Slow Motion Train Wreck

I saw Ford's latest sales numbers on BlueOvalNews recently. Battling insomnia, I took a look. Despite Ford's attempt to put a cheerful spin on the numbers, I see some very disturbing trends which should rattle any Ford fans who are paying attention.

• Jaguar is catatonic*. Nothing subtle here, -41% sales from Q1 2005. They need some product, and the need it soon. Sales of the recently redesigned flagship, the aluminium bodied XJ are off 40%. The X-Type and S-Type shouldn't even be discussed in polite company.
  
• The nearly forgotten Taurus sold more units, 55,833, than Fusion + Five Hundred (22,962 + 29,845 = 52,807). This had better change, or... The Fusion and 500 were supposed to replace the Taurus, and mark the beginning of Ford's competitiveness in the car business. I hate to sound like TTAC, but this is starting to look like a disaster.
• The Mustang is selling at about the same rate as the Focus. That is, Ford is letting the Focus wither. The Focus should be a bread-and-butter car for Ford. The Mustang is nice, but it is more of a toy, not a car for the masses.
  
• Freestyle sales are firming up. This is good, Ford is probably recapturing some customers who are dumping the Explorer (-25.4% vs Q1 2005).
• The Explorer, a high-profit vehicle, is not doing well after a significant update. GM's Trailblazer/Envoy had a similar decline, but it was not updated in some time. Which means that Ford plowed millions of dollars into the Explorer update for very little return. There is a pattern here.
  
• Sales of the Escape declined by 4.2%, even with the ramp up of Escape Hybrid production. Another example of Ford letting a key product slide for too long before an improvement--everyone else (Honda, Toyota) has since redesigned their compact SUVs.
  
• Sales of the Freestar minivan have collapsed at a Jaguar-like pace: -34% from last year. Again, after a major update to the product, which included adding a new powertrain, structural changes, and an all new interior.
• The F-series (F-150, F-250, etc.), which make up fully half of Ford's truck volume, showed an increase. This goes to show that fuel prices are not necessarily the driving factor in the sales of light trucks--product appeal is. Heavy trucks showed an even larger gain, +7%.
• Volvo is not doing well, either. The new S40 declined by 4% instead of advancing. The new V50 was off by 27%. Even Volvos best seller, the XC90 SUV, which just got a Yamaha V8, slid by 2%. Some of this may be attributed to currency exchange issues, which make Volvos more expensive.
  
• Land Rover's relatively new LR3 declined by 9.2%.
  

You can't really guess profitability from sales numbers, but from the trends, it looks like Ford is being kept afloat mostly by Mustang, F-series, and commercial fleets. This despite all the hoopla about "the year of the car". Management can make excuses about fuel prices hurting SUV sales, but then how they explain the decline of the Escape and the rise of the F-150? Recent redesigns of some key products did not appear to hold the line, while other segments such as small car and small SUV are being neglected.

How long can this continue?

*Get it? Jag? Cat...


Read The Full Article:
http://theautoprophet.blogspot.com/2006/04/slow-motion-train-wreck.html

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

2006 Land Rover Ranger Rover -- Ergonomics Aren't
Us

I keep trying to convince myself that Land Rovers "aren't like they used to be" (which would be a good thing, btw). I tell myself, "They've been owned by Ford long enough to not have incessant mechanical gremlins and train-wreck ergonomics anymore, right?" Tonight I drove home a 2006 Land Rover Range Rover HSE. On the tight turns along Old Topanga Road (PCH was having traffic issues) I noted that on hard left-hand turns the axles were binding. It wasn't in low-range and all other settings were in "normal" mode but it still shuttered and groaned on hard lefts (the problem didn't exist on hard rights). I tried to distract myself from this trait by tuning in my favorite talk radio station. Problem was, my station is on the AM band and the audio system was set to FM (cue ominous "Bumm!-Bumm!-Bumm!" music). Because the buttons surrounding the LCD screen are decorated with bizarre pictograms that tell you NOTHING, and because most of the audio system must be controlled through the touch screen, I found it nearly impossible to switch bands. There are additional audio controls on the steering wheel, but these buttons -- while large and taking up a lot space -- can only adjust volume and frequency (I think...).

Read The Full Article:
http://blogs.edmunds.com/karl/.ee905df

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

RC Engines

It's truly amazine what kind of engines are available to the RC modeling guys.

The engine pictured is a five cylinder four-stroke radial engine. It produces four horsepower at 8,000 RPM while weighing less than six pounds.

There are many other cool engines. This flat four weighs even less, and makes the same power. It doesn't look quite as sexy, though.

Then we have the two-strokes. They make tons of power and rev to insane RPMs while weighing less yet. This engine makes 4.8 horsepower, revs to 25,000 RPM (that's twenty-five thousand) and weighs less than two pounds.

Can't leave out the outboards. This one just looks so cool.

I'll take one of each, please.

Read The Full Article:
http://dorri732.blogspot.com/2006/04/rc-engines.html

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

The GMC PAD: An Urban Loft

The Institute for the Future blog discusses the GMC PAD concept. The PAD is an urban loft developed for the modern city dweller. The IFTF blog also talks about "reconfigurable cities."

IFTF's Technology Horizons program is focusing its research this year on the theme of "lightweight infrastructure. These new infrastructure designs will emphasize smaller, smarter, more independent components that can be organized in ways that are more efficient, more flexible, and more secure than the capital-intensive networks of the 20th century.

While at first, the PAD concept may appear as the culmination of the ever-bigger trend in SUVs in America, we can also see it as a lightweight alternative to the traditional home or apartment. IFTF has noted the emergence of temporary cities like Burning Man as an important trend in our 2005 Map of the Decade, but if the concept embodied by PAD really caught on, we could see a whole new form of urbanism based on nomadism and reconfigurable cities. Lightweight infrastructure might allow us to rapidly prototype new forms of settlement as needs and constraints shift from day to day.

You can see more about the GMC Pad here on January's L.A. Auto Show website. Information about other unique designs from the show can be found here. (via Boing Boing)

Read The Full Article:
http://www.driversdrive.com/cgi-bin/ddblog.pl?ddblog=406061

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

GM Viral Ad Campaign Hit With Negative Ads

CNET reports that GM's viral ad campaign had unexpected results when people starting entering negative ads. Some of the ads accused GM of contributing to global warming. Thousands of the ads flooded the Internet according to CNET.

As part of a partnership with the TV show "The Apprentice," GM launched a contest last month to promote the Chevy Tahoe SUV. The contest challenges viewers to create their own digital commercial about the SUV at Chevyapprentice.com. Entrants must choose from a range of video clips and sound tracks and write their own text to create their ad.

Over the weekend, hundreds of people used the Internet to circulate thousands of videos that charged GM with contributing to global warming, protested the war in Iraq or just demeaned the Tahoe's quality. Some videos also contained profanity or sexually explicit messages.

Late Monday, GM announced that it would begin screening the ads for "offensive and inflammatory" content but would not remove material based solely on a "negative tone" toward the company.

The contest is a success as a marketing campaign, according to Melisa Tezanos, a GM spokeswoman. Consumers have submitted more than 21,000 ads and have e-mailed commercials over 40,000 times, she said. Chevyapprentice.com has generated 2.4 million page views, and the average visit to the site lasts more than 9 minutes. The company anticipated before launching the contest that it may see some negative ads, but Tezanos noted that more than 80 percent of the commercials depict the Tahoe in a favorable light.

GM recently said it would remove some of the more offensive ads but that it would not remove ads simply because they were critical of GM.

Update 4-6-06: You can also GM's response on their FastLane blog.

Early on we made the decision that if we were to hold this contest, in which we invite anyone to create an ad, in an open forum, that we would be summarily destroyed in the blogosphere if we censored the ads based ontheir viewpoint. So, we adopted a position of openness and transparency, and decided that we would welcome the debate. (As an aside, we have been truly disappointed by the number of submissions we had to filter outbecause of their vulgar content.) I won't bore you with the details, but the overwhelming majority of the 22,000 submissions thus far have been earnest attempts at creating positive advertisements.

The contest winner will be announced here on April 27th.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.driversdrive.com/cgi-bin/ddblog.pl?ddblog=404061

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

DaimlerChrysler Achieves 90% of 8,500 Planned
Mercedes Job Cuts

Forbes is reporting today that as of the end of March, DaimlerChrysler has achieved 90% of its planned 8,500 job cuts. According to the article, 7,800 employees have either accepted severance packages or already left the company. The job cuts, most of which are coming from German Mercedes production plants, were originally expected to take as long as September of this year to complete.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.emercedesbenz.com/Apr06/06DaimlerChryslerAchievesNinetyPercentOfPlanne
dMercedesJobCuts.html

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

Mazda Launches Larger CX-9 CUV at NYIAS

For this year’s New York International Auto Show, Japanese automaker Mazda will be introducing an all-new sport utility vehicle, its second new production vehicle and second SUV for 2007. After launching the CX-7 crossover this past January at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, the CX-9 is the latest product to expand Mazda’s [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://cars.blogs.ca/2006/04/06/mazda-launches-larger-cx-9-cuv-at-nyias/

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

Mercedes-Benz James Cook Voted Camper Van Of The
Year 2006

In a recent poll conducted by the "promobil" magazine, the Mercedes-Benz James Cook was voted "Camper Van of the Year 2006" by the publication's readers. Edging out 282 competitors, the James Cook took top honors in both the best camper van over EUR 40,000 and the overall categories, earning 56% of the approximately 20,000 votes tallied. Since its inception in 1995, the James Cook has been honored with the award twelve consecutive times.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.emercedesbenz.com/Apr06/06MercedesJamesCookVotedCamperVanOfTheYear2006
.html

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

Spy Photos Of The Newest Smart ForTwo

Although not scheduled for release until April of 2007, spy photographer extraordinaire 'skoochyatone' has just sent us the first images of what we can expect from the newest smart fortwo. As you can see from the photos, it appears the latest smart will remain similar in shape and size to the current model. Early rumors indicate the next smart fortwo will feature more streamlined headlights (see last photo), and despite the disguise, the spy photos appear to substantiate this fact. It also appears as though the new smart will be moving away from the three-tiered rear lights and adopting a more traditional approach, a move that most smart owners won't be losing any sleep over.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.emercedesbenz.com/Apr06/06SpyPhotosOfTheNewestSmartForTwo.html

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!