CSpec

GM doesn't care which state "needs" jobs. There must be a clear profit motive for doing this, probably because of falling Lambda volume and the possible sale of Saturn as was mentioned above. That senator can go screw himself.

Self sufficiency = hopeless poverty. If Indian drugs are cheaper, bring 'em on.

Looks OK...

Original article: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle6067339.ece Sales of vehicles in China hit a record last month, underlining the country’s rise in the market as carmakers in the US scramble to avoid bankruptcy. Chinese people eager to leave behind the age of the bicycle bought 1.10 million vehicles in March, up some five per cent from the previous record of 1.06 million in March last year, data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed. The number cemented China in its position as the world’s largest car market, outstripping even the US. Sales have been buoyed by a desire among Chinese to have a car of their own – in many cases their first set of wheels ever – as well as by government tax cuts and rebates on small car purchases intended to lure buyers back into showrooms. Growth in sales had slowed in 2008 to its lowest annual rate in more than a decade as the global financial crisis took its toll towards the end of the year, prompting many Chinese to keep their wallets shut tight in case of more problems ahead. However, the government support measures introduced in February have spurred the market. Yi Junfeng, an industry analyst with Changjiang Securities, said: "Few had expected such an explosive growth for the month. I certainly didn't as the economy had not shown clear signs of full recovery. It seems that the tax incentives for small cars and subsidies are really effective and the 10 percent annual growth target set by the government is achievable." Chery Automobile Co, maker of the best-selling compact car, the QQ, sold more than 35,000 cars in March, hitting its second monthly record this year. Foreign manufacturers also benefited. Ford Motor expects to grow faster than the overall China market this year, banking in part on policy support to lift sales of its new Fiesta small car rolled out last month. Regardless of its miseries back home, General Motors said it sold 137,004 vehicles in China in March, up 24.6 percent from a year earlier. Its minivehicle joint venture, SAIC-GM-Wuling, saw sales surge 38 percent to 90,784 vehicles. Kevin Wale, president and managing director of the GM China Group, attributed the strong showing to a wide product lineup, and forecast that the company will double its sales, to more than 2 million a year, by 2014. Overall passenger car sales hit a monthly high of 772,400 units in March, up 10.26 percent from a year earlier, and a rise of 27.2 percent from February.

The interior still gives me a very Korean vibe for some reason. Something about the lashings of silver plastic on the center stack and console.

Absolutely beautiful. They're supposed to be crap to drive, but who actually drives a car that expensive anyway?

Subaru keeps screwing up good old designs. This just looks weird, and they made the interior much worse with blocky, boring, unsporty look.

Very boring. Interior is typical Chrysler blocks with some slightly more interesting parts.

Acura's front ends have been absolutely awful lately. The rest of it is OK, if a bit odd. The interior looks the same as the MDX.

There's a difference between the whimsical ruminations of what the perfect model lineup would be, and what is actually attainable at the cash-strapped GM at death's door. I agree that Buick is capable of making a fine product that rivals Lexus, but the image is so damaged I don't see how they can fix it within any reasonable amount of time with no money.

Sad, but probably necessary. Just giving Buick good product like the Enclave and new Lacrosse isn't enough to generate sales and image: just ask Saturn. Saving Buick in North America would require great product, dealers, marketing, and patience. GM doesn't have the money or the time to make this happen.

Very very safe. Not bad, but quite boring. Also the interior is still too blocky and boring.

You beat me by 3 minutes.

Hmm, watching the video it looks like the trunk still has very intrusive humps from the rear wheels.

This is a great review. I had doubts about the SRX but this seems very promising. I sure hope this more feminine version does better than the last one!

I like it overall, but I don't like 2 details: the square wheel arches and the really thick strip of chrome at the top of the grill. Otherwise I think it looks good and modern.

Original: http://www.economist.com/business/displays...ory_id=13414108 Time for a new driver General Motors gets a new boss, but Barack Obama is really in control IF AMERICA’S two beleaguered carmakers, General Motors (GM) and Chrysler, had harboured the hope that Barack Obama would prove a soft touch, any such illusion has been robustly dispelled. When the news leaked on March 29th that Rick Wagoner, GM’s chief executive for nine years, had been told to step down by the president’s auto task-force in favour of his number two, Fritz Henderson, there was little doubt that more unpleasant medicine was on the way. So it proved. The next day the task-force gave its analysis of the "viability plans" the two firms had submitted in February as a condition of the $17.4 billion emergency-loan package agreed on December 31st ($13.4 billion for GM, $4 billion for the much smaller Chrysler). Its verdict on both plans was damning; its threat that bankruptcy, albeit of a “quick and surgical kind”, could still be the best option, was unambiguous. Although GM was given some credit for restructuring its business in recent years, the task-force concluded that progress had been far too slow, and that something much more thorough than GM’s management and key stakeholders seemed willing to contemplate was needed. Furthermore, the assumptions on which GM was basing its plans were a good deal too rosy and left uncomfortably little margin for error. The task-force identified six areas where it found GM to be over-optimistic or in denial: domestic market share, which it expects to contract by only 0.3 percentage points a year after 30 years of falling by 0.7 points; pricing in a collapsing market which still doubts the quality of GM’s products; the drag of underperforming dealers; the consequences of the failure of GM’s European arm to secure outside investment or government support; a weakening product mix as consumer tastes and tighter fuel-economy rules eat into sales of high-margin trucks and sport-utility vehicles; and legacy health-care and pension liabilities that will reach $6 billion a year by 2013, forcing GM to maximise volume rather than return on investment. But GM can take one quite substantial crumb of comfort from this otherwise bleak assessment: Mr Obama’s team reckons that if it can shove the company, its unions and its bondholders into taking more drastic and painful action, a healthy business could yet emerge. GM has started making some good, desirable cars in efficient, flexible factories. Critically, GM also has the scale, technology and reach that a capital-intensive, highly competitive global industry demands. None of this, unfortunately, applies to Chrysler. On just about every count, the task-force sees Chrysler as a basket-case. Saddled with out-of-date factories, over-reliance on the North American market and unfashionable trucks, a poor reputation for quality, a dearth of new models in the pipeline and insufficient resources to fund future power-train development, Chrysler is too weak and too small to survive on its own. Chrysler’s only hope, Mr Obama said on March 30th, is to consummate the deal it has been discussing since January with Fiat. The Italian firm would supply it with "cutting-edge technology" in the form of fuel-efficient engines, small-car platforms and factory automation. In return, Fiat had expected a 35% stake in Chrysler, a strong base from which to buy the rest of the company should it so wish, as well as a manufacturing and distribution base in America. In negotiations held in March between Steven Rattner, the investment banker who leads the task-force, and Sergio Marchionne, Fiat’s boss, Fiat agreed to scale back its initial stake to 20% and not to increase it beyond 49% until Chrysler had repaid American taxpayers in full. Chrysler now has until the end of April to get the deal done. Meanwhile the government will continue to supply it with working capital. Mr Obama says he will "consider" lending the firm a further $6 billion if it can construct a credible plan with Fiat. But can it? Mr Marchionne is adamant that Fiat will not put any of its own much-needed cash at risk, and the Fiat team that has been carrying out due diligence on Chrysler thinks it will be two years before the American firm will feel real benefit from the partnership. Given that Chrysler has spent most, if not all, of the $4 billion it received in January, it is hard to see how $6 billion will take it through to 2011. The government says that if Chrysler is to survive alongside Fiat it will require "at a minimum…extinguishing the vast majority of Chrysler’s outstanding secured debt [about $9 billion] and all its unsecured debt and equity." Cerberus Capital Management, the private-equity firm that acquired an 80% stake in Chrysler in August 2007, seems resigned to surrendering its equity, and the banks that hold unsecured debt are also in a weak position. But the senior debt holders may decide that they will fare better if Chrysler files for bankruptcy and they can make a grab for whatever sellable assets are left. The outlines of GM’s future are not much clearer, but at least it seems to have one. "We cannot, we must not, and we will not let our auto industry simply vanish," Mr Obama said this week. That does not, however, mean that GM will necessarily avoid bankruptcy, as Mr Henderson acknowledged. In a marked change of tone from the old regime, of which he was a part, Mr Henderson said he was prepared to do whatever was necessary to reorganise GM—including making a trip to the bankruptcy court if agreements could not be reached with bondholders and the United Auto Workers union to slash more than $50 billion of liabilities. Mr Obama has given Mr Henderson 60 days (and sufficient working capital) to bang heads together and drive through other changes. Above all, the task-force will want to see evidence that GM can repair its balance-sheet and become capable of generating positive free cashflow in a car market somewhat bigger than today’s, but smaller than in the past. There is, however, a growing belief that the best way to achieve that may be a "quick rinse" bankruptcy reorganisation which separates a new, lean and mean GM from an old GM that holds legacy health-care obligations, dud brands and unwanted factories. Supposedly, the former would swiftly fly free, while the latter would remain in bankruptcy and be slowly wound down. In practice, nothing is likely to be that neat. The only certainty is that even though GM has a new boss, the government is really in control.

I dunno, I think this looks very boring and already starting to look a bit dated.

I agree that it looks good. Sort of like a sedan-sized and more normal X6. I'm not so sure about the interior, though.

Happy birthday!

Original article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123859954307378495.html Despite reporting another major sales decline in March, auto makers expressed a rare bit of optimism Wednesday, saying they see signs the industry's downturn might be near bottom and a recovery could be starting. All the big car makers suffered sales declines of 36% or more compared to March 2008. Industrywide, U.S. sales totaled 857,735 cars and light trucks, down 37% from a year earlier, according to Autodata Corp. But that's up from 688,909 vehicles sold in February and was the highest total since September. February's sales were down 41% from a year earlier. The annualized sales pace, a closely watched indicator, came in at 9.86 million vehicles, well below the 16 million or more the industry typically logged a few years ago, but up from February's pace of 9.12 million. "I believe we are in a bottoming process for the industry," Bob Carter, a group vice president at Toyota Motor Corp., said in a conference call. Mr. Carter said the company's 18% sales improvement in March compared with February could be "a very early indication that we have floored and some optimism is starting to return to the market." Michael DiGiovanni, the top sales analyst at General Motors Corp., said he expects a "very, very gradual pickup" in vehicle sales in the second quarter. He cited "the first signs of brightening" in the market. Jim Press, Chrysler LLC's vice chairman and president, said, "The market is starting to show small signs of life which need to be nourished like seedlings." Chrysler, like GM, is seeking additional aid from the government. The uptick in March's sales pace was helped by sales of cars to fleet customers such as rental-car companies. GM sold 36,000 vehicles to fleets, the company said. That is fewer than a year ago but up from February. Chrysler sold about 30,000 vehicles to fleets, a person familiar with the company's sales figures said. Foreign auto makers including Toyota and Hyundai Motor Co. also boosted fleet sales in the past year as sales to consumers plunged. Fleet sales often are less profitable than consumer sales. Higher incentives offered to buyers also pumped up March's sales. Auto makers offered, on average, a record $3,169 in incentives per vehicle sold in March, according to Web site Edmunds.com. The figure represents a jump of $733, or 30.1%, from a year earlier and $171, or 5.7%, from February. Car makers cited leading indicators in the economy that suggest demand could edge upward in the second and third quarters. "I can say that we have been seeing some encouraging signs in recent weeks that the pace of economic decline could be moderating," said Ford Motor Co. economist Emily Kolinski Morris, citing reports of stabilization in consumer confidence. Housing starts also increased in February. Positive signs also include rising used car prices, more cash buyers in the market and the expected return of the government and other large-scale vehicle buyers that will be boosting fleet sales, Ford officials said. Mr. Kolinski Morris noted, however, that "credit conditions, auto industry restructuring risk and consumer psychology all seem likely to have some part in generating industry sales outcome that is worse than any model based on historical performance would have predicted." Chrysler's sales fell 39.3% in March, although its total came in at 101,001 vehicles -- the first time since September that sales topped 100,000. GM's sales declined 44.7% to 155,334 cars and light trucks, Autodata said. Ford sales fell 41% to 131,102 vehicles. Toyota's sales slipped 39% to 132,802 and Honda Motor Co.'s 36.3% to 88,379. Slumping sales at Chrysler and GM are a concern for the U.S. Treasury, which has given both companies billions of dollars in loans to keep them from collapsing. The Treasury has given Chrysler 30 days to craft a viable turnaround plan centered on a binding alliance with Fiat SpA, and has given GM 60 days to work out its recovery plan. The Treasury also announced this week that the government will guarantee warranties on GM and Chrysler vehicles to help ease consumer concerns about buying from companies that are at risk of bankruptcy. But consumer worry is only one trouble Chrysler faces. It lacks the scale auto makers need to compete in a global industry, carries too much debt and cannot afford the spending required to produce the new models it needs to compete, the Treasury's auto task force said in a summary of its findings Sunday. It was unclear what President Barack Obama's rejection of the GM and Chrysler viability plans and mention of possible bankruptcy restructuring had on sales overall since the discussion came at the end of the month. But Ford sales analyst George Pipas told analysts and reporters Wednesday that "we did see in the last week things start to pick up."

Well considering that they would be wiped out largely in bankruptcy, they should be ready to deal I would think.

Original article here: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchang...rivers_seat.cfm I ABSOLUTELY hate the idea of comparing the administration's response to the collapse of the big carmakers to the administration's response to the collapse of the financial system. They're superficially alike, yet different enough in substance to make analogy misleading. And yet, I can't avoid it. Barack Obama's comments today, as he rolled out the administration's plan for handling the all-but-certain failure of General Motors and Chrysler just demand to be held in constrast to his administration's poor roll out of its banking plan. The first and most notable difference is the messenger. Tim Geithner may be brilliant, but his speeches have not inspired confidence. Mr Obama, on the other hand, radiates it. No one in politics is better and hitting the right tone in any given speech. The administration's plans may seem stingy relative to the terms given to banks, but by any other measure they are exceedingly generous, and yet Mr Obama's comments came across as appropriately stern and commanding. He is not going to allow the carmakers to sink without his assistance, but he is going to get something for the government's money—in Chrysler's case, a more stable partner; in GM's a more aggressive restructuring and a corporate head. Where the banking system is concerned, by contrast, the administration has been excessively accommodating, and it has also seemed excessively accommodating. The root of public anger isn't in the details of the bail-out plans, which are poorly understood, but in the optics of it. There are other factors worth considering, of course. As big and important as America's auto industry is, the dollar amounts at issue are dwarfed by the bets being made on banking rescue, and the economic downside to a failed carmaker bail-out is significant but nothing like the cost to getting the banking rescue wrong. Partially for that reason, the carmakers have a poorer hand with which to gamble, and it shows. Already today Chrysler and Fiat have agreed to an alliance, and GM's bondholders are on board with the plan. And for what it's worth, markets are off some 3% on the day. But if nothing else, the administration's approach here oozes competence and toughness, even as the government prepares to extend billions in taxpayer dollars. That's a pose it has yet to strike on the banking issue, where the appearance of a tough line is more crucial, even if Mr Obama's economic officials have determined that actual hardball would be counterproductive. Finally, an aside: Mr Obama's carmaker rescue seems likely to include support for economist Alan Blinder's "Cash for Clunkers" programme, in which incentives are provided to owners of old, dirty automobiles to trade them in and buy newer, cleaner models. It creates demand for cars while greening the automobile fleet. The policy frequently came up in stimulus discussions but failed to make it in; maybe this time its luck will be better.

This is the most absurd regulation. Just have a carbon tax and let the market decide what a good MPG is, not some leftist bureaucrats.

Isn't the Azera FWD?