Lee Iacocca, former chairman of Chrysler Corporation, once famously said, "When the crusaders get on their horses, you might as well get out of their way." Then again, Iacocca also did things that corporate executives rarely do when confronted with a serious mistake the company's made: He 'fessed up to the error, apologized and quickly made things right with the aggrieved.

For example, in the late eighties it was revealed that Chrysler had disconnected the odometer cables on vehicles used by the company's executives. Once those vehicles were retired for sale -- to a new car dealer and thence to the public -- the odometer cables would be reconnected, but the mileage on the car would still show near zero. Disconnecting a vehicle's odometer violated federal laws; but, while Chrysler's attorneys were telling Lee not to comment on the issue, Iacocca ignored them and went to the media.Read more

The invitation came in a phone call from Lee Chapman, president of the New Car Dealers' Association: Would I be interested in attending a small get-together with a few key individuals and Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst? Lee was relaying the request from Tom Durant, owner of Classic Chevrolet in Grapevine, sent via Tom by his brother Jerry, who owns several dealerships in Weatherford. I accepted. Not because of the chance to sit with the Lt. Governor, but mostly because, although we had talked on the phone once a few years back about an expansion he was doing at his dealerships, Jerry Durant and I had never met face to face.

Jerry Durant is in the middle of another major expansion to his stores, even as brother Tom is about to start another series of expansions to his Grapevine properties. As one dealer put it, the Durant brothers are absolutely fearless and long-term thinkers; without the Durant brothers in North Texas, our state's construction industry would not be quite as busy.Read more

Some 1,232 miles northeast of Fort Worth lies the city of Detroit. One year ago it was considered the poster child for the imminent destruction of American manufacturing might. The mood at the city’s 2009 auto show was somber at best, only marginally less depressing than a funeral; rumors circulated that in the future the Los Angeles Auto Show would overtake Detroit as the premier American showcase event for the best of what the auto industry has to offer.Read more

What happens to a country when its citizens can no longer distinguish the truth? It shouldn’t be hard to define the line between fact and fiction on simple issues, and yet so many seem to find it challenging. Worse, when they’re confronted with the real facts, instead of learning they typically respond with disproportionate anger.Read more

"I’m not real fond of raising [gas] taxes when there’s a recession going on." — Texas Governor Rick Perry, quoted at www.rickperry.orgRead more

In a database in my primary computer sits a decade’s worth of automotive stories that I’ve reported daily at 570 KLIF AM. Although the reporting lasts only 90 seconds each day, the text prints out at 898 pages and just over 409,000 words. It’s a tiny window in time, and not just for the automotive or energy news; through it we can also look back on the successes and failures of manufacturing worldwide over the past 10 years.Read more

Another year has gone by and with it 52 more automotive reviews on Fox Four’s Good Day. Now it’s time to pick the most exceptional new cars introduced this year that have come to the market in 2009. Only, in terms of the best of the best, this year marked a low point: Very few new cars stood out in my mind as delivering unbelievable value for the money.Read more

Too much has been made of "the new General Motors" — certainly too much of the "urgent, activist" new board of directors. Numerous platitude-prone individuals who cover the automobile industry claim that it’s time for GM to "reinvent" itself. Others say that the game of executive musical chairs being played is crucial if they’re to get the "right" individuals into senior management positions before launching a raft of key products.Read more

It’s hard to get too worked up over the threat of the end of the world from Climate Change. Of course, it could happen; but if it does, it’s doubtful that we can do much about it. And apparently we’re not that easy to kill; 70,000 years ago our race, homo sapiens, was near extinction — down to a mere 2,000 individuals. Since then those two thousand souls and their descendants have suffered through an Ice Age, droughts, floods, plagues, the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, endless wars and Al Gore.Read more

It seems like just yesterday that I couldn’t go into a 7-11 store without one of their staff wanting to tell me about all the problems they were encountering with their Kia. And even before Kia ever launched in America, most everyone selling new cars had had to tell someone trying to trade in a Hyundai Excel, "I’ve got a bit of bad news for you."Read more