Housekeeping: TTAC Wants YOU!
Are you involved in the car industry and want to help make TTAC a better publication? Then we’re calling on you for your assistance.
Although TTAC has its network of sources in the auto industry, we’re also looking for a group of people in various fields (whether its in retail, on the OEM side, manufacturing, suppliers, finance, labor relations or the “downstream” end, like maintenance and repair shops, rental car agencies and the like) that we can call upon for their expertise. Call it the TTAC Advisory Board.
Your identity will *always* be kept strictly confidential, and we won’t necessarily be asking you to confirm stories via back channel. Instead, the aim is to improve the quality and accuracy of our writing by having expert opinions that can be called upon to provide their expertise to help boost the level of the site’s written work.
What’s in it for you? Well, not a whole lot. Perhaps some auto show or press trip swag. Dinner and a bar tab on us when we’re in your city. Mostly, you’ll be helping raise the bar at your favorite publication. A few of you already serve in this capacity in a de facto role- and we cannot extend enough thanks to readers like Mikey, who was one of the first. But the time has come to formally expand this initiative.
If you are willing to donate a bit of your time in the name of assisting the site, please email me, derek at ttac dot com.
More by Derek Kreindler
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If you ever need verification on how many lines of coke it takes for a finance manager to remember where he left his demo the night before or want to see up close and personal photos and stories of sleds running through auction lanes, I'll be more than happy to oblige.
Regarding the lead picture: "Welcome, young Skywalker, I have been expecting you." Anyone in his circle who cracks will end up being choked to death via the Force.
I VOLUNTEER myself as TRIBUTE.
Before the bailouts, I was one of the longtime (since my 20s) GM customers who had no end of problems with the product AND dealer service departments who were better at extracting money out of the customer than they were at actually FIXING cars. My pain continued and I finally ended it with one of the flagship models, a Corvette! And then the bailouts came; forced down my throat and about 150 million taxpaying Americans. This boiled me over, like the overheating Vette that I sold (because it was the last damned straw). I am one of those readers vehemently opposed to the GM and Chrysler bailouts. Here we are 8+ years later and I still am. It's even visceral in some sense, and I will not buy a car from either manufacturer based on my own sense of suspicion and morality. It is what it is, the bailouts have costed these manufacturers my "customership", maybe forever. The sad thing is, I'm not usually one to hold a grudge! But on this I will, and I know there are many others like me who won't play either, so GM and Chrysler have effectively "given up" possible future revenue from us. And bailouts always beget more bailouts. It will happen, I'm certain of it. Whatever I may say in these threads, however, everybody needs to understand where I'm coming from; it's a strong sense of right and wrong. Never let my firm stance be confused with "assassination" in any way. And please don't even imply it, because that in itself is also "assassination" if you really think about it. Beside that, as one of those who will be paying this debt for decades, I and my 149,999,999 fellow "actual" taxpayers really deserve better than that. Derek, I hope the "expert" panel will be balanced with at least one or two who understand this, because for some of us, it's a very real concern. A moral one even, and it DOES come from a love of our country and culture. Anyway, thanks for listening.