As the über-ridiculous Aston Martin One-77 approaches final production-readiness, watching the thing run hot laps is finally becoming as much fun as wrapping your head around its €1.4m ($1.9m) pricetag. Especially because we’re extremely unlikely to ever see one of these things on the street. According to Auto Motor und Sport, Aston has already received a $14m offer for ten of the One-77’s 77-unit production run, apparently from a single Gulf State collector. So unless you live in one of the tonier neighborhoods of Dubai, you’re unlikely to get any closer to the One-77’s 760 horsepower V-12 than this. Enjoy the taste, peasants.
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Is Sergio Marchionne’s Italy-dissing getting your weekend down? Check out the Italian rebuttal, courtesy of Ferrari’s 458 Italia Challenge, the road-racer version of Maranello’s game-changing supercar. Italy may not buy enough Puntos and Pandas to keep its unions and mass-market brands happy, but it still knows how to produce some of the most viscerally intoxicating automobiles around. And when it comes to weekend entertainment, that’s good enough for us.
Speaking of confused advertising directions, BMW and its US-market ad agency GSD&M Idea City have parted ways according to Automotive News [sub]. GSD&M was responsible for the poorly-received “Joy” campaign, which BMW had adopted as a global campaign. And according to the report, BMW didn’t call off the relationship. The ad team pulled the plug because
Relationships are no longer strong with the marketing team, particularly in the wake of [BMW USA marketing boss Jack] Pitney’s death; the agency wasn’t making enough money on the account; and there wasn’t an opportunity to do the kind of work the agency had hoped to undertake.
Here’s hoping a new team helps BMW get its advertising mojo back. With Cadillac’s CTS-V going after the German sports sedan jugular with one of the best ads of the year, and luxury competition heating up in the US market, this is not a moment to get caught napping.
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John Dingell Jr. has represented Michigan’s 15th congressional district for 55 years. His father held the same seat for 22 years before that. Dingell has lived his entire life in Washington, D.C., never in the southwest suburbs of Detroit where his constituents live. For perhaps the first time in his life, Dingell is actually in a political battle. The Detroit Free Press published the results of a poll that showed him 4% down to his challenger, Dr. Rob Steele, a cardiologist from Ann Arbor, with just three weeks to go before the election.
From conflict-torn Afghanistan [via Newsweek] comes this strange tale of Taliban tribute to the “the vehicular equivalent of the AK-47”: the Toyota Hilux (more famous among Western car nuts for its infamous Top Gear adventures).
As the war in Afghanistan escalated several years ago, counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen, a member of the team that designed the Iraq surge for Gen. David Petraeus, began to notice a new tattoo on some insurgent Afghan fighters. It wasn’t a Taliban tattoo. It wasn’t even Afghan. It was a Canadian maple leaf.
When a perplexed Kilcullen began to investigate, he says, he discovered that the incongruous flags were linked to what he says is one of the most important, and unnoticed, weapons of guerrilla war in Afghanistan and across the world: the lightweight, virtually indestructible Toyota Hilux truck.
Given the controversy of the Volt (earned or not), GM is being closely watched from all angles. Some people think that GM hasn’t changed. Others think that this may delay GM’s IPO. But, ironically what hasn’t changed, despite the witch-hunt of GM’s owners, is Toyota’s unwavering support of GM. Read More >
TTKN News reports that General Motors has been awarded a top rating of 100 percent in the 2011 Corporate Equality Index (CEI), a survey which is carried out by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC). This scoring of 100 percent represents the fifth consecutive year that GM scored 100 percent in this survey. They didn’t get that top spot for their stance on Tibet. As a company that is entirely dependent on two governments (U.S. and Chinese) GM wisely kept their nose clean on THAT. Read More >
Chevrolet’s new Australian-built Caprice PPV killed the field at the Michigan State Police trials for 2011 models, winning 0-60, 0-100 and top-speed comparisons, the braking competition and turning in the fastest average lap time. Dodge’s Charger nipped at the Caprice’s heels, but the day belonged to Holden. As predicted [unofficial results including Ford’s Taurus-based cruiser available at Jalopnik].
For some people (you know who you are), the 200 horsepower provided by the 2011 Hyundai Sonata’s 2.4-liter four-cylinder base engine just isn’t enough. The traditional solution: a V6. But Hyundai, taking a page from Chrysler’s Iacocca-era playbook, has opted to offer a turbocharged 2.0-liter four instead. The specs look good: 274 horsepower at 6,000 rpm and 269 pound-feet of torque from 1,750 rpm. The pricing? Even better. The Hyundai Sonata SE 2.0T lists for $24,865, only $1,550 more than the regular Sonata SE. Are these the cheapest horses new car money can buy in a midsize sedan?
We were not amused (to coin a phrase) at Ford’s decision to tax fans of the hatchback by adding $500 to the price of its five-door Fiesta and forthcoming Focus. And rather than following Ford’s example, GM has priced its CTS-V Sportwagon some $475 cheaper than its $63,465 CTS-V sedan, by starting prices for the unique muscle wagon at $62,990 (including destination). Needless to say, we love the wüchtig, 556 HP CTS-V, so the prospect of a distinctively be-hatched version for less money is like catnip here at TTAC HQ. On the other hand, our beef with Ford has to do with its refusal to offer the practicality of a hatch at the base price point, and that argument doesn’t really hold water in the tire-smoking world of supercharged V8 rocketships. Moreover, $475 doesn’t exactly make much of a difference when you’re talking about a car that costs the equivalent of four base Fiestas. Still, we like to think of this as a win for the wagons… if only in principle.
Tickets for Ford’s 2012 Focus (coming next spring) start at a Cruze-pipping $16,270 (destination charge not included), but that’s for a “S” Trim four-door sedan with “100A” equipment (rear drum brakes, manual air conditioning steelies). In other words, as with the Fiesta, Ford has made its “come-on-in special” version of the Focus sedan-only. Move up to the “SE” trim for an apples-to-apples comparison, and you find that the Focus hatch carries the same $795 “hatchback tax” as the Fiesta. SE Sedans start at $17,270, while the SE hatchback starts at $18,065 (Sedan pricing in PDF here, Five-Door here). Meanwhile, “Titanium”-spec Focii are knocking on $23k, at which point you’re getting the same 2.0 GDI as the base model, while Cruze customers venturing into similar price territory will have upgraded to the well-received 1.4 Turbo. So why is it that the hatchback tax bothers me the most?
The ad shown above seems to cement a sad reality for automotive enthusiasts: the objects of our passion are no longer considered the cutting edge of material culture. And this reality is reflected is reflected in more than just ads for mobile phones, the object that appears to have replaced cars as the touchstone of youthful cool. For a broad array of reasons, young people (the traditional arbiters of cool) are less obsessed with cars and car ownership than they once were. Even automakers themselves are rushing the automobile to the scrapheap of history by seeking to load ever more phone-like capabilities to cars, a trend that both fuels phone mania and disinterest in driving as an intrinsically rewarding experience. But, it seems, that cars can still be cool after all…
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No, not the silly humpbacked 911. That’s just Porsche’s latest wallet-lightening technology. Porsche’s nod to heritage is in the fact that it’s building only 356 of these 911 “Speedsters.” Because, you see, the first Porsche Speedsters were based on the Porsche 356. Oh yes, and by limiting an “exclusive” to a few hundred units means Porsche can charge $204,000 for a 408 HP 911. Which, after all, is actually the more significant nod to Porsche heritage: the 911-based Speedsters, which arose in the cocaine and yuppie-fueled 80s, have long been a high point in Porsche’s proud tradition of charging silly money for ever-so garish “special editions.” Doesn’t heritage just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?
The last time Lotus trotted out an “Elite,” it was a funkily be-hatched, sports tourer which, at about 2,000 lbs, was already nearly a thousand pounds heavier than the sleek fiberglass coupe it replaced. Thirty five years later, the beat goes on: as part of its mainstreaming effort, Lotus is showing a new “Elite” concept at the Paris Auto Show that is the heaviest and most powerful model the brand has ever produced. At 3,700 lbs, and offering a hybrid five liter V8 (reportedly based on the Lexus LS600h drivetrain) and a folding hardtop, this Elite appears to be aimed at Ferrari’s California… and more generally, at people who don’t know who Colin Chapman was. Lotus CEO Danny Behar tells Autocar
Make no mistake, there’s a definite market requirement for the Elite. It’s the ultimate compromise of sports car feel with comfort and space. There will always be those who say Lotus should stick to small sports cars, but we didn’t take the decision to design something like the Elite lightly. It is based on months of careful research and planning.
What Behar apparently doesn’t get is that McLaren would be more than happy to take Lotus’s status as the preeminent British sportscar maker if it takes its eye off the ball for a second. And going from the Elise to the Evora to a full-fat, hybrid hardtop convertible tourer is quite the leap of faith for Lotus. Business is business, but brands are brands… and we didn’t realize just how mainstream Lotus was aiming for.
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