The BMW UUC Digest Volume 3 : Issue 427 : "text" Format Messages in this Issue: Re: Aston Martin sold (OT) Re: Run Flat tires Re: Run Flat tires Re: Run Flat tires Re: Run Flat tires Re: <E36> engine quitting problem Re: Aston Martin profitability - or not (OT) Re: Run Flat tires <E36> More window questions Re: Run Flat tires <OT> Ferman BMW, Palm Harbor
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 10:23:31 -0500 From: "Roberts, Clarence H CIV USA" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Ben Keyes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <bmwuucdigest@uucdigest.com> Subject: Re: Aston Martin sold (OT) Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > What we are seeing is current management, and economics, tidying up > the problems caused by the super egos of previous management. if you mean Jac Nasser, then perhaps some of it falls at his feet, but there were years & years & years of chances to make Jag work which haven't turned out so well, both before & after his time. the rest of our problems have very little to do with egos, in fact had there been a few strong egos able to make decisions (the layers of mgmt & who can & can't approve what are legendary & pathetic) there might not have been some of the weak product decisions and lack of foresight which have caused problems. We can agree that the American car companies have helped their competitors tremendously by their inaction. That could be the topic of numerous case studies alone. However, you are taking an overall observation and restricting it to a specific instance. No doubt Nasser is responsible for a lot of what is wrong at Ford but this is a systemic problem much wider than Ford. Piech's reign at VW continues to boil and bubble. Chrysler and a lot of other companies were merged/bought up by DCX's previous leader. Chrysler is not the first to go, they have been unloading them for some time. BMW management grabbed up Rover to take it away from Honda who was providing Rover with product at the time. Remember the Sterling? Too bad Honda could not transfer the idea of quality control. But then Mercedes has not had much luck at that either. The driving force behind Lotus' acquisition was Suharto's son who controlled Proton at the time. The jury is still out on what will happen with TVR. So, I plead my argument again, egos are a central part of what is happening. Maybe what we are seeing is a flaw of western style corporate management. Honda had the good sense to back off from competing very aggressively with BMW for Rover. And Toyota probably has enough loose cash lying around to buy any company they want. But they don't bother, they compete in the market place and grow internally. But then Nissan had to be saved - by a French car company that sent in a one-man show. Bottom line: If it works out you may get credit; if it fails you most certainly will get blamed. and yes, I made up the $10k (or $20k) number for profits for A-M but if you look at whatever Porsche claims to make per vehicle, it's not too hard to imagine those margins on their very high sticker prices. Ben My guess is the number is a lot higher, more like $50k or greater for the new owners. With all the discussion of overhead the timeline has been ignored. The new owners only concern is their investment and future unit costs to produce; Ford has eaten the development costs, provided a new factory, and probably is providing low cost parts and support to insure success. Who wouldn't want to take over such a gold mine? Sort of like your rich uncle gave you a going concern to play with. ________________________________________________________________________ __ In memory of Michel Potheau - friend, enthusiast, founder of the BMW CCA. UUC Motorwerks - BMW Performance Fine-tuning and home of the Ultimate Short Shifter - accept no substitutes! 908-874-9092 . http://www.uucmotorwerks.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 12:00:09 -0400 From: "Gary Derian" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Tammer Farid" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <bmwuucdigest@uucdigest.com> Subject: Re: Run Flat tires Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> A tire that has been inflated for 20 years isn't much of a spare. You will be lucky to get to the next exit with that. Gary Derian > -tammer > E28 w/ full-size spare--original TRX even! > ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 12:28:55 -0400 From: "Fuerst, Chris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <bmwuucdigest@uucdigest.com> Subject: Re: Run Flat tires Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Hell, I drive on 20 YO tires. 1st - unsafe at any speed -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gary Derian Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 12:00 PM To: Tammer Farid; bmwuucdigest@uucdigest.com Subject: Re: [UUC] Run Flat tires A tire that has been inflated for 20 years isn't much of a spare. You will be lucky to get to the next exit with that. Gary Derian ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 09:32:23 -0700 From: Kazuto Okayasu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <bmwuucdigest@uucdigest.com> Subject: Re: Run Flat tires Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> At 09:00 AM 3/15/2007, Gary Derian wrote: Yeah. The TRX spare that came in my M6 has a 90s datecode, but it looked sufficiently scary that the car carries a donut out of my E46. I've BTDT with a 12-year-old spare while in college, and that wasn't a good experience. >A tire that has been inflated for 20 years isn't much of a >spare. You will be lucky to get to the next exit with that. >Gary Derian > >>-tammer >>E28 w/ full-size spare--original TRX even! > >Search the ARCHIVES:http://www.mail-archive.com/bmwuucdigest@uucdigest.com > > >__________________________________________________________________________ >In memory of Michel Potheau - friend, enthusiast, founder of the BMW CCA. > >UUC Motorwerks - BMW Performance Fine-tuning and home of the Ultimate >Short Shifter - accept no substitutes! >908-874-9092 . http://www.uucmotorwerks.com Kazuto Okayasu Manager, Desktop Support Services Administrative Computing Services, University of California, Irvine [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 10:44:29 -0700 (PDT) From: Tammer Farid <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: bmwuucdigest@uucdigest.com Subject: Re: Run Flat tires Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> That's why, in summer at least, I just keep one of the mounted snows in the trunk. -tammer --- Gary Derian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > A tire that has been inflated for 20 years isn't much of > a spare. You will > be lucky to get to the next exit with that. > Gary Derian > > > -tammer > > E28 w/ full-size spare--original TRX even! > > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ Sucker-punch spam with award-winning protection. Try the free Yahoo! Mail Beta. http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/features_spam.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 12:03:42 -0400 From: "Gary Derian" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "John Bunda" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <bmwuucdigest@uucdigest.com> Subject: Re: <E36> engine quitting problem Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> My first guess would be the crankshaft sensor. Gary Derian >A friend with a '98 328ic is having a problem with her E36 328ic with 79k >miles. The engine runs fine, it just dies and won't restart for a while. >It will later restart, run fine for 10-20 minutes (or longer), then die >again. Her shop diagnosed a bad ICV, which was replaced, but the problem >remains. Me, I suspect a bad fuel pump relay, but that is from my >experience with E30s. Is there a common failure like this on these cars? >Thanks for any help. > > John > 89 M3 > 03 M3 > > > Search the ARCHIVES:http://www.mail-archive.com/bmwuucdigest@uucdigest.com > > > __________________________________________________________________________ > In memory of Michel Potheau - friend, enthusiast, founder of the BMW CCA. > > UUC Motorwerks - BMW Performance Fine-tuning and home of the Ultimate > Short Shifter - accept no substitutes! > 908-874-9092 . http://www.uucmotorwerks.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 12:14:45 -0400 From: "Ben Keyes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: "BMW List" <bmwuucdigest@uucdigest.com> Subject: Re: Aston Martin profitability - or not (OT) Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Dennis wrote: > > Ay, there's the rub. Developing a new platform takes a lot of money. and Ford paid for all that already. therefore the new owners don't have to pay it again - at least until they decide their product line is too long in the tooth, which may not happen for quite a while, by one analogy I could imagine, you can only make a knife so sharp - if the basic platform is sound (all indications are that it is) they can dress it up with new sheet metal or whatever they want for quite some time. > investment needs to be amortized over the course of a model run. Ideally, a > manufacturer can amortize that platform over multiple models (X5 = 5 series > = 6 series, Mondeo = X-type, Tahoe = Silverado = Denali = Suburban = > Escalade). Thus it is an accounting issue. Let's say you spent $300mm on > development costs. How much of that cost do you attribute to the first car > that rolls out of your factory? $300mm? $30mm? $3mm? $300k? $30k? $3k? > Do you spread it over your anticipated sales over the life of the model? yes. you spread it out over the cycle life of the program. in my back of envelope comparison it goes something like this : GM or Ford spend $2B to do a major truck program, as the new GM pick-ups recently introduced or the new Super Duty. that includes all the engineering headcount, the plant updates, the tooling for suppliers, the launch costs, etc. then you spread that cost out over the life of the program, allocating to each vehicle some share of it. in the case of the big GM program it's probably larger than $2B (they often throw out figures in the press relative to the massiveness of a new program), in the case of the Super Duty program it might be less (I have the numbers here at my desk but I'm not sharing them obviously) but you get the idea. > How accurate do you think Aston's sales projections are/were when rolling > out the DB9 - projections for the DB9, the Vantage, the DBS, over the next > 5-7 years? It could be anything that the AM finance guys wanted. seems that it would be based on their perception of the market, macro economic factors, regulatory changes, market growth in new areas of the world, yada^3. just like any other business would forecast future situations. the people who wanted to buy the company would have been given full access to the company's projections & whatnot as part of the due diligence/offer process & they either think they were good or bad & bid accordingly. there were either a lot of people who wanted a vanity project & ignored the actual financials of the company or the business equation offered was a compelling one. or a combination of the two. > All of which goes to the point that using MANUFACTURING profitability to > ascertain OVERALL profitability is a foolish game, Ben. never said I was comparing the cost of a screwing together a basket of parts with the ultimate profitability of the company. and yes I've been on the program side of counting the individual beans in terms of the basket of parts, now I work on the engineering side of the pile of beans. > If that's so, and if you don't know what the overall investment and > amortization is for AM's R&D (which you don't, because Ford has never > disclosed it), then why did you state that AM was making $10k-$20k per > vehicle? because I made up a number and I still think it's within the realm of reason. I could probably find out, tho it's probably buried somewhere within the financials of PAG & I don't have any good contacts there. > Sure, on paper all of that makes sense. But what's true for a simple back > of the envelope math is not necessarily true in the specific case of Aston > Martin, Ben. Which is what I've (foolishly) been trying to point out all > along. neither one of us can prove anything, you're just saying "I think your estimate is too high" and I'm saying "here's how I came up with my estimate, I don't really care if you think it's high or low." > By your math, Jaguar would be profitable. By your math, Lamborghini would > be profitable. By your math, Rolls Royce would be profitable. By your > math, Maybach would be profitable. By your math, Bugatti would be > profitable. nah, I wouldn't consider any of them profitable since they've got really low volumes (except Jag who tried to grow beyond their britches and invested accordingly then ended up standing around wondering where all their forecasted sales went), are still working off of new-ish platforms (tho the Maybach is just an overgrown S-class obviously but it's still got lots of unique parts required) or insane technological parameters (Bug) or a new factory and a limited market (RR). I note that you didn't include Bentley in that list - by many accounts they're making VW money because they've got high (relative) volumes, good margins, shared technology (tho one can argue that on an enterprise level the complete failure of the VW Phaeton platform-mate of the Bentley products and the historical so-so showing of the A8 probably balance out things a good bit) and an (apparently) larger market than they initially forecasted. > By your math, hell, CHRYSLER and FORD would be profitable. no, they're not & they won't be. we have too many fixed costs (people, health care, retirees, etc), inefficient development processes (too many people, too many prototype vehicles), poor decision making (cars no one wants to buy because they're not interesting - NOT because they're currently unreliable or poorly built to a large degree), entire brands with structure to support which aren't viable on their own & lack identity, > Simply demonstrating that R&D costs, amortized over the expected lifetime > production of a vehicle line, constitutes only a percentage of that > vehicle's selling price is both simplistic and misleading. Is it true? Of > course it's true. But that leaves out everything else. yep - all that stuff I mentioned above as to why Ford, GM, Chrysler, Fiat and others aren't or haven't been profitable. > ***** Bottom line - is Aston Martin profitable, on a stand-alone basis? I > don't know. It could be. It could be significantly profitable. But it's > wrong to arrive at that conclusion because you've arbitrarily concluded that > each car sold is making "profits" of $10k-$20k a year. sure is, but people far smarter than us, with access to all the data involved decided to make the decision to spend almost $1B on it, so they very likely didn't just do it for the hell of it. Ben ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 12:08:47 -0500 From: "Bill Mitchell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <bmwuucdigest@uucdigest.com> Subject: Re: Run Flat tires Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I'm sure run-flats have their uses, and for the car-makers a big part of that is less weight since no spare is provided. And as time goes on and more are in the pipeline, the cost will come down some, but I doubt they will ever be cost competative with regular tires. For some people they make good sense, but I cannot ever see me buying into them, I can change my own tires (as well as oil, clutch, brakes, transmission, shocks, etc.) so I'm never in a situation where I cannot put a spare on, and the biggest objection I have is the non-repairability of run-flats. I can see certain people going through several new tires a year simply because of punctures, and that is totally wasteful in every way imaginable. Like many other things (i-Drive for one), BMW has answered a question that was not asked. Bill M. > > the first generation of them were pretty harsh/heavy/etc but there has > been lots of work to reduce that problem. it was noted that BMW didn't > design the full suspension on the E60 around them & it suffered in it's > initial incarnation due to it, but subsequent versions have improved to > the degree that there's little difference between the RF equipped cars & > normal ones. the MCS being small, tightly suspended & with relatively > low profile tires would tend to execerbate the harshness of RFs. I > actually enjoyed driving my wife's more with the 15" winter tires on > it (OE phone dials w/175s or whatever they are) than with 16s or 17s. > >> Besides, runflats even with tire pressure sensors, cannot help if you >> have a catastrophic flat, like say putting a 2" rock into the tire (which >> happened with the 325 a few months after getting her)... > > yep, and for most people that's what roadside assistance & cell phones are > for. if you live out of range of cell phones or frequently travel in > places like > that making accomodations is a good plan, otherwise I don't worry about > it. > ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 11:54:36 -0700 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: bmwuucdigest@uucdigest.com Subject: <E36> More window questions Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> OK, I didn't get much feedback on this issue so I'll try a different route. 1. I believe that the door jamb switch is working correctly, because the dome light works correctly when I activate the switch (either with the door or by fooling it and doing it manually). 2. The "one touch" open and close work on the errant window (passenger side). 3. I tried the reset as per Bentley and also no change. So I'm left with two possible areas of investigation. 1. Bad ZKE module. 2. Bad Hall sensor or magnet in wrong position on motor shaft. So here're my questions: 1. Where's the ZKE module? 2. (a repeat) what is the correct position of the magnet on the "resistance" sensor on the motor shaft (toward the hinge or back toward the rear of the car on the passenger side (M3 coupe))? 3. The windows have adjustable, vertical stops at the ends of the window support brackets. Do these work in conjunction with additional microswitches or with the "resistance" sensor to determine the stopping point? In other words they're just mechanical stops and the "resistance" sensor just notices the lengthening of the pulses and takes appropriate action through the ZKE. Thanks, Kevin E36 M3, 1999 ---------------------------------------------------------------- This e-mail communication is confidential and is intended only for the individual(s) or entity named above and others who have been specifically authorized to receive it. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not read, copy, use or disclose the contents of this communication to others. Please notify the sender that you have received this e-mail in error by replying to the e-mail. Please then delete the e-mail and any copies of it. Thank you. ---------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 16:02:02 +0000 (UTC) From: "Christopher Anrig" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: bmwuucdigest@uucdigest.com Subject: Re: Run Flat tires Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> One of my biggest complaint is that RFs just don't communicate information to the driver very well. I don't think they translate a lot of feel via the suspension, seat and steering wheel. I rely on that information all the time. Chris > Some can and some can't. The Michelin PAX system has a unique rim, but > others fit on more or less standard rims. > Gary Derian > > >> 4. Takes a special wheel, thus you cannot mount regular tires on > >> run-flat wheels. > > > > Search the ARCHIVES:http://www.mail-archive.com/bmwuucdigest@uucdigest.com > > > __________________________________________________________________________ > In memory of Michel Potheau - friend, enthusiast, founder of the BMW CCA. > > UUC Motorwerks - BMW Performance Fine-tuning and home of the Ultimate > Short Shifter - accept no substitutes! > 908-874-9092 . http://www.uucmotorwerks.com > ----- End Original Message ----- ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2007 08:52:09 -0500 (CDT) From: "Kevin Jay (Mr.Fabulous)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: bmwuucdigest@uucdigest.com Subject: <OT> Ferman BMW, Palm Harbor Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Anybody got any service experience (good or bad) with Ferman BMW in Palm Harbor, Fl... please write me off-list. - Kevin Jay '96 328is, red/tan, 99K, usual H&R/Bilstein setup, a few M3 parts too '02 X5 3.0, white/tan, 60K, bone stock ------------------------------ End of [bmwuucdigest] digest(11 messages) **********
