Wolfsburg must be fuming. Among all the good news coming in from all corners of the earth, there’s a market that insists on being the proverbial thorn in their side. That’d be my little ole Brazil, which is, en passant, the world’s fourth largest. And it’s a market where Volkswagen has been nearly forever. Well-known Brazilian automotive journalist Fernando Calmon, writing for the just-auto website, reports a major shakeup in automotive brand values in Brazil (can you feel the ground shaking a little?). Mr. Calmon, citing the Brand Finance consultancy, reports that the most valuable car brand in Brazil is… Read More >
Remember the Saturn Vue? It’s back, baby, and more cannibalistic than ever. Starting in 2011, the refreshed Chevrolet Captiva will be undercutting Opel’s Antara, itself a rebadge of the same Daewoo Winstorm. Because what Opel needs right now is to prove that sometimes it’s worth paying a little extra for a German brand on your rebadged Korean Crossover. That’s what you call giving a brand a sense of purpose. Meanwhile, does anyone out there actually miss the Vue?
If you exist outside the fast-paced world of the automotive branding community, you might believe that the point of car brands is to sell cars. Needless to say, you’d be wrong. The big buzzword around car brands, particularly the more niche and eco-friendly brands is “mobility.” As in “we must leverage our brand values to provide a broad-based mobility strategy for the cities of the future.” Or, to put it into layman’s terms, “screw cars, we gotta start building scooters.”
China has a dizzying array of car brands. Nobody is quite sure how many car manufacturers there are. Number of car brands in China? Anybody’s guess. Well, there will be a new one. Nissan created a new brand exclusively for China. They call it the Venucia. Solid Chinese name … Read More >
I think there’s a decent business case if you take the long view
Chrysler Dealer Don Lee gives Automotive News [sub] his take on Chrysler’s pitch to new Fiat/Alfa dealers, thereby confirming that few dealers expect a Fiat franchise to take off in the short term. And for those “decent” long-term prospects, Chrysler’s saying that
a showroom of 2,500 to 3,000 square feet would be sufficient to start… To get there, some dealers are going to have to take it slower. They’ll have to offer a separate showroom but go beyond that as more product becomes available.
So, what will the 500 do for dealers? According to the Pentastar gang, dealers can expect
healthy gross profits of up to $1,500 on each Fiat 500
Lee reckons that figure is “optimistic,” but we disagree. Chrysler has said that 500s will start around $20k, and they’ll have to considering any US-bound 500 that comes out of Chrysler’s Toluca, Mexico plant could be sold for near double that price in Brazil. Per-car profit margins on US-market 500s will be strong… it’s the 50k projected annual sales volume (78k by 2013) that prospective dealers need to worry about.
There are no rumors to report here, just a hypnotic video of Mazda working through its new Kodo design language on a compact hatchback concept. As with the Shinari concept, Mazda’s stated goal of becoming “the Japanese Alfa Romeo” is well-evidenced, and though it’s early days yet, the new direction looks promising. But then, anything that looks less like a stimulant-crazed Pokemon than the current Mazda3 would have counted as improvement.
What would intellectual property lawyers do without China’s Chery? In 2005, a legal dispute between Chery and GM was settled after Chery swore that they would never sell a Chery car in the U.S. – GM took the position that Chery was dangerously close to Chevy. Attorneys, start your accordion file folders, here we go again: Read More >
The last time we looked at the evolving Opel Astra coupe, I wondered
what do you call a Buick coupe that could fit under the hood of a classic Riviera?
Though we have a much better idea of what the Astra Coupe looks like, and we know that the Astra sedan/wagon will be called the Buick Verano in the US market, the question remains unanswered. Surely “Buick Verano Coupe” is too bland for what could (in theory) be the next Integra/RSX. Skyhawk? Apollo? Wildcat? Or is the dearth of promising names indicative of the challenges facing any compact Buick Coupe?
The use of automotive journalism in car commercials never ceases to fascinate. For example, do consumers really consider Audi over BMW because Audi won three straight Car and Driver comparisons? Has an ad built around the winning of a Motor Trend Truck Of The Year ever “moved the needle” for an actual buyer? More importantly, does Autoblog Dot Com take actual decibel readings before declaring the Chevy Cruze’s interior “Lexus Quiet,” or is that just, like, their opinion? This is, after all, one of the most prominent uses of an automotive blog’s work in car television advertising to date… and for all the advantages that car blogs hold over the buff books, old-school, scientific testing isn’t one of them. On the other hand, at least our online colleagues aren’t quoted stooping to the level of Automobile Magazine, which apparently compared the Cruze to a Cadillac. But are Cadillacs “Lexus Quiet”?
The de-Ramification of the Dodge brand took another important step today, as Dodge previewed its new Ram-free logo. Similarly, the new 2011 Durango (on which the updated logo appears) has also had the Ram taken out of its Rama-lama-dingdong… er, technical underpinnings. Once a big BOF bruiser, the Durango has had a unibody makeover along the lines of Ford’s Explorer, making 2010 the year of the Cross-retro-ver. But will the old SUV brands remain relevant after becoming poster boys for automotive and cultural excess back when gas prices spiked? More importantly, does anyone actually like the new Dodge badge?
People have a lot of fears with electric cars/extended range electric cars. Will the government subsidies distort the market? Can manufacturers be able to sell them profitably? Are they really that environmentally sound? But the one which gets everyone is “range anxiety”. Will I have enough juice to get me home? It’s an issue which manufacturers are dealing with in their own ways. GM has come up with their own way of dealing with it; they’re trademarking it: With range anxiety being trademarked, someone just dreams the word, and GM’s lawyers will be on top of him, and make him surrender the illicit dream. Read More >
In recent interviews with Automotive News [sub] and AutoObserver, GM’s recently-hired marketing boss Joel Ewanick dished out some of the insights that have earned him the reputation for being an ace image guy. He tells AN [sub] that
Consumers don’t buy General Motors. General Motors sells nothing
Oh, really? Because GM decided to remove the GM Mark of Excellence from its vehicles right around the time it emerged from bankruptcy, the better part of a year before Ewanick was brought on board. Since the first Government Motors joke emerged on the internet, GM has sought to distance itself from its corporate umbrella’s brand… and this is the insight Ewanick is bringing to the organization? Hell, Automotive News [sub] suggested that “Stop mentioning General Motors” when he was hired in June of this year. Which leaves Ewanick only one choice: don’t talk about General Motors more than anyone might imagine.
Chrysler execs met with some 400 potential Fiat dealers today to discuss plans for a new network of Fiat and Alfa-Rome brand stores in the US, and as we have noted, a certain amount of overlap can be expected. Chrysler says that “as many as 200” stores could be opened for the Italian brands, but the company has only identified 119 metropolitan markets in 38 US states where it projects sales growth in small car sales. Even with only “about 165” stores planned for the initial rollout, quite a few markets could host dueling Fiat/Alfa stores. According to the NYT’s Nick Bunkley, Idaho, Iowa, Alaska, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, South Carolina, The Dakotas, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming will not receive Fiat/Alfa dealerships. Meanwhile, the AFP reports that Chrysler plans to sell 50,000 Fiat 500s in 2011 alone, meaning each of the 165 stores will sell an average of 303 units per year.
Despite the deep ties between his firm and Volkswagen, Ferry Porsche firmly believed that Porsches could only be Porsches if the company remained truly independent. “Independence,” he says in the video above, “has always been the attitude at Porsche.” But as the latest addition to the Volkswagen empire, tasked with developing mass-market architectures and planning Porsche-brand versions of the Audi Q5 and Volkswagen BlueSport, Porsche’s culture has little choice but to change. But will becoming a good team player within the VW-Audi-Seat-Skoda-Bentley-Lamborghini-Bugatti strategy kill off the spirit that made Porsche great? Or can cultural independence survive the VW takeover?
When Mazda’s next-generation Mazda5 debuts later this year, it will mark the high-water point for the brand’s Nagare design language. Named for a 2006 concept that first showed off the dramatically flowing (some might say overwrought) look, Nagare has not been a stunning success, and Mazda announced several months ago that the Mazda5 would be the last car to use the design language. At that time, Mazda said it intended to reposition itself as “The Japanese Alfa-Romeo,” but lines like that could mean literally anything. Today, with the debut of the Mazda Shinari Concept, it’s clear that Mazda’s new look is headed in a far more conservative direction. In fact, to our eye, the sleek four-door looks quite a bit like the meeting point between the Tesla Model S and the Fisker Karma. In any case, it fits the “Japanese Alfa-Romeo” billing quite well. Plus, it doesn’t look like a deranged Pokemon. Now that’s progress!
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