Ford Motor Co. has released its first-ever iPhone application, called Flex Photo Lab, to pitch a new product: the 2009 Ford Flex.

Flex sales started slowly, but its promotional iPhone application has already caught fire. The automaker hadn’t officially announced the release, but nearly 20,000 potential Flex buyers had already downloaded the free application by Monday.

The program allows users to enhance photographs on their iPhone, or learn more about the Flex.

Once the application is opened, users can enter a darkroom, where they can alter photographs with special effects. For example, users can run a photograph through a kaleidoscope filter, using their finger to circulate the image, and save the end result.

Continue reading →

Share This

Unthinkability is upon us. Or is it unthinkableness?

No matter, as “W” might say, it’s reallymarkable, the stuff that’s goin’ on today, especially in Detroit.

And hold onto your helmets, dear readers, stranger days are coming.

Chrysler LLC will almost certainly disappear in the next few months, assimilated into General Motors Corp. or Renault-Nissan in a deal blessed, if not partially funded, by the U.S. government. Unless, that is, Chrysler is first peddled to an outfit from China, India, Italy or Russia.

GM, the world’s largest company for most of the last century, could implode at any moment from the mounting pressures of being all things to all people, providing cars for every purse and purpose, plus generous pensions and pay and health benefits to support generations of workers and spouses and kids and retirees.

Rick Wagoner, GM’s resilient CEO, who has survived previous predictions of his imminent demise, may bow out soon, no matter what becomes of the GM-Chrysler talks. His smarts and likability have kept him on top so far, but GM has underperformed for so long that somebody must ultimately pay the price — and the loyal Wagoner has been reluctant to cut loose other top-level executives for not producing results.

Do I know this stuff is going to happen?

No, of course not, any more than I know exactly what buildings will be demolished the next time a tornado rips through town. But I’m pretty sure a cyclone is whipping through Detroit’s automobile industry now and that we’ll hardly recognize the landscape when it’s gone.

Here’s one small example of the unthinkable happening in these stressful times.

Don Leclair, Ford Motor Co.’s chief financial officer and widely respected whiz at crunching numbers, suddenly “retired” this month. The Oct. 10 announcement received only modest attention because reports of GM-Chrysler merger talks surfaced the same day.

Leclair retired at age 56; his replacement Lewis Booth is 59.

Continue reading →

Share This

In the doomsday scenario raising anxiety around the Motor City, General Motors Corp. makes a deal for Chrysler LLC, keeps Jeep and the minivans, and vaporizes the rest of the company.

Tens of thousands of Chrysler’s 66,409 employees lose their jobs as cash-desperate GM swiftly cuts redundant operations and sheds unprofitable models. Factories and dealerships are closed, and the lights go out at Chrysler’s gleaming corporate headquarters campus in the northern suburb of Auburn Hills.

It’s not something Andre Thibodeaux wants to think about. The general manager of Lelli’s, an upscale steakhouse and Italian restaurant near Chrysler’s 15-story tower, gets about half his lunch business from the automaker and related businesses.

The eatery, with roots in downtown Detroit and family owned for three generations, already has lost business as Chrysler and parts suppliers have downsized and people eat out less due to economic worries. The loss of Chrysler’s corporate headquarters is almost unthinkable.

“I can’t imagine moving the building or changing or selling or anything like that,” said Thibodeaux. “Auburn Hills in general is built all around that building.”

Although it may be unimaginable, industry analysts say GM would have no choice but to slash costs if it acquires struggling Chrysler from its current owner, New York private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP.

Both sides have been talking for months, but the pace recently has increased. Cerberus wants out of the auto business, and as the credit markets have dried up, GM, worried about running too low on cash before the U.S. auto market rebounds, wants Chrysler’s currency stockpile.

A person familiar with the negotiations said Friday that the talks have advanced to the point where top executives of both companies have looked at a deal and asked for refinements. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are secret.

In August, Chrysler said it had accumulated $11.7 billion in cash and marketable securities as of June 30. That figure remains around $11 billion, the person said, despite Chrysler’s U.S. sales being down 25% through September, the largest decline of any major automaker.

Continue reading →

Share This

Clearly the hottest talk in the auto industry right now revolves around Chrysler LLC Privately owned by Cerberus Capital LP, and suffering major losses so far this year with an overall car and light truck market that doesn’t shed a particularly positive light on its fortunes changing anytime in the immediate future, it appears the latter portion of the “make or break it” scenario is all that’s left.

And “break it” is what Cerberus may do, splitting up Chrysler in into chunks and selling these off to the highest bidders. GM has been in talks with Cerberus for more than a month, the exact details of which are still not known, while previous and concurrent discussions have been taking place with France’s Renault-Nissan.

Such a move, while appearing like a classic corporate raider tactic that Richard Gere’s character Edward Lewis in “Pretty Woman” might execute and Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) would try to talk him out of, might be the best way to maintain Chrysler’s brands intact, although it’s difficult to see where the namesake brand, Chrysler, would fit into the scheme.

Continue reading →

Share This

The Ford Ranger is the truck that refuses to die — on sale in its present form since 1998, the small pickup soldiers on in the U.S. even as a new model is readied for overseas markets. Previously, Ford had planned to close a St. Paul, Minnesota, plant that builds the Ranger in 2009, but rising gas prices convinced the automaker to keep things running until 2011. Now, however, the faltering economy is changing those plans again, and the Blue Oval will shut the factory for all of December to compensate for falling demand.

Continue reading →

Share This

TOKYO - Denso Corp. said Thursday there is no truth to a report it plans to buy part of Ford Motor Co.’s (F) stake in Mazda Motor Corp. .

“While there were media reports about the stake purchase, it is not something the company has released and it is not true that we have made a concrete decision to purchase Mazda shares,” the core auto parts manufacturer within the Toyota Motor Corp. said in a statement.

The Nikkei reported earlier Thursday that Ford had asked Denso to purchase part of its stake in Mazda, and that Denso is likely to consider purchasing some of the shares.

source:cnn money

Share This

US auto giant Ford Motor Co. has asked Denso Corp., a core autoparts manufacturer within Toyota Motor Corp., to buy part of its stake in Mazda Motor Corp., a report said Thursday.

Denso, which wants to expand the current business ties with Mazda to which it sells auto parts, is likely to consider purchasing some of the shares, the business daily Nikkei reported, without citing sources.

Mazda, Japan’s fifth largest automaker, is believed to have already approached Denso about buying some of the Mazda stock that Ford holds, it said.

Reports last week said Ford, Mazda’s biggest shareholder with a 33.4-percent equity, plans to sell most of its shares in Mazda to raise badly needed cash amid the current global financial crisis.

The stake in Mazda that Denso would acquire is likely to total less than one percent of Mazda’s total outstanding stock, the Nikkei said.

Officials at Mazda and Denso were not immediately available for comment.

The Nikkei reported that Ford had approached between 20 and 30 prospective buyers for its shares in Mazda. Trading houses Sumitomo Corp and Itochu Corp have expressed interest, the newspaper said.

Mazda may also buy back some of its own shares, it said.

Mazda’s shares were down 4.6 percent at 272 yen, outperforming a 9.8 percent fall in the benchmark Nikkei average .N225. Denso shares were 8.9 percent lower at 1,818 yen.

Share This

Shares of General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. finished the day up slightly, despite more news of credit tightening and modest drops across the nation’s major stock indexes.

Amid reports that it continues to explore a merger with Chrysler LLC, shares of GM opened Tuesday trading at $7.94 — $1.43 higher than Monday’s close of $6.51 — before falling to a low of $6.01 before recovering in the last hour of trading.

Ford stock followed a similar, if less severe, trading path Tuesday. Ford shares opened at $2.97, 58 cents higher than the Monday close of $2.39. They rallied at the end to close at $2.45, up 6 cents, or 2.5%.

Analysts blamed the overall drop in the markets — one day after the biggest rally since the 1930s — on the worsening outlook for third-quarter earnings. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 76.62 points, or 0.8%, at 9,310.99. The NYSE Composite Index finished down 20.4 points, or 0.3%.

Share This

It’s a tough time to bring a big truck to market, but Mark Fields, Ford’s president of the Americas, said the 2009 Ford F-150 sets a new bar for fuel-efficiency, quality, capability, technology and innovative features.

“We offer the best value for the features we provide,” Fields told a group of journalists at the Dearborn Truck Plant, where UAW workers are slowly ramping up assembly for the new F-150.

The new truck, which is also being built at the Kansas City Assembly Plant in Missouri, starts at $20,345 and is rated at 15 miles per gallon in the city and 21 on the highway.

The truck launch comes as the nation reels through one of the worst financial crises in recent history — one that has caused a clampdown on virtually all kinds of lending and has forced consumers to radically rein in their spending.

Consumers who are buying cars and trucks in this environment are leaning toward the most fuel-efficient model — or those with the biggest discounts.

Among potential truck buyers, for example, Fields said fuel economy has jumped from No. 10 to No. 3 in importance.

Continue reading →

Share This

The global auto industry is set to suffer dramatic changes in the wake of the world financial crisis.

General Motors is in negotiations to merge Chrysler, the third-largest U.S. automaker, with Cerberus Capital Management, which owns 80.1 percent of Chrysler, The New York Times said Saturday.

If GM, which is rumored to go bankrupt soon due to sluggish sales, is merged with Chrysler, they will consolidate overlapping car models and share marketing networks, saving up to 10 billion dollars.

No. 2 U.S. carmaker Ford is reportedly considering selling its subsidiaries to normalize management.

According to the Japanese daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Ford is considering selling 20 percent of its stake in Mazda to Japanese trading corporations and financial institutions for 100 billion yen (993 million dollars). Ford owns 33.4 percent of Mazda.

Automakers in Japan and Europe are also scaling back their workforce and production. Japan’s largest automaker Toyota early this year began cutting production at its plants in the United States, the United Kingdom and Turkey, followed by a similar move at its Guangzhou factory in China last month.

Continue reading →

Share This