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Entries in Cars (34)

Friday

Sep102010

Now This is a Car For Johnny Law

Friday, September 10, 2010

Polizei

If you look carefully at the license plate on the police car pictured above, it appears to be registered to Boblingen, which is near where we live now in Germany. Boblingen is a wonderful little city, but the traffic and speed cameras there are no fun. They are hidden all over the city, and they do Johnny Law’s job for him—they get everyone to slow down and drive reasonably.

Not every police officer can drive a Porsche, however:

There’s a three-way shoot-out blazing on the mean streets of Detroit. This one pits Ford against General Motors, with Chrysler hoping to score with a lucky shot of its own.

The three makers are all vying for the police interceptor market Ford will vacate when it pulls the plug on its time-worn Crown Victoria, long the vehicle of choice for the nation’s law enforcement community, in September 2011.

While police departments have used a variety of vehicles in recent years, especially for unmarked and undercover cruisers, the Crown Victoria Police Interceptor has garnered the lion’s share of law enforcement sales, with about 60 percent of the 75,000 vehicles sold annually. That demand was one of the main reasons Ford has kept the Crown Vic in production so long.

Most of the cities and towns patrolled by Johnny Law are flat broke. There’s no money left. So, why not just abandon the idea of having Johnny Law use a police car? Why not have him use a minivan? A minivan is the ultimate Johnny Law vehicle. Buy them used and change the oil or do whatever is necessary to ensure that the thing doesn’t break down after a few thousand miles.

The roomier ones are perfect for law enforcement work. The minivan could be the unsung hero of fiscally conscious communities all over the nation. The minivan can patrol with excellent views of the surrounding area. It can even be fitted with a Johnny Law perched on top, spinning a spotlight around. The minivan can be retro-fitted for multi-use. It can use one to three Johnny Laws if necessary. It can fit a couple of them up front and it can haul between five and seven rowdy small-town teenagers. Put bigger motors in them and you’ll see the difference. Johnny Law doesn’t do much chasing these days anyway.

I know, I know—they’re dowdy. Well, so what? Dowdy is reliable, and reliable is the new austerity trophy. Get yours today.

Norman Rogers | tagged

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Sunday

Sep052010

Never Minimize the Fact that President Obama Saved the American Auto Industry

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Made in AmericaI hate to be the one to break this to you, but the right way to react to this is to trumpet the fact that we still have an automobile manufacturing industry in this country:

WALLACE BAISDEN, Ormond Beach

A writer complained in Wednesday’s edition of The News-Journal about the Republicans solely blaming Obama for the financial mess this country is in.

The letter writer is right to conclude that Obama inherited a lot of this fiscal calamity from a former Republican administration. She also claims Obama had no money to work with because Bush-Cheney spent it all. Two good talking points, but the question is why Obama then proceeded to place into law a costly health insurance plan and an $800 billion stimulus spending plan.

Some fast and hard fiscal restraint was needed , but a sharp curtailment in spending wouldn’t coincide with Obama’s plans to socialize this nation.

I have made the case that the best thing for us is to economize carefully and spend wisely; this would include reforming entitlement spending and reducing the footprint of American military forces overseas. We must reduce the bloated “terrorism industry” in our government, be it in the Department of Defense or the Department of Homeland Security. We don’t need to be defended by contractors who live by mercenary rules; we can defend this country with government employees and the military. There’s no need to pay someone $150K a year to sit in an office and do what a $75K per year government employee can do.

The list of things I oppose, when it comes to the Obama Administration, is lengthy. I oppose the foreign policy, the war policy, and the fiscal policy of this administration. Handing billions to Tim Geithner to hand out to his friends was a disaster. There’s nothing funnier than a “shovel-ready” job being counted upon to make this country greater. By definition, a shovel-ready job is a job few Americans are willing to take anyway.

Nothing makes me laugh more than this continued mantra of socialism. That’s the marketing scheme of the people who want to make money scaring you about President Obama. That’s what they trotted out when he took office. No serious scholar of history can make the case that we don’t already have socialism, American-style, and that we will evolve into a socialist state. That cheapens the victory of the Cold War. America takes care of the meek and the mild because of a sense of great obligation to protect the least of us in ways no other nation on Earth can conceive of doing so. The greatness of America is the generosity of our people and the common sense of applying that generosity in ways that does not turn us into a nation of whining babies, expecting handouts and whatnot. We have a quibble here and there over how far to extend the hand or pull it back but America does one thing right—it doesn’t look the other way when people are starving, no matter where they are. No nation does as much to feed itself or feed the world.

To conclude this wandering rant, you can argue that there shouldn’t be a second term for President Obama. I’d be one of the few who could make that case without becoming deviantly unhinged. But you cannot argue with the fact that the American auto industry was dead in the water and that the actions of the Obama Administration had a lot to do with saving it. Will it prosper? I don’t know. One thing is certain—here in Germany, you see a lot of Fords. Let’s keep it that way.

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Friday

Jul232010

The Myth of Better Than Expected Earnings

Friday, July 23, 2010

Yes, that's a Shelby, sir.I've never bought into the idea that a large publicly traded company can really go out and shock Wall Street with exceptionally high earnings:

Ford Motor Co posted a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit of $2.6 billion and said it was on track for higher earnings and lower debt in 2011, sending its shares up 4 percent.

The No. 2 U.S. automaker lowered the top end of its range for U.S. auto industry sales for 2010, citing in part the slow recovery in the U.S. economy. But it said the recovery was sustainable.

Ford has now posted five consecutive quarterly net profits after recording net losses totaling $30 billion from 2006 through 2008 as it cut jobs, sold brands and began to rebuild a product lineup overly reliant on large SUVs and pickup trucks.

"It was a solid quarter, they are definitely back on track," said Mirko Mikelic, a fixed income portfolio manager at Fifth Third Asset Management in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The only major headwind for the company would be the "weak to tepid" outlook for the economy, and Ford is positioned to do "real well" if the economy improves, he said.

If you are a shareholder in a company, you're watching things on a day to day basis. If you're charged with analyzing how things are going for a company like Ford, you're watching sales and inventory and costs and a host of other factors to the nth degree. By the time the earnings statement is released, if anything there shocks you, that's on you, brother. And shareholders don't talk to people on Wall Street about how a company is doing?

If looks could kill, then the look that Wall Street gave car companies at the dawn of the Obama Presidency would have been a withering one. It's nice that they are coming back. It's great that Ford is making money and that GM is doing well in China. Does it really mean they're "back" from the abyss?

No.

It means they're getting some good press. How much did it cost? What was done in order to ensure that there would be some positive news for American car companies this summer? Are we being manipulated?

I can tell you what I see in Germany with my own eyes. I see a large number of Ford Dealerships. I see Fords everywhere. I also see something that you don't really see in the United States, and that's cars made by Renault, Skoda, and Opel. Yes, there are the ever-present Mercedes, BMW, Audi, and Volkswagen cars on the road. Japanese cars are rare. That's what I see, anyway, and what I see isn't manipulated by anything other than my own eyeballs.

If you suspect we're all being manipulated, then join the club. I'm not buying any of this. I think our world economy is too sluggish to stop spending entirely but I am not naive enough to think everyone should spend themselves into oblivion. This is what it looks like before they show up and repossess everything and take it away in a rented van on bald tires.

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Thursday

May062010

Clearly, we don’t want to do anything to damage the auto industry in Canada

Thursday, May 6, 2010

That's quite an understatement, when you consider how different the approach towards Toyota has been with regards to regulators in Canada and the United States. The New York Tiimes has taken a look at how the automaker has faced wildly different approaches from the Canadian and U.S. consumer safety agencies:

During much of the eight-month crisis between Toyota and safety regulators over recalled vehicles in the United States and Canada, the public pronouncements from the two governments have been remarkably different.

As early as November, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration criticized the Japanese automaker for providing “inaccurate and misleading information,” while its Canadian counterpart, Transport Canada, issued a statement that declared, “Transport Canada applauds Toyota’s action to protect consumers.”

The divergent messages have helped create the impression in Washington and elsewhere that Toyota has been more cooperative with Canadian regulators, and that somehow Canadian car owners have received better and swifter treatment. But newly released Transport Canada documents show that behind the scenes, some Canadian regulators were just as frustrated — and sometimes alarmed — by Toyota as were transportation officials in the United States.

“Toyota Canada’s action seriously undermines this safety issue,” one field investigator for Transport Canada wrote in an e-mail message in October after reviewing Toyota’s public disclosure over floor mats that may have caused unintended acceleration. “Frankly, I’m appalled by their action.”

As lawmakers in Washington hold a hearing on Thursday to consider new American safety regulations as a result of the recall of millions of Toyota vehicles, a parliamentary committee here is reviewing thousands of pages of e-mail messages and other internal regulatory documents that are casting the carmaker in an unflattering light — and are causing some Canadians to question the effectiveness of the country’s approach to regulating an industry that politicians have carefully courted rather than alienate.

Why the gulf between how the two have handled Toyota? Is it purely economic, which seems to be the implication of the article, or is it really as simple as the idea that human life--public safety--is more valuable in the United States than in Canada?

If so, I have to tell our Canadian friends to put away their air of superiority. You see, Canadians, and I'm speaking generally, have long lorded over Americans that their way of life is better than ours. I lived in New Hampshire--don't try to explain the Canadian mindset to me. I've had a belly full of it.

Now, I am quite biased. Father used to drive us up to Prince Edward Island every fall and buy up potatoes; he usually purchased three or four large trucks full of them. These were shipped back to the states hidden inside of wine bottles--don't ask. We used to have to wait in a tumbledown motel for days on end while Father and a handful of resentful potato farmers rammed potatoes into wine bottles. This is probably where I discovered the Canadian propensity to talk down about the American system of government, since Father would get visibly upset about the possibility of facing the Border Patrol's questions about why he wanted so many potatoes and why he was transporting them in wine bottles when it was perfectly legal to bring them into the United States.

Canadians aren't evil, however, just full of themselves. They have long celebrated their health care system, their vaunted "Canadian" way of doing things, and their ability to live in a cleaner, safer environment. The end result of that is that Canadians are usually broke, and won't pick up the tab in restaurants. Their money isn't worth as much (at least it wasn't in the 1990s, and no one--no one--likes to be slipped a Canadian quarter) and their taxes have always been confiscatory and outrageous. I loved their beer until I discovered Heineken. I will always appreciate their cheerful acceptance of bad weather. I'm just not inclined to believe that they have a better system of government anymore.

I do admit to having parliamentary envy. I think we all envy a good parliament now and then. Canada has gotten tired of being broke all the time. Canada is the uncle who is tired of being seen in shoddy shirts and ripped hobo pants, and now he's going to get serious about his dog walking business and make some money. Welcome to maturity, Canada. All we care about in this country is money, too. But, you don't see us lording it over anyone.

We do, but I'm trying to make a larger point here. Canada, welcome to modern society. Here, we care more about the corporate bottom line than we do about a Toyota Rav 4 crashing into a guardrail at high speed, out of control and upside down because everything failed on it. Human life is valuable, but so is the earnings per share ratio for a company trying to make some money. Have some perspective, right?

Update on Thursday, May 6, 2010 by

Norman Rogers

Toyota Canada Says It Learned of Pedal Repair Procedure Later Than Europe (wheels.blogs.nytimes.com)
Toyota Statement on Canadian Parliamentary Hearings (newswire.ca)
Toyota and Lexus vehicles continue to deliver performance, comfort and efficiency to Canadians in April (newswire.ca)
Ottawa to launch investigation into Toyota recalls (financialpost.com)
Toyota should have revealed '05 lawsuit: critics (cbc.ca)
Toyota execs face music in Ottawa (cbc.ca)
Transport Canada officials grilled over Toyota safety (thestar.com)

Norman Rogers | tagged

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Thursday

Apr012010

Spreading Around a Few Too Many Bribes

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Let’s be clear on one thing—one man’s bribe is another Congressman’s campaign contribution. When a major worldwide corporation admits to something like bribery, it’s news:

German carmaker Daimler has pleaded guilty to corruption in the US and will pay $185m (£121m) to settle the case.

The charges relate to US Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission investigations into the company’s global sales practices.

Daimler, the owner of Mercedes-Benz, admitted to paying tens of millions of dollars of brides to foreign government officials in at least 22 countries.

Just the 22 countries then? Is that all? What that tells me is that corruption is a way of life in this world. Being honest gets you what, then? Moral superiority? How is it that this company could spread so much largesse around and get away with it for ten years?

The offences were committed between 1998 and 2008 by Daimler’s German-based exports subsidiary Export and Trade Finance, and its Russian business Mercedes-Benz Russia.

They were said to have given money and lavish gifts to help win contracts in countries including China, Russia, Thailand, Greece, and Iraq.

Daimler’s chairman Dieter Zetsche said the firm had “learned a lot from past experience”.

“Today, we are a better and stronger company, and we will continue to do everything we can to maintain the highest compliance standards,” he added.

No wonder the world’s auto industry is what it is. The idea of building something affordable, desirable, and reliable just doesn’t cut it anymore.

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Sunday

Mar142010

The End of the Road for Bajaj Scooters

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Bajaj Scooter

It’s a sign that globalization is happening—once people can afford a better product, what they used to settle for becomes obsolete. That’s what has happened to the Bajaj scooter, once a transportation mainstay for India:

Later this month, Bajaj’s last scooter factory will roll out its last scooter, ending an era in India’s transition from dreary socialist behemoth into a consumerist powerhouse. And those one-time icons of middle-class achievement will be left to secondhand dealers and armies of sidewalk mechanics.

Because in modern India, modest dependability just isn’t enough.

“People have more money to spend today,” said Pradeep Tyagi. He sells used motorcycles in the New Delhi neighborhood of Karol Bagh, where dozens of used-car and motorcycle dealers — and a handful of scooter shops — are jammed into a few narrow lanes. “No one wants to spend that money on a scooter.”

Wander among the neighborhood’s tiny, dusty shops and it becomes clear how India’s aspirations have changed.

Because while India still has desperate poverty — more than one-third of the population lives on less than $1 per day — it has also become a nation of fierce consumers, its buying habits nurtured by a growing economy, easier loans and relentless advertising. In places like Karol Bagh, that means people who once would have aspired to scooters now want motorcycles. And everyone dreams of cars.

This is what I do not get about people who sneer at “green” technology and getting smarter about making things that are self-sustaining. How can you not see that there are people all over the world who want what we have here in the West? How can you not see that if you put fifty or sixty million cars on the roads of India in the span of a few years that it won’t have a tremendous impact on our environment? How can you not see that there’s money to be made here? Where is the car that gets seventy miles to the gallon and would be perfect for the Indian market? If Ford or GM had a car like that, wouldn’t it be smart to be at the top of that game?

Perhaps it is the traveler in me; I don’t know. I just don’t see how people can be so ignorant. The transition of India from a bicycle and scooter nation to a nation of cars and people owning two or more cars is happening. Shouldn’t we have cleaner, better cars to sell to them right now? Or should we just go back to thinking no one else should have it so good?

Norman Rogers | tagged

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Friday

Feb262010

Move Your Car, Dingbat

Friday, February 26, 2010

Former Representative Melissa Hart’s Abandoned Crap Sandwich of a Volkswagen Jetta

If you want to maintain some sort of political viability, you have to figure out how to keep the various elements of your life from spinning out of control. Simple things, like remembering how many wives, homes, children, and dogs you have are easy. Remembering to maintain ownership of a crappy old car you don’t need anymore, eh, not so easy:

Representative Melissa Hart is so obscure, I am forced—forced!—to use a picture of actress Melissa Joan Hart.Former Rep. Melissa Hart may have hit the road and gone back home to Pittsburgh in 2006 when she lost her bid for re-election, but it appears that a car she owns still remains in the Longworth House Office building parking garage — more than three years after she left Congress.

It looks like Hart, a Republican who represented Pennsylvania’s 4th District, left her white, older model Volkswagen Jetta six parking spaces away from the parking garage’s entrance into the buildings that house congressional offices in Washington.

But Hart’s “dude where’s my car” dilemma may not be her only problem, if the car is in fact hers. According to the Committee on House Administration Web site, former members can only park in the garages if they are not registered lobbyists. Hart, who now chairs Pittsburgh-based law firm Keevican Weiss Bauerle & Hirsch’s Government Relations practice, is registered in the Senate lobbyist database.

A woman identifying herself as Hart answered the phone at her law office, but hung up after the reporter asked if the car belonged to her. The Daily Caller reporter immediately called Hart back and left a message at her work, but she did not return those calls or subsequent e-mails.

She must have said, who the hell is the Daily Caller?

Anyway, police up the loose debris in your life, good lady. Cars are not things you can abandon. Staffers, certainly. Pension plans, employees, contractual obligations signed with drunks, mujahideen allies, loyal relatives—sure. But cars? No. You could get three or four grand for a clunker like that. That’s enough to buy a nice kitchen from IKEA, or so I hear.

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Wednesday

Feb242010

This is Why We Don't Live in Maryland Anymore

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Once Byron is able to safely transport the last of the mink habitat inhabitants down here to St. Thomas, we will no longer have a presence in the State of Maryland. When I made the decision to pull up stakes and leave, there was forty inches of snow on the ground and the Howard County Snow plow driver was throwing bottles of urine at us as he pushed snow into our cul de sac, blocking us in. I shall probably live in New Hampshire once again, but the middling part of the Mid-Atlantic is no where I shall ever live again.

Go straight to hell, Mid-Atlantic. You are uninhabitable for decent people. You are a butt sandwich I’m not going to accept anymore.

That’s why I smirked when I read this:

A major nor’easter is expected to bring blizzard conditions to interior New England and heavy rain and near-hurricane-force wind gusts to Northeastern coastal areas Wednesday through Friday.

Little, if any, snow will fall in Boston, Massachusetts, while Washington, New York and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, could see as much as 5 inches of snow with locally higher amounts, CNN meteorologist Sean Morris said.

Record snowfall totals of 30 inches or more will be possible across upstate New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, Morris said. Very strong winds will combine with the heavy snow to produce dangerous white-out conditions and widespread power outages.

You can do thirty or forty inches of snow in New Hampshire; they have plows there. They have a snow removal system there. You cannot do that same amount of snow in states like Maryland, which have spent all of their money on schools that don’t teach and government programs that ensure that the poor are always poor and cannot read and write. You cannot do that in a state where the people who own snow removal equipment can jack up their prices and collect blood money from the Federal government while you and yours sit snowbound in a development run by an incompetent homeowner’s association that forgot to bribe the equipment-starved county to plow them out first.

You would think all of this snow would have saved a company like Hummer; alas, it did not:

General Motors’ deal to sell its Hummer brand to a Chinese automaker fell through Wednesday and the company said it now plans to shut down the brand.

GM did not give any details about why the agreement to sell Hummer to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machines Co. Ltd. could not be completed, saying only that it was disappointed it was unable to close the deal.

One of the things that I did notice about the snowstorms we received in Maryland earlier this month was that they revealed that the Hummer did fairly well in the snow; hospitals were forced to use them to get sick people into emergency rooms. The military version of the Humvee is preferable; that thing they call a Hummer is a fraud, but it did look like a pretty good runner in the snow. The military version went through the snow like shit through a skinny goose. I dumped the Suburban because, well, why not? I’d rather get a Mercedes and leave it at that.

On the site where Scuddy’s Bar stands, we will construct a mink habitat for Byron and extend our property holdings out and down the narrow lane that brings a single car up to the property. If you were to ask me about hurricanes, I would say that, at least when a hurricane comes and destroys everything, you don’t have to wait for a snowplow to come and save you.

Norman Rogers | tagged

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Thursday

Feb042010

Johnny Law Gets His Mannequin

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Really, what’s the fuss here?

A New Yorker faces a $135 traffic fine for using a mannequin as her “plus one” in the high-occupancy vehicle lane of the Long Island Expressway.

An alert sheriff’s deputy on Long Island became suspicious this week when he saw the “passenger” wearing sunglasses and using the visor. The problem: The sky was overcast.

When he stopped the vehicle, he found the mannequin, fully dressed with a long dark wig, blazer, shirt and scarf.

The 61-year-old driver left with a summons. In addition to a fine, she could be hit with two points on her license.

“At first glance, this may seem humorous but it is not a joking matter when you drive off with a ticket,” Sheriff Vincent F. DeMarco told NBC News.

Another major crimewave averted. If this was the woman’s third or fourth offense, fine. But, how seriously are we supposed to take the enforcement of commuter laws when we can’t build high speed rail, light rail or establish regular bus services in this country?

I’m not excusing the woman’s choice to use a mannequin to flaunt the laws—I’m saying that I don’t get why it has to be about going to court and all of that. And, did you ever stop to think that maybe, just maybe, the woman was lonely and couldn’t find any friends? I’ll stop so that you can allow sympathy to shame you into silence.

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Wednesday

Feb032010

Think Before You Sow Panic, Knucklehead

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Toyota RAV 4

The thin resume of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood reveals that, once again, the Obama Administration has a problem bringing clowns from Illinois out to Washington D.C. to run things. Whether it is President Bush bringing his Texas mafia to D.C. or Bill Clinton bringing his hillbilly traveling circus to our nation’s capital, these things never work out:

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told owners of recalled Toyotas to “stop driving” their vehicles, but later said he misspoke and advised owners to bring their vehicles to dealers if they were concerned.

LaHood made the comments in testimony before a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation.

“What I said in there was obviously a misstatement,” LaHood said.

Department of Transportation spokeswoman Olivia Alair said the DOT was advising owners to contact their local dealerships to arrange for fixes as soon as possible.

Toyota’s most recent recall in the United States affects 2.3 million vehicles over the potential for sticking gas pedals.

Uh huh.

Next time, let’s try to find the best people for the job, and not populate the government with a bunch of home-state pretenders.

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