December 2007
Nardelli, Cerberus Defendeth Too Much?
By Michelle Krebs December 28, 2007By Bill Visnic After issuing a statement just before the holidays saying recent media characterizations of the financial situation at Chrysler LLC âpainted an inaccurate pictureâ of the companyâs fiscal health, media and analyst tongues are wagging with suspicion that the companyâs hedge-fund owner, Cerberus Capital Management L.P., is scrambling to salvage its car-company investment. Cerberus, which owns 80.1 percent of Chrysler and typically is closed-mouthed in its dealings with the media, hastened to back up Chairman and CEO Bob Nardelli when The Wall Street Journal reported Nardelli recently told some Chrysler employees the company was âoperationallyâ bankrupt. more
Buick Design Will Grow Bolder,GMâs Top Design Exec Says
By Michelle Krebs December 28, 2007By Dale Buss Expect future Buick vehicles to rip a big page from the success of the aggressively styled Enclave crossover and move quickly away from design-legacy retreads such as the company's Lucerne and LaCrosse midsize sedans. Ed Welburn, GM’s vice president of global design, told AutoObserver that Buick is shifting decisively toward “bold†and “dramatic†design statements such as Enclave while still trying to retain some “elegant†and “romantic†elements from its design theme over the previous generation. He said to expect more iterations of the sort of overstated approach used with Enclave, which is distinguished by cues such more
Fleet Sporting Ford’s "Green Paint" Hits the Road
By John O'Dell December 28, 2007A Ford E-350 cutaway gets the "green" treatment at Ohio plant. U-Haul this week began renting the automotive industry's first vehicle fleet to sport Ford's "green paint," a product expected to wear better than conventional auto paint while being environmentally cleaner and faster and cheaper to apply. Aside from a few decals boasting eco-friendliness, the 200-plus E-Series vans that U-Haul, North America's largest trailer rental company, has added to its fleet don't appear to be anything special, but they are -- if only skin deep. The solvent-borne paint contains more pigment than conventional water-borne auto paint, which allows the more
Soy Seats and Corn Upholstery: Ford's Biomaterials Researchers Really Do Have a Better Idea
By John O'Dell December 27, 2007Foam Researchers Deborah Mielewski, Cynthia Flanigan and Christine Perry. Christine Perry, they say, cooks up a mean chocolate cake. But the Ford Motor Co. materials scientist is busier these days working on foam for car seats. Her laboratory concoctions do have one thing in common with her culinary triumphs though: both use renewable plant materials grown in the U.S. For her cakes, it's flour from wheat and sugar from cane; for her foam, it's oil from soybeans. Perry, one of the five scientists—the others are chemical engineers -- who make up Ford's biomaterial research team, is part of an more
Oops! Here's BMW's Correct HQ Locale in the U.S.
By John O'Dell December 27, 2007Chalk it up (please) to pre-holiday brain fade. We put BMW of North America in the wrong city in a recent post. The company's North American headquarters are in Woodcliff Lake, NJ, not in Montvale (that's where another German automaker keeps its U.S. offices). At least we got the state right! more
Fiat Revival Celebrations Are Premature
By Michelle Krebs December 26, 2007By Richard Feast It’s being hailed as the turnaround story of the year, but put the champagne back in the cellar. Celebrations about a Fiat revival are premature. I was a judge on one of those auto industry Man of the Year award panels last year. Sergio Marchionne, the 55-year-old Italian-Canadian who has done so much to stop the rot at the Fiat group, emerged as the clear-cut winner. My nomination for someone else stood little chance in the face of overwhelming voting for the “saviour†of Fiat. Still, I have reservations about whether Marchionne deserved the award – because more
Drive Greener on the Cheap and Easy Plan
By John O'Dell December 26, 2007Giftmas is over and most of us are sitting on wallets that are considerably thinner than we'd like. So we asked contributor Mac Demere -- a writer, auto and tire tester, race driver and, most recently, head of the environmental team at his company's test track -- to share his best advice for a cleaner, greener start to a new driving year, without busting our already fragile budgets. Here are Mac's tips for cheap and easy ways to go green. By Mac Demere, Contributor Doing good doesn’t have to cost a lot. Drivers can take many low-cost actions to limit automotive more
The Sun Rises on an Indian Auto Empire: Tata to Buy Jag, Rover
By Michelle Krebs December 24, 2007By Nick Kurczewski MUMBAI, India — Just in time for Christmas, it appears Tata Motors will win the right to purchase what might be the ultimate bargain of the automotive world: The Mumbai-based auto manufacturer has completed the purchase of Jaguar and Land Rover from the beleaguered Ford Motor Company. Ford originally bought these icons of the British motoring industry for well more than $5 billion, but the reported price Tata paid is estimated to be less than half that, somewhere in the region of $2 billion. more
Automakers Blog to Make Their Point, Connect With Customers
By Michelle Krebs December 24, 2007By Dale Buss When Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli didn’t like the negative stories being written about the automaker in the business press over the past couple of weeks, he didnât write nasty letters to the editor that may or may not have been published. He didnât call a press conference to discredit the reports. He blogged. He used Chrysler’s The Firehouse blog to set the record straight that the automaker was not in the dire financial straits that had been reported. He insisted Chrysler was making progress in its turnaround and had the full backing of new owner Cerberus Capital more
NYPD ... Green????
By John O'Dell December 31, 2007NYPD Detective Derek Siconola astride a Vectrix electric scooter. The New York Police Department will begin road testing four all-electric Vectrix scooters in January as part of a broader campaign to make America's largest police department a greener one as well. The 36,000-officer NYPD has already deployed a handful of hybrid cars, as well as a number of flex-fuel vehicles that can run on both gasoline and ethanol. more