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Crunch watch Mar 09: the auto industry in crisis

By Ben Pulman and Tim Pollard Motor Industry 31 March 2009 13:48 Tuesday 31 March 2009• Porsche said that its earnings before tax rose to €7.3 billion in the six months to the end of January – including a €6.8bn windfall from its VW share options (Financial Times)• Fritz Henderson, GM's president and chief operating officer, will step up to replace Rick Wagoner, who was ousted on Sunday as CEO of General Motors (Financial Times)• President Obama is essentially CEO-in-chief of GM – despite not owning a single cent of stock, says Detroit News commentator (Detroit News)• German chancellor Angela Merkel gives assurances that any would-be investors in GM's European arm will be given state support. Opel is asking for €3.3 billion in aid – and up to 25,000 jobs in Germany depend on it, with up to 300,000 jobs across Europe including Saab and Vauxhall (BBC News)Monday 30 March 2009• General Motors' chief executive Rick Wagoner has been ordered to resign by US president Barack Obama with immediate effect. It's part of Obama's administration's critique of GM and Chrysler's turnaround plans – he's understood to be unhappy with the plans submitted (BBC News)• New GM non-executive chairman Kent Kresa has admitted that at the company's next general meeting it will have 'a majority of new directors' (General Motors)• Chrysler will receive US government aid for the next 30 days, but the Obama administration has said that if the company cannot secure a tie-up with the Fiat Group within that time period it will not receive any more money from the taxpayers and could go into liquidation.

Aston Martin to axe a third of jobs

Aston Martin today announced 600 potential redundancies. It is consulting with the unions to lose 300 permanent jobs and 300 temporary staff By Tim Pollard Motor Industry 01 December 2008 14:00 Aston Martin announced at 2.00pm today that it is to cut a third of its UK workforce in a response to a slump in sales. The company, based in Gaydon, Warwickshire, said it today launched a consultation with the unions to cut 300 permanent jobs and 300 temporary posts – out of a total of 1850 employees.

Back to basics for VW, says Walter de Silva

By Adam Towler Motor Industry 25 June 2008 13:01 It was an odd place for an inside line into what future Volkswagens will look like, but when head of VW Group design Walter de Silva invited CAR to the old Fiat Lingotto factory in Turin - now a conference and shopping centre – we could hardly say no. De Silva described VW as being immersed in a 'process of defining their design language' which could be read as ‘we’re still sucking our designer thumbs to see what happens’. Audi, De Silva said, had already been through that process and its design DNA was ‘understood by everyone in the company, right down to the smallest details'.