A month ago, I wrote about a talk with a friend of mine who still has his high-paying job at a German automaker. He had listened to Sergio Marchionne’s appeal for government intervention in a European car industry suffering from overcapacity. My friend said that his employer and other German makers are strictly against governmental tinkering and artificial resuscitation of automakers in distress. He reported that their order books are full, and they are happy to take the market share of European makers in distress. Now, this memo finally arrived on Sergio Marchionne’s desk. (Read More…)
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The original Santa Fe used a 2.7-liter V-6 that was supposedly developed by Porsche — and the joke went that the Germans traded that engineering for the Santa Fe’s styling so they could “Design” the Cayenne.
That story no longer applies. The new Santa Fe has homegrown world-class engines and styling that beats the Porker six ways to Sunday.
The steamy erotica novel “50 Shades of Grey” is apparently inciting the passions of housewives across Manhattan. Good to know that Lexus has something for the good people of Boca Raton, Florida, in the form of the new Lexus ES.
That was an easy call: Car sales in Europe will decline again this year, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne told his assembled shareholders at a meeting in Turin. Fiat, caught with pants and sales down in Europe’s teetering south, would be in much worse shape without Chrysler, Marchionne thinks:
“This was the only way to preserve Fiat’s future. It does not make sense anymore to talk about Fiat as an Italian or European company… With Chrysler we have fixed our excessive dependence on Europe and have the tranquility to overcome the market’s fluctuations.”
Chrysler surprised again in March with a 34 percent gain and the best monthly result in four years. Back home in Italy, Marchionne already preannounced “horrible sales” for Fiat and March.
Reuters says that the shareholder meeting approved the conversion of Fiat’s preference and savings shares into ordinary shares, which makes it easier for Fiat to buy the 41.5 percent of Chrysler it does not yet own.
The scrum of journalists and wanna-bes around the Viper has been consistently packed for two hours now. We have some impressions from Byron Hurd and NASA instructor Jeff Stutler for your consumption; later on in the show I will wander over, sit in the thing, and try to correlate it with my experiences of the previous Vipers.
We all know that the new Acura RLX will have a V6 and a neat SH-AWD system using electric motors and such – but how about the budget model, that revives the long-dormant four-wheel steering system from the Prelude, once known as 4WS!
“Imagine,” Ford’s marketing wunderkind Jim Farley suggested, “if your service advisor knew your name? If he knew your preferences? What you wanted?” Well, as a former owner of two Phaetons, I don’t need to imagine that. Everybody in VW service at my local dealer knew my name, my wife’s name, our weekend plans, and which one of the dealership’s loaners I liked best (“Blackie”, a Passat 2.0T). That’s what happens when you sell cars that require frequent servicing and have nobody on staff in the entire country who can perform said servicing in even a marginally competent fashion.
Farley, of course, wasn’t talking about 5400-pound German crapwagons. He was talking about treating Lincoln buyers to the finest dealership experience available.
Rarely does it happen that I get so excited to get up on a Monday morning, especially after a late night on a Sunday. But it was different this Monday, I was driving all the way from Mumbai to Pune early morning to drive a taxi. Yes a taxi, but this is no normal taxi, you […]
There was a time when Ford had the luxury equivalent of three little pigs.
I’m not sure if Jaguar, Lincoln and Volvo were the industry equivalent of straws, sticks and bricks. But they were by all measures an ungodly mess of marques that bled billions out of Ford’s coffers by 2007.
Something had to be done. Enter Alan Mulally who blew out two of the brands, and only kept Lincoln after a Deliverance level of squealing by managers and executives at Ford.
In today’s exercise, you will need to pick one brand for Ford to keep. Yes, crystal balls and Monday morning quarterbacks are a common thing at most automotive blogs. So instead of shooting from the hip of the modern day, let’s look back to the time that was the late, late, late Bush era and figure out which brand offered the most potential.
8.4 liters. 10 cylinders. 640 horsepower. 600 lb-ft of torque. 3297 pounds. It’s still a Viper.
They did not know that TTAC’s man in the cold was surreptitiously snapping pictures with his iPhone. Again-elected Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin simply watched while Renault COO Carlos Tavares defaced the hood of a brand-new car with a Magic Marker. Nissan’s COO Toshiyuki Shiga grinned and did not interfere either. This is how they celebrate the opening of a new car factory, this afternoon in Russia. (Read More…)
My girlfriend is really excited for tonight’s debut of “The Real Housewives of Vancouver”, and I bet that the Real Housewives already hankering for a new ride before the 36-month lease on their current GL350 BlueTecs are up. Here’s more questionably-built ostentatiousness to satiate their vapid souls.
Not to have another stab at the best “production, street-legal” Nordschleife lap time. That’s not why they are trading the chilly Eifel for balmy Yokohama. Allegedly, Nissan does not want to work on the 7:24:22 lap time.
Instead, says GT-R program director Kazutaka Mizuno: (Read More…)
Earlier today, Derek expressed his hope that we’d be seeing the Impala t the show in a color other than black. No such luck. Live shots from Julie Hyde and commentary from Byron Hurd below.
The Junkyard Find ’79 Corona we saw earlier was a pretty nice car, but it was a regular sedan with an old-fashioned trunk. Just as Chevrolet buyers could buy a Nova with a hatchback in 1979, Toyota shoppers had the option of getting a Corona Liftback. Let’s tune into the old days of analog television and watch how Toyota USA’s marketers pitched this fine automobile. (Read More…)
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