Archives

General Motors (GMGMQ) isn’t having a bad bankruptcy—things appear to be more or less on track—but there are some substantial difference between its Chapter 11 adventures and Chrysler’s, which have concluded.

A biggie is future liability claims. Here’s a rundown of what GM has agreed to on the issue. Note that the New General will not be ditching future liability claims. Chrysler, by contrast, has ditched them.

It's now starting to look as if Volkswagen doesn't just want to engineer a dramatic reverse takeover of Porsche (which earlier this year tried to take over VW) but possibly punish Porsche as a brand.

Lower gas prices have meant a return to American’s No. 1 motoring complaint: traffic. At $4-plus a gallon, freeways emptied out, and those who could afford to fuel their cars were treated the massive transportation planning as it was meant to be, before the congestion crisis of the past 20 years or so. When the price of gas plummeted, idle vehicles left the garage and returned to the roadways. Rush hour was again not very rushed.

Yesterday, I pointed out that Buick has lost customers in the United States because General Motors (GMGMQ) has not managed to simultaneously achieve strong brand identity and high product quality. Ideally, those two pieces of the puzzle work together. In China, GM has created a luxury-brand image for Buick, and it's made sure the cars themselves are appealing. As a result, Buick has thrived.

I recently threw in the towel on handicapping the Porsche-Volkswagen takeover merger Teutonic family melodrama. As of…today, it’s looking like Porsche is still trying to extract itself from a reverse takeover by wooing a few billion from Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund.

Since last year, Tesla has made no secret of its desire to obtain low-interest loans from the Department of Energy—loans targeted at fuel-efficient auto production. But because Tesla’s only current product is a $100,000-plus sports car, it needed to prove that it had a business strategy that went beyond selling fast, electric toys to the well-heeled.

With the General Motors (GMGMQ) bankruptcy taking center stage, and with Chrysler coming out of Chapter 11, it’s easy to forget about Fiat (and now Chrysler) CEO Sergio Marchionne’s insistence that for a global carmaker to survive, it must produce 5.5 million new cars annually.

That was why Marchionne wanted to get his hands on Opel, GM’s main European brand. Opel now looks as if it will go instead to Magna, a Canadian parts supplier (with financing from a Russian bank). So Marchionne has switched his efforts to partnering with French carmaker Peugeot.

The North American International Auto Show, held every year during the frozen Detroit winter, is generally considered THE big car show. It’s where the Big Three (when they were still big, not bankrupt or deeply in hock) staged their major “reveals” of new models. The rest of the world pulled into town, too. All the other U.S. auto shows—Los Angeles, Chicago, New York—have been also-rans compared with Detroit.

This is one of the weirdest things I’ve come across since I began following the ups and downs of Tesla Motors a few years back. An experimental marketplace, SharesPost, has developed beta technology that allows pre-IPO valuations of companies. Tesla is an early entrant and has been valued at $1 billion.

The comments in Ad Age of General Motors’ (GM) former marketing VP, Mike Jackson, have set off a buzz online. Not that there’s anything shocking in what Jackson has to say. At base, GM didn’t encourage the kind of edgy, creative advertising that’s become expected, even craved, by consumers in a fragmented, competitive marketplace.

The new Honda Insight hybrid is supposed to be a game-changer because it’s priced lower than a comparable Toyota Prius (right around $20K for the Insight versus $22K for the Prius). However, as Reuters (via Autoblog) is reporting, the Insight may not hit its debut-year sales numbers.