GM hopes Camaro has broad appeal
When it brings back the Chevrolet Camaro muscle car in a few years, General Motors Corp. hopes it will attract younger buyers as well as appeal to its traditional customers who want to roar down the highway.
GM’s top executive said Thursday the new version of the Detroit icon will appeal to car enthusiasts, yet be more fuel efficient and sophisticated than the 1969 version on which it is loosely based.
The new rear-wheel-drive car, with more aerodynamic styling than its predecessor, will hit showroom floors early in 2009. It will have automatic and manual transmissions and six- and eight-cylinder engine options to appeal to many buyers, Chairman and chief executive Rick Wagoner said.
The decision to build a car that hearkens back to GM’s heyday comes as the company struggles in a market beset by foreign competitors. The company lost $3.2 billion in the second quarter alone, due mainly to employee buyouts and other restructuring costs. Its July sales were off 22.2 percent from a year ago, led by declining demand for pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles.
Oklahoma City
Anadarko buys Kerr-McGee Corp.
Anadarko Petroleum Corp. closed its $16.4 billion buyout of fellow oil and natural gas producer Kerr-McGee Corp. on Thursday after shareholders for Kerr-McGee agreed to the deal.
Houston-based Anadarko announced in June that it would buy Oklahoma City-based Kerr-McGee and pay $4.7 billion to buy Denver-based Western Gas Resources in a move to more than double its annual sales and gain a bigger footprint in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico and the Rockies.
“The Kerr-McGee transaction makes Anadarko one of the leading companies in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico and in the Rockies, two of the fastest-growing oil and natural gas producing regions in North America,” Anadarko chairman Jim Hackett said in a statement.
Kerr-McGee stockholders will receive $70.50 per share in cash for each share of common stock. Kerr-McGee traded at about $50 a share before the deal was announced June 23.
Washington
AFSCME ‘tax’ will urge voting
The largest union in the AFL-CIO – representing state and local government workers – is beginning a multimillion-dollar effort to mobilize its members to vote, work for improved health care and organize more workers.
The effort will be paid for by increases in the dues paid by workers and the fees paid by local unions.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, with 1.4 million members, voted this week in Chicago to increase the “per capita tax” it charges affiliate unions, union President Gerald McEntee said Thursday.
McEntee said the union will raise $60 million from 2007 to 2009 with the increased fees and $60 million per year after that.
“In 2004, progressives lost our third straight election; politicians who won were more viciously anti-union than ever,” McEntee said in a conference call.