Lightning Is Out of the Bottle, Retiring On Bitcoin, and Pontiac Is Put Aside

The Automotive Troublemaker w/ Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier

Today we talk about the very first Ford Lighting rolling off the production line, the largest retirement plan holder allowing investments in Bitcoin, and we’re talking about Pontiac’s final days.

• The very first Ford Lightnings have rolled off the assembly line

  • Pre production began on Sept 21, 2021 (Just over 7 months ago)
  • Executive Chairman, Bill Ford, “Today we celebrate the Model T moment for the 21st Century at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center.” “The stunning anticipation for F-150 Lightning is a credit to the work of our Ford engineers and designers, and the UAW team members who are building these trucks with pride.”
  • 200k Pre orders, Ford plans on fulfilling 150k this year
• Fidelity plans to allow investors to put bitcoin in their 401Ks. The plan will open the 23,000 companies that use Fidelity to bitcoin options later this year.
  • Fidelity is the US's largest retirement-plan provider, but this move toward the mainstream for crypto will need the endorsement of employers to be complete, which remains to be seen.
  • Under the plan, Fidelity would let savers allocate as much as 20% of their nest eggs to bitcoin, though that threshold could be lowered by plan sponsors.
  • Vanguard Group, a major competitor of Fidelity’s, says it “has no plans to offer a cryptocurrency option within its 401(k) plans,” according to a spokeswoman. On its site, the company says, “since cryptocurrencies are highly speculative in their current state, Vanguard believes their long-term investment case is weak.”
  • Overheard — “If I retire right now I can live on my savings for 30 years, now 10 years, now 41 years, now 3 years”
• On April 27th, 2009 GM announces plans to end production of the 80 year old Pontiac brand
  • Pontiac’s origins date back to the Oakland Motor Car, which was founded in 1907 in Pontiac, Michigan, by Edward Murphy, a horse-drawn carriage manufacturer. In 1909, Oakland became part of General Motors, a conglomerate formed the previous year by another former buggy company executive, William Durant. The first Pontiac model made its debut as part of the Oakland line in the 1920s. The car, which featured a six-cylinder engine, proved so popular that the Oakland name was eventually dropped and Pontiac became its own GM division by the early 1930s.
  • The New York Times: “More than any other G.M. brand, Pontiac stood for performance, speed and sex appeal.” Pontiacs were featured in such movies as 1977’s “Smokey and the Bandit,” in which actor Burt Reynolds drove a black Pontiac Trans Am, and the 1980s hit TV show “Knight Rider,” which starred a Pontiac Trans Am as KITT, a talking car with artificial intelligence, alongside David Hasselhoff as crime fighter Michael Knight.

Get the ASOTU Daily Push Back email at https://www.asotu.com/

Lis

Hosts: Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier
Get the Daily Push Back email at https://www.asotu.com/

JOIN the conversation on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asotu/

Read our most recent email at: https://www.asotu.com/media/push-back-email