BMW Motorsport Celebrates 40 Years

In honor of BMW Motorsport's 40 year commitment to blurring the line between everyday driver and mid-life crisis automobile here's a video walk around of my favorite M car, the original M Coupe.

Making its debut in 1998, it was an audacious project for the M team. Essentially the BMW top brass said: "Make a car that will beat the Porsche 911 around the Nürburgring. We don't care what it looks like."

The resulting automobile drew criticism for its aesthetics from enthusiast and editors alike. However there was no denying that the M division had produced the most powerful, best handling M car yet. Its outward appearance may have been a little too far ahead of its time, but once behind the wheel everyone agreed the difference was oh-so-good.

Happy birthday BMW M, and here's to another 40 years of Ultimate Driving Machines.

Selective Finger Wagging

Jamie Dimon, the man at the helm of JPMorganChase, has been "invited" to testify before the Senate Banking Committee concerning the firms $2 billion [now] $3 billion dollar hedge loss.

Does anyone else see the hilarity in the fact that the U.S. Senate, which has been operating without a budget for the past 3 some-odd years (not to mention operating in a deficit), for one...has a "banking committee", and two...is concerned about a hedge loss that is within the realm of rounding error in relation to the total amount of assets managed by the firm.

Why doesn't the Senate Banking Committee extend an invitation to the Senate Budget Committee to discuss the absence of a Congressional budget since the sun first rose on the Obama administration. I'm pretty sure there's a committee at my bank that would be contacting me if my account operated in the red for too long.

Strange Noises From Under the Hood

So three days before Facebook's IPO General Motors announces that it is ceasing all paid advertising on Facebook; claiming it's not working. OK fine...maybe so, social media ads is a tricky business. Remember though, Facebook has 800,000,000 active users that, if I remember hearing correctly, an average of one third of that population is logged on at any given time. Then yesterday, the day of the Facebook IPO, GM announces that they will not buy ads during the 2013 Super Bowl. The reason? "It's gotten too expensive."

Ok, hold on. The Super Bowl is the single largest television advertising EVENT of the year. It's widely known that many people watch the game not even for the game...but for the commercials. Couple that decision with GM withdrawing ads from what everybody knows is the largest registered online audience on the face of the planet...Facebook (it's kind of a big deal) and something just doesn't sound right.

In my opinion, what GM's decisions say is not that Facebook ads don't work, and that boo-hoo advertising is too expensive...it says to me that something is wrong at General Motors. Something is definitely wrong.

What about Ford? The only other American auto company that anyone really cares about, and didn't take any bailout money. What is Ford's take on Facebook advertising?

..."We've found Facebook ads to be very effective when strategically combined with engagement, great content and innovative ways of storytelling," Ford spokeswoman Kelli Felker said in an e-mail.

Pssst hey...GM...do that!