AutoExpress never met a car they didn’t like. Or, if they did, they kept that opinion to themselves. In keeping with the advertiser-pleasing house style, the British car mag offers readers a “review” of the Vauxhall/Opel version of the Chevy’s Hail Mary-shaped plug-in electric/gas hybrid. Despite the fact that the car isn’t in production, regardless of the company’s ongoing refusal to let anyone test the car in extended range mode (i.e., when the ICE kicks in), AutoExpress gives the Ampera . . . five stars! Other than than a quick kvetch about the price and an unquestioning reference to the Lutzian crock about “the gas going stale in the tank,” Paul Bailey is a booster. Still, at the end of the proverbial English day, “the project raises more questions than it answers.” Such as: will European governments buy into the Volt-as-savior meme that found such fertile ground in the US? You don’t hear the Germans talking about it . . .
So how’s that going to work once GM sells Opel, anyway? While the development has been happening at the Tech center in Warren, what work has been done on the car in Europe? I mean, besides designing a better exterior and interior than the one we’ll be seeing over here.
Will GM sell the car to Opel, or license them to build it? Will anybody even care? My guess is that however badly it does in the US (and that’s probably quite badly indeed), it’s going to do a lot worse as a 40k-euro economy car where they’ve already got really efficient diesels and don’t seem to have adopted hybrids the way we have.
Does anybody really think that this car is going to make it to market?
If cars could cry, they would look like this.
@ScottMcG :
it’s going to do a lot worse as a 40k-euro economy car where they’ve already got really efficient diesels and don’t seem to have adopted hybrids the way we have.
Sum of Toyota Priuses sold in Germany in July 2009:
549.
That’s not even enough to put it in the “Top 100” list of best selling cars in Germany.
And yet, July 2009 was the second best month for the Prius in Germany ever. Normally it sells about 300/month, with May 2009 being exceptionally bad at 86 Prii sold.
But hey, let me write a press release for Toyota:
BREAKING NEWS:
July 2009, Germany
We’re proud to announce that July 2009 has been the most successful month for the smug Prius in the land of Wurst and Bier – ze germans bought five hundred and fourty nine of them, which means for the second month ever we sold more Priuses than Volkswagen sells their popular Phaeton sedan.
On a related note: Auto Bild gave the new Prius a very positive four star review.
Ain’t gonna help though.
So, the Ampera – expensive Opels stopped selling well in the late 1970s. I’m not holding my breath for this to change.
Mirko Reinhardt,
As compared to the car the typical UK family drives (gaged by looking at the parking lots in the Lake District and in Scotland when I was there in 2005), the Prius is slightly bigger and a lot more expensive.
If we could get diesel-powered Vauxhall Corsas here, the Prius probably wouldn’t be such a hot seller here, either. But since it’s just about the only currently-produced car in the US that gets 50-ish MPG with a useful carrying capacity, it’s a winner. I spent the whole trip bitching about how American car companies were sending the practical little cars that I like to Europe, and only selling overpowered blingmobiles at home. GM and Ford make money building great small cars — they’ve just chosen not to sell them at home.
Also, paying ~$8/gal (1£/L) sucked.
I’m rooting for the Volt and the Ampera, but the jury’s still out until I can drive one at my local Chevy dealer.
The cars in “Transformers” look like they came off the showroom floor and the cars heading for the showroom floor look like characters from “Transformers.”
Sum of Toyota Priuses sold in the Netherlands in August 2009:
1364.
Which makes the Prius the top selling car in Holland. It has to do with the taxman and i wouldn’t want to claim that the German taxman is playing favorite to the German carmakers but i would be surprised if it wasn’t. Ampera will be a German car so i expect a more friendly enviroment for it than the Prius.
GM would do/would have done well to adopt the Opel’s lightning bolt logo in the US for the Volt and any future electric models.