Challenger Garage

A new House bill spearheaded by Republicans replaces $15 billion in direct government loans to automakers with a $14 billion loan insurance program to be partly funded by the automakers. This would presumably loosen credit to automakers while assigning much of the risk to the American taxpayers, and providing large profits to banks which would [...]

The automakers are in dire need of some loans to tide them over for a few months. Democrats have, after grilling the executives and demanding plans for action, chosen to lend out $15 billion of the $25 billion which should already be in the automakers’ hands.  The White House managed to prevent that $25 billion from [...]

  This particular person — me — thinks the auto shop rocks.  I don’t care if you’re an independent, a dealer, or whatever.  You have saved me from many a jam in the 10+ years I’ve owned a car, and it’s overdue that I say thank you for it.  My first car was a 1987 Buick LeSabre [...]

The sharp-tongued Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee have demanded that the automakers all merge, or go bankrupt so they can void their loans and union contracts; but either way they’ve made it clear they will never support government intervention to save the industry, which one called a dinosaur. The problem, aside from a corrupt banking [...]

Let’s look at the Senate for a moment.  Senators get complete job security for six full years; given how few senators are not re-elected, one can say that they actually have far better job security than that. But even within those six years, they get security that makes tenured university professors look like, well, autoworkers.  Senators get [...]

That’s a headline you could actually read.  The UAW workers’ wages aren’t that important, in the whole scheme of things. Really. That’s not the big issue, at least not for Chrysler.  Take a look at Chrysler’s estimated expenses for Quarter 1, 2009. Out of $11.6 billion, wages account for $900 million. That’s much less than 10%. Even [...]

Peggy Risley of Blanchard Gold sent an e-mail around, detailing steps the government has taken so far in this financial crisis. I haven’t done my usual fact checking on this but it seems right. Here’s the list (edited somewhat): Wall Street $1.6 trillion in loans to banks so far in exchange for otherwise unwanted collateral. The Fed [...]

No, it isn’t really.  However, I heard and read a lot of talk about how the automakers said nothing substantial to Congress, and about how they had no plans, and no humility.  Bob Nardelli, at least, seemed to have his hands on a lot of facts.  Here is what he actually said on November 18, at least according [...]

The pathetic performance by the CEOs (Moe, Larry, and Shemp) was almost enough to make me change my mind about supporting aid for the automakers. They were that bad. Did their PR departments have any clue how to prepare them, or did they all just go off the reservation on their own? Did Wagoner actually object [...]

Today, the government agreed to bail out Citibank, putting in $45 billion and backing $300 billion in “high risk” loans.  There was no discussion of whether the CEO flies around in a corporate jet, or whether he makes too much ($3.16 million in 2007 plus an agreement to provide him with a further $102 million in [...]

You have to read this Freep opinion… and pass it around… I think it really adds a lot of perspective to the bailout talks. http://www.freep.com/article/20081123/COL01/811230371/1210/BUSINESS (Thanks, Ed Stockelbach.) That said — personally, I’m in favor of throttling back the executive perks and compensation as far as we can get away with it. If nothing else, it’ll make it [...]

Don Holohan, steam heat expert, featured this article in his recent newsletter. Since few of you follow steam heat, I thought it was worth repeating here. It’s particularly relevant to city dwellers, given the new impetus for locally generated power (in New York, miniature power stations are apparently all the rage; apparently Venezuela has been [...]

Nobody asked me for my opinion, but then, I didn’t ask Mitt Romney, Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh, or any other big-mouths for their opinions, either.  Incidentally, the auto industry economists DID clearly see economic troubles coming, at least six months before it did. Ford and Chrysler acted. GM did not. So here are my conditions for loans [...]

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, whose father ran AMC, wrote in the New York Times about the prospect of bridge loans for domestic automakers.  He claims that the loans would actually cause the death of GM, Ford, and Chrysler, because bankruptcy is, in his view, the only way to get rid of UAW contracts, executive perks, [...]

The Detroit Three CEOs stood before Congress today to plead their case. They insisted that their companies could not declare bankruptcy and survive, as posturing small-town-values hypocrite Senator Shelby insisted they should go bankrupt so they could put their retirees into poverty, break their promises to vendors and banks (putting many of them into bankruptcy), [...]

Senator Shelby, who refers to American automakers as dinosaurs making cars nobody wants (ignoring the domestics’ current market share and critically acclaimed vehicles such as the Chevy Malibu and Dodge Challenger), has suggested that the automakers should simply go bankrupt. Numerous other analysts have suggested this path, mainly as a way to avoid paying pensions [...]

Customer service pays. Consulting firm TARP (Technical Assistance Research Programs), which has counted Chrysler as a client, has proven this repeatedly using numbers and formulas from their research. Even using the most conservative of numbers and formulas, they can show that just about any investment in service is likely to yield a much greater return in [...]

This is an interesting speech made on August 4, 2004, which may bear reprinting. Tom LaSorda Chief Operating Officer, Chrysler Group “The Fully Flexible Corporation” I’ve been looking forward to this opportunity to discuss the state and future of our industry. Thank you for inviting me to be a part of it. Having fairly recently moved to the COO position [...]

Some people told us that the dreams of environmentalists and conservationists (two separate groups, by the way) were insane: that Americans could slash their energy dependence, move to smaller cars, and drive less.  Others told us that Americans were born to be spendthrifts, that we could never get our consumerist greed under control.  Both turned out to [...]

You may remember how the analysts and reporters were claiming that GM, after acquiring Chrysler, would shut down pretty much everything but the minivans and Jeeps. At that time, you may remember my saying: Rubbish, I say. Even if Rick Wagoner is as foolish as he looks.  These people don’t know Chrysler. They are still thinking the Daimler line [...]