#CammyCorrigan

I don’t know how the US press is reporting it, but according to the UK press, California is on the verge of economic collapse. IOU’s were issued to public workers, lawmakers can’t agree on a budget and neighbouring Nevada has instigated an advertising campaign to lure businesses away from California. Governor “Ah-nuld” Schwarzenegger (who for the rest of the article will be referred to as “AS” as I can’t be bothered to write his name out every single time) is trying his best to bring business to “Cali”. He’s gone on a jaunt to Asia to try and drum up trade. And his press folk will announce even the smallest win.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about rumors circulating that the Saturn plant at Spring Hill, Tennessee may be coming back online as GM’s volume increases. Well, the rumors are getting stronger.

Historically, Volkswagen has given the U.S.A. much more attention than their sales deserve. The U.S. are considered key to VW reaching their goal of becoming Nummer Eins auf der Welt (I’m sure Herr Schmitt will correct my German – he sure did.). Trouble is, their US head, Stefan Jacoby, deserted to left to work for Volvo and Geely. This means they needed to find someone new. And they may have just done that.

I can’t speak for the US market, but in the UK car market there is one segment which I can never see dying. The small, luxury car segment (A.K.A The luxury entry level). This is the area reserved for your Audi A3’s, BMW 1 series’ and, to lesser extents, Volvo S40’s and Mercedes-Benz A-Classes. The reason I believe this segment is more robust than other is because it revolves around one factor which has been around for a very long time. Vanity. In the UK, you have many (and I mean “many”) mid-20’s to early 30 men, who’ve got a half-decent paying job and want to lash out on a car with a luxury make. Very few will go with cars like the Audi A4, BMW 3 series and Mercedes-Benz C-Class, because they either scream “rep-mobile” or “old man”. They won’t go any higher up the ladder because that’ll be too costly. So the small, luxury car segment is perfect for them. The least amount of money for the most amount of badge-snobbery. This is why the BMW 1-series is so successful in the UK, despite being quite a poor car. “I can get a BMW for the price of a Golf? Sign me up!” Well, it seems a new boy is coming to the market. Only this one has a trick up his sleeve…

When assessing things to buy (especially with your own money) people have different priorities. For instance, when buying a TV, some choose a bigger screen over feature (“I’m never going to use ALL 4 HDMI sockets!”). Likewise, when choosing a holiday, most people think destination is the most important criterion. But some people think the destination isn’t important as long as it’s family friendly, or the food is good, etc. Can you guess what this weekend’s “Weekend Head Scratcher” is going to be…?

A long time ago, I was told a little phrase which stuck with me: “Sometimes, you may be done with history, but history isn’t done with you.” It made a lot of sense to me. Just because you’ve finished with something doesn’t mean it’s over for the other party. Seems like Daimler and Cerberus are learning this the hard way.

Remember that old saying, “What’s good for GM is good for America”? Well it seems that the UK is developing a similar ethos. “What’s good for Ford is good for the UK”. Now, this isn’t some arrogant Ford executive trying to brainwash the UK public that buying their cars is their public duty. There really is a good reason behind this. Honestly.

Ray LaHood is great, isn’t he? When that big nasty corporation, Toyota, was building those awful machines that were murdering people and their children in their sleep in the middle of the night, he urged everyone to “ stop driving your Toyotas” ( Ford also had a problem with unintended acceleration, but LaHood couldn’t go after them with the same vigor as he was busy dealing holding “Toyota’s feet to the fire” at the time). His useful piece of advice led to a calm and controlled recall and gave people the courage to come forward and give their horror stories of how their Toyotas went all “HAL” on them. Then came allegations that Ray and the NHTSA were suppressing a report that confirmed it wasn’t the cars but driver error. Well, Ray knew he was being stabbed in the back but you can’t keep a good man quiet for long…

When you start a new job, it’s considered important to make a good impression. How does the saying go? “Start as you mean to go on”. Well, Dan Akerson, I suspect, tried to heed that advice and ended up putting his foot in it. The Associated Press reports that Dan Akerson, CEO of Government (soon to be “General” again) Motors, presented a webcast to GM employees. The usual CEO rhetoric came out. “GM needs to keep competitors on their heels rather than responding to what they do” said one GM worker, who asked not to be identified as the broadcast was not available to the public; despite being owned by them. “Attack mode” was another phrase used. But then Mr Akerson said that GM’s Cadillac brand has to make cars that are better than BMW’s. Now I thought this was quite a harmless statement to make. The CEO set a (quite high) benchmark to beat. Sounds reasonable, right? Not according to some.

A few weeks ago TTAC reported how BMW and Daimler revived a long-ago formed joint purchasing venture in order to help drive down costs for the 2 independent car makers who can’t achieve high volumes of scale. This was seen as quite a big step in a direction few expected. As our resident German put it, “If you think South Korea and North Korea have communication problems, then you should be in a meeting between Daimler and BMW engineers.” He does have a way with words, doesn’t he? But he wasn’t wrong. It’s been a bit of joke to in the industry how Daimler and BMW view each other. As the mustachioed one put it, “Daimler engineers view their colleagues as boorish Bavarian upstarts. BMW engineers think Daimler is a congregation of has-beens.” And you thought relations between GM and Toyota were frosty! At least they had a plant together. Well, it seems that relations maybe thawing between the boys in Munich and the lads in Stuttgart. Kind of…

On The Booth Babe’s last article, TTAC commentator, LALoser, stated that he originally thought that I was the Booth Babe! He based this theory “because of the just below the surface Anti-Americanism.” So to address this accusation, I decided to blog the following…

DNA India reports that Tata is making a concerted effort to source parts for Jaguar and Land Rover from low cost countries like China, India (duh!) and Poland. DNA’s source for this claim said: “Earlier, Ford used to procure 17 percent from low-cost countries like Poland, China and India, whereas Tata Motors is planning to increase it to 35 percent.” Tata has buys more than just cheap parts. They outsourced low-end design and development work to lower-wage countries. But before you start the “If you thought JLR reliability was bad now…” don’t get too carried away.

I hate to get all “workers of the world unite”, but management seems to get away with a hell of a lot more than the rank and file. Take Prudential’s bid to take over AIG’s Asian arm. The bid failed and the whole exercise cost Prudential £377m (about $579.5m). Digest that figure for a second, then digest the next fact. The CEO, Tidjane Thiam, refuses to stand down over this mistake. Now consider this, if you, as a rank and file member, would cost the company you work for just 1 percent of that previous figure, could you honestly expect to keep your job? Now let’s look at the FIATsco incident. The whole affair cost GM $2b. Again, had you have cost the company you work for just 1 percent of that figure, could you keep you job? After writing this paragraph, I find the next story almost heartwarming.

When you buy a car new, depreciation is a risk you have to take. So like with any risk, one tries to minimize it. That’s why Toyota and Honda are such perennial favourites. low depreciation. But what cars should you avoid if you don’t want to suffer depreciation that could make you depressed?

As I wrote a few days ago, European car sale figures aren’t looking too great. In fact, for want of a better phrase, they’re bloody awful. (Detailed numbers to follow at around Sept 15.) The reason behind this drop is the detox from the high of “Cash For Clunkers”. Now that the artificial boost has gone (or is slowly dissipating) the market is coming back down to where it should be. And where it should be isn’t good news for auto manufacturers. In the UK, it’s just as bad. The SMMT reported a drop of 17.5 percent in new car registrations compared to August of last year. This is in line with the SMMT’s prediction that the second half of the year would be tough, to put it mildly. “New car registrations were down 17.5 percent in August and conditions will remain challenging through the rest for the year,” said Paul Everitt, SMMT chief executive, “The industry enjoyed a better than expected first half of the year and despite the difficulties, SMMT is forecasting that new cars registrations will close just ahead of 2009 figures.” Shall we take at look at the winners and losers in the UK market for August 2010?