Chongqing Lifan, a Chinese car maker that is more known for its prodigious motorcycle output, launched its collector’s edition of their 320 model last week. The car is priced at 39,800 yuan ($5,830). Even China’s Gasgoo thinks that the Lifan “resembles a Mini Cooper.” But hey, BMW has motorcycle roots also.

The marketing strategy of the “collectors model” is interesting. The Lifan 320 prototype was officially launched at the 2009 Shanghai Auto Show in April. At its launch, the Lifan 320 was priced at 48,800 yuan ( $7,086).

The collector’s edition of the 320 comes with many upgrades, but is lower priced “to target fashion-conscious young buyers.” Hmm. Having trouble selling the knock-off?

Maybe the brand conscious Chinese fancy a real Mini. Or not. In the first nine months of 2009, BMW sold  59,400 BMWs and only 2,934 Minis. It’s a big country. They want big cars to go along with it.

It’s not an academic question: if your answer is yes, Mazda has a $1.1B share offering it wants you to participate in. Now that Ford has reduced its stake in Mazda, the Japanese automaker is finding itself short on all kinds of hybrid and EV development. In fact, Mazda’s planned offering will dilute Ford’s share even further, to 11 percent. Automotive News [sub] reports Mazda’s plan is to use the money to improve fuel economy by 30 percent by 2015 mainly by improving its internal combustion engines, gradually adding electric components such as a hybrid system. However, isn’t promising to offer a first hybrid (let’s pretend, as most of the world has, that the Tribute Hybrid never happened) by 2015 a bit like a TV company finally offering a flat screen within the next five years? Has Mazda dallied to long with hydro-rotary nonsense, or is Mazda’s Hail Mary worth betting on?

We set a new record with the Datsun 210 Clue: 50 guesses! Wow. And SFO In Training nailed the woody. And for those that question what’s going on here, this is our way of warding off dementia. You know, use it or lose it. And this sure beats crossword puzzles. Happy hunting!

Will Ford go bankrupt? I doubt it. Not while the “bad” automakers that suckled on the federal teat go on and on and on and on. A FoMoCo C11 would expose the government’s Detroit bailout for what it was/is: unfair, ineffective, ill-conceived and unsustainable. Politically, Ford’s failure is not an option. If push comes to shove, Uncle Sam will send Ford more Department of Energy loans, some juicy subsidies and generous tax breaks; anything and everything up to and including cash money. This despite—I mean because of the fact that Ford is guilty of the same sin that sank GM and Chrysler: taking in less money than they spent. Political calculations aside, is it even possible that Dearborn’s darlings will be forced—forced I tell you—to prostrate themselves in front of federal taskmasters? Once again, to answer that question, feel the burn.

(Read More…)

Thanks to $7m in state grants and incentives, a $26.5m investment by Bannon Automotive and the promise of $52m in federal loans, Syracuse NY will become the American home of the Reva NXR. The AP (via MSNBC) reports Bannon expects production to reach 15k-20k units per year. But is $25k for 100 miles of charge, a 65 mph top speed and a bit more interior room than an Isetta going to fly in the US market? Oh right, government subsidies don’t care.

And it wasn’t even close. Though the proposed concessions didn’t even move Ford to parity with its UAW-VEBA-owned cross-town rivals, 92 percent of the KC plant’s workers rejected the deal. According to The Detroit News, a UAW national Vice President tried to convince workers to accept the deal prior to the vote, but was apparently shouted down by angry employees. “(He) spoke and was booed,” said one worker who the DetN did not identify. “There were a lot of ‘No’s!’ It was a very loud meeting.” And apparently, it was the no-strike clause that got workers so steamed. Which makes a certain amount of sense… after all, what good is a union that can’t strike? The problem is that the no-strike clause was a crucial factor in convincing Fiat to take charge of Chrysler, an automaker the UAW ended up with a 60 percent stake in. And now, the worker’s rejection of a Ford agreement strikes an equally rippling blow to the UAW’s pattern-bargaining strategy. Can the UAW have it both ways? It sure looks like it’s going to try. Though KC was the first local rejection of the deal (five other plants narrowly approved it, two have rejected), a vote is approaching (on Friday) at the Dearborn Truck plant that has been a hotbed of UAW dissent. So much so, that it appears that UAW leadership may have delayed the Dearborn vote until after all the other locals’ votes. Still, if the Dearborn vote fails, which it well could, we could see major turmoil within the ranks of the UAW.

Is anyone surprised that the lawyers who guided “old” GM into the dustbin of history scored $255,555 a day for 90 days? The $23 million price tag seems like small beer to me. According to The Detroit News, “AP Services, headed by Al Koch, who doubles as the chief restructuring officer of GM’s bankruptcy estate, had a team of 153 people working on GM’s bankruptcy case, and several charged $835 an hour in June.” Fair enough, you know, for a $50 billion-plus taxpayer “investment.” Besides, AP dropped their rates when the Justice Department bitched about them to a federal judge. Of course, the move wasn’t retroactive. But then, why would it be?

$413 million isn’t a ton of money for one of the largest global automakers, but GM’s purchase of Daewoo’s entire share offering still doesn’t completely add up. After all, GM was barred from spending US taxpayer bailout money on overseas assets. And it’s not like GM wanted to increase its stake from 51 percent to 70.1 percent; GM-Daewoo tells Reuters GM had to step in with the cash when the Korean Development Bank, SAIC and Suzuki declined to participate in the rights offering. But under which sofa did GM find the cash? “The money came from GM’s global operations,” is all Daewoo’s reps will say about the matter. And though we could criticize GM for starving its overseas operations in order to keep the wolf from Daewoo’s debt-riddled door, the reality is that few of GM’s divisions are as important as Daewoo for GM’s global product development now that Opel is on the way out the door. The real problem is that this outlay is hardly the last one GM will have to make in order to keep its small-car development hub.

(Read More…)

Well, we’ve been here before. A while back we’d heard that an Alfa 169-branded, LX-platformed sedan would be built at Brampton for the US market, with a rumored $62k price point. That story seemed a bit iffy at the time, although it wouldn’t surprise us to hear it announced officially at Chrysler’s forthcoming five-year plan announcement. Especially now that we’re hearing more rumblings that Fiat will borrow the LX platform for European-market sedans to be built at the former Carozzeria Bertone plant in Turin. Automotive News [sub] reports a Lancia Thesis replacement and possibly even a entry-level Maserati will be built using Chrysler’s long-running RWD platform. Fiat has been looking for a RWD platform for some time, having planned on using Cadillac’s Sigma platform, and when things got nasty with GM, Fiat went sniffing around the Jag XF platform. Now Fiat has its rear-drive underpinnings, and Chrysler’s new “Pentastar” V6 to play with… but will Maserati settle for less than a V8? And will the American market actually be getting an Alfa-branded LX? TTAC will be on-hand for Chrysler’s five-year product plan announcement, and will report the definitive word on November 4th.

It’s 2009, and Chrysler Group is still hugely dependent on Ram sales to keep dealer volume flowing. Not that there’s anything wrong with pickups per se, but dependence on a shrinking market (down 34 percent year-to-date, compared to 27 percent reduction for all light-duty vehicles) is never a good thing. Cutting into profits to keep your share of said declining market is even less of a good thing. And yet Chrysler is planning on doing just that, cutting starting prices on 2500 and 3500 Heavy Duty Rams by $1,970. According to Automotive News [sub] Ram 2500 regular cab 4×2 with a 5.7-liter Hemi V-8 will start at $28,165, including shipping for the 2010 model year, despite offering more equipment than the outgoing model. Why? In a word, desperation. “There’s not a lot of strength in Chrysler’s portfolio right now, so they’re trying to give it its own identity,” says Edmunds Editor Karl Brauer. Except that “won’t sell unless they’re discounted to the hilt” was already part of the Chrysler portfolio’s identity. The only difference with the Ram is that it might just sell. As Cash-for-Clunker-era sales results prove, even huge rebates (on top of record manufacturer incentives) don’t do much to move Chrysler’s moribund car lineup. So why not try massive discounts on massive Rams?  How much worse could (will) it get?

Swedish daily Dagens Industri claims to have their hands on Koenigsegg Group’s secret market-plan for Saab. The one they used to secure a 600 million Euro loan from European Investment Bank. And they are aiming…upmarket! The ultimate goal is, by 2016, to establish a true luxury brand, and by then have such exclusive and expensive cars that an annual sale of 65.000 cars will suffice (by doubling the average prices).

(Read More…)

Remember the scene in Jaws when Quint is being eaten by a great white shark, where he kicks his legs at the beast’s head, trying to avoid its endless rows of razor-sharp teeth? I reckon Lincoln’s designers based the MKT’s snout on Bruce’s man-eating maw. Sure, there’s a touch of Hannibal Lecter’s mask to the […]

If it goes according to the plans of two competing car dealers, Des Moines, Iowa, will become the center of the Chinese car export revolution. The Chinese car invasion has been long feared, but so far has not materialized. Two guys in Des Moines are on a Chinese trade mission …
(Read More…)

Yours truly, Sajeev Mehta writes:

Hello Piston Slappers, this S.O.S. is for anyone GM-savvy enough to tango with a 4.1L Cadillac. And live to diagnose another day: are you up for the challenge?

I acquired a 1986 Fleetwood 75 Formal Limousine (1 of 1000), which made me reconsider my stance on wrong-wheel drive GM products of the mid 1980s This was a $0.99 eBay purchase from a frustrated shipping company in the Houston Ship Channel who lost their overseas buyer. It didn’t run, until we installed a $20 ignition module. Which brought the less-than-a-buck Caddy back to life. Almost. So what’s the problem?

(Read More…)

The recent arrest of a Ford employee on charges of industrial espionage may have been enough to scuttle Ford’s sale of Volvo to Chinese firm Geely. Or, as Bertel Schmitt reports, perhaps the spy story was just a convenient excuse to get more money out of the deal. But whether as a legitimate concern or strategic fearmongering, industrial espionage is hot right now. The Freep reports three former GM-Daewoo employees have been charged with spycraft, for allegedly transferring “critical GM technology” to Russian automaker tagAZ. The technology in question: engine and component designs for Daewoo’s outgoing (J-200 model) Lacetti, predecessor to the Cruze. And GM claims tagAz’s new C-100 sedan (above) looks a little too similar to the Lacetti in question. “It’s pretty close, if not dead on,” say GM-Daewoo spokesfolks. “The J-200 may not be a new vehicle for a lot of developing countries, but for a lot of emerging markets, it’s a very aspirational vehicle.” And it’s been a best-seller in Russia. TagAZ denies that it stole designs from Daewoo, saying it spent four years and $250m developing the C-100. But it also hired “a number” of former Daewoo engineers, according to GM, which is probably the most legitimate way to steal a good design. But with GM possibly wavering on the Opel deal, will this latest espionage raise doubts about the wisdom of selling Opel to another Russian firm? It probably should.