“Chrysler workers rally to save Sterling Heights plant - Detroit Free Press” plus 4 more

Chrysler workers rally to save Sterling Heights plant - Detroit Free Press
Q & A with Marino Franchitti - Autosport Online
Auto Racing Headlines - Rotoworld.com
Bedford car dealership feels betrayed by GM - Roanoke Times
TheStar.com | Insight | From Motown to Hoetown - Toronto Star

Chrysler workers rally to save Sterling Heights plant - Detroit Free Press

Posted: 26 Sep 2009 08:21 AM PDT

About 500 Chrysler workers, retirees and family members sang, chanted and prayed Friday afternoon for the company's board of directors to reconsider closing the Sterling Heights assembly plant by the end of next year.

Meanwhile, the board met at Chrysler's Auburn Hills headquarters to review a plan to update the company's future cars and trucks.

The company had no comment about the board's actions, but it is expected to provide details of its plan to President Barack Obama's automotive task force as early as next week.

Those attending Friday's rally were clear about why Chrysler should preserve the plant that produces its only midsize cars, Chrysler Sebring and Dodge Avenger. Chrysler and Fiat excluded the Sterling Heights assembly plant and seven other factories from the taxpayer-financed bankruptcy sale to the new company, of which Fiat owns 20%.

"All of our taxes helped bail this company out," said employee Rebecca Suell. "Since the bankruptcy, there's been no new products assigned to any of Chrysler's U.S. plants."

The company plans to make the Fiat 500 minicar in Toluca, Mexico, and begin selling it in the United States by the end of 2011.

Sales of the 2009 Sebring and Avenger made in Sterling Heights have dropped by more than 50% through the first eight months of the year. Their sales increased last month because many customers participating in the cash-for-clunkers program wanted them, but inventories vanished and Chrysler could not restart production until the program's last few days.

The plant eliminated its second shift in March 2008, and has been idle this year in January and all but two weeks between May 1 and Aug. 24.

CEO Sergio Marchionne has said Fiat has delivered to Chrysler a foundation for a new midsize car that will be shared among Chrysler, Dodge and Fiat's Alfa Romeo brand.

The company has not said where those future cars would be assembled, but workers would like it to be built in Sterling Heights.

"This isn't just about us," said Pat Johnson, an engineer on the assembly line. "We pay taxes here. We support local businesses here, and we build world-class quality cars. A lot of our jobs depend on each other."

Johnson's coworker Rochelle Banks pointed to the shopping center across Van Dyke Avenue and said two or three restaurants have closed this year because of decreased business from plant workers on their 30-minute lunch breaks.

Contact GREG GARDNER: 313-222-8762 or ggardner@freepress.com

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Q & A with Marino Franchitti - Autosport Online

Posted: 26 Sep 2009 05:51 AM PDT

Q & A with Marino Franchitti

The LMP2 championship may have gone to the Fernandez Acura, but the Dyson Lola-Mazda package has got stronger and stronger as the American Le Mans Series progressed.

Yesterday at Road Atlanta, Marino Franchitti not only took his third straight class pole, but beat the rest of the class field by 1.2s. He told AUTOSPORT about the great strides his team has been making, and his hopes for 2010.

Q. Were you expecting to get pole here or were you expecting it to be harder than that?

Marino Franchitti: I was expecting it to be closer. We are 1.2s ahead of the next car and I did not expect that at all. I hoped we could get pole but I thought be one or two tenths either way. So that was just amazing. It was one of those laps though, it was a blinder.

Q. The track seems to have come to a lot of people today, was that the case with you guys?

MF: We only ran last night. We had an issue on Wednesday, so we only ran in night practice. We only ran one session on Wednesday too, but from lap five of that first session on Wednesday, the car was quick out of the box having never been here before. We haven't touched it really. We've tried stuff but we ended up going back to where we began.

Q. So you've gone with the set-up that you rolled out of the truck with?

MF: Yep. And that's happened a couple of times this year. Our technical director Peter Weston and my engineer Vince Wood, between the two of them they just give us amazing set-ups. At the last race in Mosport, we had an issue with ten minutes to go, and unfortunately we didn't win, but we got pole position, fastest lap and again we hadn't adjusted the car for the race.

Q. The goal is obviously to win here but what are the things that concern you the most about tomorrow?

MF: This is still the first year of this programme. We don't have a big budget and you don't get to do a lot of testing here so we are improving the car on race weekends. That's not an easy thing to do. Sebring was obviously a low point for us, so if we get past the same point tomorrow, we are into the unknown. This year was all about learning and improving the package and that is what tomorrow is about.

Q. So even though you are on pole, you would say the target is to finish?

MF: Absolutely, to keep the car out of the pits as much as possible. And run our race. We are not going to baby anything, we are going to go as hard as we can. We are just going to keep learning.

Q. There are some rumours of rain tomorrow, does that effect your plans?

MF: Some cars you have to, but though I haven't driven this one in the wet, my team-mate has at Mosport and all we did was bolt wets on it and sent him out and it was fantastic. Obviously we have got the windscreen to worry about and that is just something you have to deal with whether you are in a GT car or whether it's just your visor.

Q. You seem very popular in this team, everyone seems pleased for you.

MF: It's a family here. When I was joining this team I tried to speak to people that had been with this team and it is hard to find people that have been with Dyson, because they never leave! James Weaver was here for 20 or something years, Butch [Leitzinger] has been here for 15 years. It's a family. What's important about this team is that no one is treated differently from anyone else. We all have the same level, we all do our job, and if one of us doesn't then we don't win. You can see it.

Q. Does that put more pressure on you tomorrow if it comes into the last hour and you are in the lead?

MF: No, not really. We have been there already this year. We have led the whole race and with 10 minutes to go, and then we ran into a problem. It would just be great to get to the end in a strong position, whether we win or not is not as important as actually just making another step in the development of this car. We are here doing this on our own. Okay RML are in Europe and we are close with them and there is a lot of crossover, but in North America it's us and that's it. Really from where this programme was in Sebring to where it is now is just because of the effort of everybody in Dyson, Mazda and BP. And obviously we are running the bio-fuel in the other car and that is pretty amazing. There are not many series that would even let you do that, so we are running the bio-butanol.

Q. Is that what both cars will be running next year?

MF: We hope to.

Q. For next year, what's the target because you can't keep having learning years can you?

MF: No. For me the idea would be to stay here with Dyson Racing, continue with this programme and hopefully take that next step which is not just competing for race wins but putting it together for a championship and that is going to take another step up in every part of the programme. I would really love to be a part of that.

Q. You raced a GT car at Le Mans with Drayson Racing. Would you like to do that again or would you prefer to go back with an LMP car?

MF: If I go back to Le Mans I hope it's with an LMP car because it really suits me. I love driving the LMPs, they are a huge amount of fun. But also I really benefit a lot from driving the GT car. I think every LMP driver should be made to do it so that they could understand what you go through and to know how difficult it is, without the downforce and the power and everything else. I really like the way it keeps you grounded. Coming from GTs makes sure that you don't forget how difficult it is. I would say I'm better in traffic because of that experience.

Q. Do you feel your career is blossoming now, and that you are becoming the driver you always thought you could be?

MF: Yeah, I am definitely getting where I want to be. The great thing about the tough journey that I've had up to the last few years is how hard I keep working. I see other drivers get to a point, and I don't know if they think they have made it or whatever, but they just stop or they lose that hunger. And for me, given the journey I have had to get here, that will never be a problem. I always feel like I am fighting for my next race. I think I always will because of those challenges on the way up. I'm definitely doing the things I always dreamt I could, pole positions, fastest laps, race wins. Driving an LMP car and developing it. Even just being a part of a team. This is the first time I have been with a team for two years, and this is only my third full year of sportscars.

Q. Which is the best car you have driven of the three LMP2 cars?

MF: That's tough. Obviously I have had the most success in the Lola so that has a special place in my heart. But I would have to say there were bits of each of the Porsche, Acura and Lola that I have really enjoyed and I would like to put them all in one mega car. I think for me the Acura programme, I really became a part of the development of that car. I went from the original Courage through to the development of the Acura, from the first test along. That was a huge learning process for me. With the Porsche it was very reliable and really fun to drive. And although we had some input it wasn't like this year. From the drivers, engineers and mechanics you can see with this year that our signature is on it.

Q. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Mazda engine?

MF: The last two years I have driven 3.5-litre V8s, but this is the first time I have driven a turbo-car. This is a four cylinder two-litre turbo. But the electronic wastegate controls that you have now, you sometimes don't feel like you are driving a turbo at all. It is quite amazing. You don't feel lag and the gearing is done very well. It's a very light engine, it's about 80 kilos or something. It's a very small compact unit which helps the balance of the car. From where the engine started this year, we have developed and developed, with the TC and mapping and everything else. It continues to make huge strides, and though I wouldn't look at it now and say we are where we want to be, but...

Q. So next year you think you could actually be a frontrunner next year?

MF: We should be. If we continue with it we expect to be battling for wins overall which will be fun. The good thing is the programme has never stood still. We find something, we learn about it, fix it and move on. And that is just the process, but we are here doing it in public because we don't have the resources of a Porsche or an Audi. That's a hard thing to do but also very satisfying when we get it right.

Q. Is today's pole one of your best achievements so far?

MF: Yeah. I got pole at Sebring, which was my first ever ALMS pole, but yes. The thing for me is that the poles have come at Sebring, Road America and Mosport and here!

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Auto Racing Headlines - Rotoworld.com

Posted: 26 Sep 2009 05:15 AM PDT

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Bedford car dealership feels betrayed by GM - Roanoke Times

Posted: 26 Sep 2009 04:53 AM PDT

Photos by KYLE GREEN The Roanoke Times

Murray & Bolling Chevrolet in Bedford has been terminated by General Motors and will no longer sell new cars. The dealership will instead sell used cars and continue to service vehicles in its garage. "I'm ready to wind down, but not like this," said co-founder Guy Murray, 74, who operated one of the oldest Chevrolet dealerships in Virginia.

Murray and Bolling still has General Motors parts in its service department. The dealership received notification from GM that it will no longer provide new vehicles, effective Oct. 5.

BEDFORD -- As General Motors resumes a path forward after bankruptcy, the automaker is about to unhitch a Bedford dealership that has tagged along for more than half of GM's life.

Murray & Bolling Chevrolet is on the list of more than 1,100 deleted dealerships that GM no longer will supply with new vehicles.

The dealer cuts are in the wake of an auto industry head-on collision with higher gasoline prices, a tough recession and changing consumer loyalties, and are affecting all parts of the country.

GM lost its independence -- it is now majority government-owned with a stock sale planned next year -- and rank as the world's No. 1 automaker. The company lost $30.8 billion in 2008 and $43.3 billion in 2007.

In explaining its plan to reduce its dealer network by 2,600 locations (or 40 percent), 1,100 through actual terminations, the company has said it must make changes to stay in business. It said it had too many dealers too close together, which drives down prices.

The company's Web site directs customers looking for a Chevrolet dealership to stores in Roanoke, Lynchburg and Altavista.

"We want there to be no impact on our customers," the site says.

Murray & Bolling Chevrolet will sell only used cars and service after Oct. 5, its business stripped of every building sign, floor mat and sheet of stationery bearing the Chevrolet name.

One of the oldest Chevrolet dealers in Virginia, the company had represented GM for 62 years, more than half of GM's 101-year history.

At Murray & Bolling this week, there was acceptance and anger among the owners.

"I'm ready to wind down, but not like this, not to be screwed out of your business," said co-owner Guy "G.E." Murray, 74.

GM was a trusted business partner for many years, he said. That changed when the federal government got involved in the company's affairs after an infusion of tax dollars.

In bankruptcy court this summer, GM canceled dealer relationships and negated its obligation -- a duty in any voluntary dealer closing -- to take back unsold vehicles and parts as well as special garage tools and to credit the dealer for what it had paid for such items, the owners of Murray & Bolling said.

In this case, the dealership is out what it has invested unless it finds a buyer or buyers.

Murray & Bolling did move its existing inventory of new vehicles, the last sale being a Chevrolet Equinox that was bought by a Bedford County resident on Aug. 31. But parts and tools remain a liability.

GM spokesman John M. McDonald said he could not discuss Murray & Bolling. He said that the company gave dealers who were in compliance with their franchise agreements but chosen for termination two options: close immediately and file a claim in bankruptcy court, or agree to undergo an orderly wind down with a flexible closure date and, in some cases, limited financial assistance. He declined to say whether GM declined to reimburse dealers for spare parts on inventory and tools they were required to own to service GM vehicles. He said many groups took financial hits in addition to dealers, including employees, suppliers, shareholders and bondholders.

"This is not fun. It is not fun for anybody," McDonald said.

Murray & Bolling is not closing.

The owners are leasing the garage to the mechanics who will continue servicing vehicles without interruption. Used cars are for sale. The company's new name will be Murray & Bolling Inc.

Many know its history.

The company began in the early 1940s as a downtown Bedford appliance, lamp and household goods dealer. It quickly expanded into automobile sales and became Murray Chevrolet.

Founders Guy Murray and Basil Murray, who were brothers, were later joined by Onex Bolling; by Onex's son, Richard; and by Guy Murray's son, also named Guy. Today, Onex Bolling, 86, Richard Bolling, 57, and the younger Guy Murray own the business.

They recall many years of profitability, civic involvement and prominence, including 1989 to 1990 when Onex Bolling was president of the Virginia Automobile Dealers Association.

Standing in the nearly vacant, former new-truck lot, Richard Bolling said, "I'm used to walking by here and seeing trucks end to end. But nothing ever stays the same."

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TheStar.com | Insight | From Motown to Hoetown - Toronto Star

Posted: 26 Sep 2009 04:46 AM PDT

Catherine Porter
Environment Reporter

DETROIT–Businessman Matt Allen crosses Warren Ave. in lower east Detroit and wades into a neighbourhood.

Houses and a high school once cluttered this block. Now, there is nothing but calf-high grass and a few scruffy trees as far as you can see. He is looking for houses.

"On that block there is one," he says, pointing to a white clapboard house with a green Ford parked out front. Its tires are gone, its back window smashed.

"On the next block there is none. On that block there is none. On that block there is none. On that block there are three."

Behind him, a rust-coloured cigar factory slumps empty, its windows broken. A few blocks down there is a store, but it's boarded up. A man sits with a pit bull on the steps of a dilapidated house next door. Its windows are covered with plywood.

"You'll see a house over there that looks pretty good. But look closer. There's a hole in the roof," Allen says.

A whisper of sidewalk peeks out from beneath the grass. A brown hawk flies overhead.

If you couldn't see the letters "GM" on the top of a tower in the distance, you'd think this was the country. But it's central Detroit – the equivalent of Leslieville in Toronto.

"From McDougall to Chene St., from Warren all the way to Forest Ave., this is 35 contiguous acres and there are five structures on the whole thing," Allen says. "See what I'm saying? It gets real easy, real fast to do the math."

The math adds up like this – Detroit was built for 1.8 million people. Now, half that number live here. Every third house is gone or empty. The former residents are not coming back.

Instead of building yet another flashy casino, Allen is pitching a radical – and highly contentious – solution. Empty whole parts of the city, dig up the concrete, yank down the light poles, and reclaim what was here before a guy named Henry Ford moved to town: farmland.

"This is relatively fertile clay loam," says Michael Score, an agriculture adviser with Michigan State University. It's perfect, he says, for high-end horticultural crops.

Score has drafted a business plan for Hantz Farms, Allen's company. He spins around the field, describing what we'd see standing here in three years. A number of greenhouses growing cucumbers, lettuce and tomatoes. Rows of strawberries and raspberry bushes, where Detroiters will pick their own quarts. Apple and cherry trees. A wetland. A field of sunflowers. A block of Christmas trees.

What about those five houses?

"If someone doesn't want to move, we'll farm around them, just like a farm in the country would," Score says.

This is not some urban planning student's master's thesis. Allen says they've already begun assembling land to become the biggest urban farm in the world, to the horror of local activists.

The Hantz plan is to convert 2,024 hectares of mostly abandoned land into 120-hectare farming "pods" across the city – each roughly the size of Canada's Wonderland.

The farms would provide fresh fruit and vegetables to a city starved for them. It would offer much-needed jobs to Detroiters. And, most important to a city facing a $300 million deficit, it would cut out whole garbage truck routes and police patrol zones – costly budget items.

Urban farms would shrink the city in chunks, cutting out whole neighbourhoods like holes in a block of Swiss cheese.

"How do you take a crippled, post-industrial juggernaut and turn it into something else?" Allen says.

His answer is farm it.

"We're creating a new model for 21st century cities."

Detroit might seem an unlikely champion of urban agriculture, as the birthplace of the automobile and its farm-devouring offspring – urban sprawl.

But, it has become ground zero for North America's local food movement.

Last year there were roughly 550 gardens in the city's urban farming network. This year there are more than 850.

Driving around the city, you can see everything that will make up your dinner – chickens, goats, mushrooms, plum trees, honeybee hives. I passed a whole block growing shoulder-high corn. A horse grazes outside a barn behind a high school. Edith Floyd parks her tractor behind her house – 12 kilometres from city hall, where bureaucrats are scrambling to catch up with the collard greens sprouting on street corners.

Here, a locavore doesn't eat food that's travelled 100 kilometres. She eats food that's travelled 10.

"I picked these this morning," Floyd says, carrying a laundry hamper filled with watermelons to her stand at the Wayne State University farmers' market. The chalkboard propped in front reads "Grown in Detroit."

It's enough to make Michael Pollan, author of local food manifesto The Omnivore's Dilemma, swoon.

Why Detroit?

The answer becomes clear a few minutes after pulling off one of the multiple interstate highways that are the city's equivalent to subway lines.

You feel like you've dropped into Miss Havisham's dark, cobwebby parlour in Dickens' Great Expectations – the uneaten cake an earthy mound on the dusty table, still waiting for the groom decades later.

Whole streets of once-ornate houses are collapsing. Sprawling factories are fenced up, windows shattered. You can see through the abandoned train station in the heart of the city. Kids in school uniforms walk through pastures that yawn between the houses left standing.

While neighbours wait months for street parking permits in Toronto, Detroit has nothing but space.

Even the mayor, Dave Bing, has called half of Detroit vacant.

Once a symbol of industry, the Motor City is now a model for deindustrialization.

It's been shrinking since the 1950s, when the Big Three auto companies were still raking in profits and art deco bank towers crowded downtown. The cars that made Motor City also killed it, speeding inhabitants past the city-limit signs to its leafy suburbs even before the race riots of 1967. After the city burned for a week and 43 people died, there was a stampede to get out. Detroit became a doughnut long before anyone had heard of the Wal-Mart effect.

What's left today is in tatters. Detroit boasts one of the highest crime rates of any American city. Around half of Detroiters aren't in the labour force. According to the Detroit Literacy Association, 47 per cent of the population can't read or write.

Most of the city is a food desert, where residents buy provisions in tins from convenience and liquor stores. There's not a chain grocery or big box store left in all the 357 square kilometres of Detroit. That means to buy even basic supplies, like a bath towel, you have to leave town.

"There used to be a Polish-Italian bakery there," Mark Covington says, pointing to his patch of broccoli and squash across the street. He's sitting in the window of a hollowed-out home where only two years ago, his kindergarten teacher lived. Since she moved to a nursing home, "scrappers" have broken in and stripped away every bit of metal – the copper wires and pipes, the grates, the doorknobs.

A truck roared up at night, attached chains to the metal bars that still guarded the windows, and pulled them down.

"This was a nice mixed white-black neighbourhood when I was growing up," says Covington, 37. "People started leaving."

Two years ago, after losing his job as an environmental technician, Covington spent a week hauling garbage off the lots beside his home. He then planted boxes of vegetables where neighbours once lived. He named it the Georgia Street Community Garden and invited passersby to tuck in.

"People around here don't have lights or gas," he says, waving to a woman who has stopped to pick some cherry tomatoes. "So what was better to grow – flowers or vegetables?"

A woman up the street started sending her foster kids to help, and a movement was born. Covington erected four white boards to show movies on Saturday nights. He brought in chairs for reading sessions. He started a backpack program and hosted a harvest dinner for 90 neighbours.

Last year, he bought his old teacher's home and the derelict store next door for $1 from the city, and $4,000 in back taxes. He plans to refurbish it into a community centre.

"We're not just into farming. We're into community self-determination," says Malik Yakini, one of the leaders of Detroit's nascent farming movement. The self-described "social architect" runs an Africentric school and chairs the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. He talks about food justice – where the community reaps both the nutritional and financial rewards of the food it buys.

His D-Town Farm spans two acres of city parkland on Detroit's western edge, where little bungalows with rusted awnings still line wide streets and a faded ice cream truck does laps of the yellowing boulevard. The volunteer team running it sells its leafy greens and radishes to local restaurants and farmers markets. Next year, it plans to hire two permanent employees.

"We're trying to create an economic model, to show how agriculture could contribute to the economic recovery of Detroit," Malini says, pushing into the brush to reveal a plastic greenhouse where oyster mushrooms will soon grow.

That model doesn't include agribusiness. Replacing General Motors with Cargill isn't the answer, he says.

"We're activists. We're concerned with the health, vitality and well-being of the black community generally. This is one part of a larger picture. So any proposal that brings in the corporate sector and disempowers community is problematic for us," says Yakini, who spearheaded the just-formed Detroit Food Policy Council. "We're much more in favour of smaller scale community-operated projects where people themselves have a vested interest and profit from the sale of the produce."

Go to Europe, and you'll trip over the remnants of all kinds of empires. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German government moved residents to concentrated areas in cities like Leipzig and turned off the lights elsewhere.

But in North America, where people spend more time every year commuting to work than vacationing, the idea of planning decline is foreign.

"In the U.S., everything is about reaching the next frontier. Growth is progress," says Karina Pallagst, director of the Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective program at the University of California at Berkeley. "So talking about shrinking is taboo. It's a very painful insight to say we have to cut back."

Still, there are some local models. Facing a population a third the size of its glory days, former steel hub Youngstown, Ohio, has offered to move residents out of dying neighbourhoods into denser ones, where city resources are concentrated. It plans to demolish leftover homes, yank up street lamps and let nature take over.

"It's like taking a segment of an orange out," says Joe Berridge, a partner with Toronto's Urban Strategies, which helped draft Youngstown's "right-sizing" plan.

Flint's former acting mayor, Michael K. Brown, recently spoke about following suit and "shutting down quadrants of the city."

While running for mayor last spring, Bing raised the prospect for Detroit.

"We've got limited resources as a city," his spokesperson Edward Cardinas says. "We're tying to figure out how to keep providing services."

What's different, in Detroit's case, is the role of farming.

City planning officials have struck a working group to craft a vision for "agricultural urbanism" and corresponding legislation. As it stands, all farms are technically illegal. But facing a homicide a day, the city has been preoccupied. Now, it is wondering if the ground beneath the crumbling pavement could be part of the solution.

The Hantz farm proposal is on Mayor Bing's desk. He'll get to it once he figures out the budget, Cardinas says.

The potential is inspiring. A recent study by Michigan State University sustainable agriculture professor Michael Hamm shows that by growing about 5 per cent of the extra fruit and vegetables Michigan residents should be eating to meet health standards, the state's economy would gain $200 million and more than 4,000 jobs. Much of that produce could be grown in Detroit – which by his calculations has 4,800 acres of vacant land, not including parks or right-of-ways.

"There's a huge opportunity," Hamm says. "The lesson then is we can carve out green space and not think of agriculture as an outlying activity to cities. It will be an integral component of a green city in the future."