Our aim is to raise the Lotus brand equity back to its rightful place as it existed in the 1970s when it competed with the likes of Ferrari, Porsche or Aston Martin. Maintaining the unique Lotus DNA is crucial, but with more relevance, greater efficiency and even more sustainability than we have had in the past.

Accelerating up the motorway slip road, the Ampera charges hard and deceptively quickly up to 50mph, but by then the single-speed electric motor’s flat torque curve has begun a nose dive and acceleration at high speeds is poor.

The 0-62mph time of 9 seconds and top speed of 100mph are an indication of this – most family hatchbacks with that sort of sprint capability will have a top speed of nearer 130mph

The Telegraph‘s Andrew English lays into the Chevy Volt/Opel Ampera’s high-speed acceleration, in an early test drive on European roads. Apparently an Opel engineer was embarassed enough by the performance to tell English that

We are considering driving the wheels directly from the petrol engine

Huh?

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Pity the automotive industry. With a minimum three-year lead time for new product development, timing vehicle launches to coincide with appropriate fuel price levels is never easy. Chevy’s Volt, for example, was developed and hyped during the gas price spike of 2008 when it seemed almost anyone would pay a hefty premium to ease some of the pinch at the pump. Now though, with gas prices holding steady at around $3, there’s reason to question whether consumers will flock to unproven, expensive vehicles like the Volt, absent a pressing economic incentive to reduce gas consumption. The Freep takes on this topic today, asking with gas prices so low, will anyone buy a Volt? And this is not mere media hype. Bob Lutz fretted about this possibility last year, when he said

If gasoline stays cheap, then the American public says, “I’m not interested in that; I will keep my Tahoe longer.” It puts us in the industry in a position where we are at war with the customer

This would be a depressingly familiar position for GM to find itself in, especially since it would be a product of The General striving to do something different. Gas prices are slowly beginning to go up again, but there’s no sign that this summer will see the kind of energy price volatility that will have the Volt and Cruze (let alone the Nissan Leaf) flying off dealer lots. Do you see gas prices going up soon? How expensive will gas need to be before Americans see cars like the Volt as a mainstream option? What happens to the Volt if gas prices stay level, or even drop? No only are these intrinsically interesting questions, but there’s also lots of money (including lots of taxpayer money) riding on the outcome. What say you?

Note to Volkswagen marketing: it’s important to know your competition. The Acura RDX is a compact SUV that comes with a standard turbocharged engine, a fact that makes your already-questionable marketing claim look just plain stupid. Alternatively, this is yet more proof that Acura is the most invisible brand in America. [Hat Tip:Alex Rashev]

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TTAC Commentator Sinistermisterman writes:
I have a 1997 Ford Escort (Manual) with far too many miles on the clock. If I’m particularly harsh with the gear changes, I get a clunk every time the revs drop off. I’m guessing this may be the engine/transmission mounts wearing out. Now if they are wearing out, can I just be gentle from now on and not worry about it? Only I really don’t want to spend much on the car. The reason I ask is that when I used to live in the UK I had a 1996 European Ford Escort and the rather puny rear engine mount broke (after thrashing it mercilessly)… and the engine tried to twist its way out of the car in a rather spectacular fashion. Are the engine mounts on US Escorts equally as weak/rubbish as the European versions?

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Possibly worried that SUVs are falling out of favor along with the dinosaur juice that keeps their desert kingdom afloat, Saudi Arabia is getting into the SUV business, with this Ghazal 1. Personally approved by King Abdullah, some 20,000 of these peculiarly-styled utes will be sold around the Gulf Region each year, according to Top Gear. The project started life as a Mercedes G-Wagen, which was re-skinned by students at King Saud University. Apparently the king was so impressed with the design (or just bored enough with his Escalade) that he approved the thing for production. Pricing, equipment and options are not available at the moment, but don’t expect the Ghazal 1 to do particularly well outside of the circle of Saudi Royal Family dependents. On the other hand, that is one hell of a market right there…

Remember the miracle carburetor that would have halved the gasoline consumption, if the wicked oil companies would not have bought the patent and locked it away? As a matter of fact, the lowly ICE has made great strides when it comes to reducing consumption, a drive that has traditionally been championed in Europe and to some degree Japan. (Read More…)

Nothing is worse than turning into something you’re not. I am not my father, and yet here I am besmirching his Curbside Classic series with this mystifying find. This Mk1 Scion xB is emphatically not a HUMMER, and yet… well, just look at it.

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If you read my Mustang GT introduction and Performance Pack on-track test articles, you know that I am an unabashed fan of the 2011 Mustang GT. On a road course, it is very probably the fastest normally-aspirated ponycar in history; it’s certainly the best-conceived, best-assembled, and most satisfying ponycar I’ve ever had the pleasure of […]

A woman driving between Texas and Montana was stopped in South Dakota for the crime of driving with too many cats. In the case known as “South Dakota v. Fifteen Impounded Cats,” that state’s highest court ruled Wednesday that the feline seizure was the appropriate response. On August 13, 2009 at around 11:15pm, a Pierre policeman had stopped Patricia Edwards as she was backing out of a parking spot. Edwards, broke, was living out of the car with fifteen cats and all of her personal belongings.

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If anybody harbored plans to kick Toyota in the shins and topple them from their top spot as the world’s largest automaker: Well, it didn’t work. Wags all over the world were predicting the worst for Toyota, but the numbers tell a totally different story. In the first five months of 2010, all units of Toyota produced 55.1 percent more cars worldwide than in the same period of 2009. The following table speaks for itself.

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Europe is a bit hybrid-adverse and far removed from Japan, where the Toyota Prius has been leading the charts for the 12^th month in a row. In a move to convert Europeans into hybrid-lovers, Toyota started production of their hybrid Auris in the UK. (Read More…)

It may not be apparent from the cheerful, distracted way in which I load my TTAC contributions with ridiculous jargon, shocking sexual audacity, and repulsive images of the ghetto, but writing an online auto review is actually a rather tightly woven proposition. One has about a thousand words, give or take a few, in which to convey the essence of a vehicle which has cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. There is usually so much data in the press materials that a simple Cliffs Notes version of that data would run to double the permitted review length.

That’s not all. Everybody has access to those materials, so one must be careful to save some room with which to convey accurate, personalized driving impressions. Speaking frankly, there are only three differences between the average denim journOrca (just made that up) and your humble author: I can drive a vehicle beyond four-tenths, I fit in most bucket seats, and I rarely sleep alone at press events. Therefore, in a thousand-word review, I have to set aside a few hundred words to be honest about how the car drives.

You get the point. There’s not a lot of room in the “trunk” of a review. This doesn’t stop most of us in the business from putting junk in that trunk. The “junk” in question consists of vague, uneducated ranting on automotive styling. Click the jump to hear some examples and discuss what should be done.

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Auto show season might be over, but the marketing event season is in full swing. At concerts, state fairs, sporting goods stores, hotels, golf tournaments, baseball games, food and wine festivals, gay pride festivals, dog parks, any kind of place where a target demographic might gather, you will find a car company showing off the vehicle they think target demographic should be driving.

It could be a ride and drive, it could be a static display ,or it could be an entire day’s experience like AMG Challenge, Chevy Rev It Up or Taste of Lexus (although big events like these seem to have been put on pause with the onslaught of the recession). Regardless of the level of formality or the amount of activity, all have one thing in common: People like me are working there. (Read More…)

I don’t know whether you know, but the UK government has a deficit of £155b which needs to be slashed. On June the 22nd, Chancellor George Osbourne laid out his plans on how to eliminate that ugly budget gap. VAT would be increased to 20 percent from 17.5 percent, civil servants would have their wages frozen and benefits would be slashed. Yep, life is going to be pretty grim in the UK for the next five years. Unless you’re a multi-national company with an electric car up your sleeve. (Read More…)