The Chinese influence on luxury car design
The news that sales of Rolls-Royce cars in China have overtaken those in the US, and that China now accounts for 31 per cent of Rolls-Royce’s sales, makes me wonder if we have reached a turning point for luxury design.
That sprung to mind when I saw a BMW M5 driving along a parkway in the US the other day. Although this is subjective, my first reaction to looking at its rear view and tail lights was that it would have looked more at home on the Bund in Shanghai.
The pun proved irresistible. “Mystery Ends, Mistry Begins”, ran the headline in India’s Economic Times on the appointment last week of Cyrus Mistry to succeed Ratan Tata at the head of the eponymous tea-to-steel holding company. If the succession was a mystery, it looked to have a pretty feeble final twist.
Lutz sheds no tears over Saab story
It’s a cruel coincidence that the latest death knell for Saab comes within days of the latest extension of car guy Bob Lutz’s lease on life.
On Thursday, a Swedish court rejected the carmaker’s attempt to seek protection from its creditors, pushing a decision on potential insolvency into the hands of suppliers and employees awaiting payment for materials and labour. Saab is appealing, but the obituaries for the group – now selling well under 100,000 units annually – are already being written.
Electric cars: waiting for a new model
The demise of Norwegian electric car pioneer Think Global will drain some of the energy from advocates of electric vehicles.
They should recharge by shifting their view from blueprints of cars and studying instead more comprehensive plans that aim to combine vehicle, infrastructure and services.
Why Chevrolet should replace Vauxhall and Opel
General Motors’ plan to give “a higher profile” to its Chevrolet brand makes lots of sense, given that Chevrolet is the equivalent of the Toyota brand – a volume marque around which other brands are arrayed. But why stop there?
It is increasingly odd for GM, which has been attacking its brand proliferation in the US, to have different brands around the world for its volume cars – Vauxhall in the UK, Opel in Germany and Holden in Australia.
The company has already taken the logical step of losing the GM Daewoo name in South Korea and adopting Chevrolet instead. Why not bite the bullet and do that same in other countries?
It is tempting to dismiss the Renault scandal, which has humiliated Carlos Ghosn, the company’s chief executive, after he admitted this week that it had falsely accused three former executives of espionage, as a corporate Dreyfus affair.
Renault forgets the principle of innocence
Renault’s grovelling apology to the three executives it wrongly accused of industrial espionage is an extraordinary episode that indicates a lack of judgment by its senior managers.
Carlos Ghosn, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Patrick Pélata, Chief Operating Officer, present their sincere apologies and regrets, personally and in the name of Renault, to Messrs Balthazard, Rochette and Tenenbaum, who were wrongly accused in this affair.
They are committed that reparations be made to the three executives, and that their honor in the public eye be restored. They further acknowledge the serious personal harm that they and their families have suffered. Carlos Ghosn and Patrick Pélata will personally meet with Messrs Balthazard, Rochette and Tenenbaum as soon as possible.
Mr Ghosn and Mr Pélata, rather than waiting for evidence that the three executives were guilty of what they were being accused of, reached that conclusion after an inquiry that was clearly flawed.
Bonuses: carmakers good, bankers bad
Contrast the reaction to rewards paid to UK bank executives – £28m in share bonuses and long-term incentives to nine Royal Bank of Scotland officers, for instance – with the response to stock awards worth almost $100m for Ford Motor’s Alan Mulally and Bill Ford.
Both pay-outs are being made to executives who took on big turnround jobs – and had no responsibility for what went before. Both contain deferred elements. Both, let’s face it, are huge in absolute terms, however you cut them. But whereas many people seem to believe Mulally, Ford’s CEO, deserves his pay-out, his RBS counterpart Stephen Hester and colleagues have attracted mainly brickbats for their rewards.
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John Gapper is an associate editor and the chief business commentator of the FT.
He has worked for the FT since 1987, covering labour relations, banking and the media. He is co-author, with Nicholas Denton, of All That Glitters, an account of the collapse of Barings in 1995.
Andrew Hill is an associate editor and the management editor of the FT. He is a former City editor, financial editor, comment and analysis editor, New York bureau chief, foreign news editor and correspondent in Brussels and Milan.
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