Last week we told you that Volkswagen could announce this week that they would buy Giorgetto Giugiaro’s Italdesign. Sure enough, they did. At a joint press conference held today in Turin, both companies announced that Volkswagen Group will take a 90.1 percent stake in IDG. That buys them the company lock, stock and barrel, including the brand name rights and patents. Read More >
Whoever said there’s no replacement for displacement? French Peugeot surely doesn’t think so. Brazil’s Bestcars makes us salivate with the news that Europe will get the chance to fawn over Peugeot’s new medium compact, the 308 GTI. And what do we get? Definitely not that one. The car has 200 hp and torque of 275 Nm. All from a puny 1.6L mill. That’s 125 horses per liter. Read More >
The auto enthusiast community is far too fragmented to ever achieve real consensus on any issue, but if there’s a single authority on performance-oriented cars, it’s Britain’s enthusiast bible evo Magazine. So when evo bashes an enthusiast-targeted model, it’s usually worth taking note of. The latest print issue of evo includes a Chris Harris review of Audi’s range-topping RS5 coupe [online summary here], the 444 hp, V8-powered flagship of its A5 lineup, and from line one the reader can tell that something is rotten in the state of Quattro GMBH. Harris describes an attempt to blow the doors off a 328 hp S4 camera car, only to find that, three gears later, his $15k more expensive coupe had barely gained any ground on the supercharged V6-powered S4. So, what gives?
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Nissan made quite a stir in EV-watcher circles by announcing that its UK-produced Leaf battery packs would cost under $400/kWh, but as we noted at the time, those numbers are being supported by various government incentives. Now, with a new government taking over number 10 Downing Street, Nissan’s UK Leaf production incentive might be on its way out. With the UK’s new Conservative-led government facing profound budget challenges (try a $240b deficit on for size), The Telegraph reports that a $30.5m grant approved by the outgoing government could fall victim to an overarching review of new expenditures by the incoming government. And that’s just the beginning…
As Americans have noted, bailouts can get costly. Europe has just decided on a trillion dollar bailout for their southern European deadbeats member states. Who’s going to pay for all that? In Germany, raising taxes is taboo (for the moment.) Lowering taxes had been one of the wedding vows of the ruling coalition. They didn’t say exactly when, but raising taxes would be politically – not very smart. So how else to raise money? Where else than from our darling piggy bank, the hapless motorist. Read More >
5 years ago, disturbing news reached Germany. A Chinese company called Jiangling had the nerve to disturb the peace of the Frankfurt Motor Show IAA by displaying a Chinese SUV, with the intent to sell the vehicle. With dispatch, a crash test was arranged by the ADAC, the German equivalent of the AAA. The car failed miserably, the video became a hit on Youtube, and turned into an example for all that’s wrong with Chinese cars. Landwind was done. Never mind that rumors wouldn’t die that ADAC’s Landwind test had used, shall we say, “enhanced techniques.” Never mind that Germany’s TÜV, the company that officially tests cars for the German government, tested the car later and certified that it met all mandatory safety criteria. Never mind that the ADAC has a sometimes incestuous relationship with German auto makers. Landwind was destroyed, the first attempt to invest European soil with Chinese cars was repulsed. Later, ADAC did the same to Brilliance, again under questionable circumstances, again with the predictable results: Brilliance was dead, had to leave Europe. Well, Brilliance is coming back. And so does Landwind. Read More >
The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association ACEA released sales numbers for April. As predicted on Friday, the numbers are bad. For the first time this year, and for the first time in 10 months, numbers are negative. New passenger car registrations in Europe fell by 7.4 percent in April compared to the same month last year. They will get worse. Read More >
Ford Europe will swallow a tried and trued antidote against flagging car sales: Heavy discounting. Yesterday, Ford had announced – in a rather roundabout way – that their European sales had dropped a breathtaking 17 percent in April. Putting cash on the hood is no surprising move. Wouldn’t there be another detail. Read More >
I guess, a lot of people at Ford European HQ are sorry of their “Europe’s biggest brand” rararah of last month. There will be a lot of “eat your words” in Cologne. Or “eat a broom” as they say in Germany. Much less appetizing than eating words. Ford’s sales numbers for April are horrible. Read More >
While bullets fly in Bangkok, Toyota announced today that production at a Toyota plant near Bangkok will cease by the end of May. Toyota says the plant closure has nothing to do with the public unrest, it should be seen on the context of the reorganization of Toyota’s global operations, says The Nikkei [sub]. Read More >
Whenever TTAC took GM to task for branding run amok and excessive platform sharing, the example of Volkswagen has always been the key counterfactual. With seven brands available in Europe, the Volkswagen-Audi group is the continental GM, always looking for another way to repackage a pedestrian FWD platform. The only difference is that VW has actually been growing. But Wolfsburg’s brand profligacy is starting to bear some GM-style bitter fruit. Skoda has been surprisingly strong of late, actually making problems for the Volkswagen brand in certain markets. Seat, on the other hand, is not doing so well. With only one factory, at Martorell, near Barcelona, Seat has always been a slightly niche player, offering older VW designs with some Pontiac-style “emotional” styling flair and a sportier image. The problem now, as Seat CEO James Muir tells The WSJ [sub], is that
The brand really is too small for this plant
Running at only 60 percent of its 500,000 unit capacity, Seat is too small for its lone plant. As a result, VW is launching a last-ditch effort to save its dying brand.
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Those Chinese sure are tenacious. After European Brilliance importer HSO went bankrupt last November, after Brilliance wrote a whopping loss for 2009 while the Chinese market went through the roof, after Brilliance announced that they had stopped all exports to Europe (there wasn’t much to stop,) one would have thought that China’s Brilliance thoroughly had it with exporting to Europe or any of the first world countries. But no … Read More >
Now that the Conservatives (with the help of the Liberal Democrats) have come to power in the UK, the Conservatives are going to push forward their plans for a reduction in the UK deficit (i.e savage cuts). Now, while I agree in the long term, this will be good for the UK, in the short term, it will cause higher unemployment and severe “belt tightening”. The UK isn’t the only country with this frame of thinking. Only today, the Spanish government has announced deep budget cuts in order to reduce their deficit and to prevent markets from thinking of them as the next “Greece”. So, with the UK and Spain making these budget cuts, the Euro looking unsteady and Greece still not convincing markets, what else could make Europe stare at another recession? That’s right, a possible trade war. Read More >
From Ferrari’s manual-free pledge to BMW’s move to front-wheel-drive, the auto industry is breaking down formerly untouchable barriers left and right. The latest: longtime four-wheel-drive specialist Land Rover will build a front-drive version of its forthcoming compact “SUV Coupe” known as the LRX. The new model, which debuts at this fall’s Paris Auto Show, will generally be available with all-wheel-drive, but after launch a front-drive base version will become available. Though Landie had previously foresworn FWD models as being incompatible with the brand’s values, there’s been a change of heart and according to Autocar, the Tata Motors-owned marque
cannot ignore the growth of the two-wheel-drive SUV segment
There’s been no word thus far about the LRX’s availability in the US, but if it does arrive stateside don’t expect FWD versions to be imported. And don’t expect the LRX codename to grace its rear deck either: five names are said to be under consideration for the model, one of which is “Land Rover Compact” and none of which is “LRX.”
Ford’s first hybrid models for European customers will be built in Valencia Spain. Valencia was the logical choice.
Valencia had been picked in 2009 as the European single source for all versions of the “compact multi-activity model” Ford C-MAX and Grand C-MAX . Powered by EcoBoost gasoline and Duratorq TDCi diesel engines, they will launch later this year. A gasoline-powered seven-seat version of the C-MAX model for North America will go into production in Valencia in late 2011. Read More >
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