Spending the beginning of the month in Klondike domain can change one's perspective. we left for the third theatre of the Tokyo-2-L.A., The Hard Way extravaganza
half-expecting I'd collect up Aug sales total upon the road, as well as maybe even attend in upon GM, Ford as well as Toyota sales discussion calls whilst pushing the Suzuki Kizashi. We didn't even have dungeon coverage or an Internet signal in The Yukon, when the numbers were announced.
So I'll leave you starting in to the week end with the little post which plays the bit of catch-up.
You know by now which Aug '10 automobile as well as truck sales were dismal, nonetheless by many accounts not as dismal as expected. Total sales fell twenty-one percent versus Aug '09, the full month of the Cash-4-Clunkers program. General Motors' tumble was worse than the industry's, at -24.9 percent, to 185,176.
Ford continues to be the splendid spot. Even though it did okay during C4C, Ford/Mercury/Lincoln was down only 10.7 percent for August, to 157,503. I'll stop at the third of the brand new Big Three, Toyota, which slid 31.4 percent, to 148,388. Among the three, Toyota's marketplace share is down, whilst the inducement spending is up, the outcome of the quality problems, not C4C Aug comparisons or the probability of the double-dip recession.
Last month, Chevrolet Camaro outsold Ford Mustang, 6,321 (-27.2 percent) to 5,570 (-11.4 percent). These have been two have been canaries in the double-dip coalmine, since they're expected to humour more fast than rational, commodity sedans as well as crossovers.
One analyst told the Detroit Free Press which larger sport/utilities as well as pickups sole comparatively well last month. Of course, he was comparing Aug to last August, when SUVs as well as pickups didn't good from C4C. Ford sole 47,652 F-Series, up 4.5 percent, as well as Chevy sole 34,084 Silverados, up 5.1 percent. Federal impulse for road construction seems to be helping, if only the little.
And hold it or don't, brand new automobile credit is freer this year than last. For which reason alone, this year's automobile as well as truck sales will go upon to improve upon '09. A double-dip would blunt GM's recovery, though the modest profit levels this year more or less proves the reinvented association can break even with eighteen percent marketplace share as well as only 10 million annual light vehicle sales.
In this week's other big attention news, The Huffington Post leaked excerpts of
former Car Czar Steven Rattner's arriving White House tell-all, "Overhaul."
Put in reserve the hackneyed pretension as well as you'll find the couple of automobile enthusiasts' revelations in the HuffPo leak, including Rattner calling Sergio Marchionne the Automotive Task Force's "biggest headache" in saving Chrysler, Rahm Emanuel telling Rattner, "f... the UAW," as well as how JP Morgan Chase longed for 100 cents upon the dollar from Chrysler's debt when it filed bankruptcy. The Task Force offering $1 billion of the $6.9 billion due Morgan, as well as Rattner had to humour the arguments from the Morgan fit named Jimmy Lee which GM as well as Chrysler should come to terms the merger.
In my talk with Rattner's replacement, Ron Bloom carefully indicated which his predecessor is given to the reporter-turned-financier's hyperbole, which Chrysler didn't come as close to extinction as Rattner indicated in the Fortune repository article.
Quoting Samuel Johnson, Bloom said "an imminent unresolved concentrates the mind. Everybody indispensable to know there was the really bad alternative which awaited them if they didn't come to the table."
Chrysler wasn't as close to the corner as Rattner says.
There was also the little exaggeration this week about GM's brand new CEO as well as future chairman, Dan Akerson. The explanation is not only which he's the Republican, the single who contributed $2,500 to John McCain's unsuccessful presidential bid as well as another $28,500 to the Republican National Committee, though which he's the rabid, free-market one. As the overused line from "Casablanca" goes, I'm shocked...shocked! Akerson replaces as CEO Ed Whitacre, another voiced Republican, who transposed Fritz Henderson, who I'm pretty sure is the Republican now, if he wasn't before. Henderson transposed Rick Wagoner, who I'm pretty sure was the Republican, as well as positively was the Blue Devil.
It's not the party affiliation, though the ferocity with which Akerson has revealed it, which seems to be upsetting Democrats, independents, as well as supporters of the automobile attention bailout. It doesn't bother me. In an off-the-record meet-and-greet with Akerson, we met the stereotypical, win-at-any-cost monetary titan, the unapproachable Naval Academy grad who expects to kick donkey as well as take names inside GM as well as with the competitors. Not the type of man to give journalists let alone designers as well as engineers, the warm as well as hairy feeling.
Ignore his contempt for Obamanomics. The administration department wants the CEO who can take GM partly private prior to the midterms whilst convincingly proof his, as well as GM's independence. It will be hard to hold any critique which Akerson is the puppet as well as Obama is pulling the strings.
Don't dont think about income limits. Akerson, like any big-time CEO, is in it for the cash, for the kill, so he'll fast wish to liquidate the superfluous apportionment of the sovereign government's seductiveness in GM after the pre-mid-term Initial Public Offering. With those income limits, whom was the Obama administration department starting to get? Steve Jobs? George Soros?
What troubles me about Akerson is not which he's laissez-faire in the face of the realpolitik await every grown nation's supervision gives the industries, as well as it's not which he's not the automobile guy. Mainstream media have been fond of pointing out that, conjunction is Alan Mulally, as well as look how he incited out (with help from phone calls to GM's Wagoner). While Mulally didn't know the disproportion between the Ford Five Hundred as well as the Taurus, he does know engineering. More importantly, he does know manufacturing. Note which the couple of paragraphs back, we called Akerson the "financial titan." we wish we could call him the "manufacturing titan."
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