Michael Schumacker, The drivers choice

Allan, he actually sold the Bugatti before he went to Ferrari and still was driving for Benetton it was a Yellow SS model. I don't know anything about the Lambo, but he apparently has a warehouse full of exotics. If I had his money I would have all of the above including a McLaren F1.

 

.......and you were saying????????

DL

 

I agree. The new Ferraris are going downhill. They aren't that great of cars performance wise besides the Enzo. The new 612 is ugly and the 360 lacks performance for the money your going to spend on it.

 

Hey Allan,
Those Maui onions are clouding your vision...or are your tears being caused by something else?

Where's your favorite Camaro SS? I'm surprised by your choice of comparison.

DL

 

good one darth!! LOL!! I see the similarities.

 

Allan that is BS and you know it, Porsche hangs it's hat on their endurance racing pedigree, Ferrari on F1, Audi on endurance and prototype racing, Lamborghini on ... um..er...mmm...oh yeah, that GREAT Larousse in the early 90's in F1, it lasted.... what, half a season? They blew more engines than a $2 whore.

They certainly tried. It's easy, when you FAIL miserably at something, to say AFTER the fact: "oh, well, we didn't really WANT to suceed at that anyway, it wasn't all that important to us" (yeah right) As for the 612, I agree, wouldn't buy it, Ferrari IS most certainly making ALL their cars to appeal more to geriatrics and invalids who don't want to drive an exotic, but that does NOT detract from the FACT that they have THE MOST STORIED racing pedigree that exists in ANY form of motor racing, PERIOD!!

 

LMAO!! This is a very entertaining thread! I was studying... but I think I'll just sit and wait for the next reply! F-chat is so fun.

 

Allan:

Looks like yet another owner is having problems with the brand. From the NYTimes. If the parent company can't make money off its own models, its really tough to justify large investments in niche markets where there is little return.

Cheers.

Volkswagen Is Bracing for a Downbeat 2004
By MARK LANDLER

FRANKFURT, March 9 - When Volkswagen's top leaders toured the Geneva Motor Show last week to inspect the wares of rival carmakers, the chief executive, Bernd Pischetsrieder, walked three steps behind his predecessor, Ferdinand Piëch, who is still chairman of the company's board.

On Tuesday, Mr. Pischetsrieder presided at Volkswagen's annual news conference at headquarters in Wolfsburg. But his downbeat message showed he was still grappling with the legacy of a costly expansion engineered by the influential Mr. Piëch, who ran VW from 1993 to 2002.

Volkswagen said that it would eliminate 5,000 jobs as part of a broad cost-cutting plan to counter eroding profits and the unfavorable effects of the rising euro.

Sales at VW, Europe's largest carmaker, are off to a dismal start this year, even for the new edition of its perennial best seller, the Golf.

"Operating profit for the first quarter of 2004 will be lousy, to put it very clearly, even compared with last year," Mr. Pischetsrieder said. "January 2004 was the weakest month in many years."

As part of a plan called ForMotion, Volkswagen said that it would double its cost-cutting target to 4 billion euros ($4.96 billion) by 2005. That will mean reducing its payroll of 142,800 workers by 3.5 percent, mostly through offers of early retirement. It will not lay off any employees in Germany.

Volkswagen said many of its troubles came from the rise of the euro against the dollar, which has hurt its sales in the United States and other dollar-pegged markets. But VW brought some of that pain on itself by failing to hedge its currency exposure until long after other German carmakers had done so.

Now, the company said that it had hedged 70 percent of its currency risk for this year. It also plans to increase production in non-euro countries, like Brazil and Mexico, where it has assembly plants.

Mr. Pischetsrieder said that he did not expect to see his worst-case outcome, which he described as a euro trading above $1.30 (it now trades at $1.24), a chronically stagnant market and plunging car prices. "But we must be prepared for that," he said.

Some of Volkswagen's troubles stem from Mr. Piëch's ambitious foray into the rarefied end of the market: the Phaeton luxury sedan, designed to compete with BMW and Mercedes-Benz, has fizzled. Also, Volkswagen has poured money into boutique acquisitions like Bentley and Bugatti.

Volkswagen executives maintain that these luxury sidelines add luster to its overall brand image. But it is not clear that the strategy has worked, given that VW has so far struggled in its effort to demand a premium price for the fifth generation of its most popular car, the Golf.

Europeans have balked at buying a Golf, which, with a midsize engine and a few options, can cost 25,000 euros ($31,000). Volkswagen is now offering free air-conditioning - opening the door to the kind of sales promotions that have sapped the profits of American carmakers.

"It's way too expensive," said Rudiger Koch, a Volkswagen dealer in Oberursel, a suburb of Frankfurt. "If you go back three years, you could get an Audi A4 or a BMW 3-series for that price."

Mr. Koch said VW should have invested the money it used to build the Phaeton in other smaller models. He worries that the redesigned version of the mid-size Passat, due next year, will also be expensive.

Volkswagen still hopes to sell 600,000 Golfs a year. But it faces stiff competition from the Opel Astra, a cheaper compact that has just had an overhaul. Opel, a unit of General Motors, has an unexpectedly strong 30,000 orders for the car, which is to go on sale later this month.

Perhaps the biggest long-term threat to Volkswagen is its eroding performance in customer satisfaction surveys. In its just-released reliability rankings, Consumer Reports placed VW a little below average among new cars. But among those five years old, it ranked last.

Among the problems the magazine cited were faulty electrical systems and ignition coils. The only VW model it still recommends is the Passat. VW insists it has improved its quality standards.

China, however, remains a bright spot for Volkswagen. The company sold almost 700,000 cars there last year, and maintained its No. 1 position in what is its only rapidly growing big market. Mr. Pischetsrieder said VW had invested 5.3 billion euros ($6.58 billion), and was prepared to spend more.

Even there, however, analysts see risk. With foreign carmakers flooding into the market, China is likely to become glutted.

"Volkswagen has dominated this market for a long time," said Graeme Maxton, an analyst at Autopolis, an automotive consulting firm in London. "The only way for them to go is down."

In his remarks on Tuesday, Mr. Pischetsrieder was anything but casual about the challenges facing Volkswagen. Given the weakness of the market, he said it would be an "ambitious" target for the company to match its 2003 operating profit of 2.5 billion euros this year.

In addition to cutting its payroll, Volkswagen said that it would slice manufacturing and product costs, make its sales unit more efficient, squeeze more out of its marketing budget, and trim other overhead costs - a process Mr. Pischetsrieder described as "thrifty housekeeping."

Some analysts noted that Volkswagen stopped short of layoffs - a step that most financially straitened carmakers take. But with the government of the state of Lower Saxony being an influential shareholder in VW, an assembly plant shutdown could have political consequences.

"The company appears to have a grip on its problems," said Thomas Aney, an auto analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in Frankfurt. "We'd like to see more details on how they're going to tackle these problems."

For all the talk of cutting costs, Mr. Pischetsrieder showed no signs of scaling back his predecessor's ambitions for Volkswagen to compete in virtually every product category. With new models like the Audi A6, the Seat Altea, and the Skoda Octavia, it will cover 85 percent of the auto market.

 

Sounds like sour grapes from the Larousse pits.. what do you think David Hobbes?

 

As long as he brakes for small animals, he's okay by me...

 

You're going to love this shot, Allen. haha, why am I making it so easy for you?

 

Actually, the Enzo and CS are definitely lapping the Gallardo

 

All the makingd for a good MasterCard commercial.