Ferrari Chariman Luca Di Montezomolo recently got a spin in Michael Stoschek’s homage to the Lancia Stratos, possibly one of the rarest treats in the car game just now. And even though it’s neither a Lancia nor a Stratos, anyone would be thrilled to drive one before they’re all locked into some climate-controlled bunker somewhere. But that’s not all Luca has to be thankful for: with a disastrous 2010 F1 season behind it, Ferrari is the center of speculation that Fiat will sell it off as it moves towards closer ties with Chrysler Group. Freedom from Fiat might mean an end to Lancia-branded one-offs based on Ferrari platforms, but given the depth of Fiat’s gamble on Chrysler, Ferrari would probably prefer to watch from a distance anyway. In fact, the only thing Luca probably isn’t thankful for this week is direct competition from the McLaren MP4-12C, which is launching at almost the exact same price as the 458 Italia.
When Chrysler revealed its Five Year plan last year, product plans showed the PT Cruiser dieing off after 2010 with no planned replacement. Then, earlier this year, Chrysler rebadged a Lancia Delta and brought it along to the Detroit Auto Show without saying much about it. Now, Motor Trend says a production version of the Chryslerized Delta Concept will be shown at the next Geneva Auto Show, raising the possibility that the Lancia could come to the US… and soon. Sure, it’s possible that the Delta will simply be for other markets where the Lancia/Chrysler two-face will show its Chrysler side (the UK and Brazil come to mind), but Chrysler needs to beef up its US volume to keep the turnaround turning around. And that means not only replacing the PT, but bringing customers in with something new and fresh. Could a PT Corsa fit the bill?
Legendary GM CEO Alfred P. Sloan long ago came up with the formula for success in the automotive industry: a family of brands that could sell “a car for every purse and purpose.” Starting with Chevrolet, Oakland, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac (in ascending order), Sloan oversaw the expansion of GM’s brand ladder to include such intermediate steps as Pontiac, Viking, Marquette and LaSalle. And though Sloan create a dizzying (and ultimately unsustainable) stable of brands, he never changed the top and bottom rungs of the ladder: Chevrolet was always the cheapest GM car available, and Cadillac was always the most expensive. But fast forward to 2010 and, though many of Sloan’s brands are long gone, the burgeoning Chinese market has given way to the unthinkable: a GM brand that slots in below Chevrolet
We all knew that Bob Lutz wasn’t going to spend his retirement circulating between the golf course and the early bird special, and when Lotus rolled out the most ambitious re-boot of any car company since GM, we should have known Lutz would end up involved somehow. After all, Lotus’s CEO Dany Bahar has bragged at length about making Lotus the “Real Madrid” (think Miami Heat) of the sports car industry… and if there’s one high-profile prima donna in the car industry, it’s Mr Robert Anthony Lutz. Read More >
According to a recent projection, GM will be selling over 2m vehicles on its Gamma (Aveo) platform by 2016… and thanks to Cadillac’s Urban Luxury Concept, we know what the most profitable iteration of that platform could look like. Yes, it’s the new-wave Cimarron of the future, inspired by such pedigreed city-car competitors as the Aston-Martin Cygnet and the Bugatti Petit Sport Sang de Navet. And with Lambo doors and a grille that would put a crunk rapper to shame, the littlest Caddy certainly does everything it can to distract from its humble (presumably budget Korean hatchback) roots. Because, as lead designer Frank Saucedo puts it
There is no minimum size for a Cadillac driving experience.
But there is a minimum volume per platform target… and the importance of this metric almost guarantees that, in some way or another, the Cimarron will ride again.
The Wall Street Journal [sub] reports that, after selling a mere 9,000 units last year, the Honda Civic will be retired from the Japanese market. For perspective, the Civic sold 609,000 units worldwide last year. According to the report
Sales of the Civic in Japan reached their largest annual volume of 177,000 vehicles in 1975, accounting for 71% of the company’s overall domestic sales that year.
What happened to the Civic? For one thing, it got bigger… and Japan didn’t. The 2011 Civic is 32 inches longer than the big-in-Japan 1975 model and weighs nearly twice as much (1,495 lbs in 1975, 2,630-2,830 lbs today). And by the looks of things (above), the forthcoming Civic refresh isn’t going to bring a whole lot to the table either, besides a corporate grille. There’s been a lot of chatter of late about Honda and its loss of “mojo”… the fact that the Civic has lost relevance in the Japanese market shows just how far Honda has come from its roots. No wonder a little mojo was lost along the way.
Born in 1977, Mr Goodwrench was a marketing brand used to sell GM parts and service at franchised dealers. Now, after 33 years in service to The General, Mr Goodwrench is passing on to join Pontiac, Oldsmobile and HUMMER in GM’s crowded brand graveyard. Automotive News [sub] reports that
GM marketing chief Joel Ewanick wants the vehicle brands, not corporate, to be the stars of GM, and that includes service and repairs
Ewanick has made it clear that he intends to continue the post-bankruptcy trend of shifting emphasis away from GM as a corporate brand and towards GM’s four vehicle brands. As an umbrella brand for service and parts for all of GM’s brands, Mr Goodwrench can be considered the latest victim of GM’s corporate restructuring. But Goodwrench was in failing health before Ewanick’s brandicide spree, and even embodying the brand as the satirist Steven Colbert didn’t convince GM’s US dealers to emphasize the Goodwrench service brand. GM won’t officially comment on Mr Goodwrench’s condition, but the brand is expected to survive in the Canadian market, where it allegedly continues to enjoy consumer cachet.
In order to honor the passing of this past-its-prime symbol of GM’s decidedly mediocre service reputation, we’ve assembled a few Mr Goodwrench ads below the fold. Read More >
The need to expand automotive brands while improving fuel economy is driving automakers to some interesting lengths of late. From GM future concepts that have more in common with a Segway than a Cruze, to Honda’s U-3X and Chrysler’s ill-fated PeaPod, automakers are sending strong hints that the future will be smaller and decidedly less car-like. And MINI and Smart recently took this trend to its logical conclusion, each announcing that they would build (or, more precisely, re-brand) scooters… or as they call them, “alternative mobility concepts.” Which raises the question: what’s a scooter brand to do? Well, Piaggio, maker of the Vespa and other scooter-based “alternative mobility concepts” isn’t going to just drone off into that good night, and it’s fighting back by creating an “alternative” to its core scooter products: a four wheeled car-like “mobility concept.”
Well, there’s nothing quite like being wrong, is there? Exactly a week ago I registered my (somewhat hesitant) support for Chevy’s new tagline, “Chevy Runs Deep,” and though I still believe that the tagline itself is better than anything else GM’s marketers have dreamed up in a while, I probably should have waited for the brand’s ads to come up out before weighing in. After all, any good (or good enough) idea is only as good as its execution… and these ads really don’t seem to move the game past some of Chevrolet’s previous cornball ad efforts. The main ad in the series (above) is as bland as an Impala’s interior, and does nothing to inspire respect for Chevy in contemporary (read: post-bailout) terms. Can “the strength of the nation” be found in every Chevrolet? If so, does that strength refer to something other than the government money that kept Chevrolet from the scrapheap of history? Instead of inspiring a bold approach, it seems that the “Don’t call it Chevy” moment simply pushed Chevy’s advertising back into gauzy pseudo-patriotism of its recent past. But don’t take it from me… hit the jump for a sampling of the latest Chevy Runs Deep ads. Read More >
Given that European luxury brands have generally had their way with Detroit-based competitors in the US market, it should come as no surprise that Cadillac has failed to make any appreciable headway in the European market. The brand has been launched and re-launched in Europe four times in the last twelve years, according to Autocar, and its latest relaunch was supposed to boost sales to 20,000 per year by 2010. Despite that ambitious goal, Cadillac has fallen flat with European buyers, having moved about 1,300 units this year. As a result, the latest re-launch of Cadillac has been accompanied by dramatically scaled-back expectations: 2,500 units per year within the next “several” years (Cadillac expects the new ATS to make up about 1,500 units of this volume). Only limited numbers of CTS sedans and wagons will be converted to right-hand drive for the UK, and diesel engines for the CTS range are on hold. But even with a more modest approach to Europe, Cadillac is widely expected to keep struggling in Europe. After all, Lexus spent some $2.8b attacking the European luxury market, but sales which peaked at 60k in 2007 have retreated to a mere 30k units. As Cadillac gets stuck into its fourth re-launch, analyst Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer is not optimistic
The brand Cadillac has no fascination for Europeans and no customer base. Why should I go from Audi, BMW, Volvo or Mercedes to Cadillac? Lexus has shown us how much investment is needed to do that… My forecast is, they (Cadillac) will not be in the market in Europe by 2020. Some people might buy one in the U.S. and export it to Europe. That’s it
TTAC has long interpreted the industry’s trend towards global product lines and component-sharing as requiring a few strong, focused brands rather than the scattershot approach defined over several decades by General Motors’ mess of poorly-defined brands. But the industry wasn’t always marching to the beat of the fewer, better brands drummer. Once upon a time, the American car market teemed with foreign and domestic brands of all sizes and persuasions, offering consumers a nearly unfathomable level of choice. And though we know we’ll never return to the days that saw Borgwards and Crosleys sold alongside MGs and Matras, we do sometimes long for a return to those Wild West days when there were more brands than anyone knew what to do with. And since we’re approaching the corpse-exhuming-est holiday of the year, we’ll go ahead and ask: if you could resurrect a dead brand through a dark and unholy ritual, which would it be and why?
Would you rather have giant, coffin-nosed Cords rolling around, or would you like to see Chrysler reboot its small-car program by dusting off the old Rambler name? Or perhaps you’re hoping BMW uses the Isetta nameplate for its forthcoming city car, or that Fiat adds to its burgeoning brand portfolio by draping a Hemi-powered Challenger in sexy Italian metal and calling it the Iso Grifo. Whatever your unholy brand resurrection dream might be, this is the time to share it. Because you just can’t keep a good zombie down…
After spending years wandering the gray shadows that divide this life from the next, the undead brand Pontiac will be placed in its final resting place sometime tomorrow. Scientists at TTAC’s paranormal automotive brand research lab are still working to determine exactly when Pontiac slipped from relevance into the nightmare world of zombie-dom, but Pontiac has been living on borrowed time since being officially marked for death a year and a half ago. As of the end of October there were still 125 Pontiacs on dealer lots around the country, but dealer agreements covering the brand expire on Halloween, making the day of the dead the last day to buy a car from America’s biggest zombie brand. And what better way to celebrate Pontiac’s decades-long waking nightmare than by buying a G6 on the spookiest day of the year? Meanwhile, as Bob Lutz, Lee Iacocca, and Zombie Bunkie Knudsen converge on Oakland County to commit their faithful brand to the cold earth, let’s take one more moment to remember the brand that died too long before anyone noticed. Are your memories of Pontiac fond recollections of the brand’s vital youth, or spooky tales from its long, shambling un-death? Finally, will Pontiac actually stay dead this time?
Since we’ve already irritated Saabistas by posting a comparison of the Nissan Juke to the 96, we might as well just come out and say it: Saab is one sick puppy. Third quarter results are out for the Dutch-Swedish automaker, and they’re not good: the firm has lost $70m on an operating basis last quarter, and has burnt through $160m in the the first nine months of 2010 [full results in PDF here]. Wholesale and retail sales in the first three quarters were down by 10 percent and 45 percent respectively compared to the first nine months of 2009, and Saab has cut its 2010 sales projections from 45,000 units to 30,000 units, or half of the 60k projection Saab started 2010 with. Improbably, the company still believes it will sell 80,000 Saabs next year, and 120,000 in 2012. And though Saab-Spyker has a negative equity of about $234m, the company says it does not need to recapitalize. In other words, comparisons to the Nissan Juke are the very least of Saab’s worries.
Ferrari may not sell you a new car if you haven’t already purchased a used model, but starting today the Maranello mob will let anyone into their new palace of branding run amok, Ferrari World Dubai. General admission is a highly reasonable (by Ferrari standards) $60, which is actually cheaper than a kids “Fernando Alonso” polo shirt at the Ferrari Store, and that includes access to the fastest roller coaster in the world, as well as 200,000 square meters of other Italian-sportscar-themed attractions. The opening had been delayed by the death of the Sheikh of Ras Al Khaimah, a neighboring Emirate, but according to the most recent reports, Ferrari World is opening today. Enzo would be so… er… something.
The 
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