EXAMPLE: You thought the great American Chrysler brand would be going bankrupt? Fucking forget about it! They have a deal in place that may avert bankruptcy.

So there!

EXAMPLE: GM has a turnaround plan. Once upon a time they had hundreds of thousands of workers, now they're going to cut their workforce down to 10% of its all time high. Slim and trim baby! Fighting shape! Let's sell some automobiles, shall we?

EXAMPLE: Don't believe the USA muscle car is soon to controlling the fucking road once again? How do you explain this headline, hot shot? "Honda Swings to Quarterly Loss."

Loss. Loss of power. Loss of prestige. Loss of the lead which has been retaken, by America.

Win: What American cars are doing. Case fucking closed. Let's ride.

Sure, we've all been concerned about what this recession will mean for Ferrari, Maserati, and other patriotic European "ultra expensive" (direct quote!) car manufacturers. Well, have no fear: Porsche's net profit in the first half rose strongly, and auto execs are expressing the confidence that will get us all through this mess:

[Ferrari's North American chief Maurizio] Parlato says he's not too worried about the attacks on Wall Street bonuses and the troubles in the financial industry. "Our customer base is not mainly those people," he says. "Those people are quick buyers" who favor other brands that don't require a waiting list.
"Our people," Mr. Parlato says, "have serious money."

And thank god for that. Among those with less-than-serious money, the American dream has gone from "owning a house in the suburbs" to "subletting a small efficiency in a subdivided foreclosed house in the suburbs." Which is okay, because plummeting oil prices will help them save money on their lengthy commutes to their new jobs at the Orange Julius, where they are working, pluckily, to make up their 14% stock market losses in the first quarter.

America!

"The news has a negative effect on customers as well as employees," according to auto dealers, as well as the drone ABN salesman in this video clip. In other words, things that are happening, in the world, are bad for your business, as a seller of cars. True.


But even in the fucking ABN commercial, they couldn't avoid "DOW DOWN 500+ POINTS" in the background. Probably because of the auto industry.

Update: Jeff Bercovici reports that Couric didn't authorize the use of her ABN clip for use in their news-bashing marketing materials. So, CBS News sent a C&D letter to CBS Outernet which runs ABN and forced them to take down the clip. They complied, but there's still plenty of Couric littered throughout the site. For instance, this:

This is an ad for Zurich Financial Services, an insurance company. And you will wish you had purchased their insurance when you come back to your parked car and find it scratched, or with a window shattered, or tagged up. Oh wait, it's just a sticker, telling you about Zurich Financial Services! Now you can have a nice, relieved laugh before you set out to find the person who put the sticker on your car, and run them over. Keen insight into the consumer psyche: That's the Zurich way. [via Copyranter at Animal]

If you give rides at $100 a pop, only 10,000 rides until you get to Profitville—population you and a sweet Chrysler 300 Series C. [Ebay via Swampland]

Jesus, Chevy Traverse, why? Her nodding bombardment at the end is particularly soul-searing. [I have been looking for this awful commercial all week so thanks to Brandfreak for digging it up. May it now die.]

[via Adfreak]

Detroit is a two-paper town, and I don't care what the reasons are for that, but they're very bad reasons. Nevertheless, the company that owns both papers is going to make them much worse, and not deliver them most days! A winning business plan if I ever heard one:

"The papers will deliver to subscribers only on the most profitable days of the week — Sunday, and either Thursday or Friday or both, said these people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the changes and the decisions were not final. On other days, they will still print slimmer single-copy editions. The changes will be accompanied by staff cuts, these people said."

As you can imagine, being a newspaper in Detroit during the implosion of the American auto industry is possibly one of the shittiest business propositions possible. This is the biggest step towards an online-only future that any major American paper has made since the Christian Science Monitor announced its plans to go totally digital. So perhaps, who knows, it might work? More likely it's a step towards bankruptcy, followed by the inexorable collapse of Detroit into an I Am Legend-style monster-infested ghost town.

But it might work. [NYT, WSJ; pic: Freep]

1. "As of now, the three executives — Rick Wagoner of General Motors, Alan R. Mulally of Ford Motor and Robert L. Nardelli of Chrysler — are not planning to join the carpool."

2. "Initially, organizers intended to assemble a convoy of numerous fuel-efficient, American-made vehicles to demonstrate the innovation coming from Detroit, but it might end up being more about the people involved than the products. 'From an efficiency standpoint, getting a bus or two would probably be the best way to go.'"

3. "The group is planning a quick trip, perhaps leaving Dec. 7 and heading back late the next day, with no stops for rallies or demonstrations."

Two buses, full of auto dealers, on an 18-hour round trip from Detroit to Washington, with no public rallies. But they did get the New York Times to cover it, so hey. [NYT]

• They're buying cheaper "wipe-up towels" to "lower GM's 'cost per wipe.'"
• They've stopped replacing batteries in their wall clocks, and updating them for daylight savings time
• They didn't even hold press conferences at the latest auto show.
• Cheaper pencils!
• No more voice mail: "Recordings that used to say, 'please leave a message,' now say 'please call back.'"

This company full of not-on-time workers who are too busy dealing with ripped, low-quality paper towels and broken pencils to call back reporters who missed the press conference only to find that they can't leave a message for anyone is on the road to recovery! [WSJ, Ad Age; pic via]

Newspapers nationwide lost more than $130 million last year in auto ad sales. Car ads have gone from 10% of national newspaper ads, to less that 3% in just three years. That's terrible by any standards. Magazines are experiencing a similar decline. So how to put this disaster in a good light?

Amid this gloom is actually good news for traditional media because the effects of the auto downturn suggest that the impact of the Internet on the business models of newspapers, magazines and broadcast television is being exacerbated by more cyclical forces. And cycles turn.

“If the economy were better, newspapers would be better, and we’d be having a slightly different conversation,” said Mr. Goldstrom, of the newspaper association.

If the economy were better, we'd be having a different conversation! And if newspapers were printed on $100 bills they would be more popular. Print media has come to realize that the internet represents a fundamental shift in their business model, not some temporary cycle. But they're clinging to the hope that the auto industry, of all things, is in a mere momentary slump.

The auto industry is not in a momentary slump! Gas prices, global warming, etc. (Insert standard explanation here). GM was once one of the mightiest companies on earth. Now it can't pay its dental insurance. Besides this vague, unfounded optimism that things will turn around, there's not a shred of evidence in the story (even from marketing execs) that anyone is actually counting on car ads coming back to their earlier levels. Maybe when they invent viable electric cars, in 20 years or so. Until then: you newspapers better find someone else to sell to.

[NYT]

[Bloggers] and other Internet critics have already started to expose what they see as greenwash advertising. A French group called l’Alliance Pour la Planète, for example, cites an ad for a Japanese sport utility vehicle that was billed as having been “conceived and developed in the homeland of the Kyoto accords,” the international emissions-reduction agreement.

The Times' advice: "avoid vague and unsubstantiated claims — the kind that bloggers and other critics are quick to pounce on." That's the New York Times, conceived and developed in the homeland of the Son of Sam killer.

[NYT]

Renault complained to the police because the magazine, Auto Plus, "published pictures and details of a new model not due to be launched for another three years." I call that a hell of a scoop. Three years in advance! Such things are criminal matters in France. By contrast, in the greatest country on earth (USA), leaks like this are routine, and it's the company's god damn problem to track down leakers. (Unless you're talking about Apple and the Think Secret blog). Renault says they were just getting a little assistance:

"It kills creativity, you may as well just give our models to the newspapers and our competitors. What's the point of doing any research?" a spokesman said.

"The idea is not to attack Auto Plus but to cut off the sources that feed it, to find the source inhouse."

Interesting interpretation. In that case, police should be raiding Renault and arresting its executives every time an consumer is tricked into buying one of their crappy cars. The idea is not to attack Renault, you see, but to cut off the money that feeds it.

USA, USA, USA.

[Reuters, Folio]

Mosley himself pointed out, in response to their joint condemnation of him:

Given the history of BMW and Mercedes-Benz, particularly before and during the Second World War, I fully understand why they would wish to strongly distance themselves from what they rightly describe as the disgraceful content of these publications.

Zing? Honda and Toyota also issued somewhat more mealy-mouthed statements on the affair, generically calling for "high standards of behavior" among senior officials.

But why? BMW/ Mercedes said in their statement that because of Mosley's position, the scandal's "consequences therefore extend far beyond the motorsport industry." Really? Because unless I missed something, it consisted of a leaked tape of a man pursuing his own, admittedly kinky and extreme, sex life. You could be forgiven for thinking that it's more disgraceful for executives at some of the world's largest auto companies to spend hours viewing Mosly's private sex tape in order to determine their own high-handed response.

These companies have never been shy about using sex to sell their products. Indeed, sex is a basic staple of auto marketing, from its TV commercials to the models at its trade shows. And does anyone believe that Mosley is actually a Nazi because he has a fetish? By that logic, lots of otherwise straitlaced executives at corporations around the world would in fact be dungeon masters or slaves or tigers or Catholic schoolgirls.

Mosley is thus far standing firm in his decision not to resign.