Oracle of Delphi

You're probably right Satty, since I think that's his only recourse ...

Short Americans shouldn't bathe as much as they do, since the hot water tends to make them shrink!

Come to BMW, twin kidney grille, RWD, no Bangle, just Börger now, and remember they mimicked Pontiac to a great degree to get where they are today ...

I'm doing my part by helping BMW build RWD's ...

Not me, I love the W's and always will ...

Canyons look very European ...

Let's us not forget the best benefit of all, the (UFP) - The United Federation of Planets ... Live Long and Prosper ... Resistance is Futile ... etc, etc!

I would tend to agree, but this one now has cupholders that all the girlie men were clamoring for ...

You won't have long to wait, he's 88 years old ...

Hmmm, I did something similar. I had taken my daughter to see the new Star Trek movie, afterwards I swung by to pick up my wife and go to dinner with her and my daughter, the wife was asking how we liked the movie. I said it was great, then I meant to say you have to see the new Captain Kirk and Spock, but what I said in a rather loud voice because the restaurant was crowded was, you have to see the new Captain Kock, there was long silence until I realized what I said and I could not stop laughing ...

Four Brands? They should have went to two Brands. All I hear is how the American consumers are going to make GM pay for the tax dollars invested, by not buying anything made by GM. Maybe even two brands may be one brand to many ...

If you use the 2nd one, I will sue your a$$ for name infringement MCS is to close to PCS, and the way the courts are today, I will win ...

A yellow 1975 Ford Pinto on the German autobahn ...

I wouldn't know what Americans do, cause I'm a Italian/German Hybrid ...

Balls you say ???

Jamie Lareau Automotive News June 8, 2009 - 12:01 am ET General Motors, which already has told more than 1,300 dealerships they will be dropped, is pressuring survivors to sign a contract that gives up rights spelled out for dealerships in state franchise laws. To enforce the deal, GM issued a threat: If dealers don't sign, the company can, in bankruptcy, cancel their franchises now. Dealers must sign by this Friday, June 12, or risk termination. Such agreements ordinarily could not be enforced because they conflict with state franchise laws, which limit an automaker's freedom to rewrite franchise agreements. But GM is working on the theory that federal bankruptcy law provides the clout to make these changes stick after the company emerges from Chapter 11 reorganization. Lawyers who represent auto dealers hotly dispute that interpretation of bankruptcy law. Automotive News has obtained a copy of the proposed agreement, which states that GM can require dealers to: -- Sell substantially more vehicles. -- Maintain bigger inventories. -- Eliminate non-GM brands in the showroom. -- Upgrade dealerships and maintain high customer satisfaction scores. -- Not protest any new store that GM locates more than six miles away from their dealership for two years. Various state laws set their own rules to prevent automakers from locating stores too close to each other. The average radius is 10 miles. In an interview last week, GM sales chief Mark LaNeve said bankruptcy provides GM one chance to create a healthy network of dealerships. He said that the contracts are not intended to be a threat and that GM will work with dealers. But lawyers who represent auto dealers bitterly disagreed. "My first reaction is outrage," said Eric Chase, a lawyer with Bressler, Amery & Ross in Florham Park, N.J. Chase said the proposed agreement gives GM too much authority to override state franchise laws once the automaker is out of U.S. Bankruptcy Court. "It's overreaching," he said. "What they're trying to do in bankruptcy is go outside of bankruptcy in the future, so the new GM will prohibit the rights of dealers that are otherwise protected by state franchise laws." Gag order Lawyers say the agreement tightly restricts dealers. For example, the dealer must agree not to discuss the agreement with anyone other than employees or business partners. If a dealer wants to talk about it with anyone else, GM must give written consent. The proposed agreement does not list GM's specific sales goals or other performance targets. Nonetheless, dealers must sign it or GM will terminate their franchise agreements in Bankruptcy Court, according to the document. One dealer who asked not to be identified said he will sign his participation agreement but only because he believes he has no choice. "It's terrible because GM is holding you up to a new standard on your sales, which they have not disclosed," the dealer said. "They say we have this great new territory and have to sell more cars. GM can throw you out for any reason at this point. "I'm hoping for the best — but, you know, they've got me pretty good." Many states have laws preventing dealers from waiving their rights. But GM takes the position that its continuation agreement would give U.S. Bankruptcy Court jurisdiction to handle any disputes between dealer and factory, even after the company leaves Chapter 11. "There are no black-and-white answers to these questions yet," said Mike Charapp, a dealer attorney in McLean, Va. "I view these as unusual agreements, quite aggressive agreements by the factory. "A dealer should not enter them lightly with some assumption that a court will find them inappropriate in the future." 'Not that onerous' LaNeve said the agreement is "really not that onerous." "All we want to get across is, 'Here's what we want to get from you in the new GM,'" he said. LaNeve said the company expects surviving dealerships to sell at least 10 percent more vehicles per store, on average, than they did last year. That's because the stores GM is winding down account for about 10 percent of the company's U.S. volume. If the market improves, LaNeve said, GM might ask for 20 percent. He said the ban on protesting new dealerships more than six miles away should bother dealers only if GM were to add stores. "We're taking dealerships out," LaNeve said. "The reason for the clause is because with this dramatic of a reduction not every store will land in the right location. Some of the surviving stores might need to be relocated to get the market mix right. "If we wanted to terminate them, we'd give them a wind-down letter, not a participation agreement," he added. "These are the dealers we want to go forward with." Link: http://www.autonews.com/article/20090608/A...paign_id=alerts

Jamie Lareau Automotive News June 8, 2009 - 12:01 am ET DETROIT -- General Motors wants to eliminate hundreds of Cadillac dealerships in metro markets to make the brand's per-store sales comparable with those of Mercedes-Benz, Lexus and BMW. In a dealer broadcast on Tuesday, June 2, GM sales chief Mark LaNeve said some Cadillac dealers might be surprised to learn they will be terminated by Oct. 31, 2010, said GM spokesman Pete Ternes. As part of the company's plan to winnow its dealership network, GM wants to align the number of Cadillac dealerships in major markets to those of its competitors. "Our current footprint of 1,400 Cadillac dealers, most of which are dualed, is out of sync with modern luxury automotive retail," LaNeve told dealers, according to a transcript GM gave to Automotive News. LaNeve did not say how many dealers Cadillac would terminate. But to reach the goal of a per-store sales match with rivals, hundreds would have to go. "Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Lexus outsell us with 250 and 450 dealers," LaNeve said. "We have to address this and enable our large Cadillac dealers to do more volume." The luxury gap How Cadillac and its rivals compare in per-store sales. Franchises as of Jan.1----- Avg. 2008 Sales Cadillac 1,422 ----------------112 Mercedes-Benz 347-----------651 BMW 338---------------------- 737 Lexus 226 ---------------------1,158 Source: Automotive News Data Center Link: http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti...paign_id=alerts

Mafia

No manufacturing assets either ...

Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEKoxWfGICc

Many thanks to all, for the good wishes ...

I've come into some extra cash lately, perhaps I should buy it? I'd change Pontiac to only building the muscle Pontiacs of the 60's and 70's, oh and of course a new model called a Börgermobile, a Green Earth friendly car ...

WARREN, Mich. - Even now, as General Motors fights for survival, there is something ambivalent about its prescription for saving itself, a conflict implicit in a bit of symbolism that recently greeted arrivals to the Detroit Metropolitan Airport even before they reached baggage claim. One of GM's touted new automobiles sat on display in the center of the automaker's airport gift shop. It was not the coming electric car, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, championed by Bob Lutz, the GM executive most identified with the Hail Mary that the vehicle represents for the bankrupt company, which faces the immediate future as a ward of the federal government. It was not one of the relatively new GM hybrids. It was not even a mid-level sedan called the Chevy Malibu, which has received flattering reviews and awards, in part for its better-than-average fuel economy. It was instead a car that flies in the face of all the worries about the American automotive industry, all the calls to make it more environmentally responsible and therefore more viable: the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS with a V-8 engine, General Motors' version of the fast and powerful model that automobile enthusiasts commonly call a muscle car. With an estimated 25 miles per gallon on the highway, the 400-plus-horsepower Camaro SS is not a car renowned for being fuel-efficient. It is another Bob Lutz car, a monument to Lutz's and GM's enduring hope that even as the company struggles to escape bankruptcy as a smaller, leaner producer of fuel-efficient vehicles, the glory days can somehow be resurrected. "Sexy with charisma," is how Lutz recently described the Camaro while in his office on a square-mile expanse known as the GM Technical Center, the nucleus of the company's research and development efforts. It is the kind of Detroit-speak he favors. "Some people don't care for those kinds of descriptions today — it's a different time," says Lutz, who drives a gas-thirsty 2009 Corvette, a dream car of muscle lovers. "But we have new vehicles, too. We have the Volt. We are committed to the electrification of the automobile. We know this is the time." If you were to believe that Lutz commissioned the Volt because he thinks the environment needs to be saved from carbon dioxide emissions, or that the United States has a moral obligation to lead a greening of the planet, you would be wrong. "If you look at most of the mainstream media, you get the impression that 95 percent of Americans today want a vehicle like the Chevrolet Volt or a [hybrid such as the] Toyota Prius," says Lutz, until recently the former head of GM's global product development and nowadays the company's vice chairman and senior adviser. "And that, by God, the reason General Motors is in trouble, is that we have not offered a vehicle like that. But when you look at the reality, at today's fuel prices, most Americans still want a conventional car." Why the Volt then? "Because it is an important symbol. We need it. It has a chance to change our image," he says. As GM's situation has become increasingly dire, and interested parties from President Obama to shareholders have demanded that the company start making more fuel-efficient cars, GM has pointed to the Volt as evidence of its changing ways. But the values that have long shaped this iconic company are deeply held, especially the passion for pushing the envelope of automobile performance and power. In many ways, the Volt, and GM's subtle shift from old design priorities, represent a contradiction of those values. Meanwhile, some industry observers are unconvinced that the Volt, even if it runs flawlessly, can be the company's savior, and view it as a miscalculated effort to woo back customers by awkwardly trying to demonstrate a new cutting-edge bent. "I just think GM is focusing on the wrong thing," says Daniel Roos, an engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies the automobile industry. "The quality of its cars was horrible in the '70s and '80s, but it's much better now. It has world-class vehicles: the Malibu and the Cadillac CTS. They should be [promoting] those and capitalizing on their strengths." While regarding the Volt as a sign of modest progress within GM, some critics see the car as basically another half-step in a company prone to half-steps. They point to the Volt's internal-combustion gasoline engine — dubbed by GM as a "range extender," meant to supply electricity to the motor after the vehicle has exhausted its 40-mile range on battery power alone — as an indication that the plug-in electric car is not quite what it purports to be. To these critics, the Volt neatly reflects long-standing problems in GM's corporate culture: a propensity for knee-jerk responses, an inbred caution even in the midst of reform and a lingering preference for comfort over efficiency. Lutz vociferously rejects such characterizations. Not only does the Volt demonstrate GM's "commitment to changing," he says, but also the car is simply "the first generation of an electric vehicle from GM" that will produce successive generations of enhanced Volts, ultimately leading to a car running entirely on electric power in excess of 150 miles. Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31146562