Autocar explains what happens when BMW’s X6 sells an unexpected 110,622 units since its introduction: it gets copied. By Audi.

Nothing has been made official, but in an interview with German media representatives at the recent Geneva auto show, Audi boss Rupert Stadler, alluded to the new German crossover, saying, “We can imagine a model between the Q5 and the Q7… a coupé-like, four-wheel driven model.”

The decision to provide the new model with what Stadler describes as “coupé-like” styling and standard “four-wheel drive” also paves the way for an outwardly sporting variant from Audi quattro, the same division responsible for the company’s diverse range of RS models. While still early days, Audi is thought to be considering a range-topping Q6 RS model powered by the new turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 engine, set to make its debut in the new-generation RS6 at the Frankfurt motor show in September.

The greatest thing about the Nissan Juke is its absolute peach of an engine, a 1.6 liter, direct-injected, turbocharged little screamer. In fact it’s such a wickedly fun little engine that it’s a shame it exists only in a polarizing vehicle like the Juke. To that end, I noted in my review of Nissan’s funky “sportcross” that

Without the marketers, it’s tempting to believe that Nissan’s engineers would have widened the Versa platform, added the fantastic turbocharged engine, and then decided to simply put a steroidal Versa body on top, creating the king of all B-segment hot hatches.

Well, according to this shot from China Car Times, at least part of that fantasy is coming true. In this first shot of an updated “2011/2012” Tiida (Versa), you can see the phrase “DIG Turbo” gracing its flanks, suggesting that the Juke’s little 188 HP mill (or, at least a detuned version of same) could be headed to the next-gen Versa. Does this mean a high-po “GTI”-style variant is coming to America’s best-selling B-segment car? Let’s hope so. Frankly, the more vehicles that get that feisty little engine, the better. [Awesome “Engine porn” video for Nissan’s 1.6 DIG Turbo after the jump]

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With the proliferation of in-car connectivity systems like SYNC, MyLink, MyFordTouch, Blue&Me, etc, the ability of a car to play MP3s, read out text messages and update social media accounts has surpassed such traditional attributes as power, efficiency and handling for many car buyers. And though many of these OEM-branded systems are underpinned by identical software architectures from Microsoft or Garmin, they are taking an ever-more important place in the marketing of new cars. Differentiating these differentiators, then, takes a huge amount of development effort on the part of automakers and their suppliers, and the result is another electronic system with the potential to go out of date with the same speed as a cellular phone. Wouldn’t it be smarter to just create an open-standard connection between your phone and your car so that you don’t need to replace your car when its onboard connectivity electronics go out of date? That’s the goal of the Car Connectivity Consortium, which is aiming to explode the OEM-branded in-car connectivity model.
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Under fire for its un-annotated edits to Scott Burgess’s Chrysler 200 Review, the Detroit News has reposted Burgess’s original review even as the departed critic confirmed that those edits were the reason for his departure. The NYT reports

“What we did was wrong because it was done at an advertiser’s request,” said Mr. Burgess, who had been at the paper since 2005. “I was ashamed I made the changes.”

Mr. Burgess said he first tendered his resignation on Monday, but was asked to reconsider. Susan Carney, business editor of The Detroit News, said his resignation was effective on Wednesday.

The episode marked the first time Mr. Burgess had been directed to alter a review due to a negative reaction — from an advertiser or otherwise. “There were plenty of times where I’d written reviews that people were upset about, but we never did what we did on Friday.”

Online changes were made without any notation that the piece was re-edited, which breaches accepted industry practice, said Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute, a journalism training and advocacy center in St. Petersburg, Fla. “What happened gives the impression that content might be for sale, whether that’s real or perceived. And that will cause the erosion of trust in the newsroom.”

DetN business editor Susan Carney admits that the situation was handled “poorly.” Burgess will be appearing on AutoLine After Hours at 7 p.m. ET, and is likely to comment further on the story.

Sometimes news stories don’t need commentary. This little item, from orange.co.uk, seems like one of those stories:

Simona Suhoi, 28, faces up to five years in jail after police found her behind the wheel a month after she was banned from driving.

The former singer and designer, who is known as Simona Sensual, was pulled her over for not wearing a seatbelt in her home city of Bucharest.

She said: “I admit I shouldn’t have driven the car but I had no other choice.

“You see, I was having terrible pains in the chest, I think it was because of these brand new breast implants.

“I tried to get a taxi but they were all busy so I jumped into the car and dashed for the clinic. I mean, what was I supposed to do?”

And aren’t two airbags safer than one seatbelt anyway? You’ve been a great crowd, don’t forget to tip your waitresses.

I’ve dispatched one of TTAC’s writers to get to the bottom of the copyright fight that’s surrounding Chrysler’s “Imported From Detroit” tagline, as Reuters reports that Chrysler’s claim to the line may not actually hold up.
Chrysler applied to trademark the slogan for use on clothing, bags and other wearable items in January. An attorney for Pure Detroit said the company did not start selling the T-shirts until after the ad aired in early February.

[Moda’s] attorney, John VanOphem, said Chrysler cannot trademark the phrase because it is “merely descriptive.”

“Our position is that Chrysler is trying to claim ownership of something it doesn’t have a right to own,” VanOphem said. “They do not own any exclusive rights to the ‘Imported from Detroit’ phrase.”Chrysler applied to trademark the slogan for use on clothing, bags and other wearable items in January. An attorney for Pure Detroit said the company did not start selling the T-shirts until after the ad aired in early February.

But the attorney, John VanOphem, said Chrysler cannot trademark the phrase because it is “merely descriptive.”

“Our position is that Chrysler is trying to claim ownership of something it doesn’t have a right to own,” VanOphem said. “They do not own any exclusive rights to the ‘Imported from Detroit’ phrase.”

Meanwhile, another battle over automotive copyrights may yet be brewing: Saab has introduced its own answer to SYNC and Onstar, named IQon, a term which may be in conflict with Nissan’s display technology used in the Juke, named I-Con. Hit the jump to see a video of the Nissan system in action, and let us know if you think Saab is going to have to come up with a new name, or if copyright law will let both of these naems coexist.
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Good news! Google Maps will now point you to the nearest “electric car charging station” if you search for same, reports CR.

[Google] is working with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is developing a database of available charging stations (known as EVSEs, or electric vehicle supply equipment) around the United States. Installers of EVSEs have the option of having their stations displayed as public. When we were charging the Nissan Leaf at our facility, not a public venue, our chargers showed up on the Leaf’s navigation system; The navi in the Leaf is designed to remember sites at which it had been charged.

The bad news? Well, just look at that map. Unless you live in California, you don’t need Google to tell you where the nearest charging station is, you need a clairvoyant to tell you where one might someday be built. If you’re still struggling to understand why EVs need to be tested on a local level before the federal government spends more money subsidizing them on a national level, look no further.
[UPDATE: The screen grab above is not comprehensive. Surf over Google Maps for a closer look at EV charging stations in your area]

President Obama’s goal of having a million plug-in vehicles sold in the US by 2015, like almost every other political goal these days, has become a divisive issue. For ever American who sees it as a courageous step away from oil addiction or ecological disaster, another sees it as market manipulation or a fool’s errand. But like most political debates, the row over government encouragement for plug-in vehicles serves more as a venue for other political cold wars (typically global warming and fiscal policy) than as a way to move towards a sane, equitable strategy. And, argue to the authors of a report that points out the poor chances of success for Obama’s goal, the political discussion over EV subsidies will stay stuck there until we figure out a lot more about who buys EVs and why. The problem: there is no national demonstration program to collect the data on which a real conversation about EV subsidies could be based.

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As the former “car czar,” who led the government’s restructuring of GM and Chrysler, Steve Rattner has a considerable interest in portraying his pet projects as having turned the corner. But in a recent CNBC appearance, Rattner acknowledges that the market is “spooked” by GM’s increased reliance on incentives and the “unexpected” departure of its Chief Financial Officer. Ford, meanwhile, simply gets rapped for not communicating a slightly lower Q4 profit than Wall Street expected. And though Rattner’s not the guy to press the point home, there’s a clear distinction to be made between a much-hyped stock aligning itself with expectations (while making a tidy $6b+ profit) and a company that’s losing key personnel while leaning on incentives to recover the volume lost on brand and dealer cuts. But Rattner’s got bigger worries than short-term financial performances, or incentives or personell changes… he sees another, equally familiar problem that’s fixing to give GM (and, to a lesser extent, Ford) the fits: rising gas prices.
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The first time I saw Scott Burgess’s review of the Chrysler 200, I very nearly posted a screengrab of the headline to TTAC as a conversation-starter. Why? Because when a Detroit automaker re-launches a worked-over vehicle in a crucial segment and then hypes it with a Detroit-boosting Super Bowl ad, the local paper just doesn’t go and slam the car in question. In fact, it’s rare to ever see a negative review of a Detroit-made vehicle in either the Detroit News or its sister paper the Detroit Free Press. Ultimately I decided against pointing out the DetN’s slam, as one headline does not a story make… unless, of course, it does. Jalopnik.com reports that Burgess has resigned from the Detroit News, and that a number of his bon mots have been excised from the online version of his 200 review. Lines like “regrettably, the 200 is a dog,” as well as his conclusion that

It’s vastly improved, but that’s only because it was so horrendous before. Hopefully, this car is a placeholder until the real redesigned 200 arrives – eventually.

The only thing this 200 proves is that good enough is never going to be good enough.

The Detroit News hasn’t yet commented on the story, but Jalopnik’s investigation creates a pretty damning case against the paper [Ed: for all we knock ’em, we have to acknowledge El Jalop’s fine work here]. The DetN may have lost a huge amount of credibility by forcing out Burgess for daring to tell the truth, but this story will only help draw more awareness to the ugly reality that still defines too much of the automotive media. Painful incidents like this one will ultimately leave the automotive media more healthy for having forced writers to stand up for the truth.

There’s an interesting (if troubling) perception out there that there is no longer such thing as “bad cars.” Certainly compared to what was available just ten years ago, the market has improved its offerings, making most new cars consistently better than the vehicles they replaced. But the corollary to this rule, that each new car is always better than the one that it replaced, does not actually hold up to scrutiny, at least according to Consumer Reports.

In fact, in its most recent auto issue, CR gave a number of vehicles worse scores than their predecessors earned, indicating that progress is not a given in the world of cars. And no wonder: automakers aren’t simply trying to wow consumers, but must constantly balance increased performance, content and features with lower costs. The VW Jetta is a poster child for the kind of decontenting that we’re beginning to see creep into the market, as Volkswagen is emphasizing the Jetta’s price in its marketing materials. But are there other, less intentional examples of automotive “value inflation”? What car is/was the biggest “step down” from its predecessor?

With automakers keeping the incentive pedal pinned to the floor as they entered the new year, a price war has been brewing in the US market for a while now. Hyundai USA CEO John Krafcik has called the trend “a step backward for the industry,” pointing out that nearly every automaker had struggled to regain pricing power coming out of nearly three years of industry-wide weakness. But with GM and Detroit leading the way with high (if “targeted”) incentives, matched by uncharacteristically high incentives from import-brand rivals like Honda and Toyota, it seemed that nothing could prevent a volume-pumping, but profit-sapping price war in the US. At least until Japan was hammered by earthquakes, tsunamis and nuclear accidents. Now, with manufacturers and suppliers still struggling to understand the full impact of production shutdowns and reduced inventories, TrueCar has projected current price trends forward, and finds that supply interruptions could reduce supply to the point where prices actually start coming up again. Check out TrueCar’s spreadsheet on supply and pricing projections in XLS format here, or hit the jump for a few highlights.

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The Senate’s Congressional Oversight Panel, which has been charged with monitoring the TARP program, has released its final report [PDF] before it disbands next month. Given TARP’s importance in this country’s historical sweep, we’d recommend that everyone at least glance through the document. But, if nothing else, TTAC’s readers should at least check out the section on the Auto Bailout, which not only summarizes the government’s actions, but also points out problems that arose during the bailout as well as problems that could still emerge as a result of the bailout. The “Lessons Learned” portion of the Auto Bailout section is of special interest, and so we are republishing it below the fold. For all of the hot air and ink that’s been spilled over the bailout, the reality is that it was simultaneously a success and a failure. As a purely short-term, cost-no-object effort, it very clearly prevented what could have been a messy collapse in the auto sector. But because the true costs and long-term effects of the bailout aren’t yet known, it’s still impossible to say if that short-term rescue was worth the costs or will even prevent another industry meltdown in the future. (Read More…)

At the end of last year, the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (aka “Blender’s Credit) very nearly expired before congress passed a one-year, $6b extension to the subsidy. The near-collapse of the largest “renewable energy” subsidy on the federal books came as the backlash built against the EPA’s approval of E15 (15% ethanol) blends for certain vehicles, with a huge coalition of industries, environmentalists and budget hawks coalescing around the idea of ending government support for corn-based ethanol. That coalition lost some momentum as the VEETC was extended in order to drum up support for the controversial tax bill that was passed during December’s lame duck session. But now, SolveClimate [via Reuters] reports that the brewing deficit battles have put the Blender’s Credit back on the chopping block, as a new bill seeks to cut the wasteful, inefficient and unpopular (outside of farm states) subsidy.

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The whole BMW-goes-front-drive thing has come as somewhat traumatic news for a number of Roundel fans, and at first blush, you’d think this camo’d BMW i3 would only stoke these fans’ fears. At least with its camo on, it’s a funky, decidedly un-BMW-like shape, all stubby nose and high, rounded roof. Think MINI meets Audi A2, and you’re getting there.

But unlike the other i-branded BMW that’s been winter testing, the i3 immediately identifies itself as an heir to its brand’s sporting legacy, kicking out its rear end in the Swedish snow. That’s right: despite the MINI-esque looks, the i3 is no front-driver, as its BMW-designed and built electric motor sits under the trunk and drives the rear wheels. Add a carbon fiber reinforced plastic body and possibly a range extender to the mix, and you’ve got one compelling (if expensive) little subcompact, rear-drive EV proposition…. and it looks like it’s a hoot in the snow. The i3 may not help BMW fans get over their front-drive phobia, but it should help bust the perception that EVs have to be mundane.