BIRD'S-EYE VIEW
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BOB LUTZ, chairman of Ford of Europe, is not a man renowned for shyness: we hear that his subtle ways of getting his message across even include reading out unfavourable personal performance assessments in front of their subjects at management meetings.
Lutz was in typical boisterous form at the Financial Times World Motor Conference in Frankfurt last week. During the session which he chaired, he called the man from BMW to task for having turned a paper on specialist cars into a 30-minute advertisement for BMWs. And Volvo's Sten Langenius was given a Lutz bullet to bite on with the suggestion that Volvo was using profits from US sales to finance low prices in Europe. (Langenius spat the bullet back with a fairly firm denial . . .) But Lutz really moved into high gear later with a claim that every new job created at Nissan's new UK factory would mean the loss of two others at existing British factories. That is an argument which has been advanced before, and there might even be some truth in it. Time alone will tell. Lutz ,could have chosen a slightly more diplomatic time to make his case, however, making his remarks only a . couple of days after his company unveiled its latest weapon in the small van sales war — the Econovan made totally in, yes, Japan, by Mazda . . .
THE FRENCH Government is stepping up its fight against the growth of Franglais by fining companies that use it in their advertising. Could we not do the same for the English language, guarding against the ingress of cornputerspeak?
Parcels carrier TNT held a press conference last week to announce a major investment in computer systems. TNT traffic staff who need to use the new computer terminals will be trained in small classes with never more than eight people. A TNT computer man described this as "an interactive feedback session".
Guilty. Fined £100.
IT HAS TAKEN Cunninghame District Council, a Scottish local authority with an 11-year history of opposition to apartheid, about 18 months to discover that it has unwittingly bought a South Africanbuilt vehicle. A Ford P100 pick-up was purchased in blissful ignorance early last year although the fact that it was designed for South Africa and
manufactured there from mainly British components was well publicised at the launch.
According to Theresa Beattie, district convenor, "the entire Labour group was horrified" at the gaffe and she promised a full investigation into it. Several members had to be treated for shock with hot, sweet whisky.
yOU just cannot judge everything by its name. The staff of Transport 2000, who are keen to support public transport as well as oppose heavy lorries, thought little of it when a North London organisation calling itself Probus invited a speaker to one of its meetings.
Probus, after all, suggested an unequivocal support for the bus in all its forms and applications. Not so, for shortly before a Transport 2000 man climbed aborad his red bus to get to darkest Finchley, the awful truth dawned . . . Probus is a club of septuagenarian retired Rotarians. Rather than finding the floor of the meeting rooms carpeted with discarded Red Rovers, the street outside was littered with parked red Rovers.
A• CCORDING to Michael Montague, chairman of the National Consumer Council, the Official Secrets Act prevents publication of statistics on damage caused by heavy
lorries. Think of the danger to national security if the Russians found out that Barnsley was about to be destroyed by an earthquake created by coal lorries rather than by blasts of hot air from one of their local admirers.
LUCAS has produced a video hasty. It was made at the Lucas Truck Superprix at Brands Hatch and includes shots from the racing driver's seat. For £14.95 you can feel the adrenalin pumping without risk for 32 minutes and expound to the family on how much better a driver you are than the tearaways on the screen.
THE TWO MILLIONTH Ford Transit is dedicated to conservation and has the warm approval of no less an authority than David Bellamy. It is a 15-seat diesel-engined minibus and has been offered on short loan to schools and sixth-form colleges embarking on conservation and environmental study trips.
Ford supports the British and European conservation awards organised by the Conservation Foundation, of which David Bellamy is a leading light. He will judge the findings of school parties on their study trips and the best will win the minibus or a similar vehiclt outright for the participating school.
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