Even today’s grim-faced auto industry is sometimes good for a laugh. For instance, unlike years past, the Chrysler presentation at the Detroit auto show will feature no b.s. — at least, not literally. Chrysler certainly couldn’t make that claim last year, when the company hired 10 cowboys to drive 120 longhorn cattle down the main drag outside the auto show, as a publicity...
Auto Industry Archive
January 2009
Kicking off an ongoing downgrade of the Pontiac brand, GM on Jan. 6 cancelled the Australian-built Pontiac G8 ST model for the United States. The G8 ST (for “Sport Truck”) is a modern version of the Chevy El Camino, a car-based pickup truck that was discontinued after 1987. The G8 ST is based on the G8 sedan. In Australia, where it’s built, the G8 ST is called the VE Ute....
U.S. sales for most luxury brands fell about as much as the rest of the market in recent months, and every luxury brand except Rolls-Royce posted a 2008 sales downturn for the full year. It’s true that luxury-import brands like BMW and Mercedes-Benz prospered as the rest of the U.S. market slumped, since 2000. But it’s wrong to say that because luxury brands fell in 2008, that the...
You know U.S. auto sales are truly terrible, when auto industry spinmeisters start off by comparing the most recent month’s awful numbers versus the previous month’s even worse numbers, instead of against the customary year-ago month. That sleight-of-hand has become a bad habit, with U.S. auto industry sales falling off a cliff in the fourth quarter, thanks to the credit crisis,...
As GM and Chrysler haggle with the Treasury Department over the final details of their first $8 billion in rescue loans, there are several questions to which we still have no answers. So in the spirit of David Letterman, here are the Top Five Unanswered Questions about the Detroit Three: Who will own GM after this deal goes through? The plan requires certain bondholders to swap their debt for...
The net effect is nearly the same, but there’s a real twist in the fine print of the agreements by which GMAC Financial Services became a bank holding company and qualified for a government bailout. Under the GMAC bailout, the U.S. Treasury Department on Dec. 29 said it was buying $5 billion in preferred shares of GMAC. Treasury also loaned GM another $1 billion to be invested in GMAC....
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- Ford Set to Regain U.S. Market Share First Time Since 1995
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- Nissan's Carlos Tavares on Launching the Leaf and Electrifying the World
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- Nissan Introduces the Leaf EV in Los Angeles
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- Siemens Builds Electric Bike for American Chopper TV Show
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- Lithium-Ion Batteries Could be Too Expensive, MIT Team Says
- Ford Bandwagon Rolling But It's Too Soon to Hop On
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