optimism, self-sabotage and disfunctional communication are still very much part of New GM. Oh yeah, and CAPS LOCK is along for the ride. Mike DiGiovanni, GM’s Executive Director of Corporate Planning and Alliances reponds at Fastlane

GM had indicated in a media call that it could produce upwards of 2.8 million units in North America — this is a number we COULD do…it’s not the number we necessarily WILL do. We only plan and report production estimates by quarter to reflect the current economic climate.

Unlike Chrysler and GM, Ford has managed to minimize the downward depreciation spiral that’s been plaguing business models across Detroit. In fact, FoMoCo has increased its net pricing by $1.9b in the first half of this year alone. Ford explains this achievement with a reach back to history: a team of 19 P.H.D.s tasked with managing pricing, production and option mixes is given credit, and compared with the “Whiz Kids” of the post-war era in the Detroit News. “They are unbelievable,” gushes Ford’s Jim Farley. “It’s very scientific. I’ve never seen anything like it in our industry.” The Global Lifecycle Analytics Department (GLAD) was formed in 2000, as a modern-day equivalent to the statistical analysis pioneers hired to bring Ford back from the brink of oblivion in the 1940s. By 2005 the team, led by Rose “The Silent Lamb” Peng, had figured out that “the resale value of Ford’s cars and trucks was being eroded by sales of poorly contented vehicles to rental agencies.” Go figure. Let’s hear it for statistical analysis.

GM’s PR efforts have a kind of spastic, bipolar quality to them. Months of near-silence are punctuated by spasms of oversharing and an avalanche of hype, none of which typically addresses the underlying concerns which prompted the orchestrated campaign. Bouncing off of today’s 90-day report card today, Chevrolet’s Brent Dewar hosted a Fastlane livechat in which we were given yet another chance to learn more than we ever wanted about the people running Chevrolet. And next to nothing about the future of the bowtie brand.

Jay Leno’s Top Gear-aping “Green Car Challenge” will pit guests on the new Jay Leno Show against each other in battery-powered Ford Focus EVs, according to The Ford Story. Not that Ford has a 2,305,476 MPG-rated battery-electric car ready for production or anything. The Focus EV “especially made for the show, foreshadows elements of the electric Focus that Ford will begin selling in North America in 2011.” But does putting whiny celebrities in a whining EV add up to great television? Too bad Tesla couldn’t come up with the product-placement cash.

GM-volt.com‘s Lyle Dennis got a test drive of GM’s two-mode plugin CUV at GM’s recent PR event. First planned as a Saturn Vue (canceled due to the Saturn spin-off), then planned as a Buick rebadge (only to be murdered by Twitter), the two-mode plugin is currently homeless. Will it ever see the showroom floor? Which brand will it be sold as? How long will it take to restyle it in such a way that even the biggest fanboys won’t diss it as an obvious rebadge? Even GM executives probably don’t know yet.

Originally published by Brandt Rosenbusch, Curator to the Walter P. Chrysler Museum and Historical Collection Coordinator for Chrysler Group LLC, at Chrysler’s Corporate blog.

In my role as Archivist for Chrysler Group LLC, I can appreciate in-depth research followed by thoughtful conclusions, even when the opinions differ from my own.

But I was struck by the untruths and general carelessness in the editorial titled “Chrysler Destroys Its Historical Archives; GM to Follow?” by Bob Elton, published on The Truth About Cars blog last month.

After the GSA and Nancy Pelosi’s office turned down TTAC’s request for a breakdown of the vehicles purchased under the Recovery Act’s Energy-Efficient Federal Motor Vehicle Fleet Procurement program, we went all FOIA. The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has now released the info to us (as it should, transparency for the program is promised here). We’ve published the list after the jump, formatting the data by model, number purchased, country of assembly and fuel economy. Exactly 11,319 of the 17,205 vehicles purchased were assembled in the USA. [NB: I’ve provided fuel economy numbers for base versions with automatic transmissions, as per typical fleet practice.]

This spot (which cribs the Allman Brothers tune that gearheads will recognize as the Top Gear theme) is part of what AdAge describes as the repair chain’s effort to attract customers from closing dealerships. After all, the service department is often where the real money is made at dealerships, and the race to snag shuttered dealerships’ business is on. Automotive News [sub] reports that CarsDirect is even offering free 60-day online listings for any dealership that is going out of business. “We hope this offer helps dealers sell more cars as they work to stay in business and remain fixtures in their communities during the transition,” says CarsDirect VP Ken Potter. Not to mention a little free publicity that comes with the charitable territory. Meanwhile, how are GM and Chrysler shoring up their PR after the nasty dealer shutdown debacle? According to a WaPo analysis, Chrysler is emphasizing product competitivity (huh?) and GM is emphasizing restructuring (why?). So much for putting the best foot forward.