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http://www.thecarconnection.com/Auto_News/...173.A11964.html Lutz: Camaro Gear Could Spawn Big Caddy A Cadillac with more than eight cylinders still possible, Lutz says. by Joseph Szczesny (2007-02-25) Could the same rear-wheel-drive platform General Motors Corp. plans to use for the new Chevrolet Camaro also be used for a new rear-wheel-drive and/or all-wheel-drive ultra-luxury Cadillac? GM vice chairman and product guru Robert Lutz recently acknowledged it was a possibility during a conversation with journalists earlier this month at theChicago auto show. Lutz noted that as part of global product strategy, GM would have fewer but more flexible platforms that would accommodate a wider range of vehicles and vehicle designs. Specifically, the new Camaro platform could be used for other vehicles. Lutz also hinted part of the reason for the delay in moving forward with the Camaro - it's now set to appear in 2009 - has been the need to extend the utility of the fundamental architecture so it could serve as the platform for other vehicles as well. "What you've got to understand is that we've got this modular product architecture kit where we have two different lengths of center underbodies, two different lengths of front rails and two different lengths of rear overhang. So we can modify those elements any way we want. In the case of the Camaro, it's long short, short. If, for instance, we wanted to do a very large rear-wheel-drive Cadillac with more than eight cylinders you could do long, long, long," Lutz said. "It's like a Lego set-you weld them together anyway you want," he added. So far, however, GM hasn't said publicly it plans to go ahead with an ultra-luxury Cadillac. However, executives such as Mark LaNeve, GM vice president of sales, service and marketing have said they would like to move forward with an upscale Cadillac that could compete with cars such as the BMW 7-Series or the new Lexus LS460. Lutz' remarks reflect one of the new realities that will have a profound influence on the car business in the years to come. Capital is in relatively short supply and with the exception of Toyota, the cost of borrowing has gone up dramatically for automakers all over the world. Thus, finding ways to conserve capital by spinning off more products from one basic investment has become essential. Lutz also noted that GM is continuing to pool its product resources from around the world. "It doesn't matter where it is. It's all one organization. We've finally realized not every region has to do their own product," he said. Even decisions on which engines to use in which products, which have traditionally been left to regional managers, are being shaped by global forces now, Lutz said. "One of the answers, which is being increasingly adopted in Europe and we plan to use it too, is to use engines in cars that are fundamentally way too small and then turbocharge them. You could envision (the Pontiac G8) with a four-cylinder Cobalt engine but turbocharged to 270 to 280 horsepower. That's a formula that works great for fuel economy because when you're not in the acceleration game you're cruising along on a tiny, little engine," Lutz said. "Trouble is that costs about $1400. Nothing is for free." "I think what we found with direct fuel injection is we found it boosts power faster than it boosts fuel economy; I think we would have preferred the opposite," he said.

This is a GM fansite, not Chrysler. No one is going to label one of my posts as bull$h! without a comment from me. It is better for GM if Chrysler went out of business than for GM to buy Chrysler.

You need to get used to the fact that in a few years, the Malibu, Aura, next generation LaCrosse, and maybe the G6 (if it stays FWD) will be GM's largest FWD sedans. If you want a big FWD sedan, Ford will be happy to sell you a Taurus or Sable, and Toyota will be happy to sell you an Avalon. If you have to have a big FWD GM product, your only choice will be the Outlook, Enclave, or Acadian.

http://www.acarisnotarefrigerator.com/Arti...66_20070222.htm Chrysler For Sale I've bee waiting nine years to hear those magical words. I nearly drove off the road the day I heard that Daimler-Benz AG was going to "merge" with Chrysler as a merger of "equals". Ha! No one believed it then except the top brass at both companies. And it didn't take much time for the Germans to become disillusioned with the marriage. Of course, the "merger" was really a purchase of Chrysler by DB. The resulting company, DaimlerChrysler AG (DCX in Wall Street-speak) was managed in Germany by Germans. In the extremely nationalistic Germany, it was like the death of the largest and greatest German industrial company. Daimler-Benz AG had interests in everything from aerospace (EADS) to software to banking. Mercedes-Benz represented the pinnacle of German engineering excellence and dominance. The three-pointed star hood ornament stood for the very best quality, luxury and safety. Mercedes-Benz cars were really engineered like no other. Then, in the mid-1990s, with Jürgen Schrempp at the helm of DB, the cost accounts took the place of the engineers and the slide of Mercedes-Benz to mediocrity began. His "crowing achievement" was the 1998 merger with Chrysler that turned a German company into a German-American company. It was only a matter of time before Chrysler began to drag down Mercedes-Benz. Mr. Schrempp divested most of Daimler-Benz non-automotive assets in order to focus on the core automotive businesses. German managers were dispatched to Auburn Hills to "fix" the problems at Chrysler. But in the past nine years, the only "bright spots" in the Chrysler group have been the Chrysler 300, 300C and the Dodge Magnum wagon. We are still waiting for the Challenger coupe and convertible; but those alone aren't enough to save Chrysler from its inevitable slide. It was also about the same time that Mercedes-Benz undertook the course to have a product in every market segment in an effort to offer something for everyone. Most analysts call this brand dilution: but Mr. Schrempp got his advisory board to look at this expansion as a necessity to compete in a global market that demanded high volumes and low costs. Another low point in 1998 was that Mercedes entered the SUV market with the unremarkable but profitable ML-Class. The proliferation of models and classes continued. Mercedes now has an alphabet soup of classes: C-Class, E-Class, S-Class, CLK-Class, CLS-Class, CL-Class, SLK-Class, SL-Class, R-Class, M-Class, G-Class, GL-Class, AMG-variants. Do you remember when AMG really meant something special? I do. But there is now an AMG variant in every Mercedes class. I think that the Germans want to go back to the "good old days" when engineers were more important than cost accountants and marketing managers. Disaster followed the massive expansion of Mercedes-Benz. Fit, finish and build quality suffered. Interior materials looked and felt cheaper. Engines became more "mass market". Mercedes-Benz abandoned its in-line six cylinder engines in favor of the much cheaper to build modular V-6 models. Then Mercedes got trapped using complex electronic systems that weren't fully tested. This menace culminated with the 2005 massive recall of more than one million E-Class vehicles to fix things like an electronic braking system that could fail. Mercedes lost its luxury car lead in both the US and Europe -- and worst of all the Fatherland -- to its main competitor BMW. The once bullet-proof reputation of the Mercedes three-pointed star became tarnished and diluted. All this happened under the flawed leadership of Jürgen Schrempp. At the same time of the Chrysler purchase in 1998, Mercedes launched the smart car brand with the diminutive smart city car the ForTwo. The cars were a hit but smart was mismanaged from the beginning by Mercedes-Benz. Mercedes built an expensive, lavish new factory in France. A separate dealer network was set up all over Europe -- a very costly venture. In fact, the cost structure was so heavy that GM would be proud and it assured smart would never turn a profit. The original concept of smart was to have a €5,000 city car that would fit the small streets and parking spaces of large, congested old-European cities. (S for Swatch, M for Mercedes combined with "art" to make "smart" -- all small letters to convey the small size of the car. Could you barf?) The little smart joint venture between Swatch and Mercedes-Benz turned sour fast as the heavy hand of the German management chased out Swatch. That inexpensive €5,000 economy car suddenly became €10,000 + lots of spiffy and expensive options. This all happened on Mr. Schrempp's watch and Mercedes was on the brink of selling or closing smart when now DCX Chairman Dieter Zetsche took control. Fortunately for us, Dr. Z stepped in and rescued the smart brand with some serious cost cutting, model eliminations and an expansion into the US market in 2008. But Dr. Zetsche had bigger fish to fry. He's been under pressure since he took over as Chairman of DCX to "fix" the Chrysler problem. In Germany, there was only one "fix" to that problem. No, not just firing 13,000 employees and closing a few plants -- the Germans wanted to unload the entire Chrysler side of the company. There's been a joke in Germany for a long time: How do you pronounce DaimlerChrysler? It's pronounced "Daimler" -- the Chrysler part is silent. That seems to be on the fast track to reality. While no car company has directly expressed interest in purchasing Chrysler, DCX managers have ordered Wall Street investment banking vampire JPMorgan Chase to prepare a "deal book" on Chrysler. This "deal book" is presented to interested and qualified parties. And apparently there are lots of interested parties. The price tag for Chrysler already floating around is $9 billion. And there are other sweeteners for the deal. Daimler is willing to pay some big money to get rid of Chrysler. It will fund all of Chrysler's unfunded pension costs so that the buyer will only be buying the assets of the car businesses, not legacy costs. That alone has got to be worth at least a couple billion. And that kind of sweetener is what a European or Korean company would like to see because those unfunded pension costs are scary to civilized countries that have national healthcare and pension systems that relieve the employers of the direct burden for these social costs. Last Friday, some Wall Street slime floated out the idea that GM was interested in purchasing Chrysler. Come on, does GM need three new brands with almost as much brand equity as Buick or Pontiac? All three Chrysler brands -- Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep -- are heavily damaged with sub-standard products, slow selling and outdated models and no big hits on the horizon. Then we have the French suitors. Renault SA, with Emperor Carlos Ghosn at the helm, may be interested in Chrysler for its dealer network to expand Nissan in the US with additional dealers and additional local manufacturing capacity. But Chrysler needs serious attention to everything from design and engineering to brand rebuilding. Does Mr. Ghosn really need this new "challenge"? Perhaps he can do his legendary "magic" at Chrysler and find a new impresario for Nissan and Renault. Renault particularly needs attention; but so does Nissan as it lost most of its talented management team in the bad-idea move to Nashville from Torrance. Then there is PSA Peugeot-Citroën. I've always been a fan of Citroën -- it has the quirk factor big-time. And Peugeot has a small but loyal following in the US. The modern vehicles produced by PSA are sexy and fresh. I would love to see this company return to the US market. But PSA may be sour on the market and has stated repeatedly that it doesn't need the US market for it to have sufficient volume to be profitable. It may be too much to hope for, but PSA would be my choice to rescue Chrysler. The French have always liked Jeeps -- why not buy the whole company, bring some French style, products and plastics to the US and continue the Jeep brand as a simple, clearly defined brand rather than the mass-marketing exercise in redundancy it has become. Ford doesn't want anything to do with the Chrysler drama. I think Alan Mulaly is smart to steer Ford clear of that train wreck. I don't think Honda or Toyota want to touch this mess either. Toyota needs to focus on building US capacity. Maybe it will buy a plant or two and then spend lots of money making them into Toyota plants, but I doubt it. Toyota also needs to focus on quality control. It's growing almost too fast to keep quality in line with corporate expectations. Toyota just settled a big class-action lawsuit over engine sludge. That is an ugly black mark on Toyota's once untouchable reputation for reliability. Toyota's also taking heat for getting bigger than GM even faster than predicted just a year or two ago. Toyota doesn't want to be the company blamed for the self-destruction going on at Ford and GM and it will do lots of things to make sure it doesn't get bad PR over these things. As demand for Toyota products grows, the company imports more cars into the North American market from Japan. Toyota traditionally wants to have at least 60% of cars sold in NA made in NA and right now, that number is much closer to 50%. I doubt Toyota would ever want to purchase a US car company. That's not how Toyota works and it's not how Japanese companies work in general. Honda has its own issues and problems. Honda has been and continues to be extremely successful in the US market. But Honda is a company that does everything itself. It doesn't want left over dealerships or plants. And Honda just ran into some bad PR of its own. It just settled a major class-action lawsuit that looks bad for Honda. Apparently the odometers on Hondas built from 2002 to 2006 are off -- high -- by 2% to 4%. If you bought or leased a Honda/Acura between April 12 2002 and November 7 2006, Honda will extend your warranty mileage by 5% and they will reimburse you for repairs you paid for if your car would have been covered by the new warranty limits. Honda will also reimburse lease charges if you paid for mileage you may not have driven. If you want information on that little "mistake" and major PR blunder, check out hondaodometerclassaction.com. The bloodsucking attorneys are now going after Nissan. I wonder why the Japanese are having problems with their odometers. This is very shameful in Japan. Who will bow in shame and resign? I think it's a safe bet that no Japanese company is interested in Chrysler -- unless you count Renault/Nissan. So what's left? We know BMW isn't about to touch Chrysler. And now that the German state of Lower Saxony has capitulated to Porsche, Porsche now controls the Advisory Board of Volkswagen AG. You can be absolutely certain that Porsche and Dr. Ferdinand Pïech are not interested in Chrysler. That leaves the Koreans and the Chinese. Both Korea and worse -- communist China -- would be political hot potatoes for ownership of a dying American industrial icon. But right now, $9 billion is pretty cheap for an instant dealer network and a car company with lots of unused manufacturing capacity. Then there is the Wall Street alternative -- Hedge funds, Kirk Kerkorian and private equity groups. I believe that Chrysler may go to one of these blood sucking vampires who will make the tough management changes like firing Tom LaSorda and brining in a new management team. The name Cerberus, the private equity firm who walked away with half of GMAC for very little and has proposed investing in some units of bankrupt Delphi, may be a major player in helping a reconstituted Daimler-Benz dump Chrysler. The private equity investors and Wall Street investment banking vultures are slobbering over this deal. It's with great glee that Moran Stanley reports that Chrysler would be the "cheapest car company in the world" and that DCX would have to take a "whopping write-down" on its investment in the Chrysler group. My prediction is that DaimlerChrysler will sell Chrysler to a US private equity firm. It's a soft interim step to return Chrysler to US ownership so that a US capitalist is responsible for the downsizing of Chrysler and the Germans won't be blamed for selling directly to the Koreans or the French. The private equity fund will hire some "star" management team to come in and start firing just about everyone they can see while demanding cost concessions from suppliers and ordering redesigns of existing products or new products that will make Chrysler attractive to the next buyer. When they are done with more mass firings, more plant closures, model deletions, dealership deletions and other cost reductions closely associated with modern American business tactics, Chrysler will be resold to a foreign car company -- most likely PSA or Hyundai. If you want a living model for a revived Chrysler, just look to GM-Daewoo. GM is selling Korean-made cars as Chevrolets and Saturns in the US and in Europe, under the brands Opel, Vauxhall and Chevy. The Korean connection would be a benefit to Chrysler for cost savings. There is a possibility that the private capital group may try to marry Chrysler with its former Japanese partner Mitsubishi. However, Mitsubishi is on life support in the US and it may not have the capital to fuse with Chrysler. The Mitsubishi name also hasn't been floating around Wall Street and as we know, if Wall Street doesn't want it, it won't happen. Stay tuned, I'm sure there will be some interesting things happening soon. Wall Street loves divorces with immediate remarriages. It means hundreds of millions of dollars for everyone involved except the common shareholders of DCX. Those year end bonuses will be as high as ever with this kind of action in the markets!

It wouldn't surprise me if no one bids enough for Chrysler, and Daimler will be stuck with it.

http://www.businessweek.com/autos/content/...index+page_news Even if all the breaks go GM's way, though, it would be a messy slog. Put simply, buying Chrysler would double down on many of GM's existing problems. GM would pare the Chrysler lineup into one retail channel focusing on the best models: the Dodge Ram pickup and Charger sedan; the Jeep Wrangler, Grand Cherokee, Liberty, and Patriot; the Chrysler 300 and minivans. Even so, GM would be left with an unwieldy 11 brands to support in the U.S. with marketing and strategy.

Not if you're losing money building those few thousand.

That was the best post you have ever written and shows why you are the right person to be running this board.

Because the buying public, not fans like us who are sentimental about our brands, could care less about Buick. Sure, let Buick have its version of the Cobalt and coupes and convertibles galore, but only a few thousand would buy them.

If GM acquires Chrysler, I think there's a possibility of Buick-Pontiac-GMC eventually being phased out. Chrysler is stronger than Buick, and Dodge is stronger than Pontiac-GMC. But I still don't think it would be a good idea for GM to buy Chrysler.

You described MyerShift accurately.

Your post is a bunch of sentimental foolishness and incredibly rude and childish.

About 3 1/2 years ago, a rumored 2007 Buick RWD sedan, either built in the U.S. or imported from Australia, was a hot topic around here. However, many, including me, felt that it was best to let the Lucerne run its course and replace it with a RWD sedan in the 2010 to 2012 timeframe. Buick doesn't need two big sedans in the current marketplace.

Perhaps Nissan-Renault. Ghosn is the only one semi-successful at merging automakers in recent years. But acquiring Chrysler might be his Waterloo.

Better to let Chrysler go out of business. Many Dodge Ram buyers would move over to Silverados, and LX buyers would be natural customers for the upcoming Zetas. Jeep and maybe minivans are the only appealing thing for GM. The few fans of Chrysler's small cars can buy Mitsubishis or Hyundai/Kias.

I only see the G8 being produced here if GM decided to consolidate Zeta production in North America and build Alpha only in Australia. However, I don't think there would be enough capacity to build all the Alphas in Australia, assuming GM could sell 50,000 Cadillac Alphas and 100,000 Pontiac Alphas per year. Hamtramck might be a nice place to produce Alphas.

There's no way GM would buy Chrysler, but there's a great chance both Chrysler and Ford won't exist the way we know them within 5 years.

Value brands like Chevrolet and Ford do better with the old names, but a brand that aspires to be upscale like Buick probably needs newer names. I wouldn't be sad to see the Allure name used the Epsilon II Buick instead of LaCrosse.

The MKS will not use the Volvo V8 (it will use a 3.7L V6 and eventually a twin turbo 3.5L V6, according to rumors), so there certainly won't be a Taurus with that engine.Also, the Taurus with the 260 hp 3.5 will still be the most powerful Taurus in history and may be about as fast as the SHO was. I believe that the 235 hp Taurus SHO V8 only did 0 to 60 in 7.5 seconds. The D3's aren't engineered for bench seats, so the Taurus will not have them.

He still has the last Taurus built in Atlanta, near his restaurant.

The Taurus name should help a little. Ford did not adequately market the Five Hundred name. Hopefully, Ford can sell about 100,000 Tauruses, 60,000 Taurus X's, and 40,000 Sables. But I hope Ford will completely redesign this car by 2010.

Buick is just a sub brand now to be sold in dealerships along with Pontiac and GMC. Buick's lineup will be limited to the Lucerne, Lacrosse, and Enclave, although are unsubstantiated rumors of a fourth model many years away. Buick is doing well in China, so it will survive in this country as well as a niche brand for the few remaining people (like me) who like traditional American cars.

Toyotas, Hondas, BMW's, Lexus - just like everyone else. Americans of all ages have unfortunately tuned out Ford and GM for good.

I think the first generation W's that debuted in 1988 were mediocre. I remember the first ones had only the 2.8L V6. If sedans had been ready at first, and if the cars had been better, the Camry may not have been so successful. The second generation W's that debuted in 1995, 1997, and 1998 were the good ones, especially with the new styling and greater availability of the 3800's. GM made a mistake not having the Epsilon wide available instead of using the W's again for the 2004, 2005, 2006 redesigns. Now I just wonder when the Panthers will die.

Didn't Lutz do the Ford Sierra, which was probably one of Ford's first aero cars in the early 1980's?I have long felt that he was overrated. Iacocca must have had reasons not to let Lutz replace him at Chrysler.