Motor shows - All Comments

re: Looking over Britain's £6k supermini

wigsworld — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:09:31 GMT

This car is fine for people who just want a workhorse but I think your better off buying something secondhand. Styling wise it is extremely bland, both the 207 and getz look much better.

re: The Big Three on the big screen

roadtester — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:55:56 GMT

It's Vauxhall we should be worried about; Opel is well advanced in talks with the German government over the subject of support if the US parent company fails. That will probably leave the UK GM operations out in the cold.

As for Ford failing - well, from a UK industrial perspective, it scarcely matters. Although the UK is probably just about their best market worldwide, they have always cut capacity here first. Now it looks as though the Southampton Transit plant - the only remaining final assembly operation they have here - is under threat. We owe them nothing.

And so what if the Focus is a nice car to drive - if Ford goes t*ts up, most people will manage just as well with a nice Kia cee'd or Hyundai i30 instead!

re: The Big Three on the big screen

Fizzy Weasel — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:17:56 GMT

I agree with Steve, he is saying that people are focusing on the wrong thing. I would say that the CEOs are overpaid and that they should ditch their private jets, but that doesn't change the fact that these companies are in trouble and if they go under a lot of people will lose their jobs, not just from GM but from suppliers all over the world, retirees would lose their pensions, banks and investors would lose their money. I think it's best to bail them out but try to put in place measures to solve the problems that led them here in the first place. Pointing out that Ford and GM would make the two most economical passenger cars in the US next year shows that they haven't lagged behind technically but that it is customer perception/styling/advertising that has failed. Unfortunately when times are hard companies need to be fast and ruthless with measures to stop it, these US companies are too big and too crippled by their massive pension liabilities and unions to rapidly streamline and refocus resources. Small private companies find it easier to make redundancies and cancel projects without being blocked by the board or by the unions. On a side note I wonder what will become of Ford Europe if Ford US crumbles? I think it's a great company that makes the best overall range of vehicles of any car-maker, the KA, Fiesta, Focus, Mondeo, S-Max and even the Kuga are all products worthy of massive respect, firstly for their dynamics, but also for their all round competency. I'd like to see it spun off and continue in the direction it's currently heading.

re: The Big Three on the big screen

optimal_909 — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:10:40 GMT

Steve is very much right.

This is ridiculous about taxpayer money, for many there will be no such a thing since they lose their jobs. the rest will pay for the ever rising unemployment and the price of unefficient use of the liquidated assets. And at the end of the day, they pay it from Chinese credit if we would like to be precise.

The generous UAW deals might be the stupidity of the Big Three, still, they were acting as social institutions what should be taken into account.

It is clear that Chrysler is walking the road of Rover since some while, and it can not be saved - it should go bust (what a coincidence, both have been driven by private equities into the graveyard). GM is very much worth considering, but Ford is definitely worth bailing out. New UAW deals will take effect in 2010, and assembly of the best products from EU market could be started soon. By the way, both of them run succesful overseas operations.

If as a petrolhead I take into account the automotive icons we lose while having the dull Toyota thriving - it is more than sad and disappointing.

re: The Big Three on the big screen

theop — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:42:06 GMT

I agree with the panel Steve too. GM especially out of the three is a bad company thats offered bad value to the shareholders and bad product to its customers...

American unemployment will rise terribly even without them going bust. However, now would be a good time to let them die. Plus or minus a couple of hundred thousand unemployed in the 25% unemployment US will have by the same time next year is peanuts. Let all the rot die in case they can recover enough in the next 10 years before the chinese buy them out altogether.

re: The Big Three on the big screen

scrap — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:19:18 GMT

Horseandcart, you make some great points. Steve Cropley is misguided here in failing to understand the justifiable anger at taxpayers being asked to bail out companies where management failures have exacerbated their current problems.

One point though - construction and real estate jobs adjust more easily to structural changes in the economy, whereas once a factory closes, those jobs are gone and probably won't ever return. This isn't necessarily fair, but with the mid-West arguably in a depression already, you can understand why Obama supports propping up the Big 3... if only to save Ohio and Michigan.

re: The Big Three on the big screen

ThwartedEfforts — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:16:30 GMT

Steve, what planet are you on?

GM alone have at least one jet that is known to have cost the company close to $40,000,000, the trips it takes costing the company a further $20,000 each way. It seems perfectly reasonable to ask the beggar why the bowl he's holding has a gilded edge.

And okay, so the F-150 was a top seller. That doesn't mean the people responsible for it weren't negligible in creating and stoking demand for oversized, grossly inefficient trucks while the rest of the world got on making the cars they knew people would need... oh, round about now. Put simply, the best selling vehicle in the States in the 21st century SHOULD NOT have been a nasty plastic bathtub with a minimum displacement of 4.6 litres.

The people in charge - the same people who have to take the heat when things go wrong - have done too little, too late, and whaddayaknow - we have yet another huge scale U.S. corporate mess on our hands. A mess that U.S. tax payers must be sick and tired of hearing about.

re: The Big Three on the big screen

ESP deactivated — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:11:01 GMT

Asking them if they'd arrived by private jet (they all had) was the highlight of the day for me. The American car industry seems to think it should bailed out as of right, a view that you seem to be reflecting here, Steve. To be honest, the arrogance of the 'Not very big 3' management (as demonstrated by all flying from the Detroit area to Washington on three separate corporate jets - couldn't you have shared guys?) is in grave danger of killing all of them.

And as for the predictions of doom - 'don't bail us out instantly and we'll all sink together' - you don't need to look very far into history to find similar bully boy tactics. GM once assured a Congressional Committee in the mid 1970s that, if the clean air act was passed, it would have to stop making cars.

re: The Big Three on the big screen

horseandcart — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:01:04 GMT

Heh Steve, easy to stand behind a bailout when you're not the one having to pay for it, unless you're a US citizen and taxpayer unbeknownst.

Closer to home the British taxpayer put something like the equivalent of £5 billion pounds into British Leyland all told trying to prop up a non-viable entity. What did they get for their money?

And why shouldn't it be pointed out to the 'Big Three' CEOs that why is it they're winging around on corporate jets when their workers are being axed in the tens of thousands? Come on, open your eyes, the mood is nasty and justifiably, not just in the US, but in Britain too. Why should £20K pa joe soap be being bailing out bankers on salaries in the millions who then wang £300k on a booze up. They're extracting the urine Steve.

As for the three million put out of work, why should auto-workers get preference over other bubble sectors of the economy, like construction, or anything to do with real estate? It's not just a case of producing trucks and SUVs rather than econoboxes it's the fact that the US car market has shrunk from a running rate of 17m/year to 11m/year, an approx. 40% decline. That's what happens when you pull the plug on credit for purchase like what GMAC(owned by Cerberus) has done to GM dealers. The same is happening in Britain. If the US taxpayer is happy to stump up $25bn on maintianing a 17m/year running level that's their choice, but it ain't going to work. Before you can 'stimulate' consumer spending back to the insane levels of 2003-7 you'll have destoyed the currency, and then you wil have the mother and father of all depressions, when there're no takers for US debt.

Thousands of jobs have got to go Steve to get baqk to a 40% declined position. Best way to organise that, is instead of artificial support of taxpayer bailouts, the big three go into bankruptcy and the assets and liablities are sorted out. That's what happens in a free market economy. We all know that this won't happen. Okay, but within no time at all, all you'll have is salami cutting of more jobs and capacity whilst the taxpayer is asked again and again for more emergency funding. The least that can happen given the use of public money is the cutting out of deluded, pampered execs lliving high on the hog within a failed business under their mal administration.

re: Looking over Britain's £6k supermini

pigface — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:01:03 GMT

Thanks for that report on the Dcaia Matt, although I 'm not quite sure why I actually read it! Do people really buy such contraptions ? Are you genuinely interested in such cars or just writing about what you're told? I'd have to say for that money I'd recommend a beautiful mint XJS V12 coupe, relish in the luxury and admiring totty feeling like a young Roger Moore, and live a little! It wouldn't be that practical a city car, I'd have to agree, but you could also buy a nice little second hand whatever and still have change for a bag of chips. Come on, you know it makes sense. Leave the Dacia's for, well, I can't really immagine.

re: VW's show of strength

Dan Stevens — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:38:23 GMT

I know exactly what you're saying. The launch of the last Golf was positively sybaritic. We were flown in individual planes to our own individual castles in Bavaria where we picked up the cars from our own individual garages attached to our own individual apartments with our own individual cooks. That's a cook per person, not a cook per apartment.

Then we drove the cars on closed roads for days. In fact, VW even laid on our own individual policeman to close any roads we wanted to drive on if the roads we had driven on weren't good enough. Dinner was served in an airship by waitresses with jet packs.

re: Paris - am I seeing things?

ESP deactivated — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:46:00 GMT

It's not as clever as the Maestro: look at one (or a Montego, in the unlikely event you can find either) and you'll see that more than half of the depth of the door was glass: which is why 1980s cars felt so light and airy compared to modern stuff.

The A1 looks like it's been reduced in the photocopier, a scaled-down 7/8s version of the original proposal.

re: Paris - am I seeing things?

Andrew Lee — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 11:48:30 GMT

If anything, it's more Allegro than Maestro: the waistline crease + rounded rump. But don't think BMW will be losing much sleep over it - it's not what you'd call cute. Take away the concept car glitz and it'll look pretty - ordinary.

re: Paris - am I seeing things?

A R Chen — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:20:37 GMT

I fully agree with Horseandcart. British designers have always dared to push the envelope and the results were often very successful even if ahead of their time.

One Leyland design that I really liked was the Princess, and let's not forget the Triumph 2.5 PI and Stag. I am glad to see many British designers exerting their influence in many car companies around the world.

And yes, Chas, the A1 does look like a Maestro and I think it looks pretty well proportioned and handsome. Is it just me or is that metallic paintwork fabulous?

re: Paris - am I seeing things?

horseandcart — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 10:36:30 GMT

What about Austin Allegro with Vanden Plas grille?

To be fair Austin Rover, i.e. the rump of the once second largest producers in the world British volume car industry, always had good designs and designers. I would go further and say the British relationship to 'the car industry' has always centered on design and aesthetic and fallen down horribly when it comes/came to the nut and bolts of product development, high volume, repititve manufacture and organsing efficiently tens of thousand strong workforces.