Daily, your time on the worldwide interweb probably means you get bugged by the odd pop-up ad and various offers of ‘free iPads’? Guilty as charged. But our pop-up this week is intended only to ensure you get a chance to tell us what you think of just-auto while the free month’s membership for all respondents and the draw for a new iPad 3 are both genuine so, please, do pile in and let us hear your views.
While there was some anti-Japanese niggle in China this week, leading to some speculation on how Japan would view future investment in a country where it does not have a proud history, most j-a readers were more interested in events closer to home here in Europe.
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General Motors held a meeting for Opel dealers to underscore its commitment to the brand, known as Vauxhall here in the UK, and the future of Ford’s Genk plant in Belgium, over which unions had been fretting after GM axed its Antwerp plant a couple of years ago, appeared to have been assured for at least eight years (normal Europe model cycle) with the Mondeo confirmed as continuing there when the new one, shared with the North American Fusion, goes into production next year, albeit six months later than expected. Even better was news replacements for the S-MAX and Galaxy MPV/minivan/people carrier twins would also be built there from 2014, with the caveat all this came from union, rather than automaker sources.
Normally, automakers are usually pretty keen to shout out about a new plant – as did Opel opening a new engine plant at an exisiting facility in Hungary this week – but I wonder if Ford’s reticence is due either to a final decision having not been quite signed off yet or because it still has some hard decisions to make in Europe and may possibly axe a plant somewhere else, like in beleagured Spain.
Unions were also in the news in Canada this week as the CAW struck a deal first with Ford and, just last night, with GM, averting a strike. Chrysler is playing hard-ball so next week should be interesting. These deals work much like south of the border with the UAW and the Detroit Three: one automaker is targeted to thrash out the broad outlines of a ‘pattern’ deal which is then agreed to by the other two with detail variations. The key point of the latest four-year pact in Canada is a two-tier pay structure, as in the US, but, though new hires will start off on less money they will gradually, over a decade, progress up to parity with the old hands.
Back in Europe, premium brands showed resistance to economic downturn in August sales and we had a close look at the looming capacity crunch.
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Have a good weekend, too.
Graeme Roberts, Deputy Editor, just-auto.com
