Archive for June, 2009

Billions approved to finance GM bailout

General Motors won approval Thursday to use up to $33.3 billion to pay for its bankruptcy, after making a few changes to settle technical objections.

The step marks another major milestone in GM’s dash through bankruptcy court, which it and President Obama’s auto industry task force hope to complete with the creation of a new, government-owned GM by the end of the month.

The financing was approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert Gerber in a matter of minutes after Harvey Miller, GM’s lead bankruptcy attorney, said the company had made some small changes to settle concerns of creditors and local governments.

About $30.1 billion of the money comes from the U.S. Treasury, with the additional money coming from the Canadian government.

The U.S. Treasury also added a clause that Gerber accepted stating it was legal for the government to pay for GM’s bankruptcy using money from the $700 billion financial industry bailout. That had been a legal objection raised unsuccessfully by Chrysler investors opposing its bankruptcy plan.

The $30.1 billion for GM from the federal government comes on top of $19.4 billion lent to GM to keep the automaker from collapse this year. The Treasury will own 60.8% of the new GM when it emerges from bankruptcy protection, a stake Obama administration officials have said they want to sell as quickly as possible.

Gerber also ruled that a group representing GM’s salaried retirees cannot form a formal committee to negotiate with the automaker.

Gerber said that because GM had the right to modify or terminate the retirees’ health care and life insurance benefits before they filed for bankruptcy protection, the retirees can’t challenge the automaker’s ability to do so now.

“While I do understand the importance of this to the retirees, I can’t grant the retirees rights that they don’t have outside of bankruptcy,” Gerber said in issuing his ruling.

As part of its restructuring plan, GM plans to continue to pay health care and life insurance benefits for its 122,000 salaried retirees and their surviving spouses, but those benefits are expected to be reduced and the retirees will be forced to shoulder a larger share of their health care costs.

Retired hourly workers whose benefits are dictated by contracts with unions like the United Auto Workers are not affected.

Also on Thursday, Gerber denied a request from an unofficial committee of people with asbestos-related claims against GM to appoint a “tort czar” that would oversee all future claims against the old GM, not just those related to asbestos.

The asbestos group had previously filed a motion requesting formal committee status, but told the court Thursday that it was no longer pursuing that. The group has one representative on the case’s unsecured creditors committee.

GM also defended the fees it’s paying investment adviser Evercore Partners to guide it through bankruptcy — but said it had negotiated a $1.5 million discount after complaints from federal officials.

The money GM will pay Evercore and turnaround experts Alix Partners was to be debated during the hearing Thursday, but Miller asked for a delay until July 2 for talks with federal officials.

U.S. officials had objected to GM’s proposed payments as “inordinately large,” saying the firms sought $40 million for 30 days of work on top of at least $85 million paid by GM to the companies before bankruptcy. The U.S. bankruptcy trustee and GM’s official creditors committee contend GM needed to provide more information to justify the payments.

In its reply filed Wednesday, GM said Evercore received $24.5 million in the months ahead of GM’s bankruptcy, not $46 million as the U.S. trustee had said. GM’s figure excludes $6 million paid to Evercore for its work in Delphi’s bankruptcy.

The trustee had said Evercore would be paid $17.6 million if GM’s sale closed as planned next month, as well as fees of $400,000 per month. GM said it estimated Evercore would now be due $14.8 million after Evercore had agreed to reduce a fee related to arranging GM’s bankruptcy financing from $2.5 million to $1 million.

GM also defended the hiring of both Evercore and Alix, saying Evercore was responsible for financial talks with the government and creditors while Alix helped oversee day-to-day operations.

Sourced via usatoday.com

An Expression of Joy with the New BMW Z4 Advert, Ad BMW Z4 Series

Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport review

The rising sun was flooding light into my bedroom at La Posta Vecchia, a former J Paul Getty home near Rome. The sky was cloudless, the morning chill off the Mediterranean already turning to a balmy warmth.

This was very good news because, to mark a century of Bugatti car making, I was about to drive the new, open-top, 253mph, £1.5 million Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport for several hours – and I didn’t fancy wearing a scarf. Scarves and Bugattis really don’t mix, as Isadora Duncan discovered – very briefly – on September 14, 1927.

At the age of 50, the founder of modern dance was still something of a fast, free-loving lady, who also appreciated fast cars; and what better than an exotic Bugatti. That evening in Nice she was wrapped in her customary long, hand-painted silk scarf that trailed ethereally behind her like a pennant. But as her young boyfriend drove her, the scarf became entangled in the whirling spokes of a rear wheel – and Isadora’s neck was snapped.

In fact there remains a question mark over whether Isadora’s legendary demise might have been in a rather less exotic Amilcar. But Bugatti’s Julius Kruta, who bears the splendid title, head of tradition, says: “The official police report stated that the car was a Bugatti; we regard it as 98 per cent certain.” As I am very much attached to my neck, I opted for a baseball cap for my long centenary drive through Tuscany.

The Bugatti story began when 17-year-old Ettore Arco Isidoro Bugatti became apprenticed to the bicycle and tricycle company Prinetti & Stucchi in his home city of Milan in 1898. There, he built a tricycle with not just one but two De Dion engines, a tendency to over-engineer that was to mark out his future.

By 1900 he had completed his first car and was on the road to technological and entrepreneurial stardom, leasing a disused dyeworks in Molsheim, Alsace to start production of the Bugatti 13 Brescia in 1910. Not a man for understatement, his maxim was: “Nothing is too beautiful, nothing is too expensive.”

The Bugatti business burgeoned after the First World War, taking parallel routes of high-quality road and successful racing cars, all driven by a characterful crowd of drivers that included industrialists, publishers, noblemen and “the occasional gigolo”, as the company archive puts it.

Bugatti race cars with their distinctive “horseshoe” radiator grille became highly successful, the eight-cylinder T35 series emerging as the brightest star: “It remains the most successful GP racing car ever,” states tradition patron Kruta.

While all this was going on, some extraordinary road cars were created, including the 21ft-long, 12.7-litre Royale, weighing 7,000lb. Six were built but only three sold between 1929 (hardly an auspicious year for capitalists) and 1932; not one royal bought a Royale.

That model, and one of the company’s most elegant – the T57S Atlantic – were designed by Ettore’s son Jean. But in 1939, death shadowed Bugatti again. Aged 30, Jean was killed driving a Le Mans-winning Type 57 C “Tank” (so called because of its all-enveloping bodywork). Swerving to avoid a cyclist, he hit a tree.

Post-war, there were efforts to continue the Bugatti line, notably by Italian entrepreneur Romano Artioli with the EB110. Then, in 1998, Volkswagen acquired the rights to the Bugatti name – a move that was to lead to the production of the Veyron 16.4. With a W16 quad-turbo engine producing 987bhp (1,001PS) and 922lb ft of torque to propel its aluminium and carbon-fibre structure, it takes 2.5 seconds to reach 62mph. Sales have reached 250, with 210 delivered.

Now comes the Grand Sport roadster, a convertible Veyron, which I was one of the first journalists in the world to sample.

Already 30 of a planned 150 have been sold.

My sunny Grand Sport day started with the removal of the car’s polycarbonate roof, which was to be left behind. If it rains, there is a rectangular “umbrella” on board that keeps the rain out below 100mph. You have to retrieve it from the luggage compartment, open it out and fasten it to the bodywork. Above 100mph, you simply get wet.

Prod the start button to fire up the huge engine and the lid-off cabin of the Grand Sport sounds like the cockpit of a powerful, classic propeller aircraft. In fact, its power output is similar to that of early Rolls-Royce Merlin-engined Spitfire fighters.

Acutely aware that I had almost 1,000bhp under my right foot and no wings, I gently eased the rumbling beast forward. Its slow-speed behaviour was generally impeccable although there were hints of bottled-up rowdiness that needed to be slapped down.

Then came the derestriction sign and clear tarmac. I floored the throttle; there were two great thumps – had I broken it already? No, it was just the seven-speed direct-shift gearbox selecting first gear to produce the sort of torque and associated G-force that elicits uncouth exclamations.

First gear is good for 60mph, second takes you to 90mph, third to 120mph – not even halfway to max. The sound of whirling turbochargers, the huge engine reaching maximum revs, the whoosh of air over the cockpit to be greedily swallowed by dual carbon-fibre intakes, and the change in ride height and rear wing incidence as speed exceeds 137mph are all communicated to the driver as the power output needle swings towards 1,001PS and the speedometer heads for 420kph (253mph).

To reach that requires a safety “speed key” to be turned. Not a good idea on public roads – and anyway, with the roof off, top speed is limited to a modest 215mph.

Ex-Formula One driver Pierre-Henri Raphanel, Bugatti’s pilote officiel, who has demonstrated the car to many of the world’s super-rich, reckons that less than five per cent of buyers ever fully exploit the Grand Sport’s potential.

I spent about five hours stretching it as far as I could. Steering is superbly weighted although the car’s turning circle is huge. Ceramic brakes give total confidence, handling is precise and the ride surprisingly good, even over rough surfaces.

Overall quality is to the level that Ettore Bugatti would have expected, although the interior mirror defiantly came unstuck on the pre-production car I was sampling, which would probably have given him a fit of the vapours.

But even he might have overlooked one vital piece of equipment that is missing: the Grand Sport needs an automatic hand-waving machine to return the seemingly endless gestures, thumbs up, whistles, calls, headlight flashes and just plain obeisance from almost all who see and hear the beast approaching.

Doing it myself was so exhausting.

Sourced via telegraph.co.uk

The Stig is Michael Schumacher?

The most recent episode of Top Gear the Stig was revealed as non other than Michael Schumacher- Is this reveal a joke or is it true? Michael Schumacher donned the Stig outfit as if he has worn it before-perhaps he has.

On the programme the Stig completed a lap of the Top Gear circuit in 1 minute 10.7 seconds in a £1million Ferrari FSX – seven seconds faster than ever before.

But despite the big unmasking motoring fans are sure to still be wondering just who  the real Stig is.

So who do you think the real stig is?