What's in a nameplate?

Over at ROK Drop, GI Korea has presented a photo of the new Chevrolet Tattoo. As I wrote there, that seems an odd name for a car in Korea, given the negative associations with body art (particularly associations with gangsters, as well as the illegality of using them to evade military service).

I had thought about driving home the point with an analogy, that it would be like calling some vehicle the Jeep Tramp Stamp or the Buick Bong. And then I remembered Korea already had a line of vehicles starting with bong.

If the "Tattoo" name idea came from Detroit, all I can say is someone seems to have dropped the ball on that one. Then again, it could be from Korea-based GM Daewoo itself, the folks who brought you the Daewoo Impact in the 1990s. Yeah, the name sounds cool at first, until you realize you're driving a safety-impaired metal box named for what happens when you forcibly smash into another object.

Then again, poor name choices seem the order of the day. Kia is trotting out its new luxury vehicle. Continuing with the K3 (Forte), K5 (Optima), and K7 (Cadenza), we now have... wait for it... the K9.

Yeah, in addition to sounding like it's a police car with an angry Rottweiler inside, how wise is it for a Korean car maker to make the name of its flagship model sound like the same thing mindless bigots and unclever comedians associate with Koreans eating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Anyway, the grille is supposed to be more feline (it's a tiger's mouth) than canine.

Anyway, in other car news, Hyundai and Kia have both been riding a wave of good fortune in the American car market, up 18 percent and a whopping 37 percent from the previous February, respectively.

...

South Korea to be first to make the all-new 2013 Chevy Malibu

General Motors, which recently rebadged its South Korean operation by dropping the Daewoo name for the more global Chevrolet moniker, announced that its plant at Pup'yŏng (Bupyeong) will be the first in the world to make the all-new 2013 Chevy Malibu.

The goal is to expand GM's general footprint — and Chevrolet's specific presence — by pushing some of its more popular global offerings, and they think they have a winner with the Malibu:

Adding the Malibu may further bolster GM’s momentum in the Korean market. The automaker reported today that its Korean unit sold 71,608 vehicles in April, marking an 8.5-percent increase year-to-year, and a 5.9-percent increase over March. It’s unknown exactly how well the Malibu will pan out in the market, but GM points to strong digital interest — Korean fan clubs for the new model reportedly have over 30,000 members — as a predictor of things to come.

It is indeed a smart-looking car. GM also sells several Buick models, which it's marketing as upscale luxury vehicles, so we may see General Motors give Kia and Hyundai a run for their money.

WaPo whops Obama on KORUS FTA "setback"

It looks like the failure to get the KORUS FTA agreement done has put the FTA more in the spotlight than it ever was. The Washington Post has some somewhat harsh words for the President:

For those who believe, as we do, that free trade can help fight global recession and prepare the U.S. economy for a new, more competitive future, President Obama's trip to Asia was a disappointment. In particular, Mr. Obama's negotiators were unable to agree with their South Korean counterparts on revisions to a much-delayed U.S.-Korea free trade pact, as Mr. Obama had promised in June. Though both countries insisted the talks would continue, it's anyone's guess when Congress and the Korean National Assembly will finally get to vote on free trade between Korea and the United States.

This setback has many authors, including Korean protectionists who stoked a public overreaction to a long-ago mad-cow disease outbreak in the U.S. cattle herd. But Mr. Obama and his fellow Democrats in Congress have the most to answer for. ...

The vast majority of U.S. business sectors favor the deal, and it would help both economies to grow. However, congressional Democrats blocked it, arguing it would cost American jobs, and as a candidate for president in 2008 Mr. Obama rejected the deal as "badly flawed." In office, he dithered for months, before finally declaring himself in favor of moving forward with a revised treaty.

In opposing the deal during the campaign, Mr. Obama echoed claims by the Ford Motor Company and the United Auto Workers. Under the agreement, Korea and the U.S. would end their respective tariffs on autos and light trucks; Korea additionally pledged to reduce tax and regulatory obstacles to imports, and accepted a mechanism that could permit the US to reimpose tariffs if Korea tried to reestablish non-tariff barriers. Ford and the UAW say that isn't enough, insisting on guarantees that Korea won't use environmental and safety standards as a de facto bar to US vehicles. In the most recent talks, Mr. Obama has been trying to get the Koreans to meet him halfway on this point.

My disappointment with the article is their repetition of the Big Lie:

It's true, as Ford says, that, before the recession, Korean companies sold more than 700,000 cars per year in the US, about 100 times as many as U.S. companies sold in Korea.

Not quite, WaPo. Last I checked, General Motors is a US company, and they are the owners of GM Daewoo, which sold nearly 60,000 cars in South Korea in September alone. When GM's Daewoo vehicles are added to the US side of the calculation, the numbers are far more balanced.

Still, the WaPo redeemed itself a bit by pointing out some other points to consider, mainly that car markets of wildly different sizes will not have car sales parity even if all other things were equal, plus there are all those US-built Hyundais and Kias:

But the US market is 16 times larger than Korea's; and about a third of Korean cars sold in the U.S. are built in U.S. plants, not imported. Maybe what really worries Ford is not the lack of US access to the Korean market, but the potential for increased Korean access to the US market.

All in all, a good article, and I hope more people will realize how many billions of dollars in economic growth the US is missing out on because of the temper tantrums of Ford, Chrysler, and Senator Max Baucus.

See the ROK in your Chevrolet?

Well, it looks like some GM Daewoo vehicles are going to become GM Chevrolets... er, just Chevrolets.

From AFP:

US car giant General Motors will introduce its Chevrolet brand into South Korea next year in an effort to boost sales, the chief executive of the struggling local unit said Thursday.

GM Daewoo CEO Mike Arcamone said the Chevrolet brand would provide "a significant momentum" to increase the local unit's sales and domestic market share, Yonhap news agency reported.

"According to our survey, half of the (Korean) public is familiar with the brand," he was quoted as telling reporters at a motor show in the southern port of Busan.

GM Daewoo, acting as the US company's global mini car development centre, uses the Chevrolet brand overseas but its cars are sold under the Daewoo brand in South Korea.

GM Daewoo's union has opposed the idea of selling the Chevrolet brand in South Korea, claiming it would relegate the company to a subcontractor for the US company.

Indeed, there had been talk of turning all of Daewoo into Chevrolet, but there was opposition, especially from unions, and you don't want to piss off the unions, not in Korea.

Plus, basically, if the Korean automaker remains as GM Daewoo, the narrative is that Daewoo is saving General Motors, but if Daewoo vehicles were to be branded as Chevrolet, as is done elsewhere, the number-three Korean automaker might be seen as just a subsidiary of the American car company.

Of course, the rebranding would have the added effect (maybe) of undermining "the big lie" whereby anti-KORUS FTA types claim that Korea sells oh-so many cars in America (by counting Georgia- and Alabama-made Kia and Hyundai vehicles as Korean) but America sells so few (by counting Korea-made GM vehicles as Korean also). If, say, half of all Daewoos become Chevrolets, it will sound even more ridiculous to make such a pitch.

Senator Dodd perpetuates the Big Lie about Korean car imports

During my morning iPod-enhanced jog, I caught the iTunes podcast of NPR's NewsHour. The subject for this particular segment was the Detroit bailout. Speaking in favor of it was Senator Christ Dodd (D-Connecticut), while Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) was steadfastly against it.

Shelby would like to see Chrysler, Ford, and General Motor go into a pre-arranged bankruptcy and reworked. Dodd pointed out that, unlike with an industry such as airlines where the consumer's relationship ends as soon as they pick up their bags at the destination airport, there is a problem with buying a major item like a car from a bankrupt company.

All in all, it was a good summary from both as to what each side of the bailout issue thinks. I even thought of linking to it for that reason alone. But what compelled me to blog about it was when Senator Dodd deflected blame from the Big Three and their supposed mismanagement and put it squarely on the shoulders of South Korea:

The word last Friday was 533,000 jobs were lost in this country in one month. And certainly none of us want to wake up in January and discover that America no longer has a viable automobile industry.

You know, we talk all the time about how well these foreign companies do. Let me just cite one free trade agreement with South Korea. In that one agreement, all we can do is sell 5,000 automobiles in South Korea. They get to sell 600,000 of their automobiles in the United States.

There are a lot of reasons why our domestic companies are not doing as well, a lot of which is their own fault, but there are other factors, as well.

The message is that it's not just mismanagement that caused Detroit's problems, nor a burdensome benefits package for its retirees, nor the drying up of credit which Americans use to buy cars. No, it's also those dastardly South Koreans who angrily wave pitchforks at cargo ships when they bring Cadillacs to Pusan and throw rocks at Chrysler dealerships in Sŏcho-gu. 

The numbers are almost verbatim what President-elect Obama said on the stump and during the debates during his campaign: The trading relationship between South Korea (and Japan) is unfair, and the lopsided car sales numbers are an example. 

Frankly, I wish someone would explain how lopsided trade numbers are a reason to NOT pass a free trade agreement that would eventually remove many of these barriers. 

Anyway, Dodd takes Obama's numbers and suggests that they are not what is the case now, but what would happen if the FTA were to pass: "In that one agreement," he says, these are the numbers.