Sweet home, Chicago: AppOne, a Baton Rouge-based company that serves as a bridge between lenders and vehicle dealers, is now working with a Chicago-based bank. MB Financial Bank, which provides loan financing and commercial banking services to motorcycle dealerships across the U.S., has joined the AppOne platform. The deal will make it easier to get a loan to buy a motorcycle through MB Financial.
Saturday night crowd: LSU was one of the top 10 schools in the country for football attendance in 2009, the 10th year in a row it made the list. LSU had an average attendance of 92,489 for its seven home games last season, good enough to place seventh. Those numbers were boosted by the Tiger Stadium record crowd that saw the LSU-Florida game, which brought in 93,129 fans. Michigan led the nation in average attendance with 108,933 fans per game, followed by Penn State at 107,008. Other SEC schools making the list included Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Florida.
Vigilance warranted: The president of Toyota’s U.S. operations acknowledged to lawmakers today the company’s recalls of millions of its cars may “not totally” solve the problem of sudden and dangerous acceleration. “We are vigilant and we continue to look for potential causes,” Toyota’s James Lentz told a congressional panel. However, Lentz repeated his company’s position that stuck gas pedals in some of the company’s most popular model cars and trucks were caused by one of two problems: misplaced floor mats or sticking accelerator pedals. Lentz insisted electronic systems connected to the gas pedal and fuel line did not contribute to the problem, drawing sharp criticism from lawmakers who said such a possibility should not be ruled out and from a tearful woman who said she had been at the wheel of a runaway Lexus. “Shame on you, Toyota,” Rhonda Smith, of Sevierville, Tenn., said at a congressional hearing. Then she added a second “shame on you,” directed at federal highway safety regulators. Lentz said Toyota has not completely ruled out an electronics malfunction and is still investigating causes of the sudden accelerations. Still, “we have not found a malfunction” in the electronics of any of the cars at issue, he says.
