At last year’s Beijing auto show, a man walked up to the Roll Royce booth with a suitcase full of “Red Maos” – as the 100 yuan note is called in China, the largest note equals $15.40 – and walked away as the owner of a Rolls Royce Phantom. At least that’s what AFP heard. Because of taxes and duties, a Rolls-Royce Phantom started at 6.6 million yuan ($1 million) a year ago. That translated into 66,000 red banknotes. Read More >
He (silver grey tie) is Li Shu Fu, Chairman of Geely, and owner of Volvo. A few days ago, we reported that Saab’s Russian rescue by Vladmir Antonov is running into flak from Brussels, and that Victor Muller is looking to China. To a niche player in China, no less. Victor Muller thinks he will maintain more independency that way. Dream on. If a Chinese buyer buys a foreign brand, then for getting credibility in the export market. That is Geely’s play with Volvo. Read More >
Recently, our man in Brazil has been confessing his love for Citroen’s “anti-retro” DS series, sparking a debate over what qualifies as “retro” and what qualifies as “anti-retro.” Here, to help draw the distinction are two separate interpretations of an iconic vehicle. On the left is Geely’s EnglonSC7-RV concept, which gives a tackily Chinese take on the classic British taxi. On the right is VW’s Up! London Taxi concept, which takes the same inspiration and packages it in a far more sleek, modern style. As a result, the Englon looks like a doughy, anglophile PT Cruiser, while the VW looks sharp, crisp and yet classic. When it comes to interpreting modern classics, its seems that capturing the spirit of a car is more important than faithfully recreating its cues.
Speaking from Shanghai, NHTSA Administrator David Strickland tells Bloomberg that “a number” of Chinese automakers have expressed interest in selling their products in the US, to which the auto safety regulator says:
When they offer their vehicle for sale, we will treat them like we will treat any company whether it is a Detroit company or a Japanese company or a Chinese company.
Strickland identified GM’s partner SAIC as one company that was interested in US sales, although the automaker says it’s waiting until it has “more suitable product” for the market. Chinese auto exports currently make up only 3 percent of production, a number the Chinese government wants to increase to 20 percent by 2012-2015. Separately, SAIC announced this week that it plans to invest some $1.85b into its hybrid, electric and fuel-cell technologies.
Aren’t iPads supposed to be in short supply, affected by the parts paralysis? The visitor of the Shanghai Auto Show wouldn’t know. Actually, if everybody would stop using the flat gizmos, just supplying car shows with them would be a great business. They are everywhere.At most large automakers, someone said: “I have a great idea: We will give all our booth ba …. I mean, productspecialists one of these iPads with a multimedia presentation.” “Super! It’s cool, and it’s green. Think about all the paper we save!” Read More >
In Shanghai, you can see the latest cars, and the cars of the future with no future. You also can see a tiny bit of the past.
Citroen brought two classics. Read More >
What lies beneath the vaguely Alfa-Romeo-like styling of the FAW Besturn B30? Here’s a hint: it’s the car that China refuses to let die. Still don’t know? Well, believe it or not, there’s a Mk. II Jetta under that sharply-creased sheetmetal, as China’s car industry seeks new ways to keep flogging the same 30-year-old German iron. Because, if it ain’t broke…
This is the BYD F0. I’ll leave it to the experts which other car this resembles. It reminds me a bit of that car, but maybe only because it’s so small and red. It should be red. It’s embarrassing. Read More >
When you have a larger joint venture with a Chinese automaker, at some point it will be strongly suggested to you to create a Chinese brand. At least this is how The Financial Times understands it: “Foreign carmakers wishing to build new plants or add capacity in China’s burgeoning car market are being told by the government that if they wish to expand, they must develop a low-cost local car brand.”
Early fruits of these suggestions can be seen at the Shanghai Auto Show. Read More >
Chery doesn’t have much new stuff in its booth this year.
There is a QQme covered in rosepetals and the usual assortment of not-quite-ready-for-market electric prototypes every Chinese company fields. But Chery trumps every other car manufacturer at the Shanghai show in one respect: Women. Read More >
As the luckless inventor of interactive video (at least when it comes to car shows), I usually avoid electronic attractions. But then, amongst TTAC’s Best and Brightest is Perisoft, developer of bitchen race simulators, and I absolutely had to test-drive the thing. If you are at the Shanghai Auto Show, it is at the Ford booth, in the left corner. Perisoft can remote into the machine from the U.S. to China, and we discussed cheating enhancing the performance of the simulator. We dropped the idea, because we didn’t want Perisoft to lose future business.
The simulator consists of three screens (made by Dell) and a cab that moves around. There also is a button that says “Motion Stop” – in case you get car sick, I guess. Before they let you drive, you need to sign a release form bigger than what I signed when I drove offshore race boats – a truly murderous undertaking at times. Read More >
It becomes immediately clear why the Chinese government did not want an upstart manufacturer of bridge pontoons to buy HUMMER: Unnecessary duplication of what is has been available at state-owned Dongfeng for ages. They even have a Chinese version of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Read More >
The Swedish National Debt Office has approved Saab’s deal to sell property to its Russian backer, Vladimir Antonov, but the Swedish firm is still waiting on approval of the deal from the European Investment Bank. Saab’s production operations have been shut down for two weeks, since the automaker began having trouble paying its suppliers. The EIB says its must simply review the deal, which would include the sale of Saab’s property to an Antonov-owned bank as well as the release of the remainder of Saab’s EIB loan, although GM gets to review the deal as well before it goes through according to thelocal.se. And since GM has long opposed Antonov taking a large share of Saab, which owns rights to some of its latest technology, Saab is reportedly also talking to several Chinese firms about partnerships that could save the struggling automaker.
“Herr Professor Piech! I guess all of us here at the Volkswagen Group are still working on becoming the world’s largest auto maker … by 2018, that’s right.
In the meantime, we built the world’s largest convertible!” Read More >
No, this is not the Mercedes B Class. It is the Beijing Auto BC301. Supposedly, it is a blatant copypaste, performed by Daimler’s joint venture partner BAIC. Read More >
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