Firefox issues at allpar?

Tannon Weber pointed out that Allpar has been fighting with Firefox lately, largely, we suspect, due to changes within Firefox itself. We think we’ve got the problem solved, using the solution at Weborial. However, we’d like your input…

We also sped up the forums a bit while investigating. At least we hope we did.

Inanity surrounds coverage of Chrysler sale

The conventional wisdom of journalists sometimes amazes me as much as the filth that comes out of talk-show hosts’ mouths (even when they don’t get caught and canned). In this case, I speak of the reality-is-no-barrier type of armchair theorizing that passes for news in some publications. The epitomy has been Business Week’s article where the writer posits that Chrysler is too small to go up against companies like PSA - which, in case you were wondering, is smaller than Chrysler, and by a good margin, too. Indeed, Chrysler Group alone is much larger than most auto companies in the world - once you take out Honda and Toyota, it simply dwarfs any automaker outside the United States. The slow international sales are also not a huge issue; it’s not like Honda has penetrated every world market successfully. If American sales suddenly ground to a halt, Honda and Toyota would be badly hurt, too.

Another oddity was the suggestion that Chrysler no longer had any loan capability since that was mixed in with Daimler. Somehow I doubt this will be a real problem, especially since at least one now-famous import automaker used GMAC for years. The “journalist” at Business Week apparently also forgot what the majority of the DaimlerChrysler Credit organization used to be - namely, Chrysler Credit. But DCX would be crazy to let that moneymaker go any time soon. They’d also be crazy not to demand that Chrysler continue to use it. One more goofy argument gone.

Chrysler is working hard on international sales, and they’ll get there eventually, if they make the right vehicles. So far, they haven’t done much to tailor vehicles to destinations, other than drop in diesels and offer steering wheels on the other side; but to be fair, there’s been profit in their slow growth. The type of car they’d need to really crack foreign mass markets is either luxury cars that look like luxury cars, or A and B segment (small) cars - like the ones they’re about to have Chery build for them. Lack of manual transmissions is also an issue, but that’s partly a result of the money crunch.

Frankly, selling Chrysler wouldn’t bother me that much, depending on who got it. Kerkorian I might be able to trust a little; he’s clearly in love with the idea of controlling an automaker, for whatever reason, and though MGM’s movie business suffered under him, the parts of the business he really wanted seem to have done well. Magna, too, I could live with quite easily. The sleazy, politically connected private equity firms I don’t trust to have the resources or long-term willpower to make up for years of Chrysler abuse by Daimler (Kerkorian claims to be willing to go five years without an eye on the bottom line), and the very fact that they are so well connected to a particular political party tells me not to trust them - and that would hold true if it was the other party, too.

Let’s face it, DCX has already done its share of damage to Chrysler. There’s the bad-mouthing, destroying SCORE, driving off talent throughout the organization, promotion by brown-nosing, forcing bad, overpriced parts on Chrysler so Mercedes can get discounts, dropping Plymouth, losing capacity that could have been used to keep a Neon replacement while making Calibers, the badly designed dealer incentives, the slashing of customer center costs, the driving out of huge numbers of engineers and testers so that there are flexible plants but not enough vehicles or options to run in them, and the incredible damage to public confidence caused by all those “off the record” comments and insinuations from board members, the sale itself, and the losses apparently caused by accounting tricks. Would even a private equity firm do any worse?

New York Auto Show

Our full New York Auto Show coverage is now posted at http://www.allpar.com/history/auto-shows/ny-2007.html!