Car News Articles

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Given the enormous and ongoing discrepancy between GM’s execs’ statements and on-the-ground reality you’d think the media would understand that nothing, nothing GM says should be taken at face value. Nope. Automotive News [AN, sub] kicks-off with the PR pleasing headline, “As Malibu soars, Impala sinks amid GM cuts to rental fleets.” Showing some semblance of journalistic integrity, AN lists the Impala-related damage and ties the model’s downturn to the up-tick in sales of its logical competitor. “While January sales of the new Chevrolet Malibu mid-sized sedan rose 57.9 percent from January 2007, sales of the larger Impala fell 30.6 percent… The Impala had been a hot seller. It finished 2007 up 7.3 percent to 311,128 units.” Chevrolet Spinmeister Terry Rhadigan provides the usual tut-tut, pish-posh, no worries Mate: “We’re still doing the methodical reduction in daily rental, and that is reflected in that Impala number. Huge progress is being made. You’ll see some decline in numbers, and don’t be alarmed. It’s all part of our strategy.” Oh really? So, Terry, what exactly are those Impala fleet numbers? “Rhadigan would not give the Impala’s retail and fleet sales totals.” Clearly, Woodward and Bernstein don’t have nothin’ on AN. Anyway, Chevy store own John LaSorsa ends the piece by backing-up the suits. “The Malibu has such style it’s pulling in an import customer.” Well, that’s one…

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The less resources available to a group that needs them, the more fierce the competition for those resources becomes. If you’re a consumer and the fight’s for your dollar, this is a good thing. For the companies chasing your custom, the struggle to compete can exhaust their resources and lead to extinction. Which is good for you and a bad for them. (Survival of the fittest and all that.) All of which is a preamble to the fact that the deals on GM wheels are getting seriously serious. Regional GM dealers– including Cadillac and Saturn– are offering “pull ahead” leases until March 15. In other words, they’ll forget six months of your GMAC Smart Lease to get you into a new lease. If you fancy a Chevrolet Silverado, well qualified (i.e. vertical) buyers can pick up a pickup on a 60 month zero percent loan. Can GM afford to offer these kinds of incentives? No. But they can’t afford not to offer them either. Darwin, eh?

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Wait, it’s worse than that… The Bath Chronicle reports that Ilya Galic drove into the spa town and parked in a pay-as-you-go parking lot. He fed a ticket machine £1.20 ($2.38) for his one-hour stay. The meter only registered £1, missing 20 pence (about 40 cents). Galic complained to the parking attendant, who told him the machines often “went wrong,” and promised to sort out the matter. Just to be sure, Galic phoned the parking office, who told him someone would look it. Last month, Galic received a letter demanding a £353.74 ($701) parking penalty payment. A bailiff turned up at Galic’s house to claim one of the family’s cars as payment for the debt. When Galic asked the bailiff to leave, he called the police. Four policemen arrived at his Newbridge home. The bailiff eventually “settled” for £410.99 ($815.52), around six weeks worth of Galic’s pension income (which covered assorted additional fees). A council spokeswoman was unmoved. The authority had not received any complaints in writing, so that’s that. 

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Chinese firm BYD (better known as an industry leader in NiCad and Lithium Ion batteries) unveiled its second plug-in hybrid at the Geneva Auto Show. Green Car Congress says its unique three-mode hybrid drivetrain starts in full-electric mode, switches to range-extending serial hybrid mode, and finally to Prius-style parallel hybrid setting (with gas and electric motor operating together). Scheduled for 2010 (isn’t everything?), the new F3DM is aimed at the European market. BYD is not shy about its chances for success in the hybrid and electric car markets. “Battery technology is our core competency,” Chairman Wang Chaunfu boasts. “And we think we are well-placed against GM and Toyota.” No surprise then, that the company’s 20kWh lithium-iron phosphate battery pack can go 70 miles on a single (long-ish) nine-hour 220 VAC charge… with a gas engine ready to kick in to extend range or increase power at any time. With a BYD test-fleet of taxis preparing to take to the streets of Shenzhen, the first automaker to sell an out-of-the-box, plug-in hybrid could well be Chinese. 

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Finally, it looks like the other shoe is dropping. Nine days after Toyota slashed prices on 16 of its Canadian models, its greatest emulator, Hyundai, has followed suit. CanadianDriver.com reports that Hyundai has recently clawed back the prices the Tiburon and the Tuscon L by $3,000 and $4,200 respectively. So how does this stack up against U.S. pricing? According to Hyundai.com, a new base-level Tiburon now costs $15,995 in Canada vs. $17,025 south of the border. The Tuscon is now cheaper north of the border, at $16,995 versus $17,235 in America. Before you Americans start drafting your business plan around a Canadian domestic market importation scheme, beware: the base Sonata is still more expensive in Canada, relieving of you $18,995 Canadian or $17,670 American. Now that Chrysler, Toyota and Hyundai have put the squeeze on dealers at other car companies’ franchises, we expect many more “adjustments” to come. [thanks to Dave McDonald for the tip]

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Britain’s Advertising Standard Authority has called-out a Saab ad for its E85-capable, “BioPower” vehicles. The ad claims “bioethanol consumption does not significantly raise atmospheric levels of CO2.” The watchdog agency also received complaints about the ad’s claim that E85 reduced C02 emissions by 70 percent over normal gasoline– but dismissed them. Saab was able to prove that the assertion is factually true… if you use Brazilian sugar-ethanol. Still, it seems like Saab ad execs could have done the math and discovered that even with a best-case 70 percent reduction in C02 emissions, 30 percent of a gas-powered Saab’s emissions still qualify as a “significant contribution” towards atmospheric carbon. Of course they didn’t, which is why the ASA ruled that the ad is “misleading” as readers are “likely to infer that bioethanol did not add a significant amount of CO2 to the atmosphere.” What a concept: requiring fairness, math skills and even-handedness of people who are just trying to save the world by selling more cars. Now if only we had a watchdog to similarly debunk the pro-E85 falsehoods spewed by America’s business and political leaders. Oh wait… you’re reading it. 

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Yesterday I think I spotted Jonathan Ross driving past the TG office towards Television Centre in a brand new, 08-reg Morgan Roadster. He was smoking a fat cigar and wearing what looked like a beret.

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I gather that a lot of what’s behind the $104 price of a barrel of oil is down to the chronically weak dollar. That’s okay, then, it’s just a currency effect - no, it’s not really okay as a trip to fill the old petrol tank confirms.

And there are worries starting to emerge in China about price inflation. The surging Chinese economy has an avaricious appetite for energy and raw materials. As it grows, it consumes more. And that helps send the prices of commodities and raw materials up - globally.

Cost-push price inflation is now emerging in the Chinese economy, a kind of feedback loop. Price inflation there has just spiked.

Food prices are going up, too (for one thing, richer people eat more - especially dairy and meat, more land intensive than cereals/veggies, squeezing them). The Chinese authorities will be very concerned. They are sensitive about inflation in staple commodities because that causes popular unrest. The last time it happened in the late 1980s, it helped underpin the protests that resulted in the Tiananmen Square protests that were then brutally crushed. 

Credit in China may well be squeezed to slow the economy. If they put the brakes on they may well be applied heavily (there’s a history of stop-go macroeconomic management in China and maybe we will be back to that, having seemingly broken out of that to 10% pa economic growth indefinitely).

Problem: China’s economic growth is needed more than ever to pick up the slack globally as the US economy teeters on the edge of recession this year. China’s economy will also be squeezed by slower exports as America’s consumers go on a crash diet.

Maybe things can be successfully managed to keep China’s economy on track, but talk of the world economic slowdown occurring alongside high/rising energy and commodity prices is definite cause for concern. Even in UK the possibility of reduced interest rates due to plummeting consumer confidence/spending is being put off by continuing concerns over inflation and energy prices in particular.  

The stuff in the below link caused my jaw to drop a bit…

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