Chrome Sweet Chrome

Kent M. Keith, 61, is CEO of Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, a Westfield, IN non-profit that advises groups and individuals on practical and ethical ways to help others.  Kent, according to Jeffrey Zaslow in this past Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, has been a do-gooder since his days as a Boy Scout in the 1950’s.  So intent on saving the world with his altruism, garnering merit badges and organizational praise, young Kent’s father pulled him aside on day and said, “Kent, don’t help the old lady across the street unless she wants to go.”

The point of Jeffrey’s discussion with Mr. Keith were summed up in four points with the headline, “Before You Decide to Save the World”:
 Throw away your assumptions about what you think people need.
 Ask recipients what they think might work.
 Focus on ideas that may be more effective than the obvious project
 Be willing to be anonymous.

Young Kent’s father’s advice and the life lessons he took away might serve as guide posts for leadership for the Detroit Three, recently chastened Toyota, and any number of enterprises, automotive and non-automotive alike.

I might sound a bit altruistic myself, but see how effective these rules are when we see GM offering to bring back 661 formerly cancelled dealerships back into the fold.  No doubt, GM and its government handlers were only trying to help, but found themselves making the damnest decision to actually hurt themselves in the market place, pursuing an assumed benefit in reducing their dealer body.  The action was so out of bounds, that even Congress could see it didn’t add up.

A further guideline to keep in mind would be, “Only the humble have true self-confidence.”

It’s not that I’m obsessed.  It just seems that every time I turn around, there’s Alan Mulally.  I ran into the Ford CEO at the Automotive News World Congress.  He is a featured often on the cover of Automotive News itself, the last being February 8.  The earlier this past week, I was getting ready for my day when Stuart Varney on Fox Business Channel mentions on his “Varney & Company” how he received an e-mail on his blackberry from Alan Mulally.  It seems Alan heard Stuart mentioning his Ford Escape Hybrid and was wondering how the ownership experience was working.  Mr. Varney was obviously impressed, as was his “company”, a brace of Fox News business analysts.  They intoned on how well Ford was doing under Mr. Mulally’s tutelage, and were impressed that he was able to give Mr. Varney (and, by extension, them) a shout out.  I seem to remember something about “America’s leading CEO” being mentioned, too.

The capper, though, was this Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, which featured Mr. Mulally as the subject of the newspaper’s “Weekend Interview”, conducted by Paul Ingrassia.  Yep, it seems everywhere I turn Alan Mulally pops up.  It makes one wonder, other than having a crackerjack public affairs office, what’s happening here.

Most often, business and political leaders crave approval and adulation.  We used to see this in the industry with Lee Iacocca, whose persona was projected via public affairs people and book publishing to be some sort of industry seer, able to move mountains and preserve not only thousands of jobs, but an entire industry.  In the last presidential election, we saw how a cult of personality was created around the rather thin qualifications of the junior Senator from Illinois.  Ultimately, such facades tend to fade quickly, as it did for Mr. Iacocca as Chrysler’s recovery faltered when the company returned to its habit of attention deficit disorder, and focused on differentiation in a world where its key competitors were intensely focused on tearing sales and profits away from American auto companies.  And we, thankfully, see the same politically, as the amateurish Obama administration focuses on issues people don’t care about, and the rather un-American, alien personality cult seems to have run its cringe-worthy course.  

It is one thing to try to impose an image from top down, but quite another to respond to one bubbling up from the bottom.  I submit that Mr. Mulally’s popularity, even his ubiquity, in the media and among many Americans stems from two factors.  The first is his enthusiastic, positive personality.  The second is the media’s and the public’s need for heroes.

I love classic movies.  I suppose movies for the most part were always banal and mundane, more often like Lifetime specials than works of moving picture literature, but true classics stand that test of time and strike at our enduring humanity.

On Ash Wednesday last week, Turner Classic Movies had two interesting offerings, “My Favorite Year” with Peter O’Toole and “Bang the Drum Slowly” with Michael Moriarity and (a very young) Robert DeNiro.  I paused to watch the last hour or so of “My Favorite Year” because I once had a favorite year of sorts, being part of Ford’s competitive intelligence team, dispatched around the globe to report on the technologies and innovations of our various competitors.  In the movie, Peter O’Toole plays a broken down old drunken actor trading upon past glories, and a young TV intern has the responsibility of delivering the wastrel to an early television variety show on time and in good order.  The tension makes up the drama of the plot, and who was once Clarence Duffy, the birth name of the O’Toole character, known as “Alan Swann”.  In the end Clarence Duffy overcomes the movie mythic Alan Swann and saves they day, all the while being completely soused.

In the next film, “Bang the Drum Slowly”, the Robert DeNiro character, a catcher for the New York Mammoths, is dying of Hodgkin’s Disease, lymphatic cancer.  The film chronicles the season of the baseball team, as the protagonist slowly succumbs.  It is that rarest of films, a man’s tear jerker.  The title is taken from the ballad “The Streets of Laredo” in which an outlaw sentenced to death is being marched to the gallows.  As he is “just a young cowboy who knows he’s done wrong”, he asks that the drummer bang his drum slowly, an Everyman on his way to his reward.

In both films, we deal with everymen who are dealing with moving from sin to redemption, the theme of Lent.  Contrast this to the announcement from Robert Benmosche regarding pay plans at our own favorite insurance company, AIG.  The company has now implemented a “pay for performance” plan as outlined in the February 11th Wall Street Journal.  Following the lead of Jack Welch’s General Electric and as disastrously copied by Ford’s Jac Nasser, The taxpayers’ own insurance firm is following a plan of forced ranking of individuals under strict guidelines so that 10% are “outstanding” number 1’s, 20% will be number 2’s, 50% number 3’s, and (one supposes) 20% will be number 4’s.  Robert Benmosche is quoted that the pay plan rewards, “the best people for their performance.”  In other words, we see the transition from redemption into sin.

Famously, Detroit automakers have historically only been able to focus on one aspect of their business at a time, and often that one thing has been the wrong thing.  Sometimes the one “key thing” is volume, sometimes it’s cost, going further back in time, sometimes it’s diversification and sometimes it’s quality.  And sometimes there is an emphasis on maximizing the key thing, sometimes to minimize it.

When volume was king, fleet sales were seen as a magic carpet ride to success.  Most of the D3 had ownership stakes in the car rental industry as a means of controlling the placement of hundreds of thousands of cars a year.  Ford owned Hertz, while Chrysler controlled Thrifty.  To be honest, I don’t remember if GM owned a rental firm, but they certainly sold a great deal of cars to rental fleets.

Of course, it didn’t take long for those rental units to find themselves into the resale market, and the Detroit 3 found themselves to have become, essentially, manufacturers of new trucks and used cars.  

Newton’s Laws of Motion (momentum, inertia and action/reaction) are not only laws of physics, they are laws of economics and social interaction as well.  In this case, the action of over reliance on rental fleet sales led to the over reaction of running away from fleet sales as undesirable.  Once again, Detroit pursued the right thing, but got it ever so slightly wrong.

A fleet sale is a sale.  Car companies are in the business of selling cars and trucks.  The car companies’ success lies in making those sales profitably.  There is nothing inherently wrong with selling to fleets, in many ways it is highly desirable business, as long as it is profitable.  In the case of the recent past, it isn’t that there were rental fleet sales, nearly as much as fleet sales served as a kind of spleen for over-production beyond the market demand for certain carlines.

Which brings us up to the January sales figures.

January 2010 sales of almost 700,000 were slightly higher (6%) from last January.  Ominously, they were still down 36% from January of 2007, the industry’s last “good” year.  I am not entirely sure how SAARs are calculated, but 700,000 times twelve yields 8.4 million.  According to Justin Mirro’s (of Moelis & Co.) “The Motor Weekly”, last January had a 9.8 million SAAR, suggesting a 10.4 million January 2010 SAAR given a 6% increase.

First it was floor mats on certain Toyota models.  Then it was condensation on the throttle pivot causing the accelerator to stick.  And now there’s speculation that the software’s to blame with some experts suggesting electromagnetic interference.  Given the software issues that recently came to light in the 2010 Prius brake system, as well as false negatives in some Ford hybrids’ brake warning system, the electronic mayhem theory is gaining steam, too.  All this is reminiscent of a household do-it-yourselfer trying to self-diagnose a tricky plumbing, heating or electrical problem and taking as many trips to the hardware store as it takes to finally solve the problem.

Some might think that my metaphor trivializes the risks involved, given that accidents and deaths have occurred.  But on the other hand, there’s no telling how many injuries or deaths occur each year due to botched home repairs.  Regardless, Toyota’s problems and attempts at resolution look to all the world like a homeowner pondering a water-filled basement, a flickering ceiling light, or a roof leak and the first couple of stabs just didn’t solve the problem.

Given the issue of sudden unintended acceleration, there are a few reactions that I have that might help everyone think about the problem.

This week, as part of GM’s ongoing youth movement, the Board’s executive search committee bypassed Bob Lutz and named 68-year old Ed Whitacre, jr. permanent Chief Executive Officer, removing his interim status.  Mr. Whitacre has a long telecommunications background, having once engineered the purchase of AT&T by former “Baby Bell”, Southern Bell Corporation (SBC).  His automotive background stretches back to the days when he first got his driver’s license and drove a service truck for AT&T.

He joins the ranks of non-automotive CEO’s to shepherd the nation’s former bellwether industry.  So far, Bob Nardelli was not able to move the needle at Chrysler, but Alan Mulally thus far has led a resurgence at Ford.  Mr. Whitacre’s prospects cannot be judged, therefore, on the track record of those two predecessors.  

Given the spotty record of his government directed czars, Ron Bloom and Steven Rattner, the industry is permitted an opportunity to draw and hold a deep breath.   One thing Mr. Whitacre might want to put into his Blackberry’s To Do List is to begin writing 535 thank you notes to the entire U.S. Congress, who has trumped the czars and has provided a path of return for dealers whose franchises may have been unfairly cancelled in the recent bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler.

Sergio Marchionne, who is after all, a lawyer, is on record as not appreciating the arbitration legislation passed by Congress to restore franchise rights to some to be determined number of cancelled Chrysler dealers.  Mr. Marchionne was under the impression that bankruptcy courts were the final arbiters of such matters.  While one can understand his frustration on one hand, but the process undertaken by both GM and Chrysler was not only arbitrary but not in best interests of the companies nor the owners of the newly reconstituted firms.

The Chrysler process is reported as being somewhat quick and dirty, while GM’s has seemed more deliberate.  This is true to a great extent, until the Automotive News had a lead piece last week on how Cadillac franchises have been cancelled.

Oh, John, let’s not park here.

Oh, John, let’s not park.

Oh, John, let’s not.

Oh, John, let’s!

Oh, John!

Oh!

This now ancient graffito pretty much sums up the twists and turns of trying to follow the debate sponsored by The Detroit News and WJR held last January 12 at the Detroit Athletic Club entitled, “Climategate: Are Green Auto Rules Based on Flawed Science?”  What sounds like a pretty straightforward proposition was subjected to a great deal of layering, twisting, turning, implication and nuance.  The discussion of the topic headed for the weeds on the first intonation, and deteriorated from there.  Let’s peel this onion.

To the organizers’ credit, the panel was made up of a balance of climate alarmists, realists, policy makers, industry representatives, politicians, and lobbyists, ably moderated by WJR’s Frank Beckmann.  The folks on the dais were:
 George Mason University Climatologist Pat Michaels
 State of Michigan Chief Energy Officer Skip Pruss
 Director of Research from Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers Kathryn Clay
 Director for Energy and Global Warming at Competitive Enterprise Institute Myron Ebell
 Congressman Fred Upton
 University of Michigan Climatologist Henry Pollack.

Professor Pollack’s opening assertion was that the science was not flawed, despite the hiccup from East Anglia, and that there was no need to debate.  Rather than everyone get up and leave, the discussion went on.  But as the various points of view emerged, it became obvious that the debate’s title was inapt. “Science” has little to do with the multidisciplinary policy debate that swirls around vehicle CO2 “emissions”, CO2 generation for power and industry, energy independence, CO2 and toxic emissions from China and India, alternative energy development and subsidies, and exploiting ample fossil fuels within US territory, Canada and immediately offshore, among other considerations.

Part of the opening remarks included a plea that that the “science” not be sullied by “political” concerns.  While there was a great deal of sympathy to that point of view, what the issue for the auto industry is how the scientific findings are being assumed, post hoc propter hoc, to mean that draconian mileage standards be enforced upon the automobile industry.  Indeed “policy” considerations (another word for “political” to be fair) are what the fallout from the scientific finding are all about.  It’s one thing to find a phenomenon, in this case “global warming”.  And it’s another to assign an agent, “human causation”. And quite another to burden one particular industry, in this case, the Automotive Industry.

After a notable victory, Roman generals were granted by the Senate a “triumph”.  No, not an old English sports car or motorcycle, but an opportunity to parade through the streets of Rome to the adulation of cheering throngs.  During these “Roman Idol” festivities, a slave was perched near the shoulder of the hero of the moment, and the slave’s job was to whisper into the ear of the honoree, “thus passes the glory of the world”.  Sic transit gloria mundi.

We plebian journalists were all atwitter last week at the Detroit Auto Show about the prospects of the long economic winter of 2009 thawing and “green shoots” were all around.  Particular adulation surrounded Alan Mulally like a halo throughout the ceremonies.  Not that the hosannas weren’t earned for the Ford CEO and his company, as the firm had one strongly profitable quarter in a very bad year and finished the year with a flourish with a 30% sales increase in December.  It’s just that we mustn’t get ahead of ourselves.

2010 has all the makings of a better year than 2009, one of the worst in several decades.  Looking at projections, most analysts predict an 11 to 12 million-unit sales year.  By any stretch, a twelve million sales year is a very bad year indeed, relieved by being better than the 10 million or so for 2009.  The good news though for automakers and suppliers will be in potential profitability.  Aggressive cost cutting has yielded a supplier industry breakeven point at 9.5 to 10 million units, as reported by Neal De Koker of the Original Equipment Suppliers Association (OESA) at the Society of Automotive Analysts’s meeting.  OEMs themselves have trimmed staffs and assets so that the Detroit Three might squeak out profits at such low volumes, evidenced by Ford’s 3rd Quarter performance and GM’s projection for 2010.

The flip side to this, though, is that Neal’s statement that this 9.5 million unit breakeven at 50 to 60% of capacity might be optimistic.  Capital equipment in a capital-intensive industry is rarely that flexible or efficient to be profitable at that sort of percentage utilization.  More capacity will need to be sacrificed, and if true on the supplier side, it may be true on the OEM side as well.  While the worst may be behind us, considerable work is yet to be done.

In years past, I accepted a position with Ryder/PIE, a freight line that is no longer there.  I was hired in the early eighties to be their National Account Manager for Automotive.  I had acquired a knowledge of the then new art of Just-in-Time inventory management, largely through attending the U.S.-Japan Auto Industry conferences that had been sponsored by two University of Michigan operations, Dave Cole’s Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation (OSAT) and Robert Cole’s Asian Studies Program.  Hiring me was clearly a case of “in terra caecorum monoculus rex” or “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”.

Ryder/PIE was the result of a merger promulgated by the firms’ owner, International Utilities or IU.  This conglomerate owned a number of trucking companies in those days when deregulation was just gathering momentum.  In the firm’s transportation portfolio, Pacific Intermountain Express (PIE) and Ryder Truck Lines were both their largest holdings and good sized LTL (less-then-truckload) carriers.  They figured that putting these two together would result in either the nation’s third or fourth largest LTL carrier.  Roadway, Yellow, and Consolidated Freight were the other major carriers at the time.

Well, things did not go well in the merger.  Management and ownership both were to blame, and the newly merged Ryder/PIE firm did not have a handle on its cost structure, and management rather blithely ignored it.  IU ended up selling the firm to a group of asset-strippers, who had a number of issues, including buying condos and Jaguars for the CEO’s girlfriend on the company dime.  While not a good turn of events, earlier we had all been encouraged to create and join an ESOP, or employee stock ownership plan.  As part owners, a group of retirees had legal standing and filed suit against the asset-strippers and won.  In the end, the employees were granted a five-year note, and strove mightily in that five years to both manage the business and then try to find a potential owner or backer to pick up the note and carry on the business.

In the end, the firm straightened itself out, sorted the loose ends, but due to excess industry capacity could not find a buyer or guarantor and folded.  The parallels to GM today are obvious.

Earlier this week, Ed Whitacre predicted that GM would turn a profit in the upcoming year.  Not only that, but GM would begin paying back its debt to the nation soon as well.  All this is good news, and many analysts feel that given a half-decent SAAR (seasonally adjusted annual sales rate or overall sales for the year) GM may actually report a profit.  These possibilities are all good news, to be sure, but what happens when the Obama Administration tries to shed its ownership of GM?

At the turn of the New Year it is traditional to rack up the gains and losses.  In my case, I’ve spent most of the year doing the easy thing, that is, pointing out the erroneous and pretentious in both the industry and the policymakers who believe they can fly into town as “seagull managers”, make a big squawk and think they’ve solved something.  Most of this piece, though, will be devoted to those who have managed make lemonade out of the railcar load of lemons we’ve had for 2009.  Winners for the year include Subaru, Hyundai (along with its stable mate Kia), Ford and VW.

Subaru, in this annus horribilis, managed overall double digit sales growth, increasing volume by 14% through the end of November, as well as increasing its market share from 1.4 to 2.1%.  That’s a 50% increase in market presence and a considerable accomplishment that will pay dividends as the market recovers.  Hyundai-Kia similarly increased total volume, in their case by 7% to an eleven-month total of 680,282 units and a useful share bump from 5.2 to 7.2%.  Ford can’t claim to have increased volume last year, decreasing from about 1.8 million in sales through November to nearly 1.5 million.  But it has built up considerable marketplace momentum, increasing market share by 0.8%, from 15.1 to 15.9%, getting within a percentage point of Toyota, who has been flat through the year.  VW, too, has seen a dip in overall volume by about 20,000 units, but has seen an over 25% increase in share from 2.3 to 2.9%.  

In today’s world, gaining share is quite an accomplishment.  It suggests a well-rounded vehicle line up with attractive innovation, as well as managing to keep away market fears of bankruptcies and dealer closings, each of which cause buyer anxiety.  But to actually gain volume where the market has seen a 24% drop from already low 2008 levels nearly shows clairvoyance.

The automotive front-page story in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal was the threat of a fascist dictator to take over the country’s automakers.  No, it wasn’t Barack Obama (more about that later), but rather his friend, Hugo Chavez and fellow book-of-the-month member.  According to the Journal, the Venezuelan dictator ordered his trade minister, Eduardo Saman, to “inspect” the Toyota operation.  The report reads, “If the inspection shows Toyota isn’t producing what he thinks it should and isn’t transferring technology, the government may consider taking over its plant and have a Chinese company operate it.  Chavez is quoted as saying in an address Wednesday, “We’ll take it, we’ll expropriate it, we’ll pay them what it is worth and immediately call in the Chinese.”

In the article, Chavez not only threatens Toyota, but U.S. automakers GM and Chrysler.  What are the sins of the automakers in Venezuela, a country where fuel prices are so subsidized that gasoline sells for about seven cents a gallon?  Chavez wants more “people’s cars” (Hitler called them volks wagen) so that more people can consume more fuel.  Chavez’s popularity, even among the poor in Venezuela is falling, and like any good fascist, he is appealing to direct action.

Wait a minute, you thought Senor Chavez was a “populist” and a “socialist”, surely he can’t be a right wing fascist as well?  Well, you forget your history.  Fascism is a left wing phenomenon.  All fascists are socialists first, but unlike socialism of the more cerebral kind, fascism is socialism stripped of its tweedy pretensions and upper East Side sophistication.  The key characteristic of fascism is the desire for Action!

I’ve been reading Jonah Goldberg’s book “Liberal Fascism”, and he uses scholarly erudition to trace through the rise of what we call fascism in Europe and progressivism in the United States.  Both are rooted in Hegel, Nietzsche, and John Dewey’s Pragmatism.  In their early days in the opening decades of the twentieth century the two were inseparable.  Going through Mr. Goldberg’s description of Woodrow Wilson’s War Socialism, it is hard to distinguish one from the other, and the author is serious when he describes World War I America as the first fascist state in the world.  Tellingly, Woodrow Wilson imprisoned many more Americans than Mussolini ever imprisoned Italians.

The "Cookie Cutter". We may never see its like again.

“Our efforts are based on our passion for saving an iconic brand that we would be honored to shepherd, and the jobs and livelihoods of thousands of loyal Saab employees, suppliers and dealers around the world."
- Victor Muller, Dutch sports car maker Spyker CEO, quoted in the Automotive News.

Saturday’s Wall Street Journal had an above the fold headline, “GM to Shut Saab Unit, Quirky Icon of the Road”.    Halfway through the front page copy, Vanessa Fuhrmans writes, “In the end, Saab proved to have too small a following to attract large scale auto makers looking for scale in a global recession.”  I submit that Saab has plenty of followers, but that they’ve been chased away by over a decade of mismanagement.

We who follow the industry know what a Saab is.  It is front drive, it has quirks, it is aerodynamic (no matter the styling), and it has surprise punches of technology and safety features.  All this fits the brand’s Scandinavian heritage and its role in the Swedish universe.  Some of you may recall my remarks in “Land of Fire and Ice”, where Saab was the summer side of Sweden’s character.  In summer, the Swedes take July off, they eat tons of succulent crayfish, inhale fingerling potatoes, and drink copious quantities of schnapps.  Saab appeals to Swedes’ summer side.  Volvo, on the other hand, is a different animal all together.  Dour, cold and forbidding, like a Swedish winter.  Practical, taciturn, and reliably sober.  I concluded that both were necessary, in that they were the yin to each other’s yang.

The “image” Saab was the mid-seventies Turbo model.  The first mass-produced turbocharged car, replete with mad wheels and an edgy, fun loving disposition.  The three-door hatchback had narrow appeal, to be sure, but had bags of character in a world of automotive boredom.  But it was towards this boredom that GM assiduously drove Saab to be.  No doubt, today’s Saab’s are as competent as anyone else’s car.  But that’s the problem, isn’t it?

Many in Detroit, all right the five or six who’ve e-mailed me, are rejoicing over Toyota’s recent troubles.  The company has had two huge quality problems recently, one with sudden acceleration with cars equipped with electronic throttle control (and floor mats) and another with sudden stalling with Corollas.  Further, despite having an extensive full line up of cars and trucks, they have not improved their U.S. market share.  And their drive to take over the Number One spot in the worldwide industry has been forestalled by, of all people, VW.

The sudden acceleration problem, as the people at Audi know, can seriously depress sales and faith in your product.  Toyota’s supposition of the problem, throttles hanging up in floor mats, at least avoids the Audi solution of blaming customers for the issue.  In the Audi case, the German firm’s placement of the throttle and brake pedals at a distance more comfortable for European drivers may have led to American newbie Audi drivers mistaking one for the other in panic situations.  As Americans have been driving millions of Toyotas for decades, an ergonomic anomaly seems far-fetched.  

While the Japanese firm suspects floor mats, a Los Angeles Times story blames “drive-by-wire” electronic throttle control systems.   If true, this would mean a more fundamental and expensive problem for Toyota.  First off, it would mean a failure in quality.  Not “quality” simply in terms of repairs per thousand, but a breakdown in the engineering of Toyotas.  That is, inadequate development and testing, and (for those in the know) poor failure mode element analysis (FMEA).

Properly speaking, if an electronic throttle fails, what should it do?  The last thing you would want would be for it to stick open.  I suppose the second worst would be for it to close down entirely, even if that would be preferable than headlong uncontrolled acceleration.  Given that Corollas suffer sudden shut off, one wonders (and this is speculative) if they also have drive-by-wire systems, but the “Mark II” version with improved FMEA.

Tell me I’m crazy, but was last week’s firing of Fritz Henderson really necessary?  Here was Fritz, a standout pitcher from his college years at Michigan, who seemed bright, aggressive and the sort of cheerleader GM needed.  The sort of guy who could bring the heat, yet step up to the plate and deliver when he had to, and with enough crises to qualify for Hamlet’s “sea of troubles”, he might or might not take up arms but at least take up a bat and give the troubles a good swat.

So, instead we have the wreckage in the wake of an executive firing.  The clue, of course, that this was an ad hoc action is the fact that there was not a successor named immediately.  In fact, the search for a replacement is expected to take months, prompting board chairman Ed Whitacre to take over the reins as acting CEO.  I hope, though, this doesn’t mean we’ll get any more vanity ads starring the Mr. Whitacre.  I’m sure we’re all glad he’s proud of what GM has to offer, but his stage presence and communication of energy leaves something to be desired.

Many analysts felt that Mr. Henderson had struck out, having failed to close the deal on Saturn, Saab, and now Opel.  You know, the proverbial “three strikes” theory.  Of course, it’s hardly Fritz’s fault that Roger Penske could not line up a supply of vehicles for Saturn from another OEM, and that buyers are not clamoring for idiosyncratic, mismanaged Swedish brands in the midst of a global recession.  Also, the theory breaks down in that it appears that the GM Board itself wanted to preserve Opel for GM at this time.

Why the Board would feel this way is a mystery.  True, some of GM’s small car expertise comes from Opel and Europe.  On the other hand, GM-Daewoo is a viable source of B and C class cars, and the proposed Magna tie-in would not have stopped the flow of Opel engineering as required.  The truly odd bit of GM retaining Opel was the 3 to 4 billion GM was to contribute to Opel’s revival, meaning that the US taxpayer is now supporting German union workers.  And it doesn’t help that Angela Merkel is playing hardball in that the German government has said that their multi-billion package for Opel is at risk now that Mr. Henderson has been dismissed.

From: Phil Jones
    To: ray bradley ,mann@[snipped], mhughes@
    [snipped]
    Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
    Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
    Cc: k.briffa@[snipped],t.osborn@[snipped]
    Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

    Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

    Thanks for the comments, Ray.

    Cheers, Phil
    Prof. Phil Jones
    Climatic Research Unit

In the 1970’s, when global cooling alarms were all the rage, Gilda Radner created her character, Emily Latilla, for Saturday Night Live.  Ms. Latilla was a take off on that durable literary character, Mrs. Malaprop who was famous for saying things that almost made sense.  Gilda’s Emily managed to hear things a little wrong.  She came on the Weekend News to rail against “Violins on Television”, the “Eagle Rights Amendment”, and why everyone so concerned about “Natural Racehorses”.  Jane Curtin would intone that the concerns were about “violence on television”, the “Equal Rights Amendment” and “natural resources”.  In character, Emily would gather herself together and thoroughly chastened she would intone right back, “Never Mind”.

I’m not sure how to turn “Human Causation of either Global Warming or Climate Change” into a Malaprop, but the discovery of scientific shenanigans at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia certainly ranks as the find of our new century, equivalent to Monica Lewinsky’s Blue Dress or the implications behind the missing 18 minutes of Richard Nixon’s White House tapes.  Many scientists have called into question the so-called “consensus” of anthropogenic (i.e., “human caused”) global warming, but finally we have the smoking gun that shows faked research, altered data, and conspiracy among the “peers” charged with reviewing the integrity of scientific tracts.

While many in the fellow-travelling press have simply ignored these developments, the perpetrators of the hoax, including Prof. Jones, have admitted to the veracity of the e-mails.  This would be an “Emily Latilla Moment”, if we weren’t on the precipice of a disastrous re-ordering of society and re-programming of individuals, all to “save the planet”.