DRIVING: that's what it's ALL ABOUT! A blog and website for automotive driving enthusiasts, featuring my interests as I see them: news and opinion about manufacturers of interest, significant enthusiast cars, and driving them hard and well.
The March 2007 Ford sales numbers are in... and it's another disastrous month for Mustang. I've highlighted the Mustang numbers in red below. Also note what the Taurus numbers used to be. Even at the end it was doing great!
In an article on CNNMoney, it's revealed that little Billy Ford, the Ford family member who thought he shoudl be a CEO, is responsible for his family loosing half of the value of it's Ford Motor Corporation stock. The situation is so bad they're thinking about divesting into other businesses.
The family has lost $581 million dollars in value so far. The value of the stock in 2001 was $1.4 billion dollars. The big drop coincides with the moment in time that little Billy took over the company and in a fit cancelled all of Jacques Nassers product plans... leaving the North American operations with almost no new model pipeline and directly resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.
A needless, sad, and perhaps fatal state the company is struggling to overcome today. The direct reason for the tens-of-billions of dollars of loans, and the unprecedented step of having to mortgage the factories to back them up.
Given the strong & very competitive marketplace, the loss of the model pipeline is the bottom line:
The Lincoln folks would have had a next-gen Lincoln LS, a new (and beautiful) Continental flagship (leveraging a stretched next-gen LS chassis), and an entirely new BMW 3 series-sized platform for an entirely new product.
The Mercury folks were studying importing the Mondeo and we might have had that starting just now.
And of course the Ford Mustang wouldn't have ended up as such a turd, Jacques would have made sure we had the IRS as well as the then-planned new "Hurricane" engine.
If I was the Ford Family, I'd be thinking about divesting ourselves of Billy.
I came across a couple of new-to-me blogs and feeds today:
"Car Videos" - some people are addicted to car videos and regularly find dozens of new ones on the 'net (not me, I don't have the time!). Here's a site and feed dedicated to just that, saving you countless hours of cruising the web from inside your office cubicle. Hmmm., their most recent video is of a Mitsubishi L300 van doing a huge burnout. Turns out is has a 600-HP checvy small block inside. This video is from Australia, where you would expect no less.
"German Car Scene" - German cars do of course rule, this site covers all of the best. Their most recent posting is of Sabine Schmitz driving an M5 on the Nurbugring Taxi. This is a great video to spend a few minutes with, repeatedly.
These are just a couple of the new-to-me feeds I've found on the millionRSSproject site, under the automobile category: http://www.millionrss.com/categories/Automobile-5.html With 393 automotive sites listed (including mine), you shoudl be able to find something of interest...
In an article on CNNMoney, it's revealed that little Billy Ford, the Ford family member who thought he shoudl be a CEO, is responsible for his family loosing half of the value of it's Ford Motor Corporation stock. The situation is so bad they're thinking about divesting into other businesses. 
