GM is leveraging the strong growth of its Buick brand to bring back a technology that might otherwise have ended up on GM’s discard pile: the mild hybrid, or as it’s now called “e-assist.” The updated version of the old BAS mild hybrid first debuted as the base engine option on the 2012 Buick LaCrosse, and now GM has included the stop-start system as an optional drivetrain for the Buick Regal. Here’s the weird part though: in the larger, heavier LaCrosse, the system provides 25/37 MPG, while in the more-efficient Regal it returns a mere 26/37. Given that the two vehicles could already be better differentiated, the fact that Buick’s engineers weren’t able to squeeze more efficiency from the Regal e-assist is a bit disappointing. Still, GM’s strategy of addressing its hybrid shortcomings by attaching its hybrid hopes to its fastest-growing brand seems like a solid one. Who would have seen Buick as The General’s hybrid standard bearer just a few short years ago?
We had to move 10 cars in 1 day. 75 miles each way. Five at the lot. Five at the auction. Atlanta was going through it’s 16th cold spell of this season and I had my wife, two seniors, and a Honda Insight enthusiast who came in all the way from Florida for a spare battery pack. Yes, I could have hired a hauler for this. But that would have cost me over $700 in the end. Doing it this way would cost less than $100 and with this being a Wednesday, it was worth the four hours. Or would it be eight?
They say that when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail… which is why, after writing about the dangers of “automotive nationalism,” this video made left me more impressed with Ferrari’s pride in the global development of its new FF Grand Tourer than with the pure eyecandy of the spectacle. Although, to be fair, the sheer sexiness of Ferrari’s new shooting brake-style tourer left me fairly riled up as well.
Remember 2009? Luxury vehicles were unsalable. People did not have to money to buy them. Those who did have the money did not want to be seen in one. Makers that were heavy on luxury were put on death watch. (Not by this site. It monitored the vital signs of more mundane makes and their makers.)
Anonymous informants may direct police to pull over any motorist regardless of whether the other driver has committed any traffic offenses under a ruling handed down by the Michigan Court of Appeals last week. The state’s second highest court reversed the finding of a circuit court that had insisted on police officers having probable cause before initiating a traffic stop.
The court considered a March 17, 2008 incident in which Michigan State Trooper Christopher Bommarito was on patrol in the city of Southgate. As Bommarito was heading out of a parking lot, a woman behind the wheel of a red pickup truck pointed at a nearby car and mouthed the phrase “almost hit me.” Bommarito immediately activated his siren and entered into hot pursuit. He had no other information aside from the point when he pulled over Shaun David Barbarich who was later arrested for drunk driving.
Imagine, for a moment, you are a plant. Well, not just any plant. You are Robert Plant, and everywhere you go, people want you to sing “Stairway to Heaven”. I’d rather not, you tell them. Never liked that one much, to be honest. We’ve a much better song that I’d much rather sing. Called ‘Kashmir’, […]
No war of words, no strikes, no hard feelings: After only two rounds of negotiations, Volkswagen and the metalworkers union IG Metallhad a deal late last night. There will be a 3.2 percent increase in base pay effective May 1, 2011, and each employee will also receive a one-time payment corresponding to one percent of his or her annual pay but no less than €500. (Read More…)
The Cougar name has been slapped on so many different Mercurized (Mercurated?) Fords that it gets hard to keep them straight. I never much cared for the over-gingerbreaded Mustang-based version, but the big Thunderbird-based late-70s Cougar seems properly Mercurial. (Read More…)
Toyota’s Senior Managing Director Takahiko Ijichi had a surprise for the press that congregated today in the windowless basement conference room of Toyota’s downtown Tokyo office. They were invited to hear the results of the 9 month period from April to December. The scribes had prepared for the worst. As the numbers were released, some furiously begun retyping the prepared stories in which they had planned to insert the expected bad numbers before hitting SEND. Instead, Reuters reports: “The world’s top automaker posted a smaller-than-expected fall in third quarter profits and hiked its sales forecast for the year to March 31 by 70,000 vehicles to 7.48 million, thanks to better than expected sales in Asia, Japan and Russia.” (Read More…)
Senator Debbie Stabenow has introduced S. 3715, known as the Charging America Forward Act, which would extend tax credits for plug-in vehicles until 2014 and “front load” the credits, to create a dealership-level discount, among other provisions. Though inspired by President Obama’s call to put a million plug-in vehicles on the road by 2015, Stabenow’s website plays up a single, all-important angle to the bill
Michigan is already a leader in emerging hi-tech battery and electric car production. Other countries are acting to develop their own advanced vehicle markets because they realize the tremendous economic potential this new technology represents. These initiatives will allow Michigan innovators to continue to out-compete the world and create new jobs here
Though the full text of the bill hasn’t hit Govtrack yet, the DetN reports that it’s chock full of plug-in subsidies, so it seems that Stabenow’s proposa is considerably more dramatic than the recent plug-in credit extension introduced by Rep Sander Levin. And that’s not necessarily a good thing…
According to TrueCar’s newly-launched Clearbook site, I did… a little. If you want to make sure you don’t overpay for your next car, you should consider making Clearbook one of the stops on your pre-purchase web-research tour. The site analyzes over 3.6m nation-wide listings and shows, by model and location, what the car you’re looking for sells for on average… a valuable tool, provided you already know what car you’re looking for. If you don’t know what you want the next addition to your garage to be, TTAC recommends you contact our own car-buying gurus Sajeev Mehta and Steve Lang, who lend their expertise to our readers every Tuesday and Thursday in their advice column “New or Used?” Whatever you do, do not just crack open a beer and start surfing Craigslist… you will definitely regret it. Remember, information is power!
Fiat/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne has earned our last several quotes of the day with recent controversial statements, so today we present him with the honor for a few choice words that have nothing to do with the United States government. Volkswagen has been sniffing around Fiat’s Alfa-Romeo brand for some time, as Herr Piech reportedly has the hots for the Italian brand. VW CEO Martin Winterkorn even said recently that
Alfa’s a beautiful brand but there are quality issues with the engines and suspension systems for example. I’m quite sure we could make a beautiful brand out of Alfa again.
For a while it looked like Fiat might be playing along with the interest, but recently Marchionne shot down talk of selling Alfa to VW. And he did so with the kind of acid-edged verbal shanking that makes TTAC smile and nod approvingly, saying
As long as I am CEO of Chrysler and Fiat, Mr [Ferdinand] Piech will never have Alfa Romeo. It’s hands-off. I told him. I will call him and I will email him. I’m not the one who bought Seat. He’s the one who bought it. I don’t know if he can [fix it], but he needs to try.
What do you do when a much larger firm comes sniffing around your prized (iftroubled) brand? Kick them right in their own struggling brand, and in this case, Marchionne went straight for VW’s “Spanish Pontiac.” The jury is still very much out on Fiat’s grand Chrysler alliance experiment, but if it fails, it won’t be because Sergio Marchionne was scared of a fight.The guy’s talent for confrontation couldn’t be more obvious.
Chrysler’s Super Bowl ad starring the city of Detroit and its new 200 sedan may have captured the imagination of American industry-watchers, but its timing was highly inauspicious. As the ad was launched, Chrysler was being thrust into a kind of transnational custody battle between US taxpayers and the Italian government, a battle that underscores the ambiguous benefits of national bailouts of multinational companies. At the same time, Chrysler workers have once again made news by getting caught partaking in controlled substances during a lunch break, an awkward representation of the culture of the city that Chrysler is so desperate to re-inspire faith in. And even outside of the controversies swirling around America’s most challenged domestic automaker, there are signs that the phenomenon that can be termed “automotive nationalism” is outliving its usefulness. Chrysler may argue that “what we make makes us,” but appeals to the national or regional character of a car are not simply misleading… they’re downright dangerous. (Read More…)
I discovered the French sense of humor piloting the new Renault Megane 250 Cup through the Scottish Highlands. When I inadvertently induced a lift-off oversteer situation, I found myself staring at an oncoming tractor through a strategically placed EuroNCAP 5-star crash rating sticker on the windscreen. The team at Renaultsport might have made one of […]
CEO Sergio Marchionne certainly suggested as much in a speech at the NADA convention over the weekend, in which he said
Who knows? In the next two or three years, we could be looking at one entity. It could be based here
From the perspective of the American taxpayer, this would certainly be the favorable outcome. After all, Fiat didn’t put a single Euro into the restructured Chrysler, and national bailouts don’t usually result in the expatriation of the bailed-out firm. But the US Treasury department isn’t the only master Fiat has to serve, and Marchionne’s suggestion that the Fiat-Chrysler alliance has touched off something of a “firestorm.” The Financial Times reports that
Pierluigi Bersani, leader of the [Italian] opposition Democratic party, demanding an explanation from Mr Marchionne said it was unacceptable for “Turin and the country to become a suburb of Detroit”.
And with Italian backlash against a possible Detroit headquartering of the Fiat-Chrysler alliance building, Marchionne is backpedaling furiously. (Read More…)
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