What's the French word for chutzpah? Whatever it is, Citroen has it in spades. Following the furor generated by their Spanish ad that featured a less-than-flattering image of Chairman Mao, they've announced they're going to manufacture a new model in China later this year. Which model? The C4 of course, the same model featured in the controversial ad. China Car Times reports it'll be built by the Dongfeng Citroen joint venture which currently builds several other Citroen models for the Chinese market. The Chinese-built C4 will be substantially cheaper than the model imported last year, so it'll probably sell well in spite of its scowling disapproval by the Chairman.

Usually I ding manufacturers for switching to stupid alphanumeric model names at the expense of memorable word names (Legend became the RL? Seville became the STS? What happened to the Continental?). But Volkswagen is doing their best to make anonymous letter/number combinations look more appealing by choosing the most unpronounceable names they can find/devise. First, we had the Touareg ("twa-reg"), which is embarrassing no matter how you say it (especially to the eponymous semi-nomadic tribe who didn't get a dime from the deal). Then VW unleashed the Tiguan ("tig-wan"), a cute-ute (their tails are made of rubber, their backs are made of springs). Yesterday, VW attempted to top both of those– and the Nissan Qashqai (don't ask me)– by calling their rebadged and slightly reworked Chrysler minivan the Routan. Route-tan? Rootin'? With apologies to Sid and Nancy, I'm going with "Rowten." Or not, as the case may be.

Now that Toyota's co-opted the Camry to make the ES, hijacked the Highlander to make the RX, fine-tuned the 4Runner to make the GX and liberated the Land Cruiser to make the LX, Lexus is planning to pimp a Prius. Bloomberg reports that Lexus wants to add "something different, and that's highly-efficiency" to their current hybrid offerings, which currently emphasize performance over fuel economy. Market research has revealed that more than a third of the people who bought a Prius last year have a family income over $100k. Half of those top $150k. (Previously blogged by TTAC here.) Not surprisingly, Lexus sees gold in them thar' demographics! That said, I guess they've never heard of "reverse snob appeal" (a.k.a. slumming). And you gotta wonder how you can add upmarket appeal without adding weight. The Japanese manufacturers didn't release any details about the new hybrid– other than the fact it'll be added to the Lexus lineup next year.

The press preview for the 2008 North American International Auto Show is finally over. TTAC’s Texas twosome–myself and Sajeev Mehta– did our level best to catch the major reveals, grill some suits and get a feel for the temper of the times. On the plane back to the Lone Star State, I collected my thoughts on the show’s winners and losers. Were the carmakers fiddling while Rome burns, or preparing to rise Phoenix-like from the ashes ahead?

What happens when you put one of the founders of Tesla and GM's Bob Lutz (is there another one?) in the same room and let them talk? It becomes a mutual admiration society. In his apostrophe-challenged Tesla Founders Blog, Martin Eberhard recounts his meeting in the Car Czar's "palatial office." Eberhard says the two execs "spent a good couple of hours talking about battery-electric vehicles." (He didn't say how many bad hours they spent talking.) And then Bob dropped the bombshell: "He started the Volt program in direct response to the Tesla Roadster." Wow! And here we were thinking the Toyota Prius had something to do with it. Anyway, after a few hours with Maximum Bob, Minimum Mark came away impressed "and willing to believe that the Volt might be a real program." After schmoozing with a few other people on the Volt program, Eberhard concluded that "the Volt Program is real." So the co-founder of Tesla is sold on the Volt. I guess that means we should now have equal faith in both.

“Toll increases must be considered imminently,” says the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority (via Boston.com). This news comes just two weeks after a 25- to 50 cent toll increase on I90. What’s the rush? “Fiscal woes” could delay more than $65m worth of construction and maintenance work on the 138-mile-long highway. Time for some regrets as well. In 1996, six exits at the western end of the highway (Exit 1 to Exit 6) became toll-free to passenger vehicles. That move “has deprived the authority of $120 million that could have staved off the growing backlog of maintenance work,” says Turnpike Authority board member Mary Z. Connaughton. State Senator Michael R. Knapik says reinstating tolls on the first six exits "would not be a popular step at all, to say the least.” State Representative David P. Linsky puts a finer point on it. "I am adamantly opposed to tolls going up, because I know that over 50 percent of the tolls we're paying now on the Weston-to-Boston extension aren't going to the road we're riding on, but to the Big Dig," he decries. Taxation without transportation?

Perhaps I should explain why I gave GM Car Czar Bob Lutz his nickname "Maximum Bob." Nah. Why bother? TTAC's archives are suffused with the demented ramblings, patently absurd pronouncements, wildly inaccurate analysis and stupefying statements of GM's resident bodacious braggadocio. He really is God's gift to TTAC. We [also] thank GM CEO Rick Wagoner for appreciating his own true nature as a Harvard-trained beancounter; a realization that led him to place the entire global product line of the artist once known as the world's largest automaker into the hands of an ill-informed, ADD-addled executive. An automobile executive who couldn't name all VW's brands. But I digress. Automotive News [sub] reports that Lutz is tired of fighting. The Car Czar wants to know why can't we all just drive E85? "There's no reason the automotive industry can't go to 100 percent E85 vehicles, and the world we love doesn't have to change." You see, the thing is, the automotive world already has changed. A funny-looking car called the Prius has outsold the once mighty Ford Explorer– and that's just for starters. Shhhh. Don't tell Bob. TTAC wouldn't be half as interesting without him. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you're a GM employee, dealer, customer or stockholder), it's only a matter of time before Maximum Bob unfurls his bankruptcy-proof golden parachute and floats off into a gilded retirement home (or three), proclaiming himself the architect of GM's product renaissance. He will be missed, but in a different sort of way by a different kind of people. If you know what I mean. 

The Lansing State Journal reveals the reason Buick Enclave and Chevrolet Malibu sales are stuck in second gear: parts. According to Gary Cowger, GM's group vice president of global manufacturing and labor, "a lack of components" underpins this December's decision to shut down a third shift at Lansing Delta Township factory. "Even if that had kept running, we still wouldn't have been able to make more Enclaves." What's more… "As you know, we put that third shift on for a while to try to ramp up. But at the tooling rates of the supplier base, you'd have to buy another set of vendor tools (to make more parts) and that takes time. We're maxed out from a tooling standpoint." Cowger also implied that the Chevrolet Malibu drought is down to the same parts problem. "What we're doing right now with the Enclave and CTS and (Chevrolet) Malibu is doing a very detailed analysis of the bottlenecks in the supplier community so you can invest in the right tool sets out there and increase the capacity of that product at the plant." Cowger admits GM underestimated demand for all three cars, but said it's "a good thing." Try telling that to the 1000 GM workers who got laid off, or the GM dealers desperate for product to sell. Oh and don't think we've forgotten that back in October, when GM announced they were shutting down the third shift, they told the LSJ they "eliminated the third shift to keep from overproducing the crossover vehicles made there." I wonder why they didn't bring up the parts issue then? [thanks to Sparky for the tip]

America ad agencies aren't the only auto industry suppliers suffering from foot-in-mouth disease. Reuters reports that a Spanish Citroen ad has triggered quite a furor in China. The poster shows Chairman Mao looking down at a Citroen hatchback. The copy proclaims, "It's true, we are leaders, but at Citroen the revolution never stops. We are once more going to put in motion all the machinery of our technological ability, in order to repeat in 2008 the successes obtained in previous years." The picture of Mao is similar to one in Tianamen Square, with the the People's Republic founder's mouth distorted and squinting eyes. Once the ad hit the internet, the shit hit the fan. Chinese web slingers felt the ad was "not only insulting [to] Chairman Mao, but the whole Chinese nation… where Mao is greatly revered." Citroen immediately pulled the ad and issued an apology. What effect the faux pas will have on Citroen's Chinese sales remains to be seen.

The normally docile automotive press has panned every new Chrysler's interior over the past two or three years, slating the cabins for [the same] ugly interiors fashioned from cheap materials. As the Brits would say, Jim'll fix it. BusinessWeek reports the Chrysler Vice Chairman and President Jim Press has announced that his employer is lowering prices and improving content on 12 Chrysler vehicles. It's all part of some kind of "master plan" that the automaker's unveiling to their stores at next month at the National Auto Dealers Association(NADA) convention. The only details Press would provide: the Compass, Patriot and Caliber get the makeover. Meanwhile, Press reminded jobbing journos that Chrysler's already made 260– count 'em 260– upgrades to Chrysler vehicles' materials and appearance. Yes, well, as the old expression goes: first impressions last. Will the interior upgrades be too little too late? Watch this space. 

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy made a pronouncement that made a lot of people think he'd lost his mind: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade." According to GM's Vice Chairman of Global Product Development, Chevrolet's gas-electric plug-in electric hybrid is GM's moon shot. Wired magazine recently sat down with Bob Lutz and asked the Car Czar what would happen if the Volt doesn't succeed. "What if Kennedy hadn't pulled off the moon shot?" Bob wondered aloud. "If it doesn't work, it's not fatal. But if it does work, it will be sensational and it will have the same sort of symbolism." The U.S. put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, as promised. What are the chances the Volt will appear in a Chevy showroom by 2010?

Rick Wagoner, eh? "Not specifically enamored." Classic passively constructed British understatement from an American car exec. Anyway, for those of you following the development of India's revolutionary Nano, it's probably no surprise that GM doesn't have the hots for the people's car's $2500 price point. The Financial Post reports that GM's chief executive declared that that “the magic” price for an ultra budget car is yet unknown. Meanwhile, GM will compete with the Nano by taking costs out of existing economy cars (e.g. GM's Daewoo delights). Speaking from the floor of the North American International Auto Show, Wagoner also admitted that his golden parachute provider has tried making a cheapo car from scratch before, using coloured plastic panels instead of painting the cars later on. "Overall, the effort hasn’t worked," he said. "What we ended up with was not a very good looking car that wasn’t that cheap.” I say nothing.

If you write for WardsAuto, you know the vast majority of the people reading your bon mots are car dealers. So you can't come out and say "you greedy bunch of bastards are responsible for getting people into cars they can't afford, which is about to turn around and bite you in the ass big time." On the other hand, you can't come out and say "consumers are stupid morons who deserve what they get when they get in over their heads on a new car and can't get the Hell out." Consumers are customers, after all. For an example of how to play it straight down the middle, alienating both camps, I recommend you click on Steve Finaly's latest editorial "The Dealer Made Me Do It," riffing on the LA Times article “New Cars That Are Fully Loaded – With Debt” (blogged on TTAC here). "First off, I’m not excusing auto dealers. Or lenders. They have a moral and business responsibility to try to stop their customers from doing something stupid, such as buying a vehicle with a sticker price that will stick them with an oppressive debt… But so many consumers today buy too much vehicle. Then, when the financial squeeze becomes eye-popping, they look for someone to blame. The dealership and lender make nice targets. Seldom do the debt-ridden blame themselves." Well, why would they? 

It's entirely possible, likely even, that GM doesn't want to reveal any decisions about their Canadian production facilities until they beat the Canadian Auto Workers with the same stick that convinced the United Auto Workers to surrender wages, job security, health care provisions, etc. But it's also true that GM has been vacillating back and forth on whether or not to build Canadian rear or front wheel-drive passenger cars for the American market for well over a year. Aside from the… wait for it…. here it comes… ready…. not yet… Camaro, there are no firm product plans for our neighbors to the north. For an answer to this dilemma, the Globe and Mail turned to GM CEO Rick Wagoner, who said union schunion [paraphrasing]. "The issue we're looking at in the U.S. is just with the CAFE [Corporate Average Fuel Requirements] – how big those segments are going to be. It really is the $64,000 question." That figure might be a little low. According to the Globe, "Sources said the original plan called for GM to manufacture as many as 500,000 rear-wheel-drive vehicles including the Camaro once the plant was running at full tilt by 2010." The limbo dance continues. 

“In a nutshell we would disagree with the assessment that Acura would fall that low in any survey,” an unnamed Acura company spokesman told Ward’s Automotive re: Consumer Reports recent brand perception survey. “Our research shows Acura is ranking high in technology aspects and brand awareness and those types of things.” Those type of things? Ed Farrell, associate director for Consumer Reports' survey team, defended the mag's methodology. He told Ward's that they interrupted 1,720 U.S. adults' family dinner to ask brand-related questions, like “When you think of performance, what car best typifies to you performance?” Typifies to you? On an aggregate basis, top place finishers Toyota and Honda earned scores of 189 and 146. Acura garnered just eight points, finishing below Audi (14 points), Mitsubishi (21 points) and Mercury (22 points). According to the unnamed Acura spokesman, "That may be one of those snapshots that’s blurry when it comes to Acura’s real image.” May? Looks like Acura joins another well-known automotive brand at the top of the charts for obfuscation, petulance, arrogance and denial.