Friday July 3, 2009

Perils Of Old Car Ownership: I took the Plymouth for a ride, then parked in the driveway and cleaned it. When I went to start the car, sparks shot out from under the seat (again ... see April 22nd posting). I removed the seat and found that the battery cable had cracked and was arcing at the break - hence the sparks. I went to disconnect it and the cable split in two. I tried taking everything apart to replace the cable but the arthritis in my hands and hips was killing me that day so I decided to leave it to the pros.

The tow company arrived with a flatbed and hauled the '39 to a local auto repair shop. They replaced the cable and, at my request, put refrigerant in the A/C unit. The car now runs chillingly fine and is back home in its usual spot in my garage.

June Vehicle Sales: It was a pretty good month to be Ford, the only Detroit automaker not owned by the government. Ford, Lincoln and Mercury U.S. sales totaled 148,153, down 11% from a year ago - month's lowest decline among major auto manufacturers. Ford Canada sales jumped 25% in June.

FoMoCo's managing its inventory well, too. At the end of June, Ford vehicle inventories totaled 343,000, equivalent to 60 days supply. This level was 8,000 vehicles lower than at the end of May and 214,000 vehicles lower than a year ago.

It's pretty much a 'Ford' company these days, with 133,684 examples of that nameplate sold in June, compared with about 7,000 units each for Volvo, Mercury and Lincoln. Volvo is on the auction block; Geeley of China is reportedly interested. Mercury is dying and Lincoln isn't feeling so hot either; it's not a good time to be a Lincoln-Mercury dealer. The L-M store where we took delivery of our last new Lincoln is now a Kia showroom. Of course, 7,000 per month looks good compared to, say, Scion. Less than 4,300 examples of that brand were sold in June. Or Saab: 779 units, down 58%.

Meanwhile, General Motors sales were down 34% percent in June. Chrysler's overall sales dropped 42 percent compared to June 2008. The Chrysler brand itself is down almost 50%.

Overall vehicle sales for June ran just under 10 million on a seasonally-adjusted, annualized basis.

Toyota posted a 32% decline in U.S. sales in June. The Toyota Division moved 114,780 units, down 34%. The Lexus Division sold 16,874 units, a decrease of 17%. 806 Lexus LS models were sold - a 47% drop from a year ago but a big jump up from the 315 sold in May. Avalon sales totaled 2,133, down 33% from last year and over 1,000 fewer vehicles than last month. Prius sales were up 6%.

Honda was off 30%, Nissan declined 23%, while Subaru was up just over 3%. U.S. sales of Porsches dropped a whopping 66%. Smart car sales were down over 56%. Everyone who wanted to buy one of these micro cars has already done so.

Suzuki sales fell a ginormous 78% - much worse than Hummer, which was "only" off 48%, although Suzuki sold twice as many vehicles as the Big H.

GM touted that sales of the forever-promised, finally-produced Camaro topped those of Mustang (9,320 vs. 7,632). Yeah, well ... let's wait and see what happens when all the pre-orders filled. But Camaro sales probably won't drop as far as the Challenger's - only 1,369 Dodge ponycars were moved last month.

He Won An Academy Award ... by a nose. Karl Malden, the talented actor with the prominent proboscis, has died at age 97. While I'll always remember him from 'The Streets of San Francisco' television series and those American Express commercials, I'll think of him every time I see a new Acura TL.

We Were There First: Over the years, the Sherlocks have been ahead of many trends. Douglas McIntyre, writing about possible structural changes in the economy, opined, "A population that used to keep cars for two years is now willing to keep them for four. It could be a change in behavior which, over the long term, would be more damaging to the industry than the recession has been. America could become a nation where people do not think their cars are "old" until they have 100,000 miles on them."

We bought our first new car in 1967; when we sold it, the odometer read just over 156,000 miles. Subsequent auto purchases have usually remained in the family for 8-12 years, racking up 80-130,000 miles. Even the fairly awful ones.

I opened my first Individual Retirement Account in 1978. My bank didn't know how to do it and made me come back the next day, pleading for extra time to "make some phone calls and do some studying." We took vacations in neat places - before they were declared "must-see destinations" by travel media. My wife started laddering our CDs in '79, 15 years before the term became part of the investment lexicon.

In the '80s, when Money magazine was touting mutual funds as the New Big Thing, we were amused. We had begun investing in mutual funds in early 1969. In '88, when our friends started to send dot-matrixed annual newsletters with Christmas cards, we responded with video newsletters ... waaay before YouTube. We were "cocooning" long before Faith Popcorn coined the term. I also had a home-based business before it was fashionable.

Not realizing that we were setting another trend, we've been shopping at Wal-Mart for over 20 years and Costco for almost 25 years. Before Costco and Wal-Mart came to our area, we shopped at Bi-Mart, an Oregon discount club/chain. I signed up for a Lifetime Membership in May 1978.

Recently, I read this: "The recession steered a new type of customer to Wal-Mart - deeper in the pockets and suddenly looking for bargains. Now the world's largest retailer has to figure out how to keep that customer when the economy recovers. So Wal-Mart is bringing in more brand names, ditching scores of other products, and redesigning hundreds of stores to give them wider aisles, better lighting, and better sight lines. It's more than just a cosmetic upgrade. That new breed of customer also spends about 40% more than the traditional Wal-Mart shopper and the retailer senses an opportunity to accelerate its growth."

The prototype for the remodeling includes lower shelves to make it easier to see across the store, better lighting and wider aisles. Expanded electronics areas will include interactive displays to test video games and portable gadgets. The store now carries brands like Danskin and Better Homes and Gardens, and its electronics section now stocks pricier products like Palm's new Pre smartphone.

"Wal-Mart executives say 17% of the chain's traffic growth in February came from new customers, and they're spending 40 percent more per trip. More than half of those shoppers living in households that take in more than $50,000 a year. While that may not be considered affluent, it's a big departure from Wal-Mart's core customers, of whom one in five does not have a bank account or has limited access to financial services."

"Now When I Die ... don't think that I'm a nut. Don't want no fancy funeral. Just one like old King Tut." Michael Jackson is, as expected, goin' in style ... specifically, in a top-of-the-line Batesville Promethean hand-polished, mirror-finish bronze casket. It has 14K gold handles and a tufted velvet interior and is "chemically protected against rust and corrosion." Sounds like the old Zeibart process for automobiles, especially when I read about "Batesville's 4 Point Protection Package."

The box is a rounded-end, continuously-welded, crank-sealer model with a "one-piece rubber gasket." Each casket is "factory tested for resistance to entry of outside elements." The Promethean retails for $25,000, although you can buy one on the internet for under $19,000. But at Forest Lawn, which is handling Jackson's funeral, you can probably expect to pay full-tilt retail. By the way, James Brown was buried in a Promethean.

I am reminded that the best casket salesman ever was Mr. Starker, played magnificently by Liberace in the 1965 black comedy 'The Loved One': "This unit is not only waterproof, Mr. Barlow. Nor just moisture-proof. It's dampness-proof." The film was loosely based on Evelyn Waugh's 1948 novel of the same name. The details of the fictional funeral home/cemetery, Whispering Glades, were clearly inspired by Forest Lawn, which mesmerized Waugh.

Amazing Comments ... especially when you consider the source: Following a testy exchange during Wednesday's briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, veteran correspondent Helen Thomas (she's 89 years-old and has covered the White House since JFK) said that not even Richard Nixon tried to control the press the way President Obama does. "Nixon didn't try to do that. They couldn't control (the media). They didn't try."

"What the hell do they (the Obama administration) think we are, puppets?" Thomas asked. "They're supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them. ... I'm not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well - for the town halls, for the press conferences. It's blatant. They don't give a damn if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame. ... It's shocking. It's really shocking."

Quote Of The Day is from James Lileks: "People! It takes all kinds to make a world. I just wish sometimes they'd go off and make one of their own."

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Wednesday July 1, 2009

Sunny Summer Days ... mean more frequent rides in my old Plymouth. Had a nice one Monday; skies were bright blue and cloudless.

Nobody Cares: Robert Farago of TTAC is upset with Buick for putting a four-cylinder engine in the 2010 Buick LaCrosse - which, by the way, is a mighty nice-looking car from the photos I've seen. Robert asks, "What is a Buick? I mean, what's the point? I'm serious. I don't get it."

I can offer commiseration, Robert. The vast majority of the car-buying public no longer cares about engines. As long as a vehicle gets good mileage and has vaguely-defined 'pep', they have no interest in what's under the hood. Pep seems to be neither acceleration nor speed but rather the low-end sensitivity of the accelerator pedal. "I just lightly touch it with my foot and it goes!"

With today's dress-up covers, all engines look like something under the hood of a Fisher-Price toy. The terms 283 small block, 351 Windsor, big-block W-series 409, 413 wedge-head, Buick nail-head, Blue Flame Six and 427 Hemi mean nothing to most buyers. I blame some of this on the metric system. 7.2-liters sounds much less exciting/intimidating than a 440 six-pack.

During a January 1987 to Arizona, we met some of my wife's uncles and aunts who were snowbirding from places like North Dakota, Montana and Colorado. When we pulled up in my white '87 Ford Thunderbird rental car, the uncles came running out ... to look over the car. "What's it got in it?" "Stick or automatic?" "How many speeds?" "What's the axle ratio?" I knew the T-Bird was a V-6 with a four-speed automatic and that the popular rental companies didn't even offer manual transmissions anymore but I didn't expect to be quizzed about the rear axle ratio.

We quickly headed to a local cafe for 'second breakfast'. The portions were huge. The women sat at one table; the men another. At our table, the breakfast conversation was mostly about cars. And axle ratios. Everybody at the table knew theirs - to two decimal places - except me.

They were disappointed by that but were happy to learn that my personal car at home had a V-8. "That 302's a sweet motor," said one. "Got pretty decent git-up-n-scoot," opined another. They had less to say about my wife's brand new Honda Accord. "Don't know much about that Jap stuff," one muttered. They teased one of the group, whose daughter had a Fiat X1/9: "How's her tin can of Spaghetti-Os runnin' these days?"

These men drove mostly full-size GM and Ford products. All were custom-ordered from their local small town dealer. They sat next to the salesman and checked the option boxes together - one by one. No bundled 'packages' for them. They enjoyed their new cars and traded them every few years for another new one. And they kept track of who bought their old one. "You know ol' Barney, he's still drivin' my '77 Caprice. She still looks nice, too. He keeps her up purty good."

Twenty-two years later, all of these men are either dead or in nursing homes. A new generation of car buyers has emerged, who know nothing about axle ratios, engine sizes or anything else. Challenge them on it and they'll respond, "Do you know the horsepower of the electric motor on your washer? Or dryer?" A logical question from people who see cars as appliances.

Buick will offer a V-6 for those who want more power than the 182 horsepower four-banger, just as is done in its Chevy Malibu cousin. But the Buick is different than the 'Bu because it's got a big toothy grill - something its intended market (Geezers and Chinamen) is known to love. That's what defines a Buick in 2010, Robert.

A final note: In the U.S., Buick sales are tanking badly. Edmunds.com has produced a graph which looks like one of those "you've got the chart upside-down" gags, showing a steady and steepening decline since the early 1990s.

Let's Get Small: Aston Martin plans to offer a new model, the Cygnet (it means baby swan), a 'luxury commuter vehicle' based on the Toyota iQ micro car. It can seat a mad dog and an Englishman inside as well as Noël Coward's body in the boot.

Auto Pessimist: Toyota says that the global automotive industry is facing two more lean years. It expects to lose more money this fiscal year than it did last and to run most of its factories at well below their capacity.

Extended Recession: Warren Buffett has told CNBC there has been little progress over the past few months in the "economic war" being fought by the country. "We haven't got the economy moving yet." He noted the weakness in retail and manufacturing, and said demand is "down like we've never seen it."

While the economy is a "shambles" and likely to stay that way for some time, he remains optimistic there will eventually be a recovery over a period of years.

Unlike 1981-82, this recession's scope is worldwide, which will only exacerbate the situation and make recovery more difficult. The global economy has not contracted since 1947. But, as Buffett has indicated, there will be a recovery; it's always darkest before dawn. But it's going to take a while to get the housing mess straightened out and, until that's done, there won't be a lot of disposable income or credit available to buy stuff.

Remember: In 1974, the Gross Domestic Product dropped six quarters in a row. That record may be broken this time.

Economics 102: Here's the crux of the problem - a vicious cycle, illustrated by House of Eratosthenes:

Book Review: 'Remembering Northeast Philadelphia' by Dr. Harry C. Silcox. When you live in a particular area, you're often oblivious to its rich history, the significance of street names or particular buildings. I was reminded of this as I read and reread this fine book.

I grew up in Frankford and Northeast Philadelphia but was unaware of much the region's history. I learned that many of its main roads dated back to the 17th Century: Bridge St. and Frankford Ave.(1683), Oxford, Bustleton and Adams Avenues (1693). The Jolly Post Inn and Tavern opened its doors in 1682 and hosted such colonial-era luminaries as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, French general Marquis de Lafayette and George Washington himself. It stood on ... (more >>>)

Yahoo! Mountain Dew is the fourth most popular soft drink in America; Coke, Pepsi and Diet Coke are the top sellers. Seven-Up and Bubble-Up didn't even make the top ten. Fanta is #8. Fanta?! I've never met anyone who drinks that Nazi-inspired stuff.

Quote Of The Day is from Laurence J. Peter: "An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today."