ArvinMeritor: Former Ford Exec To Run Auto Parts Spin-off
Former Ford Executive Phil Martens will become CEO of a new company, Arvin Innovations, a spin-off of auto parts supplier ArvinMeritor, Inc., struggling to return to profitability by restructuring, expanding globally and becoming less dependent on Detroit’s Big Three.
Martens, who ran product development at Mazda and later Ford North America, was among a handful of executives who left Ford in a political battle that had Martens’ rival Mark Fields becoming Ford’s President of the Americas.
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Rick Suzuki: Fall on Sword Justified?
By Michelle Krebs
It was puzzling and surprising when Rick Suzuki announced in late March that he would
step down as chairman of American Suzuki due to the company’s poor performance.
After all, American Suzuki sales haven’t appeared that bad on the surface. In fact, Suzuki sales have nearly doubled since 2003. In March this year, Suzuki sold 10,510 vehicles, its highest amount since June 2007 in an extremely tough sales environment when the industry as a whole and most automakers reported a sales decline.
But a closer look by Edmunds.com shows those sales came at a cost that led to the operating losses to which Rick Suzuki referred in his March letter to employees.
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Porsche Charges Eavesdropping on CEO Via a Baby Monitor
The Porsche-Volkswagen saga is becoming more bizarre every day; the latest chapter includes charges of eavesdropping via a baby monitor.
Porsche confirmed Sunday night that it has filed a criminal complaint with authorities 
regarding a suspected attempt to eavesdrop on CEO Wendelin Wiedeking. A report by the German weekly Der Spiegel, picked up by the Wall Street Journal Monday, said the complaint came after the microphone of a baby monitoring device was discovered behind a sofa in a hotel suite a day before last year's meeting of the supervisory board of Volkswagen.
Porsche holds 31 percent of the shares of Volkswagen and is seeking a majority stake.
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Kerkorian's Tracinda Builds Stake in Ford
He’s back and Ford is the object of his affection this time.
Last Vegas billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, through his Tracinda Corp., has amassed 100 million shares for a 4.7 percent stake in Ford just this month. Further, Tracinda said it plans to buy up to 20 million more shares at a premium to last week’s closing price.
Kerkorian’s move on Ford is a vote of confidence for Ford management led by CEO Alan Mulally and the company’s turnaround prospects.
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Done at BMW But Now At Rolls-Royce, CEO Tom Purves Says Luxury Market will be Challenging
By Kate McLeod
Editor's Note: Auto Observer interviewed Tom Purves, chairman and CEO, BMW U.S. Holding Corp., in late March, as he still was scheduled to retire from the company. But this week, BMW announced Purves will remain, becoming CEO of the company's Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Ltd. division in the United Kingdom, starting in July. He spoke with Kate McLeod about his decades with BMW and the company's future in a toughening U.S. market.
Tom Purves has worked for BMW either 23 or 24 years. He can’t remember exactly.
In November, at age 60, he was scheduled to retire - but now will take over as CEO of BMW's Rolls-Royce unit. Purves leaves BMW as the company is dramatically expanding its production capacity in the U.S., and creating more niche vehicles. One is a stunning modernization of the iconic 2002, the 1 Series, and another, the X6, is so new it has no category or market.
That may sound idyllic but the current BMW management in Europe is in shuffle mode, which creates chaos. “It is not really, in a sense, for me to make a judgment whether it is unusual or not,” said Purves about all the management changes in Germany. “We in America are just passing the baton.”
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General Motors Hires Ex-Nissan McNabb
General Motors has hired former Nissan executive Mark McNabb and reorganized its sales, service and marketing divisions.
GM will have four brand channels -- Chevrolet, Saturn, Buick-Pontiac-GMC, and Cadillac-Hummer-Saab. McNabb will head the "premium" channel of Cadillac-Hummer-Saab.
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Cerberus’ Feinberg: “A Recluse Lifts the Veil a Little”
A rare interview with Stephen A. Feinberg, the founder of Cerberus Capital Management, which now owns most of Chrysler and much of General Motors Acceptance Corp., provides the ever-so-slightest glimpse of Feinberg the man, but provides not a morsel of what he’s got in mind for the much anticipated end game of Chrysler.
New York Times’ “Dealbook” columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin spent two hours interviewing the reclusive Feinberg -– “the money man some hope will save Detroit” as he describes him -- at his Manhattan office. It was Feinberg’s first interview in a couple of decades –- and he still refused a photograph. His yearbook picture is the one media outlets are forced to use.
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Former UAW President Douglas Fraser Remembered
Hundreds of union members, political figures and corporate executives gathered with 
family members Saturday for a memorial service honoring former United Auto Workers President Douglas Fraser, who died Feb 23 at age 91.
Fraser led the union through its zenith in the 1970s and through the bleak times of the 1980s. He played a key role in saving Chrysler from bankruptcy. In exchange for workers agreeing to concessions to save Chrysler, Fraser gained a seat on Chrysler’s board, making him the first major union chief on the board of a large corporation.
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‘Cuda Designer John Herlitz Celebrated at Memorial Service
John Herlitz, the Chrysler designer who penned the legendary 1970 Plymouth Barracuda as
well as the 1971 Plymouth Road Runner, numerous concept cars and important recent production cars, died last month at the age of 65. A memorial service was held Saturday.
Upon graduation from Pratt Institute, Herlitz began his career at Chrysler in 1965 as a manager of the Plymouth Intermediate Car Studio. He retired in 2000 as senior vice president of design.
Herlitz made his mark with the classic American muscle car, the 1970 Plymouth Barracuda. His Barracudas, especially those with powerful Hemi engines, currently fetch millions of dollars at auction from collectors.
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Ford Dealers Get a Glimpse of 2010 Taurus
Ford CEO Alan Mulally showed dealers the next-generation Ford Taurus behind closed doors at a Las Vegas gathering. The Taurus is believed to be scheduled as a 2010 model and could be unveiled at the Detroit auto show in January.
Ford has given no official details about the new Taurus to the media yet. However, last week, the Taurus Car Club of America Web site posted a hazy photo showing a far more chiseled shape and European appearance than the current model, as reported by Edmunds' InsideLine.com.
Jim Farley, Ford's group vice president for marketing and communications, told the Detroit Free Press that dealers gave the Taurus a standing ovation.
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Peter Arnell Comes Back to Chrysler: Savior? Svengali? Or Both?
By Dale Buss
Two things are clear about Peter Arnell. He and his ideas are stepping on some mighty big toes at Chrysler. And he isn’t transgressing quietly.
But two other matters aren’t so certain – and, ultimately, they’re more important to the success of CEO Robert Nardelli’s recent move to bring in the controversial branding Svengali as the company’s “acting chief innovation officer.”
The first decisive question about Arnell: Can everyone get over the debacle that ended his first stint with Chrysler a few years ago? And the second is: Can Arnell really bring significant and quick improvements to the company now, with his broad edict to overhaul crucial areas including product design, passenger-facing technology, branding and dealerships?
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In a Recession or Headed Toward One?
Is the U.S. headed for a recession or already in one?
The man on the street likely would say we're in one, but experts are debating it.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Tuesday the U.S. was in recession. On Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund's issued its latest World Economic Outlook that said the U.S. will slip into a recession that will spread globally.
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Ford’s Farley to Unveil Marketing Plan
Next week, Ford’s long-awaited marketing plan will be unveiled by Jim Farley, Ford’s
group vice president for marketing and communications who was lured away from Toyota last fall.
The marketing plan includes an experiential aspect taking place this weekend in conjunction with the ABC TV show "Oprah's Big Give"; a multimillion-dollar ad campaign, with the tagline "Drive One," rolls out Tuesday.
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Ford: One Less Mouth to Feed as Worker Wins the Lottery
Ford Motor Co. has been offering all kinds of incentives to shed workers from its ranks, but this week it has one less, thanks to a payout bigger than anything Ford could deliver when one of its employees won the lottery.
David Sneath, a Ford hi-lo operator from Livonia, Mich., won Michigan’s $136 million Mega Millions jackpot — Michigan’s third-largest ever — on Tuesday, which was both April Fool’s Day and his 60th birthday.
What did Sneath do first? He quit his job at Ford, where he’d worked for 34 years.
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Volkswagen U.S.’ Biggest Problem: Metal to Move
By Bill Visnic
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sure, Volkswagen Group of America is concerned about the debilitating dollar-euro exchange rate, which almost daily shrinks its profit margin on vehicles built in Europe and sold for U.S. dollars.
But new Chief Operating Officer J. Mark Barnes’ biggest concern is having enough metal to move. Barnes said dealers are practically rioting for more product. Anything will do.
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Nissan’s Electric-Powered Future
By Nick Kurczewski
MONACO -- Kazuhiro Doi can engineer you a boring electric car if you want it, but he’d prefer not to. As Nissan’s general manager and technology chief, Doi has the inside line on Nissan’s work in everything from electric vehicles to hybrids, and advanced safety features.
Under Doi’s leadership, Nissan developed a vehicle th at can detect when a driver is too intoxicated to drive. One of his latest projects is the Nissan Mixim, which was at the EVER Monaco ecological car show, held March 27-30.
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Venturi Automobiles: Homefield Advantage at EVER Monaco
By Nick Kurczewski
It’s rare that an interview has to be postponed for royalty. But as Prince Albert of Monaco made his way through the displays at this year’s EVER Monaco ecological car show, that possibility was business as usual for Venturi Automobiles, the world’s only Monegasque car company.
AutoObserver caught up with Venturi’s charismatic CEO, Gildo Pastor, to discuss his tiny company’s latest electric, solar, and even wind-powered automotive technology projects. One eye scanning the floor to make sure Prince Albert’s entourage was not approaching, he also provided us with a few tantalizing hints as to what lies ahead regarding Venturi’s push into the American market.
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Toyota Denies Japanese Government Helped with the Prius
Toyota Motor Corp. denied Wednesday it had received any funding from the Japanese
government to develop its Prius hybrid, The Associated Press reported.
Former Toyota executive and board member Jim Press, now vice chairman and president of Chrysler, had been quoted in the March 24 issue of Business Week magazine as saying, “The Japanese government paid for 100 percent of the development of the battery and hybrid system that went into the Toyota Prius."
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BMW Hydrogen 7: A Surreal World Trial Run
By Nick Kurczewski
MONTE CARLO, Monaco — A hydrogen economy might still be a decade or more into the future but that hasn’t stopped BMW from continuing its real-world hydrogen trial run, courtesy of some surreal clientele. Prince Albert II of Monaco was handed the keys to a BMW Hydrogen 7 sedan at this week’s EVER Monaco ecological car show.
He joins an elite list of roughly 100 celebrities and VIPs who have been loaned one of BMW’s Hydrogen 7s. The average loan extends from six to eight weeks. A BMW spokesman at the EVER Monaco ecological car show confirmed Prince Albert would have a Hydrogen 7 for a two-month trial.
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GM's Mary Barra: Tuning Up Automaker's Plants
By Kate McLeod
Mary Barra isn’t the new kid on the block. She is a tested General Motors veteran. She isn’t even that new to her new job as vice president of global manufacturing and engineering. Barra, a native Michigander, has been around GM — in particular around manufacturing and plants — for 27 years.
We’re well beyond writing stories about the first woman plumber or jockey, or indeed the first woman anything. Barra is worth a story because of her job, global responsibility for stamping and die plants around the world — Poland, Brazil, Russia, China and yes, Wisconsin, among others. This is part of GM's new focus — trying to create one company out of many. At GM they think it is the key to survival.
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Wolfgang Reitzle: Thriving in the Prosperous Gas Business
When German engineer and businessman Wolfgang Reitzle departed Ford Motor Co. in May 2002, it was expected he eventually would turn up somewhere in the auto industry he’d grown up in.
Dubbed the auto industry’s preeminent car guy by Fortune magazine in 2000 and advocated by some to become CEO of BMW, where he had spent most of his career, Reitzle ended his automotive career as head of Ford’s Premier Automotive Group.
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Chrysler's Nardelli: Private Equity Can Rebuild Chrysler
NEW YORK — Chrysler President and CEO Robert Nardelli reassured his audience of automotive reporters, often skeptical of late about the automaker's future, that a private-equity firm such as Cerberus Capital Management can build a car company like Chrysler back to greatness.
Nardelli was the keynote speaker Wednesday at the International Motor Press Association's breakfast kicking off press days at the New York International Auto Show.
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Middle East Aston Martin Sues Aston Martin Lagonda UK for $50 Million
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — British luxury car maker Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd. UK is being sued for
$50 million by its distributor in Dubai, Middle East Aston Martin, for breach of contract.
The lawsuit contends the strained relationship between Middle East Aston Martin (MEAM), the exclusive distributor of Aston Martin cars in the region, and the parent company to which Ford sold the bulk of the company a year ago is due “to the entrenched interests of its majority shareholder, the Kuwaiti investment group DAR, and their intention to refinance its stake in the company which had been purchased in March 2007, allegedly for an overprized rate.”
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Ford Beefs Up Global Management Team
By Michelle Krebs
Ford beefed up its global management team with the elevation of five executives to group vice president reporting directly to Ford CEO Alan Mulally and naming a chief operating officer in Europe.
Since his arrival more than 18 months ago, Mulally, a former Boeing executive, has said repeated like a mantra that he wants Ford to be a truly global car company a la Toyota, not a global carmaker made up of a disparate regional units.
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Nissan’s Mark McNabb To Depart the Company
By Michelle Krebs
Nissan North America has confirmed Mark C. McNabb, who returned to the automaker last July as senior vice president of sales and marketing, will leave the auto company for personal reasons on April 1.
Rumors of his imminent departure had been swirling in recent weeks. And some speculation has McNabb going to an unnamed Detroit car company.
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GM: Won’t Intervene in American Axle Strike
A top General Motors executive said the automaker is concerned by the two-week strike against parts supplier American Axle & Manufacturing, which has slowed or stopped production at 29 GM plants. But he said GM won’t intervene in the dispute.
Fritz Henderson, promoted last week to GM president and chief operating officer, told The New York Times in an interview Monday that GM would be more concerned if it were losing sales due to lean inventories. The strike has mostly affected plants that make GM’s pickup trucks and large sport-utility vehicles, which are in abundant supply and low demand.
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Bush Comments Lend Another Boost to Cellulosic Ethanol
By Dale Buss
The politicians in Washington aren’t on the same page on every issue with the U.S. auto industry. But it’s increasingly clear the most important of them see eye to eye with some major automakers when it comes to cellulosic ethanol.
Remaining presidential candidates have made a point of touting cellulosic ethanol — which can be made from a number of sources other than corn — as an important alternative fuel. On Thursday morning President Bush added to the chorus of support at his White House news conference. He emphasized cellulosic ethanol as a crucial part of the short-term answer to problems of fuel pricing and availability, as well as a long-term solution.
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Maserati's Selwa Leaves North American Distributor
Maserati North America Inc., announced Thursday that James Selwa, president and CEO, has left Maserati, effective Friday.
The Italian automaker said Maserati CEO Roberto Ronchi will continue to directly oversee the market in coordination with the Maserati North America team.
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Ghosn Says the R-word — Out Loud
Nissan-Renault Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn told reporters in South Korea on Friday even if the United States is not in recession, its auto industry is, The Associated Press reported.
"We are very lucid on the situation of the industry that there is a recession in the United States, at least in the car market," said Ghosn, adding automakers face rising costs for iron ore, precious metals, aluminum and other materials. "These represent risk for the industry."
Still, he expressed optimism the market will improve. The American auto market "will not stay in recession for a long time," he said.
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Tata Shareholders Not Thrilled with Proposed Jaguar, Land Rover Purchase
A lot of people — investors, specifically — are not thrilled with India’s Tata
buying Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford. They insist the company should focus on the $2,500 Tata Nano microcars, not $100,000 Jaguars.
Bloomberg News reported a number of investors, including A.S. Thiyaga Rajan, who manages a $250 million fund, are dumping their Tata stock.
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GMAC Cuts Jobs, Offices
GMAC, the financial services group owned by General Motors and Cerberus Capital Management, said it would close 15 of its 20 offices and eliminate 930 – or 15 percent – of its jobs in North America.
The cost-cutting moves come on the heels of GMAC reporting a loss of $724 million in the fourth quarter of 2007, compared with a $1-billion profit a year earlier. GMAC’s troubles are due to the crisis in the housing and subprime lending businesses. In addition, delinquencies on car loans are rising.
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Delphi’s Steve Miller Publishes Memoir, Turnaround Lesson Book
The turnaround of Delphi Corp. is far from complete. The latest chapter in that saga came last week when the banks were unable to find funding that would allow the nation’s largest auto-parts supplier to emerge from bankruptcy.
Nevertheless, Delphi executive chairman Robert S. “Steve” Miller, a former Chrysler executive and a veteran of a dozen turnarounds, has written a book, The Turnaround Kid: What I Learned Rescuing America's Most Troubled Companies (Collins, $25.95, 272 pages). It is due out in April.
Fortune magazine’s Editor-at-Large Allan Sloan reviewed the book in an article picked up Tuesday by the Washington Post, entitled “Self-Portrait of a Turnaround Artist.”
Sloan said he got hooked immediately on the book, not only because the autobiography talks about Miller’s 30 years of corporate troubleshooting but more because it shows him to be a human being, “a business man in full” and “not a calculator with legs.”
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Tata Nano Bound for Europe
By Nick Kurczewski
Launched at the New Delhi Auto Expo to a frenzy of worldwide interest, the Tata Nano city-car is coming to Europe within four years, according to Reuters.
The Nano was the unequivocal star of the New Delhi Auto Expo in early January, where it was announced the car’s Indian-market price will begin at only “1-lakh,” the equivalent of $2,500. About the only thing louder than the waves of applause during the Nano’s debut was the sound of other automotive executives’ jaws hitting the floor.
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Chrysler Won't Survive; Sell It, Advises Ex-Chrysler Exec
Chrysler LLC won't survive on its own and its private-equity owners should sell the company to a foreign automaker, Dow Jones reports a former finance chief of the automaker.
"Step A is that Cerberus Capital Management should do everything they can to fix it, and step B is that they should sell it to a foreign automaker that has strong market share in emerging markets," said Jerry York, who was Chrysler's chief financial officer between 1990 and 1993. He now serves as a representative of billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian.
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Ford Marketing: Restore the Trust
Ford Motor Co. plans to unveil a new marketing campaign in March or April that works to restore consumer trust in the Dearborn automaker's products, according to Jim Farley, Ford's group vice president of marketing and communications.
"The key elements are" to "restore the trust," he said Sunday, following a meeting with Ford dealers in San Francisco at the National Automobile Dealers Association's annual convention.
Farley is expected to lay out his plan for revamping Ford’s global marketing efforts on the eve of the New York auto show in March.
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Blessed Is Poore in Spirit, for He Shall Inherit -- Nissan’s Brands
By Dale Buss
Nissan didn’t mount a news conference at the Detroit auto show last month. But the company and its vehicles were still there in force. The $70,000 cult supercar, the 473-horsepower Nissan GT-R, was beckoning gawkers ahead of its midsummer launch. Also the concept minivan, Forum, which Nissan unveiled in December.
It was sort of the same with Ben Poore. He didn’t march front and center with a mini-mic, TelePrompTer and portfolio of gestures to address a media throng about sales expectations or future models. But the company’s new North American vice president of marketing communications was certainly available around the display for interviews.
And even just three months after moving into his job from Ford, the 41-year-old Poore already has reached plenty of conclusions about where he wants to lead the third-ranked Japanese brand in the U.S. market.
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Kia Revolving Door Turns Again as Latest Execs Leave
The top two executives of Kia Motors America Inc. are out. The U.S. marketing arm of the South Korean automaker confirmed at the National Automobile Dealers Association convention in San Francisco over the weekend that CEO Len Hunt and Ian Beavis, vice president of marketing, had left the company.
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BMW Names New Top Exec
BMW (U.K.) Ltd. Managing Director Jim O’Donnell will take over as president of 
BMW of North America LLC, replacing Tom Purves, who has announced he will retire April 1.
O’Donnell will report directly to Purves, who will remain chairman and CEO of BMW (U.S.) Holding Corp. and chairman of BMW North America’s management board. O’Donnell will also assume the duties of Howard Mosher, vice president of operations, who will retire March 31.
Prior to his current role, O’Donnell oversaw sales for BMW in South Africa and the U.K. Before joining BMW, he held various positions at Ford.
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Chrysler: Back in Business For Now After Deal with Plastech
Production at Chrysler assembly plants is largely returning to normal now that the automaker has reached a tentative agreement with supplier Plastech Engineered Products Inc.
Chrysler cut production at five assembly plants Feb. 4 due to parts shortages of plastic interior parts, the result of the automaker canceling contracts with Plastech, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Detroit on Feb. 1.
The dispute between Chrysler and Plastech illustrates the changing of the guard at the automaker as well as the continued poor health of the automotive-supply base.
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UAW Will Help Elect Democrat — Either One — to the White House
United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said Sunday the union will work hard to elect a Democrat to the White House, but said the union would not endorse either Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., or Senator Barack Obama, D-Ill., for the Democratic nomination.
“The stakes in this election could not be any higher. Our jobs are on the line,” Gettelfinger told an assembly of about 1,000 union activists gathered in Washington for a conference. More than 3 million manufacturing jobs in the U.S. have been lost since January 2001, he noted.
Gettelfinger said the union will support the Democratic presidential candidates with money and sweat equity.
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BMW Chief Hits the Roadshow Circuit
Norbert Reithofer will this week become the first chief executive of BMW to go on an investor roadshow as the German automaker seeks to deflect worries about its profitability and shed its reputation as an industry laggard, the Financial Times reported over the weekend.
Reithofer will visit London on Wednesday as well as New York and Boston on Thursday and Friday to update investors on his efforts to cut costs.
The paper noted these visits mark a cultural break for the German carmaker, which until now only made its chief financial officer or other lower-ranking executives available to its shareholders.
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Auto Marketers Grapple with the Glow of Celebrity
By Dale Buss
Where would Buick be without Tiger Woods? General Motors executives can’t decide if they really want to find out. They believe the golfing phenom and global celebrity (leading in this weekend's Dubai Desert Classic) is so popular he -- rather than Buick vehicles -- became central to the brand over the years.
But now that the Enclave has rescued Buick from the sales doldrums, a new advertising campaign shows division executives are unafraid to put a renascent Woods front and center with the stylish crossover vehicle.
“These spots are very significant because they represent both Buick and Tiger moving to another stage in our life cycle,” Maria Rohrer, Buick’s marketing director, told AutoObserver. “We’ve used him in testimonial before, but we’ve never used him in this kind of emotional way. It’s wonderful when the stars align like this.”
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GM Go-Fast Guy to Lead New Hybrid, EV Development Team
By Bill Visnic
DETROIT – General Motors Corp. this week put its top performance-vehicle 
development engineer in charge of a new global team oriented to going fast in another fashion: speeding development of GM’s new hybrid-electric and so-called “extended-range” electric vehicles – and the critical battery-storage technology to enable those next-generation vehicles, like the Chevrolet Volt.
Robert Kruse, executive director of vehicle engineering for hybrids, electric vehicle and batteries, is running the new engineering team. Kruse, most recently head honcho at GM’s Performance Division, is well-regarded in the GM empire and should be an ideal engineer-executive to direct GM’s efforts to implement high-tech, electrically oriented powertrains.
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Nissan Needs "Interesting" Cars, Wants To Reinvigorate Maxima
By Bill Visnic
DETROIT –- Tom Lane, Nissan Motor Co. corporate vice president of the product strategy and product planning division, wasn’t much in a mood to mince words when AutoObserver spoke with him at the Detroit auto show. He says Nissan needs more small cars.
More importantly: “I would like to have more interesting small cars.”
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Mercedes Stalks Better Returns, Pins ’08 on Smaller Crossover
By Bill Visnic
DETROIT – Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz unit, which despite a beaten-down market managed its 14th consecutive record sales year in the U.S. and gutted out a 2 percent worldwide sales hike, wants to improve its return on sales to an ambitious 10 percent by 2010 “at the latest,” says Dieter Zetsche, chairman of Daimler’s board of management and Mercedes Chief Executive.
“Thanks to the hard work of the previous few years, we’re starting out this year from an excellent position – in terms of efficiency, quality, service and unit sales,” Zetsche says at a reception here prior to the opening of the Detroit auto show.
He says for ’08, the company will get behind two all-new products: the GLK compact crossover and the CLC coupe, a 2-door hardtop based on the mechanicals of the recently launched, all-new C-Class.
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Unabashedly American Design
By Jane Nakagawa
Now that Toyota has become the second-largest selling carmaker in the U.S., it appears that the Japanese brand is on the way to becoming the world’s largest automobile manufacturer, surpassing General Motors. In every competition, there are winners and losers, and in this case, slow and steady looks set to win the race.
Toyota’s decades-long pursuit of QDR (quality, durability, and reliability), plus consistent brand building has made the company the darling of business schools as well as consumers. Yet the good news for Detroit is that there is another round to this race, and even the best of companies has an Achilles heel.
And with the 2008 Detroit auto show on the horizon this week, it’s a good time to talk about it. Because it all has to do with design.
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Kid Rock as a Car Dealer?
By Michelle Krebs
Kid Rock, pictured rehearsing for his performance at the GM Style gala on Saturday night, almost had a different career than music.
His father wanted him to be a car dealer.
In the early days of his career, Kid Rock’s father, Bill Ritchie (Kid Rock’s real name is Bob Ritchie), desperately wanted his son to settle down into a real career in the family car business.
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Q&A: India’s Tata Motors Chief Ratan Tata
NEW DELHI, India -- Hounded by journalists and chased for interviews all day 
Thursday, Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Group and Tata Motors, has become an instant celebrity now that his company has delivered on its promise of delivering a production-ready vehicle priced at only $2,500.
The Tata Nano will be the world’s cheapest car when it goes on sale later this year in India. Ratan Tata promises that other markets will follow within two or three year’s time. Sitting down with the foreign media, Ratan Tata answered questions pertaining to his revolutionary small car, the hurdles that lay ahead, and whether the Nano will ever be sold in Europe or the United States. AutoObserver correspondent Nick Kurczewski, covering the New Delhi Auto Expo this week, excerpts some of that briefing:
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GM’s Turnaround: A Glimmer of Hope, Fortune Magazine
Fortune magazine suggests there’s reason to be optimistic about General Motors’ future in an article written by auto veteran and long-time GM watcher Alex Taylor and entitled “Gentleman, star your turnaround.” The subtitle is “Rick Wagoner’s overhaul of GM is producing cooler cars and a glimmer of hope.”
GM CEO Rick Wagoner tells Fortune what he’s been saying often in recent weeks is that 2008 will be another tough year for the automaker. He cites the same headwinds as his counterparts at other companies cite: weaker economy, high commodity, steel prices and energy prices. "Frankly, more headwinds, especially from the first two, than I would have hoped. We're going to be in soupy water for a while," Wagoner told Fortune.
Still, he added, he feels good about GM’s progress.
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GM Appointments Bolster International Growth Spots
Having just reported record sales outside of the U.S., General Motors has made some employee appointments to bolster fast-growing regions, especially Russia and Turkey.
Chris Gubbey, appointed chairman and managing director, GM Holden Ltd., in Australia only months ago, becomes GM Europe vice president and managing director, responsible for GM Russia and CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States).
GM, like most automakers, is scrambling to expand in Russia to keep up with growing vehicle demand there.
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Ford Dishes Up News Tidbits
Ford’s sale of Jaguar and Land Rover to India’s Tata Motors should be wrapped up by the end of March, a rear-drive Lincoln is in the works and the automaker’s future growth will come from outside of the U.S.
Those are just a few of the news tidbits that came out Tuesday during one of the dinner/press briefings Ford CEO Alan Mulally and his management team occasionally host.
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GM's Wagoner: Cars as Sophisticated Consumer Electronics
By Bill Visnic
LAS VEGAS – At the enormous and ever-growing Consumer Electronics Show here this week, General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Rick Wagoner leaves a telling indicator about his view on the hierarchy of the automotive and electronics industries, saying autos essentially have become electronic devices.
“If the automobile were invented today, I’m pretty sure it would debut at CES,” Wagoner says. “Because more and more, that’s exactly what today’s cars and trucks are – highly sophisticated consumer electronics.”
Wagoner’s keynote address is the first by an auto executive in the 41-year history of CES, a trade show whose hype is exceeded only by its audacious size. And if anyone thought Wagoner was clinging to any old-school notions that the electronics industry is subservient to the auto sector, Wagoner went on to describe his view of a world in which consumers will begin to see automobiles in the same light as a cell phone or an MP3 player.
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GM's Wagoner: Future Growth Is Overseas
About three-quarters of General Motors' car and truck sales will come from outside the U.S. within a decade, Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner told Bloomberg Television in an interview.
GM plans to push sales in the fastest-growing markets as demand in the U.S. stagnates, Wagoner said. In the third quarter of last year, 58 percent of GM's sales came from outside its home market. GM relied on the U.S. for most of its volume as recently as 2004.
Auto analyst John Casesa, managing partner at Casesa Shapiro Group in New York, told Bloomberg, that’s the kind of sales mix “that will eventually save GM.” Casesa said: "Overseas growth is an absolute necessity if GM is going to compete, not just with Toyota, but with emerging market automakers.''
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Buick Design Will Grow Bolder,GM’s Top Design Exec Says
By 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 as big curves in the sheet metal, lots of chrome exterior trim and huge, elongated headlights.
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No Retirement, GM’s Lutz Insists
General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz insisted reports by the Associated Press, picked up by AutoObserver Wednesday, of him considering retirement are not true.
"Read my lips: I am not thinking retirement," wrote Lutz in an e-mail to trade journal Automotive News, which also picked up the story. "The job is better than ever, and so is GM!!!!"
The Associated Press, of course, is standing by its story.
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Ford's Farley Demonstrates Qualities He Wants the Automaker to Exude
By Michelle Krebs
DEARBORN, Mich. – In his first appearance before the automotive press corps since joining Ford Motor 
Co., Jim Farley, the former Toyota exec now in charge of Ford’s global sales, marketing and communications, exuded warmth, humility, sincerity and authenticity.
Farley spun an emotional yarn about his grandfather, lunch bucket in hand, walking through the same doors of the historic Rouge complex, which served as the stage for Farley’s premier.
Describing himself often as Ford’s “communicator,” Farley demonstrated exactly the qualities he wants the Ford brand to exude when he unveils his new marketing plan in the next 90 days.
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Chevrolet Volt May Be Swan Song for GM’s Lutz
DETROIT -- Robert Lutz, General Motors vice chairman for global product development, says he may
make the Chevrolet Volt his swan song.
The 75-year-old Lutz, who is credited with GM’s product renaissance, told reporters this week that he wants to retire GM after the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid is introduced, around 2010.
Often heard ranting about the ridiculous of global warming and a pooh-pooher earlier on of hybrids like the Toyota Prius, Lutz has done somewhat of an about-face. He sees plug-in electric vehicles like the Volt as a paradigm shift in the auto industry.
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