What killed Saturn? Blandness. An unending sea of uninspiring designs and sibling ripoff’s destroyed what could have been GM’s most successful project of the last 30 years. Of course they’re not alone in the branding malaise. Ford had Mercury. Chrysler had Plymouth. A lot of folks here would argue that Toyota’s Scion is becoming a living testament to compromises that yield a death defining brand. Throw in Acura’s (lack of) reputation, Infiniti and Kia during their low points, and even the winners can sometimes be losers. Which means that with no cache, a Theft Recovery title, and 93k on the odometer, I bought it cheap. $1600. Therefore I can…
You know… that’s not a horrid-looking little interior right there. What does an adorable little “yacht tender” Aston Martin Cygnet cost, anyway Jeeves? £30,995 base? Why that’s a duke’s whisker away from fifty thousand of those colonial greenbacks! One could nearly afford three Toyota iQs for that amount of filthy lucre… and aesthetic improvements aside, they’re the same ruddy vehicle! But then, one imagines that the Aston version at least offers the sporting thrills one expects from such a storied… what’s that now? It takes 11.8 seconds to reach 62 MPH? Egad Jeeves, we’d go faster if you pushed me in the old S3! In fact, a peasant-powered Bentley is both lower-emissions and infinitely more befitting ones station than a rebadged Toyota. So much for all that “progress” nonsense…
High-profile traffic safety campaigns are being mounted at the state and federal levels against behavior that rarely causes the most serious types of accidents. In the past several years, lawmakers have enacted measures designed to increase the punishments for driving past stopped school buses in the name of protecting children. They have also enacted “move over” laws to stop police officers from being killed at the roadside. Statistics released this month by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) indicate that accidents involving either situation are exceedingly rare.
Another American car company rides to the rescue of China’s feared, but so far dismal car exports. Ford is in talks with its Chinese Joint venture partner Changan to export China-made Ford vehicles to emerging markets, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. (Read More…)
“About 13.8 million vehicles were sold in 2010 in China compared with 11.6 million in the United States.” The Detroit News
Yesterday, we had a short seminar on Chinese new car statistics. Apparently, it was needed. Too bad the Detroit News, Motor City’s hometown newspaper, skipped class. Message to the DetN: It’s 18 million vehicles. 18,264,700 to be exact.
Wheh, that’s a big question… and I was dismayed to see myself giving such a short answer to it in my Newshour appearance. There are a host of reasons for my swift “no” answer to that question… here are a few of them:
1: GM Doesn’t need saving. The Government “saved” GM.
2: The market projections for EVs are all works in progress.
3: GM isn’t actually committed to the electrification of the car. It’s committed to gas engines and transmissions and the idea of “range anxiety”… for its “electric car.”
4: If GM were committed to electrification, and that was a prudent business gamble, it would still be chasing Renault-Nissan just as Honda chased Toyota in the race for hybrid leadership not so many years ago. And like Honda, GM seems less committed (in the literal, mechanical sense) to the electric car than the emerging global leader, Nissan. Yes, the Volt is mechanical marvel, unrivaled in its complexity… but only because it clings to its gas technology. Honda’s hybrid half-step, never introducing an electric drive mode to its “mild” hybrids, seems pragmatic by comparison. Toyota’s sole ownership of the “hybrid halo” is instructive (and worrying for Toyota, considering it’s been taking a GM-esque tack towards EVs lately).
5: Even after GM starts selling tons of electric cars (in a scenario where that is indeed possible), it will be working uphill to re-establish consumer trust (in all its products) that was squandered over decades.
I could go on, but I’d rather hear your answers to the question.
VW’s 1.4 TSI “Twincharger” engine may well have been the most groundbreaking mass-market of the last 20 years, combining a supercharger and turbocharger to create a lag-free, forced-induction driving experience (a feat only Group B racers had previously attempted with any seriousness). Making either 120 HP or 158 HP in a Golf, the 1.4 TSI is rated on the Euro-cycle (non-EPA) at 6 liters per 100 km, or 39 MPG (please note, cross-cycle mileage comparisons are problematic). In the (smaller, lighter) 177 HP Polo GTI, it gets an even better 5.9l/100km. In short, it can be quite powerful, extremely efficient, and more importantly, it offers the flexibility to be tuned for a number of different applications. As a result, it won the International Engine Of The Year Award for 1.0-1.4 liter displacements four times running, and added “Best New Engine” in 2006, as well as “Green Engine Of The Year” and “International Engine Of The Year” in 2009.
And now, according to Autocar, the industry’s tortured tug-of-war between outstanding technical achievements and crushing profit-seeking grind will call the Twincharger its latest victim. The British mag reports
The company’s 1.4-litre engine, which mixes turbocharging and supercharging, is said to be too complex and expensive to produce.
Instead, VW engineers now believe that new turbocharging technology can achieve similar results at a much-reduced cost.
Side head and torso airbags have greatly boosted driver safety in left-side impact crashes, according to a new study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Side bags alone can make the difference between a “poor” result, and a “good” result, as they do in the case of the 2003 Accord, although structural integrity is also very important. Drivers in cars with a good rating were 70 percent less likely to die in such a crash than drivers in cars rated poor. Drivers of vehicles rated “acceptable” and “marginal” are 64 percent and 49 percent less likely to die in such crashes than drivers of poor-rated cars, respectively. (Read More…)
Lord love the car blogs. On the same day TTAC was fooled by a local TV report’s use of a forum photoshop, the rest of the autoblogosphere has gone bananas for an “alleged spec sheet” that is in fact pure speculation on the part of a member of the GM forum cheersandgears.com. Although the “document” in question “surfaced” in a forum poll entitled “2014 Cadillac ATS – Powertrain Predictions” (and was never presented as an official or “leaked” document), the High Gear Media Hive Mind proceeded to write up the “alleged spec sheet” as if they’d just found it in the RenCen’s executive washroom. Though unable to “confirm its authenticity,” the HGM Collective was able to determine that
the new Cadillac ATS-V will feature a 6.2-liter V-8 developing 470 horsepower and 428 pound-feet of torque. That’s more than the Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG, the bad boy of the current crop of executive sports sedans.
From there, it was inevitable that the bigboys of the car blogging world would jump aboard the bandwagon, albeit with the decency to call the source a “speculative document” or “the rumormill.” Still, this document didn’t “surface”… it was put together by a fan who then asked the members of his forum to vote on whether they “love” or “hate” his speculative lineup. Meanwhile, in the rush to parrot the “news,” some basic considerations have been left out…
Despite rising gasoline prices, January shapes up to be a very strong month for car sales. Edmunds.com Chief Executive Jeremy Anwyl told Dow Jones Newswire that the seasonally adjusted annualized rate (SAAR) for the month was looking “very strong” at 12.8 million vehicles as of last week, and was higher than December. That is a surprise: January sales typically are lower than December sales. (Read More…)
Offering everything from the Accent subcompact to the Equus large luxury sedan, Hyundai covers a lot of territory. With gas, turbo, and hybrid engines, and basic, sporty, and luxury trims, the Sonata stakes out much of the midrange sedan segment. Which leaves Kia and its new Optima midsize sedan…where? Mercury to Hyundai’s Ford? Not if […]
It’s been a short, strange trip for Maybach, as Daimler’s über-luxe branding effort went from toast of the nouveau riche to played-out self-caricature in a few short years. Needless to say, TTAC has been awaiting the long-overdue death of that brand for some time now, only to be stymied by a “final” facelift and a Xenatec-developed Coupe. Now, with Aston Martin reportedly working on the new look of the brand that “nobody at Daimler wants to let die,” Maybach’s masters are finally admitting to the fact that TTAC pointed out back in 2007: The Super S-Class was “born old hat.” Autocar reports:
Originally created to be profitable at 800 cars per year, Maybach has regularly struggled to sell half that annually since the launch of the 57 and 62 in 2002. Insiders now admit the decision to base the Maybach on the platform of a two-generations-old S-class, the W140, was a mistake.
Doing so prevented Mercedes from updating the upmarket limousine’s standard features with new navigation, communication and entertainment systems, as well as new safety features owing to an incompatible electronics platform dating back to 1990.
D’oh! But don’t worry… this won’t happen again. Honest.
You’d think that the zilch-o-torque characteristics of a Wankel engine wouldn’t be so great for hauling heavy loads, and you’d be right! Adding an automatic transmission to the mix, as is the case with this ’75 Mazda pickup, no doubt made for some interesting driving experiences when hauling, say, a dozen sacks of concrete mix in the back. (Read More…)
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