Kilcrohane's view of the Automotive Industry and Global Economy

[Betty Swollocks]

thanks to its "world-leading economic recovery", the UK now has the highest diesel price in Europe, if one excludes the non-EU and fossil fuel taxing to death Norway.

Typical @Kilcrohane. Only tells part of the story.

Have you considered the different methods of taxing? For example, in Holland diesel is much cheaper than the UK because they apply less tax to the fuel BUT they apply a much higher rate to road tax. How does €2,000 per year for road tax in Holland sound for a diesel SUV? In the UK the road tax is a few hundred Pounds for the year for the same car. You see I live in The Netherlands but I'm British and travel to the UK multiple times per month. Given the choice as to where I would pay to run a car, it would be the UK without even giving it a second thought. But I can't do that. On top of the road tax in The Netherlands you also have a BPM "luxury tax". €10,000 for an M135i. €13,000 for the new BMW M4. That's on TOP of the usual taxes such as VAT, which is 21% compared with the UK at 20%.

As per usual, you are very one sided when you present your information and don't fully understand the data you use.

How about petrol prices? The UK compares favourably with many European countries.

not only by the grossly overvalued pound

The above graph is slightly out of date, with the British pound rising so fast of late. Right now a litre of diesel in UK is £1.37 on average, and the pound is now at £1:€1.22, making a litre just over €1.67 equivalent, or 27 cents more than the European average and over 35 cents more compared to just over the Channel in France for instance.

Again, some of the countries with low diesel prices just choose to apply the tax on the road tax rather than the fuel itself! You're completely clueless!

And the Pound ISN'T rising so fast of late. It's been pretty stable for the last six months. I know because I constantly move Euros and Pounds between Europe and the UK! And it's not "grossly" overvalued! I generally wait to buy many things I need until I'm in the UK because it's cheaper there! That is NOT overvalued! Remember when the Euro was 1.60 to the Pound? I do!!


The more I read this crap you write the more I think you're a clueless teenager copying stuff off the internet, but with an amazing command of the English language!

 

[ACE]

Typical @Kilcrohane.
You're completely clueless!

Indeed. He obviously hasn't even looked at graphs of GBP vs EUR or UK Diesel prices before copying and pasting that crap here.

 

[Monster]

Typical
I know because I constantly move Euros and Pounds between Europe and the UK!

Apparently not in his universe.....

 

[Betty Swollocks]

^

I don't expect a response. As usual he'll just ignore what I've said and then just post more drivel.

I don't even know what the point of his posts are anyway? Even if he was correct, what are we supposed to be taking from his post? What are we supposed to then discuss? The UK Pound is over valued? And? Fuel prices are high in the UK? And?

 

[Kilcrohane]

Germany salutes the house-prices-buoyed British economy:

'Confident motorists drive new car registrations up(8.2%) in April'​

http://www.smmt.co.uk/2014/05/april-new-car-registrations-2014/

sounds great news for UK, right? Maybe not:

Audi +19.7%, market share 7.3%
BMW +18.3%, mkt share 5.9%
Mercedes-Benz +14.5%(smaller due to changeover to new C-Class in June), mkt share 4.9%

- approaching one-fifth of the whole UK new car market now goes to Germany's premium makers. No wonder the Germans refer to the UK as 'The Promised Land'.

Without British buyers, and their current huge consumption binge buoyed up by ~10% annual gains in their house price and constant media talk of a record economic recovery, Germany would itself be slipping back into recession, like the U.S., with factory orders having been down by a whopping 2.8% in March, driven by the collapse in demand from the E.U., the Eurozone in particular(-9.4%!):

https://www.destatis.de/DE/PresseSe...ssionid=4E729256E8202F850C235F78FEA62603.cae2

So once again, gawd bless the Great British Consumer, and may his/her Buy-to-Let house investment increase in price by a minimum of 15% each year until forever, or next year, or this autumn, when the BoE is forced to rein in BTL mortgage lending.

 

[KiwiRob]

I wonder if the German manufacturers can still be considered premium when they are selling more vehicles than some supposed mainstream manufacturers. For example I wouldn't consider anything below 5 series, A6, E class as premium, they are as common as muck and more tootle around with 1.6 & 2.0 diesels, hardly premium motoring is it?

 

[EnI]

And here we go again ... what is premium after all ... What's the definition of premium? What qualifies for premium? What defines premium? Volume? Materials? Tech? Performance? Badge? Price?

 

[Betty Swollocks]

And here we go again ... what is premium after all ?

Marketing.

 

[KiwiRob]

And here we go again ... what is premium after all ... What's the definition of premium? What qualifies for premium? What defines premium? Volume? Materials? Tech? Performance? Badge? Price?

I don't think a 314D can be considered premium, but BMW think it it.

 

[ACE]

I don't think a 314D can be considered premium, but BMW think it it.

I don't think BMW make a 314D, let alone consider it premium.

 

[KiwiRob]

Sorry I ment 316D.

 

[chonkoa]

oops!: 'Pound hits four-year high as US economy 'freezes'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...its-four-year-high-as-US-economy-freezes.html

British pound hit $1.69 today, off the back of 3.2% annualised increase in UK GDP and stagnation in the US economy.

Yesterday I said the pound would reach $1.80 by year-end if the UK continues pumping out the propaganda about its miracle economy. This level now looks conservative.

$1.80 and higher would mean absolute disaster for UK exporters, and would be a re-run of the late 1980s disaster, caused by Chancellor Lawson's boom, which claimed Jaguar Cars, and the huge run up in the pound from 2003-7, which saw a further massive shakeout of UK manufacturing, under Chancellor Gordon Brown.

The UK, and its exporters, like JLR in particular, are being hoist by their own petard.

Stagnation of US economy?
What are you talking about?

 

[chonkoa]

- er, but the dollar is down - do keep up. Thanks to Global Warming the US economy froze in Q1, meaning the US Fed will have to 'taper the Taper', whatever it says now. "QE for Bankers" has caused the US economy to become a Third World economy of 0.01% Super Rich and a huge welfare dependent underclass, and QE to infinity is the only cure on offer, until full dollar collapse.

The ruble is connected to that small thing of Ukraine, nothing to do with Russia's real economy. The possibilty of WW3 tends to take precedence over interest rates and such like - do keep up.

The yuan is being deliberately held down at the moment by the PBOC, to help China's massive export sector. Its real value is way above the current level. Like Japan and its attempt to kickstart its economy by massive money printing and devaluation of the yen, the Chinese will have to let the yuan go higher, as imported inflation through a devalued yuan will affect the population mass, and the Chinese, unlike Americans and Britons, are not averse to rioting when the price of staples rise.

It seems you are failing to understand the principle of QE. Part of the QE is to devalue to the dollar by injecting liquidity into the system.

Prior to Ukrainian crisis, the Russian was expected to grow by less than 0.5% this year.

 

[chonkoa]

Reading @Kilcrohane's sixth-form understanding of politics and cod-economics, I'm starting to believe he's not an ex-JLR employee, but is in fact head of fiscal policy of a major political party.

You mean a major political party that make up their own facts.

 

[Kilcrohane]

Peak bubble? The two 'leading' debt-based Ponzi economies rolling over? 2008 deja-vu, all over again?:

Tesla

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-...l-s-sales-decline-2012-explained-three-charts

UK(read London) House Prices

http://portal.ransquawk.com/headlin...es-apr-m-m-0-2-vs-exp-0-9-prev-1-1-08-05-2014

politicians/bankers' solution: more QE.

 

[KiwiRob]

this titbit will probaly rip your undies, flies in the face of all your doom and gloom.

UK car production rose by 21.3 per cent in April compared to the same month in 2013. It is the biggest monthly rise in domestic car making since July 2012. A total of 133,437 vehicles were built in April, bringing the year-to-date total to 538,240. SMMT chief executive Mike Hawes said: "New model introductions are fuelling growth, while Europe – which currently accounts for around half of exports – is now seeing an upturn in demand".

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/a...osh-new-hyundai-uk-production-noisy-vw-amarok

 

[Betty Swollocks]

@Kilcrohane, 29th April 2014.

Compare that to makers of vehicles in the UK, exporting to Japan and elsewhere with a 'strong' pound. The rising pound is killing UK-based makers.

The cost of this artificial, consumption and imports-driven economic recovery will be borne on the backs of the productive, exporting sector of the British economy.

And today.....

"UK car production rose by 21.3 per cent in April compared to the same month in 2013. It is the biggest monthly rise in domestic car making since July 2012. A total of 133,437 vehicles were built in April, bringing the year-to-date total to 538,240. SMMT chief executive Mike Hawes said: "New model introductions are fuelling growth, while Europe – which currently accounts for around half of exports – is now seeing an upturn in demand".


You've got to hand it to @Kilcrohane. He's like Mystic Meg!

 

[Kilcrohane]

"UK Car Production rose" - yep, well done, Britischers!, the launch of the the 3rd gen. BMW MINI at BMW's Oxford plant is almost the entire reason for this one-fifth jump in April, compared to April 2013, coinciding with the ramp up to full production speed of the new range of around 1,000 units/day.

So yes, well done to Munich HQ'd BMW keeping the "UK Car Industry" with Rolls Royce, Hams Hall and Swindon almost singlehandedly afloat . Except that they are also equally busily working on getting their Dutch* plant(the old DAF factory) ready for MINI production, and are planning to build MINIs in Mexico for the NAFTA region, so in the medium term the 'British-made MINI' could easily go the way of the once 'British-made Ford Transit', and suchlike.

You folk also forgot to mention SMMT reporting that commercial vehicle production in the UK collapsed again in April, and is barely now one-third of what it was six years ago; or that the number of engines made in the UK by the likes of Ford, Toyota and BMW are down year to date, and by around 5% compared to 2012 YTD, but don't stop crowing about all those German-owned MINIs being made in the UK, at least for now, until the Quandts* find a way to shift it all to Mexico/lower cost Europe.

http://www.smmt.co.uk/2014/05/cv-manufacturing-april-2014/
http://www.smmt.co.uk/2014/05/engine-manufacturing-april-2014/

* the Quandt family originated in Holland, Amsterdam I think. Given that and their BMW AG seeking profit lately above all, I could easily imagine the pull of cheaper - £1:€1.23 and Draghi about to print trillions of euros - higher quality Dutch production of the MINI eventually overcoming the political pain from the UK from losing "The Home of the MINI' permanently.

PS oh yeah, one last point - that you'd never hear from the British media - this whole original Mini/MINI being/should be as British as bulldogs and Churchill thing, it's BS. Issigonis came to be in England, working for Austin through happenstance. Issigonis is more German than British.

His mother was German, and that's why Bernd Pischetsrieder, former BMW AG boss and now on the supervisory board of Daimler AG, is related to Issigonis. His father was Greek, but came under British jurisdiction after Turkey lost in WWI. And besides, if the Mini was as British as Winston Churchill, his mother was an American.

 

[KiwiRob]

"
* the Quandt family originated in Holland, Amsterdam I think.

Do some research why don't you. Günther Quandt who started the ball rooling was born in Germany, his family settled in Pritzwalk in the 1600's, I doubt that makes them Dutch?

"
PS oh yeah, one last point - that you'd never hear from the British media - this whole original Mini/MINI being/should be as British as bulldogs and Churchill thing, it's BS. Issigonis came to be in England, working for Austin through happenstance. Issigonis is more German than British.

Sir Alexander Arnold Constantine Issigonis, very German sounding. It just so happened that he was a British citizen from birth, I say that qualifies him as being pretty British if you ask me. Before you put thought to print you should make sure what you are writing is factually correct.

Sir Alexander Arnold Constantine Issigonis was born into the Greek community of Smyrna (now İzmir, Turkey) in the Ottoman Empire. His grandfather Demosthenis Issigonis migrated to Smyrna from Paros in the 1830s and through the work he did for the British-built Smyrna-Aydın Railway, in the engineering works that he had established, had managed to acquire British nationality. Demosthenis's son (Alec's father) Constantine Issigonis (Κωνσταντίνος Ισηγόνης), was born, with British nationality, in Smyrna in 1872. Constantine studied in England, and later, passed his love of all things English on to his son. Alec's mother, Hulda Prokopp, could trace her origins back to Württemberg (now part of Germany). It was through his mother's kinships that Issigonis was a first cousin once removed to BMW (and more briefly Volkswagen) director Bernd Pischetsrieder.

Because Alec and his parents were British subjects, they were evacuated to Malta by British Royal Marines in September 1922, ahead of the Great Fire of Smyrna and the Turkish re-possession of Smyrna at the end of the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922). Following the death of his father in 1922, Alec and his mother moved to the UK in 1923. Alec studied engineering at Battersea Polytechnic in London. He failed his mathematics exams three times and subsequently called pure mathematics 'the enemy of every creative genius'. After Battersea Polytechnic, Alec decided to enter the University of London External Programme to complete his university education.

 

[Kilcrohane]

^ you're obfuscating. You and and Swollocks crowed about the increase in UK car production in April - remember?

I explained it was due to the ramp up of production of the 3rd gen MINI and overbuild for launch stocks. I also pointed out that UK commercial vehicle production has utterly collapsed - down over 60% in 6 yrs - and UK engine production is flat or falling, due to things like Toyota buying BMW diesel engines instead of making their own in Deeside, and Ford, the by far biggest UK engine maker, still suffering with weak demand in Europe, and hence throttling production back in Dagenham and Bridgend, or indeed moving engine production to cheaper Romania.

The Quandts fortune was based on rope making in Amsterdam, and more recently on making U-Boat batteries. There is definitely a Dutch link in the Quandts.

As to Issigonis not being German, total poppycock. Even your Wikipedia link shows his mother was German, a Swabian. Just because his grandfather and father got their employment from working for the Brits in their empire does not make Issigonis British; he was Greek-German. Indeed, in many cultures it is the maternal line, for instance in Judaism, that determines the the children's bloodline and identity, so if anything Issigonis was more German.

Like Issigonis I too had a grandfather who worked/made a living for/from the British empire. He was a sergeant in the Royal Irish Constabulary, who fought on the wrong side, seeing over 20 of his fellow RIC men die in the War of Independence, and basically banished out of Ireland after the war, but till the day he died, he, and his children, were and remain 100% Irish, and not British, even though he could have applied technically for British nationality, for an easier life. Issigonis was not British. Stop pretending otherwise. His genius came from his Greek and German genes.

And lastly, you people crowing about the rise in UK car production need to temper that enthusiasm with the understanding that the BMW contract agreement with VDL Nedcar for use of the old DAF factory is probably just the start of the move away of production from high-cost, low-quality MINI Oxford.

Just down the road, 15 kms or so, from the VDL Nedcar plant in Born is the now in the process of closing Ford Genk plant, with up to 5,000 now surplus, reasonably skilled in car assembly workers, who can be used as a pool of relatively cheap labour for the expected quick ramp up in production volumes for the now starting MINI contract, especially with the Countryman model joining from next year.

Plus, Born is far far more advantageous than Cowley in Oxford for transport and logistics. Thanks to the Queen Juilana Canal alongside, the Born plant has direct access to the main port of Rotterdam, for delivery of finished cars to the world, and bulk import of components, plus it will not suffer the now huge handicap of out of control house prices, which is making it completely unaffordable for track workers at Cowley to live near the plant.