General Motors has reintroduced the position of President and Chief Operating Officer with the naming of Fritz Henderson to the post by Rick Wagoner. Henderson's move up from Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer sees Ray Young moving from group VP of finance to Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, filling the vacuum left by Henderson's departure. Group Vice President of Global Powertrain and Global Quality, Thomas G. Stephens, also makes the move to Executive Vice President. The new appointees will work closely with Rick Wagoner and product guy Bob Lutz to keep the GM ship on course.
Henderson will be drawing on his past experience in a variety of roles at GM. Regional presidents will report to Henderson, who will confer with Rick Wagoner. For now, it's about as exciting as watching a chess match, but GM's moving these people into their new roles with an eye on the company's trajectory out of the doldrums. The newly reinstated President and COO will be looked to as an integral part of the machinery that keeps pushing GM back from the brink.
A faulty seatbelt that traps an occupant in a vehicle and leads to his death is a horrible tragedy. If the defect were given a pass at the manufacturing plant, it goes beyond tragic to criminal. Toyota is now facing two lawsuits in California, both centered around manufacturing defects that may have been ignored at its joint-venture New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant.
We reported earlier on the first lawsuit filed by Katy Cameron, a NUMMI worker who alleges that vehicles with serious problems were passed out the door, even though the NUMMI plant purportedly subscribes to the "Toyota way" of manufacturing. Instead of empowering workers to spot and correct defects, even stop the assembly line to make things right, management at the NUMMI plant allegedly discouraged Cameron by demoting her.
A second lawsuit has also been filed by the Singh family, who are blaming the seatbelt latch in their 2002 Corolla for the death of Raminder Singh. The Singhs were involved in an accident that led to an engine fire, and while 19-year-old Gurinder Singh was able to exit the vehicle, his father remained trapped by his seatbelt despite Gurinder's efforts to unlatch it.
A spokesman for Toyota has been quoted as saying, "as heart-rending and tragic as this collision was, Toyota has an altogether different view of the facts." The facts will hopefully come to light during this civil trial, which heard opening statements on Tuesday.
Reports emerging over the weekend indicate that GP2 has been purchased by CVC Capital Partners for a reported $300 million. Dang.
What's GP2, you ask? It's a second-tier "feeder" racing series started in 2005 to give up-and-coming drivers a place to display their skills on a worldwide scale and a place for F1 teams to find new talent. The series was intended to replace the ageing Formula 3000 series, and has so far proven fairly successful. Nico Rosberg won the title in the series' inaugural season, and he's racing in F1. Lewis Hamilton won the championship last year and went head-first into title contention the next season in F1. Timo Glock won the crown this year, and will be heading to Toyota F1 next season. (Heikki Kovalainen and Nelson Piquet Jr. also made the jump to F1 through GP2.) Sounds like the idea has met its potential so far.
So who, then, is CVC Capital Partners? It's the private equity firm with a history of turning international racing series around into successful ventures. Contrary to popular perception, it's actually CVC that manages Formula One, having purchased the rights from Bernie Ecclestone and his associates in 2005 (although Bernie then bought an undisclosed portion of the CVC subsidiary running the show). Prior to effectively buying F1, CVC turned MotoGP into the successful two-wheel racing series it is today.
While it remains to be seen what tangible effects the deal with bring to bear on the series – it was Bernie who co-founded GP2, after all, and CVC already held the TV rights – it's bound to bring GP2 even closer to F1 in the coming seasons. The bottom line is that if you want to know who is next year's F1 rookie, watch GP2.
Any way you look at it, Toyota's foray into Formula 1 has not yielded positive results. Despite throwing unprecedented amounts of money at the effort, their F1 team has not produced the kind of results to which the automotive giant has become accustomed. So they've apparently decided that it was time for a change in management.
Tsutomu Tomita, who saw the program through from conception to fruition, will be yielding to corporate vice-chairman Tadashi Yamashina at the end of June. Toyota has yet to announce what role Tomita will assume upon his return to corporate headquarters, but you can bet it won't be as exciting as the fast-paced world of F1 racing.
Toyota is spinning the shift as an ordinary shuffle in management, but when their F1 team has been rumored to benefit from the largest budget on the grid and has still yet to win a single race, it becomes clear that Toyota is hoping a new boss at their racing headquarters in Cologne will change their fortunes.
Ever-tightening emissions requirements, teamed with consumers' lust for today's high horsepower numbers, have led to some creative valve timing and lift schemes. Infiniti's G37 will be pack some interesting tech underhood when it debuts at the upcoming New York International Auto Show. There are actually two new developments working in conjunction to give independent control over valve timing and lift. Nissan has dubbed the control technologies Variable Valve Event and Lift and Continuous Valve Timing control, or VVEL and C-VTC, respectively. VVEL uses a clever arrangement of links to actuate the valves, and moves the fulcrum for the links via a seperate shaft actuated by a DC motor. By moving the fulcrum, the valve lift is varied.
Not long after we told you about the likely promotion of Derrick Kuzak to the role of global Car Czar, President and CEO of Ford Alan Mulally officially announced his corporate realignment plan. At the top of the pyramid is, of course, Mulally himself. Reporting to him are the leaders of Ford's three largest units: Mark Fields, Ford of the Americas; Lewis Booth, Ford of Europe and the Premier Auto Group (PAG); and John Parker, Ford of Asia Pacific, Africa and Mazda. Supporting this team will be the aforementioned Derrick Kuzak, whose office door now reads Global Product Development Leader (a.k.a. Car Czar). J Mays is still the leader of Ford's design teams and will support Kuzak.
The whole point of defining each executive's role in the company and creating clear hierarchies is so that Ford can begin acting like one company instead of five separate ones, each with their own interests. The biggest change here is that Fields, Booth and Parker will now all be reporting directly to Mulally. In the past, both Booth and Parker would report to Mark Schulz, the company's Executive VP of International Operations. Schulz, however, announced his retirement earlier this month, which gave management a perfect opportunity to cut out a middle man position and improve communication between various rungs of the corporate ladder.
Check out Ford's full press release on this realignment after the jump.
Piece by piece, Ferrari has been confirming the reports and ending the speculation with several announcements about the future of some of their key personnel and the positions they hold in the Scuderia family.
The most recent news came today with the announcement that now-retired driving legend Michael Schumacher would stay on as a "special assistant" to the new CEO of the Ferrari empire (more on that below). Since joining Ferrari, Schumacher has been more than a driver, he was the center of the team, having completely rejuvenated the historic squad from a losing relic into the dominant force in racing. What does the job of "special assistant" entail? Hard to say at this point, as Schumacher looks forward to sitting back and reflecting on life before taking on any substantial new tasks. But don't expect to see him trackside at the races and test sessions, or sitting behind a desk at Maranello, either. He'll likely become more of a consultant to the company, enjoying the quiet life he's so richly deserves while contemplating what he can do for the team with which he's celebrated so many victories.
The new CEO he'll be advising is Jean Todt, who moves up from general manager to focus more broadly on the company as a whole (or so he hopes). When outgoing CEO Luca di Montezemolo became chairman of parent company Fiat, Todt was put in charge of Ferrari as general manager but stayed directly involved in the racing team as well.
That leaves two positions open at Todt becomes CEO: general manager and team principal. Amedeo Felisa moves up from deputy managing director to general manager, following Todt up the hierarchy as his right-hand man. Ross Brawn will be leaving for a year's sabbatical, vacating his post as technical director of the team. It seems Todt will be managing the Scuderia for one more season, fuelling the speculation that when Brawn returns, the job will be his (and maybe then Todt will have a bit more room to breathe). Taking Brawn's job as technical director is Mario Almondo, who for over ten years served as industrial director. Other promotions include Paolo Martinelli, who moved up to a new job at Fiat, and Gilles Simon who takes Paolo's job as head of the engine department.
All these changes and more amount to the biggest shake-up Ferrari has felt in years, and we'll be watching to see the effects brought to bear on its legendary racing activities and delectable road cars.
Only a few days after the end of the 2006 season, reports are surfacing indicating that there's going to be a real shake-up in the management at Ferrari, primarily at the "Scuderia" F1 racing division, but also affecting the road car division as well.
It's been long expected that Technical Director Ross Brawn would retire with Michael Schumacher. It was Schumi that brought him in to direct the team, and insiders expect him to announce his retirement or "sabbatical" later this week. Nigel Stepney has been serving as race & test director, but with Brawn's departure, he could be considered for the promotion. Although Stepney didn't positively confirm that Brawn is leaving, he did indicate that some senior management are, and that the vacancies are likely to be filled from within "the family". Another candidate for the technical director post is Ross Brawn's protégé Luca Baldisseri, Schumacher's race engineer.
Meanwhile, team principal Jean Todt is expected to move away from directly managing the race team. Todt was promoted to Ferrari chief Luca di Montezemolo's position when Luca was promoted to chairman of the Fiat group, but Jean has been holding on to both posts in the interim, supervising both road and race divisions. (Some have suggested that Todt could eventually replace Max Mosley as head of the FIA.) Sporting Director Stefano Domenicali is tipped to succeed Todt as team principal, with Industrial Director Mario Almondo moving up to sporting director.
Together with the arrival of Kimi Raikkonen to take Michael Schumacher's seat as the champ retires, these management shifts amount to big changes at Ferrari. For the Scuderia, that could mean an adjustment period of another year before the team can seriously contend for the championship. Time will tell.
General Motors has reintroduced the position of President and Chief Operating Officer with the naming of Fritz Henderson to the post by Rick Wagoner. Henderson's move up from Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer sees Ray Young moving from group VP of finance to Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, filling the vacuum left by Henderson's departure. Group Vice President of Global Powertrain and Global Quality, Thomas G. Stephens, also makes the move to Executive Vice President. The new appointees will work closely with Rick Wagoner and product guy Bob Lutz to keep the GM ship on course. 
Not long after we told you about the likely 
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