Curse Buster Sound DirectoryYou are here » Curse Buster Sound » Links Directory » Business » Automotive (0)
Automotive RSS FeedsANE Congress 2008 - I'm attending Automotive News Europe's Congress in Turin next week. I go every year and it's a useful occasion to get up to speed on some topical issues, hear some good speakers and meet up with people. It's usually fun, too. Last year's was in Prague and I wrote a review. Hard to believe that was a whole year ago. Back then it looked like Volvo Cars was close to being on Ford's sales block. And private equity was still all the rage. Looking back, there were some prescient remarks from UBS analyst Max Warburton on Ford. Must say, I liked Matt Donnelly's (of Russia's Rolf Group - he's left there now) very direct way of expressing himself: 'Russians don't like hatchbacks - the weather gets very cold. Open the hatch and grandma in the back dies.' He had one heck of a laid-back presenting style, too. I spoke to him on the phone last October - interesting bloke....Feed Source: www.just-auto.com Fusion man - Look it's Friday. Someone has sent me a link to something that I'll share here. Well, it is transport related, personal mobility even There's a guy in Switzerland (calls himself 'Fusion man') who has built himself a contraption that looks pretty lethal but enables him to get about as close to soaring like a bird as us wingless humans will ever do. Quite simply amazing. You can watch his flight on the video clip. Me, I'll stick to BASE jumping (yes, I'm joking).... Proton's Chinese cure - Proton has looked like a company in a bad way for some years now. As Malaysia?s protectionist barriers have come down in the wake of liberalised trading regimes in the ASEAN region, its dominant share of the domestic market has plummeted (from 60% at the beginning of the decade to just 24% last year).
Protons had sold mainly on price, not on quality of product (alas a problem that comes with protection from competition). As imports have become more price competitive, consumers have, unsurprisingly, voted with their feet.
Proton?s exports have struggled too and the long search for a Western partner with some answers to its ills proved fruitless.
But just lately there have been signs that a turnaround for Proton is not completely inconceivable. Profits rather than losses have been posted and sales have stabilised.
A number of elements to Proton?s strategy stand out.
It has made existing products better ? at relatively low cost - and targeted export sales in new markets. The focus of i... Curious goings on at Tesla - What Tesla has achieved with its Roadster is pretty impressive, by any standards. Any firm that gets as far as it has done in executing such a radical vision deserves some credit - though Tesla's journey is far from over. It's early days in terms of deliveries of the first cars and the vision has further to go in terms of future higher volume plug-in models. And if others pick up the Tesla ball and run with it, that's no disaster either.
But beating the Tesla path has not been entirely smooth and maybe that's no big surprise given the nature of the undertaking. There's litigation stuff going on with a major contractor - Fisker - and there has been some discord inside Tesla at times, also. On the latter point, there's a curious row going on between one of the Tesla founders and ex-CEO, Martin Eberhard, and Tesla over his 'number 2' (after Elon Musk took #1) car. It's a bit sad to see, but stuff like this happens. Autobloggreen has the details.... Proton and Youngman - We have published an informative piece from Mr Bursa today looking at Proton. It may have failed to find a suitable Western partner but perhaps the troubled carmaker is now discovering sizeable opportunities in China. The deal with 'Youngman' involves Proton Gen2s being shipped fully built up to Youngman which will sell them in China under its EuropeStar brand (check out that wacky prancing logo complete with 'Engineered by Lotus' ). It's an interesting approach and the Proton-Lotus Engineering-Youngman connections could get stronger in the future.... Leave Macca alone! - Here's one that made me laugh. Paul McCartney has apparently been given a Lexus LS600h by Lexus. Good for him. You wouldn't turn that down as a freebie would you? Just one small problem. It's been flown from Japan to Britain, which kind of more than negates any benefit to the environment from Macca having it for the occasional sortie off his country estate. But it's hardly his fault - the great one was reportedly not best pleased when he found out about the method of delivery. It's more a PR bungle by Lexus.
Didn't he used to travel by bus? was often late, would grab his hat and make the bus in seconds flat ... 'Commodity surcharge' - Plenty of eyes will be on the latest initiative by ArvinMeritor to pass on soaring commodity prices to its customers. Will it stick, or more accurately, how much will ArvinMeritor's customers believe it is reasonable to pass on? My guess is that some soundings were taken before the announcement was made, to ensure that it wouldn't be laughed out of court.
One thing's for sure: market conditions are not conducive to the OEM passing 'extraordinary' costs on to the final consumer. The question, working back, then becomes where on the supply chain are rising prices to be absorbed. A number of Tier 1s in North America are just about walking out of intensive care - there were some encouraging Q1 financial results, mainly buoyed by non-North American operations (Na ops still financially precarious) - and it's probably not in their customers' interests to send them back in.... Is this for real? - Is this for real? Yes, I am afraid it may well be. The old stereotypes to the fore. Aussies do like their beer don't they?... A Europeanised Caddy - This week I have been driving around in a press fleet Cadillac BLS 1.9 CDTI Wagon. I wanted it to coincide with the interview I did with Jonathan Nash (below link). It's a pretty good piece of kit - the 1.9 litre diesel engine is turbocharged, there's plenty of load space, nice interior finish, subtle but definitely not bland styling (the Cadillac 'origami edges' figure). And the handling is sharp on what is a fairly sizeable car. No complaints and an easy car to live with. Comments in the office on the styling were pretty favourable, too - plenty thought it resembled a Saab (BLS is also made in Trollhattan).
In short, it deserves a fair hearing amongst its mainly German peers here in Europe. But will it get one or more accurately, will there be enough customers who are attracted to the idea of a Cadillac badge on their status symbol? 'Do different' might make an appropriate brand tagline. One thing though - I certainly don't think Cadillac will be emphasing Teutonic-like peer values,... Citroen C5 advertisment - Marketing and selling large premium cars isn't all that easy for the French outside of France. The German brands have something of a stranglehold - in Europe, especially. PSA is developing what it believes is a credible strategy - 'competitive premium' - essentially levering off the volume business on component sets to produce a low-cost premium offering in each segment and undercutting the established premium brands.
I think it will be an uphill struggle in an area of the market where brand equity counts for a lot. Citroen is most definitely a value-driven brand and I think that counts against it in premium segments. But it will be interesting to see how the strategy unfolds in the market. The right price point can count for a lot, too, so maybe with good product there's a chance to build a reputation (and people who consider a Citroen brand premium car may have low initial expectations). And first off, perhaps you'd want to mix it a bit on the old brand image front, try and dispel s... From Russia to Australia... - Russia's Ural Motorcycles is selling its two-wheeler product with funky sidecars to Australia. Is the 'George and Mildred sidecar' due a revival and maybe a reinvention? I dunno and it's a slightly disturbing thought in some ways. I came across Ural Motorcyles in Australia via something in the Sydney Morning Herald and I must say I find this all rather amazing - there are even sidecar adventure tours Down Under. I guess it's a relatively fuel-efficient transportation mode and Two Fat Ladies on their venerable Triumph with sidecar certainly rocked. One of those weirdly cool cult things due a mini revival? Fido's chariot?... Chrysler's creative incentive - I see the creative juices have been flowing over at Chrysler which is being hurt more than most by high gas prices. Buy a selected Chrysler model and Chrysler will subsidise the cost of the fuel going in the tank via a special credit card. It's an interesting one and I must say I like the inherent gambling element involved with holding the fuel price constant for the next three years. Will the actual pump price rise or fall and by how much? Who's judgement do you trust - Chrysler LLC's Chief Economist or your Auntie Pam's?
Seriously, I wonder if other manufacturers are looking at this.
Sure, you can say it's just another incentive (and it's capped of course), but it might be one that flies with consumers on the back of a feel-good factor which goes with filling the tank for 'just' USD2.99 for the next three years. A guy at Goldman Sachs has just forecast that the price of oil could conceivably rise to USD200 a barrel within six months. Yup, that 2.99 price might start to look like a r... Electric power - how cheap will it be? - With the price of oil where it is, there's a general assumption going around that the issues for future electric plug-ins are confined chiefly to vehicle (lithium-ion battery) range and performance alongside some consideration of the CO2 used up in power generation. I've not heard much on what the issues may be for the electric power utilities. If that aspect is not completely ignored in the discussions that go on in the auto industry, it's often assumed that what comes out of the wall socket will be there and at the same kind of price as we pay today. It couldn't actually end up being more expensive than liquified fossil fuel could it? This article in the WSJ caught my eye. ... Ubiquitous premium brands and the 'Burberry effect' - Just how far can premium or prestige brands go down the volume road? It was a question that had me thinking after meeting with Jonathan Nash, who's in charge of Saab and Cadillac sales in the UK. He turns low volume on its head and maintains that it can be an advantage in terms of delivering a more personalised customer experience. There might be a few people out there who snigger at that one, given the way Cadillac has undershot on volume, but I think he has a point.
Does the brand image start to suffer if the brand's cars are everywhere you look? How far can you take it? I guess if the tide is rising and people have more money to spend, the fact that millions of people can buy formerly exclusive designer clothes and upmarket car brands is a good thing - a simple consequence of rising affluence. BMW 3 Series outsells Ford Mondeo in UK these days; so what? And when these things do become ubiquitous, then the people who formerly wanted exclusivity can move on to something else. In Europ... UK market/motoring stats - I've been sent a very well produced booklet from the IAM (Institute of Advanced Motorists) Trust. You can download it for free (below). It contains plenty of data on the UK but there's a section on international comparisons at the back. It's a good summary compiled from a variety of sources. I defy anyone to not raise their eyebrows over a few of the stats within it. Here are a few:
Today's new lorry (what us Brits sometimes call freight trucks) is quieter than a new car made before 1982.
The years 1934, 1941 and 1966 were the worst years for deaths on Britain's roads. Fatal and serious injuries peaked in 1966 and then began falling. Road deaths in cars and also pedestrians killed on the roads have gone down sharply since 1990. A recent significant decline in 'slight injuries' began as recently as 1998.
Which country comes out worst on road deaths per thousand population? Russia, by quite a big margin (careful on those Moscow streets if you're going to watch the big football game ther... 'New' Mazdas getting disassembled and shredded - Here's an odd one to check out over your coffee break. Do you recall an ocean going car transporter - Cougar Ace - in the Pacific that ran into trouble a while back, aground on its side (I've dug out the story links from our archive - below)? Its cargo of 4,700 Mazdas was rescued, but the cars had been resting at a crazy angle for weeks.
What damage may have been done to the cars? Not all that much you might think (they are well strapped in), but the mere uncertainty was enough for Mazda to conclude that its best option was to claim the loss on the insurance and scrap the cars. The Wall Street Journal got the story on the scrapping process and have sent us the link to use (bottom link, below).
The video clip in the article is worth a look. Sad to see such treatment meted out to 'new' cars, but there you go. They even smash the CD players with hammers and drill holes in the tyres to stop them finding their way out on to the black market.
JAPAN: Mazda rules out selling rescued cars as... Kerkorian likes FMC - If there was ever a sign that Ford has really turned a corner with its latest financial results maybe it is the renewed buying interest of Kirk Kerkorian. This is the guy who took a hosing with his DCX shares (and lost a court case for compensation) and more recently failed to engineer control of GM via manoueverings involving Carlos Ghosn. Now he's taking an interest in Ford. I wonder what the Ford dynasty makes of that, but, as they own most of the voting stock, they probably aren't too concerned about any future Tracinda manoueverings. It looks more like a vote of confidence in Ford and it's turnaround course.... Austin 'Wildgoose' - I was up at BMW/Mini's Plant Oxford on Friday to meet up with Oliver Zipse, the Plant Director. We had a chat in a large building that is reserved for Mini events (an interview article for just-auto is in the works). It's also a place big enough to gather everyone together for occasional company meetings. There is some showcasing of the present product and, I was pleased to see, plenty of Mini heritage on display. There were wall-posters of old ads alongside some very pristine looking Minis. And in the corner of the hall was something truly extraordinary - the Austin 'Wildgoose' Mini Camper.
... VW footballing analogy - I have heard Rob Golding make caustic remarks about the big German company AGMs before and I don't think Volkswagen is by any means unique in its quaint procedures, though Ferdinand Piech is perhaps a master in manipulating them for his own ends.
Sounds like Rob's patience threshold was finally breached yesterday and he could not help but indulge in a little venting. Poor lad had a lot on with financial results yesterday and didn't much care for the bit players being given too much time by VW to meander aimlessly while the big questions were barely addressed, the untouchable Piech apparently revelling in it all.
Must say, I enjoyed Rob's footballing analogy at the start of his piece. Clearly things haven't been going smoothly down at 'The Valley' (home to his beloved Charlton Athletic) lately - off or on the pitch. Just what is the world coming to when getting a beer at a major (I'm being kind) sports event is that difficult? Note to self: don't wind him up even further about the Addi... Good looking Ford results - Ford's Q1 results today look pretty good. The loss in North America is well down and there's a surprisingly big profit in Europe. I don't see any smoke and mirrors at work with one-time items or anything like that - it looks genuinely good. The only slight negative is Volvo Cars tipping into the red (timing is just a little ironic with profitable LR and close to breakeven Jaguar leaving the fold).
Found myself reading Sam Toy's (ex-Ford UK chairman and MD, 1980-1986) obituary in The Times newspaper recently - he died at the end of last month aged 84. He was a big believer in the need to improve efficiency in the British auto industry and opposed protectionism. One of the things he had wanted to do was engineer a Ford takeover of BL, something which he believed would have 'strengthened the whole of the British motor industry'. You can see the thinking. Ford could use the increased volume to get scale economies and promote efficiency gains among its suppliers. And there would have been t... Copyright © 2008, Curse Buster Sound. All Rights Reserved. |