It’s all going fines at Volkswagen

05.01.2016/09.33

General Motors’ fine in 1995 for 470,000 cars using defeat devices against EPA testing: US$11 million. Volkswagen’s fine in 2016 for 580,000 cars using defeat devices against EPA testing: potentially US$40,000 million (or $40 billion, as the Americans say). The local companies get off far easier in the US. In fact, GM can even get […]

Volkswagen’s scandal won’t spread to other German car groups

24.09.2015/14.50

If you want a humorous take on what happened at Volkswagen this week, the above video sums it all up. During my 2010 mayoral campaign, I noted that if New Zealand did not diversify its economy to have more of a focus on technology, there could be a problem. Relying on primary products (I didn’t […]

Autocade hits 6,000,000 page views: a few quick ﬁgures

09.05.2015/05.44

The Dongfeng Fengshen AX7, or a Renault with a Peugeot engine (and I don’t mean the PRV V6 or the old Douvrin), entered into Autocade this week. With Autocade hitting 6,000,000 page views earlier this week, here’s a quick anorak’s run-down on the rate of growth. In short: it’s about the same in terms of […]

Reacting to AJE’s Broken Dreams: are there parallels between GM and Boeing’s 787?

12.09.2014/03.10

Simpsons fans should be able to connect the above scene with the post below. I’m sure some of you watched the al-Jazeera English documentary this week on the Boeing 787, and how there are safety concerns over the models built in South Carolina. In summary, ‘Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit and reporter Will Jordan investigate Boeing’s […]

Ford spoofs Cadillac with a more realistic commercial

29.03.2014/07.06

First up, the Cadillac ELR TVC, with actor Neal McDonough boasting about the US’s consumer culture and past glories: And now, Ford parodies it with a far more down-to-earth and realistic message about what we should be praising in the occident, starring environmental advocate Pashon Murray, who runs Detroit Dirt, a composting company: […]

Flip-flop again: GM deems Chevrolet Europe strategy a failure

08.12.2013/11.46

GM has changed its mind again: Chevrolet will not be its global brand. The strategy, where Daewoo was rebadged Chevrolet in western Europe at the beginning of the century, has been deemed a failure, and GM will withdraw its core Korean-made models such as the Spark, Aveo, Cruze and Malibu, by 2015. It will […]

How brands fool us

13.04.2013/00.37

The Google experience over the last week—and I can say ‘week’ because there were still a few browsers showing blocks yesterday—reminds me of how brands can be resilient. First, I know it’s hard for most people to believe that Google is so incompetent—or even downright corrupt, when it came to its bypassing Safari users’ […]

Volkswagen is a case for critical thinking, not blind following

16.12.2012/23.48

Here’s an article from Autoblog that combines several of the themes I enjoy writing about: cars, leadership, management and education. I’ve already hinted at this on my Facebook fan page, where I seem to post some of the pithy things these days. I sometimes try to avoid blogging about the same thing—a lot of […]

Endgame: Saab ﬁles for bankruptcy

19.12.2011/11.17

If you’re a car nut, then you won’t be mourning, too much, the passing of former Czech president Vaclev Hável. Or, for that matter, Kim Jong Il. It’s Saab that has ﬁnally died as it ﬁles for bankruptcy after GM, which still licenses key technologies to the Swedish ﬁrm, vetoed its sale to Zhejiang Youngman […]

Dodge revives the Dart, while UK Delta owners revive Lancia

07.12.2011/11.54

Fiat has announced that it’s going to bring back the Dodge Dart nameplate on a compact sedan based on a stretched Alfa Romeo Giulietta platform for the 2013 model year. This was actually mentioned when Chrysler was going cap-in-hand to the US Government, so it’s not a total surprise. The nameplate, however, is. […]