One Ford? Not in the all-important D-Segment. While America’s poncy Taurus languishes in sales, Europe’s Mondeo has been facelifted and is ready for another round of competition. And with a full compliment of Ecoboost four-cylinders and diesels, it’s likely to continue selling well there. Meanwhile, the Fiesta, Focus and more models from Ford’s European stables are headed stateside, but there’s still no word of a global unification of Ford’s D-segment offerings. Given that the Taurus has sold 60k units in the last 12 months, it might be time to consider bringing the Mondeo to America.
Nagare is done. After the 5, it’s highly unlikely that there will be another nagare car. Mazda has moved on
Mazda’s Peter Birtwhistle gives Mazda fans the brand’s best news in a long time [via AutoExpress]: the crazy design language inspired by the Nagare show car of 2006, will die with its first victim, the 2011 Mazda5. Mazda’s new direction?
[Becoming] more like a Japanese Alfa Romeo, producing cars which are great to drive, but crucially that also have the right premium feel, particularly inside.
Great idea. It would have been even better, say, five years ago. Better late than never…
The Porsche Consulting website previews the look of a forthcoming two-door GT based on the Panamera architecture. And surprise! It looks like a flattened 911. Who could have seen that coming?
Tesla, a firm that its CEO Elon Musk describes as a “technology velociraptor,” has unveiled these first hints at future applications of its Model S sedan platform [via Darryl Siry, Full presentation here]. Far be it from us to call Tesla a dinosaur, but if the sedan costs $50k base, who’s going to buy a commercial van based on the same chassis and technology? Tesla had a chance as long as it remained the Ferrari of the Silicon Valley, but these designs hint at a deep lack of focus behind the scenes.
Give it a little while and the snickering about uninspired, or foreign-inspired Chinese car design can end. Carrozzeria Bertone has signed a partnership agreement with the Raffles CU International College, an affiliate of the Changchun University in northeastern China. Next to Shanghai, Changchun is the second-most important auto manufacturing center in China. It is dominated by FAW and its joint ventures with Volkswagen and Toyota. Read More >
Via dinosaursandrobots.com come pictures of what may be the most predictable conversion ever… and it looks like this particular Kia owner went the full Amanti with it.
Ford gives us [via Facebook] as good of a view of the 2011 Explorer… as you’ll get from the seat of a 2011 Explorer. Unless this is some kind of appeal to the spelunking lifestyle segment (you never know), we may have a new ridiculous pillar size champ on our hands.
In the midst of a nearly 3,000 word InsideLine treatise on the forthcoming Equus and Hyundai’s upmarket intentions in general, Hyundai’s USA boss John Krafcik reveals that the car pictured above very nearly became the Hyundai Genesis. No, really.
There was a lot of internal debate on design direction for Genesis. We used a European design house as an early consultant, and its proposals informed the core design elements of the first approved exterior model, which got as far as the tooling stage. In our industry, when you’ve built tools to stamp the exterior sheet metal, you’ve committed millions of dollars, and so you’re pretty much committed at that stage to bring that design to market. But in the end, we weren’t happy with the design. So we made the right decision (albeit a difficult and expensive one) to redo the exterior with a cleaner, more athletic and more enduring design, homegrown from our own design studio.
It’s all speculation until we get official pricing from VW of North America, but according to Autoblog, the new Jetta will be priced starting “around $16,000” when it shows up stateside this October. With Chevy’s Cruze starting at $16,995, we face an interesting prospect: VW’s entry sedan might well be cheaper than Chevrolet’s. Of course the base Jetta will continue to be saddled with its predecessor’s agricultural 2.5 liter, but the Cruze’s base 1.8 hasn’t exactly earned many accolades either. Of course the base Cruze comes with a goodly amount of equipment, but it’s got an uphill fight on its hands if the more desirably-branded Jetta pips it on pure price point.
Apparently these press images were embargoed until tomorrow… and yet here they are. But who, you might ask, would risk being boarded by Volkswagen commandos in order to deliver these images to the huddled masses, yearning for a a glimpse of the new blandness? Oh right, it says Auto Express on the picture. According to the embargo-running Brits, this is the first Jetta to be more than a Golf with a trunk: thanks to VW’s new modular architecture, the wheelbase has been extended for more rear-seat legroom. More details when Volkswagen is good and ready, likely sometime tomorrow.
Meet the Renault Vel Satis, erstwhile flagship of the Renault range. Dreamed up in the go-go ’90s for “non-conformist” customers who sought to “distance themselves from the traditional saloon,” the Vel Satis ended up being something of a whipping boy for styling critics. And why not? In retrospect, it’s hard to deny that the thing looks a bit like the love child of a Nissan Versa and a Cadillac DTS. And yes, it is the only car on earth that can make Nicolas Sarkozy look attractive by comparison. In fact, the most apt critique of the Vel Satis’s styling was probably Stephen Bayley’s assesment that it wasn’t quite ugly enough.
To be perfectly honest, we weren’t familiar with the work of Weinsberg, Germany-based Xenatec group before hearing that the custom bodywork shop would be building a Maybach Coupe. Thanks to a tip from Auto Motor und Sport, we headed over to Xenatec’s website, and found that the firm offers a wide variety of custom bodywork ranging from the absurd to the sublime. Some of Xenatec’s customs, like the stretched Audi R8 shown above, show just how pointlessly nuts things can get when money is not a factor. Others, like the four-door BMW 6-Series and the Mercedes CLS Wagon actually represent pre-emptive swipes at forthcomingniche models. A four-door Porsche 911 even gives sufficiently well-heeled buyers the option of buying a “real” Porsche four-door as an alternative to the front-engine Panamera. You know the industry is passing through strange days when OEMs and tuning houses start meeting in the middle…
Recent Comments