Automotive News - October 13, 2008 - (Page 62) 62 • OCTOBER 13, 2008 final assembly comment WEBINAR >> Automotive News hosts a Webinar entitled "Accountable Advertising on the Internet" at noon on Wednesday, Oct. 15. Go to www.autonews.com/section/WEBINAR to register. Nightmare on Wall St. I s it Halloween yet? It’s scary out there. With global stock markets in free fall, General Motors was forced to issue a statement Friday that “bankruptcy protection is not an option GM is considering. Bankruptcy would not be in the interests of our employees, stockholders, suppliers or customers.” GM released its statement after Standard & Poor’s analyst Robert Schulz told Bloomberg Television on Friday that the Detroit 3 may be forced to seek protection from creditors. “Macro factors could overwhelm them at some point” despite their turnaround campaigns, Schulz said in the interview. The previous day, S&P had said it might cut the credit ratings of GM and Ford deeper into junk status. The news pushed GM’s stock price down 31 percent to $4.76 by the end of trading Thursday, Oct. 9, the stock’s lowest level since 1950. It closed Friday at $4.89. Ford’s stock fell 22 percent Thursday to $2.08, and closed Friday at $1.99. They weren’t alone in the rout. Eleven of the 12 car manufacturer stocks tracked by Automotive News Europe and PricewaterhouseCoopers — including Toyota, Honda, Daimler and BMW — hit 12-month lows by the end of trading Wednesday. Volkswagen was the sole exception. Through last Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average had fallen more than 22 percent in eight days, dropping below 9,000 for the first time since 2003. Who knows where it will be by Oct. 31. LEE BESFORD/REUTERS Is Ford’s MyKey really for My Kid?s the father of three grown sons, I’m familiar with the parental anxiety of having a newly licensed teenage driver behind the wheel of the family car doing whoknows-what with who-knowswhom who-knows-where. I’m certain that each of them made mistakes of judgment behind the wheel. I did, too, when I was a teen driver. Each had EDWARD LAPHAM minor scrapes. I IS EXECUTIVE did, too, when I EDITOR OF was a teen driver. AUTOMOTIVE And I’m aware NEWS. that more needs to be done to reduce the disproportionate number of crashes and highway deaths involving young drivers. But I’m not sure Ford’s MyKey, which will debut on the 2010 Focus coupe, is the answer. It’s an electronic prophylactic controlled by parents to prevent teen drivers from making common youngperson mistakes. In fairness, MyKey does some things that could be sensible for drivers of any age, such as warning when the vehicle’s speed is creeping up or its fuel is running low. It makes it possible to limit the maximum volume on the radio, a feature that might have helped preserve my hearing way back when. MyKey also can be used as a governor to limit the top speed of the Focus. And that’s where I have a problem. Why hamstring the vehicle’s ability to avoid or escape a dangerous situation if needed? Instead, why not teach the young driver how and when to use speed — and just as important, how and when not to speed? Responsibility is the key. For some time, there have been aftermarket black-boxlike chips you could install in the car to spy on your kids and their driving habits. But that never seemed necessary, or right. After all, if you need to spy on your kids when they’re driving, they shouldn’t be driving. Using an electronic tether to restrict teenage drivers reminds me of the lazy parents who keep their toddlers on leashes to prevent them from wandering away at the mall. There must be a better way. And it almost certainly doesn’t involve technology. Edward Lapham writes commentaries each week for autonews.com. Read them at autonews.com/edwardlapham. Jeremy Clarkson: Grab a sick bag. Who’d say ‘good buy’ to Chrysler? W Reviews are in: Sebring is world-crass T ho wants to buy Chrysler LLC? Lots of candidates might be interested, including a Chinese automaker and RenaultNissan, Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli acknowledged in an interview last week. But Nardelli said his job is to execute Chrysler’s recovery plan. Selling the automaker would be up to Chrysler’s majority owner, Cerberus Capital Management LP. Cerberus owns 80.1 percent of Chrysler and recently offered to buy the remaining 19.9 percent from Daimler AG, spurring speculation Cerberus is trying to sell the company. Nardelli said he has met Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn several times. “Carlos could be a strategic buyer if anything you read in the paper is true about Renault wanting to get access to the U.S. market,” Nardelli said. “China could be a very strategic buyer for a totally different reason. “It depends on who has a hoard of cash in this economy because they’re not going to get a lot of debt out there,” he said. Cerberus spokesman Tim Price recently told the Financial Times that Chrysler was not for sale. In Tokyo, Nissan spokesman Simon Sproule said Renault-Nissan continues to talk about specific joint projects with Chrysler. But, Sproule added, “anything beyond that is speculation. I’d just characterize it as background noise.” PHILIP MEECH Big demand for small cars may bring the little Ford Ka to the United States. Small cars from Europe? Don’t belittle the idea S everal automakers say they might export small European cars to the United States — cars so diminutive, the companies admit they wouldn’t have dreamed of selling them here just a few months ago. Audi may bring over its little A1, and Toyota is thinking of importing the tiny, Europe-only iQ. Ford had ruled out selling the sub-B Ka in the United States, but that decision is being revisited. “We’re assessing that right now,” Ford CEO Alan Mulally told Detroit radio station WJR-AM last week. Mulally said lots of folks tell him he should bring the Ka to the United States. He already plans to bring other fuel-efficient European small cars to the United States — starting in 2011 with the Fiesta subcompact, which will be built in Mexico. But the new-generation Ka, which debuted this month at the Paris auto show, was considered too small. At 144 inches in length, the 2009 Ka is about 11 inches shorter than the Fiesta and about 30 inches shorter than the Focus. Mulally said high fuel prices and soaring demand for small cars is cause for contemplating the Ka. Still, Ford spokesman Said Deep later suggested that Ford’s position has not really shifted much. “Is there a segment below the Fiesta?” asked Deep. “Right now we’re not convinced there is, but we wouldn’t rule out anything.” he Chrysler Sebring, smacked upside the head last year by America’s best-known car critic, has received a new title from England’s top auto reviewer: “Almost certainly the worst car in the entire world.” Last year, Pulitzer Prize winner Dan Neil of the Los Angeles Times said of the Sebring convertible: “Not just bad, but a veritable chalice of wretchedness; a rattling, thumping, lolling tragedy of a car.” This month, the Sebring was pilloried by England’s best-known car reviewer, Jeremy Clarkson, in The Sunday Times of London. He wrote: “Anyone thinking of drawing up a list of the ugliest cars ever made will be forced to put this one at the top.” And the handling? “The only option you need on a twisty road are sick bags.” He didn’t think much of the powertrain, either: “Power? There isn’t any. I have no idea which engine was fitted to my rental, but I can tell you that all it did was convert fuel into noise.” Nissan buzzes about safety system can watch swarm of bees You day and nota see anythinks all headon collisions. And I-65’s ramps to the future: E85, B20 I t doesn’t trip off the tongue like some of the famous roadways that have become part of American lore: Route 66, the Beartooth Highway, Alligator Alley. But the Biofuels Corridor — the stretch of Interstate 65 from Gary, Ind., to Mobile, Ala. — is emerging as a part of America’s new energy culture. The reason: You can get E85 ethanol and B20 biodiesel from beginning to end. For example, a driver now is no more than a quarter of a tank’s drive from a station carrying E85. It didn’t happen by chance. In 2005, the federal government kicked in $1.3 million to help gasoline and diesel retailers upgrade to handle the alternative fuels. With the completion of this project this month, 31 refueling stations are easily accessible from I-65. To mark the occasion, project officials and partners from the private sector and the states of Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama launched a Fall Corridor Drive last week, Oct. 7-9. One group started in Mobile and drove north, while another headed south from Gary. They met Thursday in Clarksville, Ind. E85 has up to 85 percent ethanol and no more than 15 percent gasoline. B20 is made up of 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent petroleumbased diesel. Nissan the little critters have something to teach us. Engineers are focusing on the bees’ bubblelike compound eyes, capable of seeing in a 300-degree radius. The bees’ supersensitive vision enables them to buzz along at high speeds without slamming into stuff, or colleagues. Nissan’s man-made version uses a laser range finder that detects objects up to 6½ feet away, within a 180-degree radius. It then calculates the distances to nearby obstacles and instantaneously plots a safe course around them. The company is testing the system in a tiny robot called BR23C. Eventually, it sees a role for the technology in a crash-avoidance system for cars. Says Toshiyuki Andou of Nissan’s Mobility Laboratory: “The whole process must mirror what a bee does to avoid other bees.” http://www.autonews.com/section/WEBINAR http://www.autonews.com http://www.autonews.com/edwardlapham
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