I got this from Mike Smith, who does great cartoons on NASCAR. I like Mike's perspective on not going back to "stock" cars, and knowing what I know from being in the sport, I think he makes some cogent arguments, particularly about safety.
A stock car can’t come from the showroom floor
By Mike Smith
As Ronald Reagan said in a presidential debate with Jimmy Carter: “There you go again.” Those are exactly the words that come to my mind when I hear a NASCAR fan say that the sport should return to using cars that are in their stock configuration. Time and time again I have heard and read this ridiculous comment from fans of Sprint Cup racing who are convinced the sport would improve if it turned the clock back to the days when drivers raced the same car they drove to the grocery store every week. Competing in cars taken from the showroom floor makes about as much sense as adding a row of seats to the Wright brother’s plane and calling it a commercial jetliner.
Pretend for a moment that the cars we drive on the street were used in NASCAR. How exciting would it be to watch a pack of front-wheel-drive cars with six-cylinder engines huff and puff their way around the high banks of Talladega? (The Impala SS is the only model sold with a V8)
Frankly, I’m not sure these cars could maintain enough speed to create the centrifugal force needed to keep the cars from sliding down the banking. And since the engines and transmissions of these cars aren’t engineered to withstand the sustained high RPMs we see in Sprint Cup racing, there wouldn’t be a single car capable of finishing 50 laps let alone 500. If you think the racing is boring now, imagine what a snoozer this race would be.
And what about safety? It would be absurd for anyone to suggest that welding in a roll cage and bolting in a racing seat to a car straight off of the showroom floor is enough to protect a driver.
I’ve read a few comments from racing fans suggesting that the stock bodies should be applied to the current racecars. Assuming this is possible, how would NASCAR insure that one manufacturer didn’t have an aerodynamic advantage? The sport’s pursuit of parity on the racetrack would die.
I don’t think the COT is perfect. I can understand the frustrations many fans have regarding the cookie-cutter look of the COT and I think there has to be a balance between trying to achieve parity and allowing for some individuality in the design area. But going back to racing cars from a car dealer’s showroom floor is an option that makes no sense.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
Rethinking The Auto Crisis
Check out this point of view. It's a little over the top at times, but I like to study positions from all sides. After reading this, does your perspective change? About the car companies? About Congress?
What Auto CEOs Should Have Said Posted by Gary Witzenburg
Shouldn't those auto/government hearings have been reversed? Did it occur to anyone else that those oh-so-painful auto CEO/government hearings should have been the other way around?
Instead of the heads of America's three remaining automakers groveling, begging and enduring live public floggings trying to sell their case for government loans to get them past the global economic crisis and credit freeze that government greed, corruption and incompetence has created, shouldn't they have been vein-popping outraged and angry? Shouldn't they have pointed accusatory fingers at that sorry collection of arrogant, auto-ignorant Senators and Congressmen who got them into this mess and demanded their assistance? Shouldn't they have looked those pompous public-trough pinheads straight in the face and demanded to know why investment firms, banks and big insurance get hundreds of billions of taxpayer bailout dollars no questions asked while what's left of America's once-mighty manufacturing muscle begs for loans totaling 1/28 of that initial $700 billion Wall Street bailout? Where were the public humiliation hearings and newly viable business plans for those guys? Here is what I'll bet those long-suffering auto CEOs wanted to say, but couldn't:
"You ignorant morons! How dare you accuse us of building cars nobody wants? We sold 8.5 million vehicles in the US last year and millions more around the world. GM still handily outsells Toyota here, Ford outsells Honda and Nissan, and Chrysler sells more than Nissan and Hyundai combined. How many of our new cars have you driven lately? How many quality surveys and plant productivity reports have you reviewed? Have you bothered to check your own EPA's fuel economy ratings? "Have you paid any attention in the last several years as we've turned our companies upside down, closed dozens of plants, shed hundreds of thousands of hard-working people who did nothing to deserve it, canceled slow-selling models and spent billions of hard-earned dollars redesigning the rest? Are you idiots even aware that we renegotiated our union contracts last year to make our US labor and health-care costs fully competitive by 2010?
"Would you recognize a good business plan if one smacked you upside the head? Have any of you ever run a business, made a business decision or even held a real job? Is there any more dysfunctional organization on the planet, any that more desperately needs a new business plan, than the US Congress? Let's compare our public approval ratings to yours.
"You scold us for using private aircraft? We run global companies flying people, parts and equipment all over the world every day. We use private planes for security and productivity and cost savings over commercial alternatives. If it were not cost effective, we would not do it, and we've been doing a lot less of it lately. Tell us, Ms. Pelosi, how much does that big private 757-200 of yours cost taxpayers to fly you home and back between your tough 3-day weeks?
"For decades, your national energy policy has been summed up by two words: 'cheap gas.' Now you want to punish us for building the big, capable, comfortable vehicles Americans wanted to take advantage of that policy...and for not building millions more smaller, more fuel-efficient cars that, until recently, almost no one wanted, and that we can't make a buck on if we build them here thanks to the high business costs you've imposed upon us through the years.
"You have blocked every avenue of domestic exploration and construction that could lead to eventual energy independence, preferring instead to pump hundreds of billions of dollars overseas to purchase the energy Americans need, much of it from countries that are not our friends. You have piled billions of dollars of unrecoverable costs on us with excessive taxation, overkill regulation and relentless litigation that our off-shore competitors do not have to bear. Then you have rolled out the red carpet to predatory, low-cost foreign competitors who come here to take our market and pump hundreds of millions more dollars out of this country.
"Is there any other country fortunate enough to have an automotive industry that does not support, protect and nourish it in every possible way? We are the only nation on earth too blind and stupid to recognize and treasure the enormous economic and national security advantages of having its own healthy, prosperous auto industry and manufacturing base.
"Now you have passed an enormously expensive new regulation requiring 40 percent higher corporate average fuel economy in hopes of someday reducing the less than 0.2 percent of global human-sourced CO2 attributable to US light vehicles. That will cost us an estimated $100 billion, and even if you believe that is really worth doing at such a cost, where are we going to get that kind of money? Talk about unfunded mandates!
"With recent resizings and restructurings and our new labor contracts, we were well on our ways to full financial competitiveness and profitability. We could have survived and the sudden $4 gas explosion - not our fault - that shifted buyer demand overnight from larger, more profitable vehicles to small unprofitable ones. We have millions of highly desirable, much more fuel-efficient small cars and engines in the pipeline for 2010 and beyond.
"Then came your mortgage meltdown and fast-frozen credit crisis, which no one in this credit-driven business can survive unaided for long: not us, not our suppliers, not our many thousands of independent dealers, not even our most cash-rich foreign competitors. They, too, are asking their governments for assistance. Will they get it? Of course! No other nation will stand idly by and watch its auto industry die.
"There was no end of election rhetoric about creating new jobs. How about saving several million of the ones we have? Can any of you begin to understand how this industry is a huge, fragile, interdependent house of cards? If GM should fail, or declare Chapter 11, so will most of its 3,690 suppliers, beginning with the 2,000 in the US that operate 4,550 facilities in 46 states. Since most also supply key components to everyone else, that will bring down all of us, including US transplant production. Don't believe us? Ask Toyota.
"Vehicle assembly, engine, transmission and parts plants nationwide will shut down. Have you seen a plant town whose plant has died? It's a jobless ghost town whose out-of-work residents, including owners and employees of the small businesses that depended on plant workers' incomes, can't afford to move because their homes – like their hopes and dreams – are worthless. How many of those communities will be in your states and districts? US dealers of all brands, with no new cars, credit or credit-worthy customers, will drop like flies. Without once lucrative auto advertising, many media will shrink and some will die? The predicted initial loss of 3 million jobs will be just the beginning. Can you spell depression?
"Yes, we have lost a lot of market share. Where did you think all those millions of cars and trucks our foreign competitors import and assemble here in taxpayer-subsidized plants in cheap-labor states would be sold, and out of whose hides did you think they would come?
"Yes, we have made mistakes, some bad products and bad business decisions in the past. And so has every one of our competitors. We are entirely different companies today with new leadership and new priorities. We have wide varieties of high quality, high fuel efficiency, highly desirable new products that Americans, as they get to know them, absolutely do want to buy. Why continue to punish us, and the millions of incredibly dedicated, hard-working people at all levels who still depend on us to feed their families, for the sins of our predecessors?
"Why punish the entire country and millions in other countries as well? If you can think of any good reason, we would like to hear it. And don't come back at us with your usual name-calling, finger-pointing, blame-shifting, uninformed opinions, decades-old perceptions and self-serving, grandstanding rhetoric. We have offered our business plans and all the facts behind how we got here and why we need and deserve to survive and prosper for the good of this country and every citizen in it.
"You know full well that this life-threatening position you have put us into is entirely your fault, not ours, and that our future viability depends completely on you. We're anxiously awaiting your business plan for guiding this country out of the economic morass you have created, beginning with the bridge loans we desperately need."
What Auto CEOs Should Have Said Posted by Gary Witzenburg
Shouldn't those auto/government hearings have been reversed? Did it occur to anyone else that those oh-so-painful auto CEO/government hearings should have been the other way around?
Instead of the heads of America's three remaining automakers groveling, begging and enduring live public floggings trying to sell their case for government loans to get them past the global economic crisis and credit freeze that government greed, corruption and incompetence has created, shouldn't they have been vein-popping outraged and angry? Shouldn't they have pointed accusatory fingers at that sorry collection of arrogant, auto-ignorant Senators and Congressmen who got them into this mess and demanded their assistance? Shouldn't they have looked those pompous public-trough pinheads straight in the face and demanded to know why investment firms, banks and big insurance get hundreds of billions of taxpayer bailout dollars no questions asked while what's left of America's once-mighty manufacturing muscle begs for loans totaling 1/28 of that initial $700 billion Wall Street bailout? Where were the public humiliation hearings and newly viable business plans for those guys? Here is what I'll bet those long-suffering auto CEOs wanted to say, but couldn't:
"You ignorant morons! How dare you accuse us of building cars nobody wants? We sold 8.5 million vehicles in the US last year and millions more around the world. GM still handily outsells Toyota here, Ford outsells Honda and Nissan, and Chrysler sells more than Nissan and Hyundai combined. How many of our new cars have you driven lately? How many quality surveys and plant productivity reports have you reviewed? Have you bothered to check your own EPA's fuel economy ratings? "Have you paid any attention in the last several years as we've turned our companies upside down, closed dozens of plants, shed hundreds of thousands of hard-working people who did nothing to deserve it, canceled slow-selling models and spent billions of hard-earned dollars redesigning the rest? Are you idiots even aware that we renegotiated our union contracts last year to make our US labor and health-care costs fully competitive by 2010?
"Would you recognize a good business plan if one smacked you upside the head? Have any of you ever run a business, made a business decision or even held a real job? Is there any more dysfunctional organization on the planet, any that more desperately needs a new business plan, than the US Congress? Let's compare our public approval ratings to yours.
"You scold us for using private aircraft? We run global companies flying people, parts and equipment all over the world every day. We use private planes for security and productivity and cost savings over commercial alternatives. If it were not cost effective, we would not do it, and we've been doing a lot less of it lately. Tell us, Ms. Pelosi, how much does that big private 757-200 of yours cost taxpayers to fly you home and back between your tough 3-day weeks?
"For decades, your national energy policy has been summed up by two words: 'cheap gas.' Now you want to punish us for building the big, capable, comfortable vehicles Americans wanted to take advantage of that policy...and for not building millions more smaller, more fuel-efficient cars that, until recently, almost no one wanted, and that we can't make a buck on if we build them here thanks to the high business costs you've imposed upon us through the years.
"You have blocked every avenue of domestic exploration and construction that could lead to eventual energy independence, preferring instead to pump hundreds of billions of dollars overseas to purchase the energy Americans need, much of it from countries that are not our friends. You have piled billions of dollars of unrecoverable costs on us with excessive taxation, overkill regulation and relentless litigation that our off-shore competitors do not have to bear. Then you have rolled out the red carpet to predatory, low-cost foreign competitors who come here to take our market and pump hundreds of millions more dollars out of this country.
"Is there any other country fortunate enough to have an automotive industry that does not support, protect and nourish it in every possible way? We are the only nation on earth too blind and stupid to recognize and treasure the enormous economic and national security advantages of having its own healthy, prosperous auto industry and manufacturing base.
"Now you have passed an enormously expensive new regulation requiring 40 percent higher corporate average fuel economy in hopes of someday reducing the less than 0.2 percent of global human-sourced CO2 attributable to US light vehicles. That will cost us an estimated $100 billion, and even if you believe that is really worth doing at such a cost, where are we going to get that kind of money? Talk about unfunded mandates!
"With recent resizings and restructurings and our new labor contracts, we were well on our ways to full financial competitiveness and profitability. We could have survived and the sudden $4 gas explosion - not our fault - that shifted buyer demand overnight from larger, more profitable vehicles to small unprofitable ones. We have millions of highly desirable, much more fuel-efficient small cars and engines in the pipeline for 2010 and beyond.
"Then came your mortgage meltdown and fast-frozen credit crisis, which no one in this credit-driven business can survive unaided for long: not us, not our suppliers, not our many thousands of independent dealers, not even our most cash-rich foreign competitors. They, too, are asking their governments for assistance. Will they get it? Of course! No other nation will stand idly by and watch its auto industry die.
"There was no end of election rhetoric about creating new jobs. How about saving several million of the ones we have? Can any of you begin to understand how this industry is a huge, fragile, interdependent house of cards? If GM should fail, or declare Chapter 11, so will most of its 3,690 suppliers, beginning with the 2,000 in the US that operate 4,550 facilities in 46 states. Since most also supply key components to everyone else, that will bring down all of us, including US transplant production. Don't believe us? Ask Toyota.
"Vehicle assembly, engine, transmission and parts plants nationwide will shut down. Have you seen a plant town whose plant has died? It's a jobless ghost town whose out-of-work residents, including owners and employees of the small businesses that depended on plant workers' incomes, can't afford to move because their homes – like their hopes and dreams – are worthless. How many of those communities will be in your states and districts? US dealers of all brands, with no new cars, credit or credit-worthy customers, will drop like flies. Without once lucrative auto advertising, many media will shrink and some will die? The predicted initial loss of 3 million jobs will be just the beginning. Can you spell depression?
"Yes, we have lost a lot of market share. Where did you think all those millions of cars and trucks our foreign competitors import and assemble here in taxpayer-subsidized plants in cheap-labor states would be sold, and out of whose hides did you think they would come?
"Yes, we have made mistakes, some bad products and bad business decisions in the past. And so has every one of our competitors. We are entirely different companies today with new leadership and new priorities. We have wide varieties of high quality, high fuel efficiency, highly desirable new products that Americans, as they get to know them, absolutely do want to buy. Why continue to punish us, and the millions of incredibly dedicated, hard-working people at all levels who still depend on us to feed their families, for the sins of our predecessors?
"Why punish the entire country and millions in other countries as well? If you can think of any good reason, we would like to hear it. And don't come back at us with your usual name-calling, finger-pointing, blame-shifting, uninformed opinions, decades-old perceptions and self-serving, grandstanding rhetoric. We have offered our business plans and all the facts behind how we got here and why we need and deserve to survive and prosper for the good of this country and every citizen in it.
"You know full well that this life-threatening position you have put us into is entirely your fault, not ours, and that our future viability depends completely on you. We're anxiously awaiting your business plan for guiding this country out of the economic morass you have created, beginning with the bridge loans we desperately need."
Monday, December 8, 2008
The Cost of Now
I got this from Seth Godin's blog, and it really hit home:
The high cost of now
The closer you get to the source and moment of information, the more it costs.
If you wanted to be the first person to see Nokia's new phone, you could have flown to Berlin, as Robert Scoble did. Or you could have been the second person by obsessively hitting refresh on his posts. Or you could have been the tenth person by having it show up in your feed later in the day. Or you could wait a week and see it everywhere. Or in a year, get one on eBay for $5...
If you want to know how the stock market did in 2006, you can spend ten seconds and find it in Wikipedia. If you want to know about today, you'll need to invest a few clicks and you'll get the delayed results. Or you could pay a lot of money for a stock market terminal and get the current prices. Or you could even risk prison and get some inside information about what's going to happen before it happens.
More than ever, there's a clear relationship between how new something is and how much it costs to discover that news.
You can check your email twice a day pretty easily. Once every fifteen minutes has a disruption cost. Pinging it with your pocketphone every sixty seconds is an extremely expensive lifestyle/productivity choice.
Sure, go ahead, stay hyper-current, but realize it's not free.
Zara, the European clothing chain, deliberately invests more than the competition in getting close to the 'now' of unit sales by store. As a result of this investment, they are far more agile (and more profitable) than most other stores.
The interesting questions:
Are you getting what you're paying for in your quest for now?
Is it worth it?
Sometimes, in our quest for the new, we overpay. Most of the time, moving down the curve will decrease your costs dramatically, without hurting your ability to make smart decisions. Alternatively, when you choose to spend the time (or money), leverage it like crazy.
I bet you are overspending on now. Not everywhere, just in the wrong areas. Worth an audit, probably.
I have to admit to overspending somewhat. Not "playing the lottery" type of spending (i.e., basically throwing money away) or "buying drinks until you puke" spending (i.e., regret doing it later), but more of the type of "investment" spend associated with reading the paper or the Business Journal. I'm not sure how I will use the info, or not sure if I will gain from it, but it's worth checking out. Also, I like to look for disparate pieces of information and try to connect them. The info also gives me a better understanding of what's going on around me.
I am sure most people who do tend to be attached to their Blackberrys hear from their friends and family from time to time with "why do need to check that thing all the time?!!!" This is undertandable and certainly inappropriate at times. More so now, with the desire to post a Tweet more and more often. There has to be a balance, and definitely "no checking your Blackberry" times. I suspect I am overspent a little, leveraged a little, but not to the subprime mortgage level. Getting a Blackberry Storm didn't help. We'll see how this investment in NOW turns out.
The high cost of now
The closer you get to the source and moment of information, the more it costs.
If you wanted to be the first person to see Nokia's new phone, you could have flown to Berlin, as Robert Scoble did. Or you could have been the second person by obsessively hitting refresh on his posts. Or you could have been the tenth person by having it show up in your feed later in the day. Or you could wait a week and see it everywhere. Or in a year, get one on eBay for $5...
If you want to know how the stock market did in 2006, you can spend ten seconds and find it in Wikipedia. If you want to know about today, you'll need to invest a few clicks and you'll get the delayed results. Or you could pay a lot of money for a stock market terminal and get the current prices. Or you could even risk prison and get some inside information about what's going to happen before it happens.
More than ever, there's a clear relationship between how new something is and how much it costs to discover that news.
You can check your email twice a day pretty easily. Once every fifteen minutes has a disruption cost. Pinging it with your pocketphone every sixty seconds is an extremely expensive lifestyle/productivity choice.
Sure, go ahead, stay hyper-current, but realize it's not free.
Zara, the European clothing chain, deliberately invests more than the competition in getting close to the 'now' of unit sales by store. As a result of this investment, they are far more agile (and more profitable) than most other stores.
The interesting questions:
Are you getting what you're paying for in your quest for now?
Is it worth it?
Sometimes, in our quest for the new, we overpay. Most of the time, moving down the curve will decrease your costs dramatically, without hurting your ability to make smart decisions. Alternatively, when you choose to spend the time (or money), leverage it like crazy.
I bet you are overspending on now. Not everywhere, just in the wrong areas. Worth an audit, probably.
I have to admit to overspending somewhat. Not "playing the lottery" type of spending (i.e., basically throwing money away) or "buying drinks until you puke" spending (i.e., regret doing it later), but more of the type of "investment" spend associated with reading the paper or the Business Journal. I'm not sure how I will use the info, or not sure if I will gain from it, but it's worth checking out. Also, I like to look for disparate pieces of information and try to connect them. The info also gives me a better understanding of what's going on around me.
I am sure most people who do tend to be attached to their Blackberrys hear from their friends and family from time to time with "why do need to check that thing all the time?!!!" This is undertandable and certainly inappropriate at times. More so now, with the desire to post a Tweet more and more often. There has to be a balance, and definitely "no checking your Blackberry" times. I suspect I am overspent a little, leveraged a little, but not to the subprime mortgage level. Getting a Blackberry Storm didn't help. We'll see how this investment in NOW turns out.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
I have been warned of the impending revolution that is Twitter. My friend Jeff Holt (who has over 500 people following him on Twitter) is convinced that Twitter is going to take over the social networking frontier and be the primary tool for communicating. There are a lot of neat ideas on how to utilize Twitter, both personally and for business. Obama utilized several of them in his campaign, and we are looking at some for 24 Hours of Booty.
The trick is to keep pushing info out there, while also absorbing the flow of info coming from the people you are following. It can be quite absorbing. However, the information coming from that feed, if thought about and processed, could lead to new directions, accelerated decision making, and/or just feeling more connected to people and the community.
What is boring, or benign, or worthy of a post? Who knows. I do know that Chris Carmichael (Lance's coach) is getting better on his runs up the Incline in Colorado. And that he's sick right now. Why is that important? Not sure, but I am more informed and might even send Chris a get well note.
I'm Twittering at www.twitter.com/spencerlueders. Viva la Revolution!
The trick is to keep pushing info out there, while also absorbing the flow of info coming from the people you are following. It can be quite absorbing. However, the information coming from that feed, if thought about and processed, could lead to new directions, accelerated decision making, and/or just feeling more connected to people and the community.
What is boring, or benign, or worthy of a post? Who knows. I do know that Chris Carmichael (Lance's coach) is getting better on his runs up the Incline in Colorado. And that he's sick right now. Why is that important? Not sure, but I am more informed and might even send Chris a get well note.
I'm Twittering at www.twitter.com/spencerlueders. Viva la Revolution!
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