Ever wonder how much car companies pay to have their vehicles featured in a major Hollywood movie? Here's a hint, a lot. The Los Angeles Times reported that Chrysler paid $3 million to have its Jeep Wrangler Unlimited featured in “Sahara,” a high-budget adventure starring Matthew McConaughey.
The product placement fee was high enough that producers nixed one scene that might have elicited an angry call from Chrysler's marketing department.
“You can't have the truck get almost stuck,” producer Karen Baldwin wrote in a March 2004 e-mail to “Sahara” executives. “I would bet that Jeep will have a heart attack when they see that. They want to show how well the Jeep handles and responds — not that it will get stuck in a tough situation.”
Just think how Chrysler felt when “Sahara” bombed at the box office.
Glossing it over
Detroit can rest easy. Our auto industry is still relevant enough to be fodder for Conde Nast's much-awaited new business glossy, Portfolio. The debut issue of the magazine featured a long, largely positive article on Bill Ford and Ford Motor Co. by Betsy Morris, who specialized in long, mostly positive articles about Bill Ford when she was at Fortune.
So what did we learn from this multi-month journalistic effort?
# Bill Ford was a visionary but was reluctant to foist his radical ideas on the company — and when he tried, he got the slow-walk from his team.
# Former Ford President Jim Padilla fits nicely under a bus.
# Alan Mulally asked Ford family members for their autographs.
# Women in Detroit wear “department store” gowns to the auto show charity black tie.
# Ford's PR masterminds earned their bonus this year.
Time warp
Some people would argue that Detroit's auto industry is behind the times.
Business Insider doesn't agree.
But an item in the new labor contract for Chrysler's new $900 million axle plant in Marysville made us scratch our heads.
Workers at the new plant will not be allowed to listen to “Walkmans” on the plant floor. Sony Walkman cassette players were once the rage — when Reagan ruled the White House.
Hey guys, join the iPod generation.
But what about the Lions?
Toyota Motor Corp. CEO Katsuaki Watanabe's trip to Michigan didn't turn out as he'd hoped. “The one day I'm in Detroit, the Tigers aren't playing,” he told the Society of Automotive Engineers' banquet on Thursday night.
“Instead I was given this Detroit baseball cap and told, 'Better luck next time,'” he said. “I looked forward to coming to Detroit because I'm a big sports fan. The Pistons, the Red Wings and Tigers have really made Detroit a great sports town.”
He made absolutely no mention, however, of the Lions, the football team owned by William Clay Ford Sr.
Banquet impresario Paul W. Smith, radio host of 760 WJR, remarked on the omission.
“If we can just get him to be a Lions' fan, and do a joint venture with Ford,” Smith mused, “who knows what could happen with the Lions?”
There has been speculation about some sort of Ford-Toyota linkup ever since Ford CEO Alan Mulally met Toyota Chairman Fujio Cho in Japan last December.
No doubt under Toyota, the Lions would be leaner, faster and they might even win.
April Fool's gone awry
Call it an extended April Fool's Day hangover.
Three weeks after the prankster holiday, General Motor's Corp. Vice Chairman Bob Lutz continues to fend off rumors of his retirement — hatched from a blog.
On April 1, TheCarBlogger posted a faux story on the retirement of the 75-year-old auto exec — long a topic of fervent speculation in the auto industry.
A perturbed Lutz posted his own blog to clarify.
“I have no plans to retire . . . not June 1, nor any other time soon,” he wrote on GM's Fast Lane Web site. “This was clearly an Internet prank gone hopelessly awry — and not a very clever one either.”
