Doesn’t that profile look familiar? Haven’t we seen that somewhere? Having taken the British brand in a bold new direction after decades of stylistic stagnation, Jaguar’s chief designer Ian Callum is letting Bertone take the lead in setting a stylistic direction for Jag’s forthcoming 3-Series competitor… and Bertone seems hell-bent on dragging Jag back to its XJ-obsessed recent past. But Bertone design director Mike Robinson won’t cop to the seemingly obvious charge, telling Autocar
Jaguar is looking at a new design direction and a small car — and we think this is the right style, with a very light glasshouse and the visual weight concentrated on to the wheels… I’m an anti-retroist. This is not an old classic design. It’s a new classic.
But is it? The (B) pillarless four-door screams XJC in proportion, and the whole effect is of a step backwards. Besides, when classic XJ proportions meet a 3-Series-sized chassis, the interior is going to face some serious space restrictions. In any case, Callum took one the boldest steps in automotive design when he left the XJ styling cues behind and penned the XF and the stunning new XJ. With this B99 concept, Bertone just seems to be muddying the waters. Let’s hope Jag keeps rejects the concept and keeps design of its forthcoming smaller luxury sedan in-house.
Winter testing continues for the platform underlying Mercedes’ four compacts of the apocalypse, and Auto Motor und Sport’s cameraman have caught copious footage of the fun. But remember, the traditional B-Class hatchback won’t be headed stateside, having been nixed by MB’s US dealer net. Instead, we’ll get
a crossover, a sporty coupe and a sedan
based on the same front-drive platform. Heck, the platform may even spawn a baby Infiniti CUV, positioned under the EX, as part of Daimler and Nissan’s hookup. Given that this test mule is validating the internals of a new direction for the Mercedes brand in the US, do we like what we’re seeing?
It’s one thing to bring back the DeTomaso name for a vehicle that doesn’t quite live up to the dashing reputation earned by the brand that produced the car that Elvis shot. It’s quite another to exhume a brand like DeTomaso in order to build a $100k+ vehicle that exhibits nearly every regrettable trend in modern automotive design. Obese proportions? Check. Urkle waistline? Check. Forgettable front end? Check. Pointlessly tacked-on fender port? Check. It’s one thing to shoot your DeTomaso because you’re drunk and it won’t start… this one looks like it should euthanized out of sheer mercy.
Let’s face it: the Lincoln Town Car is the best car in the world, and that’s why at least two TTAC staffers are Panther owners. Unfortunately for Ford, however, production of new Town Cars is completely dependent on a rare earth. Well, it’s actually dependent upon Rare Earth, the band, which generates a mineral known as “awesomtonium” every time they play “I Just Wanna Celebrate” in public. A dearth of recent appearances by the band, the members of which are now all over one hundred and ten years old, means that Ford has been forced to schedule the end of Town Car production for this fall.
What can Lincoln do in a circumstance like that? The honorable thing to do would be for every employee of the brand to publicly apologize to America right before committing ritual suicide. I’m told, however, that an internal vote regarding that topic ended up strongly on the side of “seeing our children again”. In that case, the only thing left to do is to make a new Town Car, lest the Manhattanite Masters of the Universe be forced to ride the subway.
development on the next-generation 2014 Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon for the U.S. and Canada is under way, based on GM’s all-new GMI 700 body-on-frame global small truck platform that will be built in Thailand starting late this year.
The bad news: it probably won’t arrive until late 2013 or early 2014… and by then, pickuptrucks.com figures that a refreshed Tacoma and a new Frontier will be on the market by then, in addition to a possible Ram or Jeep compact pickup. Still, the prospect of a Brazilian-developed and designed small truck certainly sounds tempting. Let’s just hope the coming competition helps make these trucks into the kind of bulletproof, fuel-sipping machines that helped boost US auto sales the last time we faced a major energy crisis.
Infiniti will show this C-segment coupe-hatch, named Etherea, at the Geneva Auto Show, as a glimpse at the brand’s 2014 time-frame compact, front-drive offerings. But, for those of us who grew up in the 80s, the Etherea’s name is at least as likely to recall the distant planet that served as the home of He-Man’s twin sister, She-Ra. But rather than serving as the battleground between the Rebellion and the evil forces of Hordak, the Etherea is a new opportunity to highlight the hybrid drivetrain from the M35h as well as “innovative access arrangements” that Infiniti is keeping secret for now. Which is probably for the best… apparently She-Ra was a Panther girl
For years now, the compact pickup market has withered away due to the chicken-and-egg dynamic of poor sales and little investment in new models. Ford’s Ranger and Chevy’s Colorado are scheduled to die off this year, and with the new global Ranger not coming to America, Mahindra’s endless delays and weak mileage ratings, and no signs of other small truck investment, the segment looks ready to die. But, as it turns out, 2011 might not be the year that kills the compact pickup: tflcar.com reports from the Chicago Auto Show that
a well placed source within the company is that Chrysler will announce a new entry-level light pickup this year.
Since Fiat took over at Chrysler, there have been rumors of a Ram-branded unibody pickup… but rumors of a Jeep Wrangler-based pickup have been rampant as well. Whatever format a new Chrysler compact pickup comes in, here’s hoping it inspires other companies to bring out a rugged, fuel-efficient, compact pickup for the US market. You paying attention GM?
Two years ago, Nissan sent a bizarre little beach buggy of a concept, called the Qazana, to the Geneva Auto Show. At the time Autoblog’s Chris Paukert called the concept that would become the Nissan Juke “so bizarre it almost looks French”… but little did anyone know the French would eventually claim the Juke’s heritage. Now, Renault, the French leg of Carlos Ghosn’s Renault-Nissan alliance is bringing their own interpretation of the compact-coupe-ute with this, the Renault Captur. Will it being searing eyeballs on the French street any time soon? Ghosn only knows…
Between Nissan’s Esflow concept and this BMW Vision ConnectedDrive concept, it’s becoming pretty clear that “clean fun” is the theme of the forthcoming Geneva Auto Show. But BMW isn’t just signaling the production look of its EfficientDynamics sportscar… the Vision ConnectedDrive also demonstrates BMW’s dedication to managing the coming information overload created by ever more technologically-dependent automobiles. Autocar reports:
BMW knows that the day is rapidly approaching when on-board sensors will deliver so much data to the driver that innovative ways are needed to present the information so it can be absorbed and acted upon quickly.
Intended to replace the conventional instrument cluster, the next-gen HUD will display info like road speed and sat-nav directions in three-dimensions.
This tech allows different information layers to be superimposed on top of one another, in turn allowing the driver to display the required data in the foreground, while ghosting less significant info into the background.
By providing this ‘optical depth of field’, BMW reckons it can provide the driver with multiple additional information sources without having to redesign a car’s fascia to take an additional display screen.
Just another step towards the day when Graphical User Interfaces become as important to cars as styling and performance.
Let’s get something perfectly clear: if you’re spending good money to bring back a legendary Italian sports car brand like DeTomaso without aiming to capture the essence of the photograph above, you’re doing it wrong. Period. If, on the other hand, you’re bringing back the DeTomaso name in order to sell
a premium large crossover, dubbed SLC (sport luxury car) that would be a rival to cars such as the BMW 5-series GT and Lexus RX-450h,
you need to go rethink your entire perspective on life. Or at least find a new business. Tragically, this is exactly what former Fiat marketing executive Gian Mario Rossignolo is doing. DeTomaso. Crossover. DeTomaso. RX450h. DeTomaso. Luxury CUV. Haven’t lost your mind yet? Hit the jump for more claw-your-eyes-out details.
What happens when Nissan re-imagines its Leaf EV’s internals into a “sports car of the future,” inspired by its long line of Z cars? You’re looking at it. Nissan will show this Esflow concept at the Geneva Auto Show, and, based on the reaction it receives, they’ll consider a production model. Though it uses Leaf electronics, the Esflow is being presented on a “bespoke” RWD platform, with a pair of electric motors driving the rear wheels. And the Leaf’s battery was likely improved upon for this concept, as Nissan claims about 150 miles of range and a sub-5 second 0-60 time.
I believe in 2020, the car will drive itself. The infrastructure will be in place, and that infrastructure will be very significant and hefty. But in that target environment, you and I don’t have to be sitting behind the wheel. In that environment, everyone will be a passenger, and you want to have full connectivity with full access to any media, or any person anywhere via the best videoconferencing available. So you need a rich media experience in the car.
At the same time, there will be a significant amount of safety applications that will be running in the car, making sure that the car is fully protected and is communicating through the infrastructure to other cars. That would be the nature of how I see the driving experience transforming in ten years plus.
Obviously, as CEO of an in-car connectivity solution firm, Mr Hushayr is heavily invested in a driver-free future… but is his vision the product of more than just wishful thinking? I certainly have some difficulty imagining giving up driving before I turn 40… but then, I’m not sure that most of my peers would. Surf over to AT and read the whole interview before letting us know what you think.
Most foreign-based automakers see the United States as a market first and a production center second: If sales are good enough, production will follow. Mitsubishi, on the other hand, seems to be taking the opposite approach. The Japanese automaker has announced [via Automotive News [sub]] that it will replace production its weak-selling midsized offerings (Galant, Endeavor, Eclipse) at its Normal, Il factory with one model: the Outlander Sport compact crossover. The Outlander Sport (known elsewhere as RVR and ASX) is Mitsu’s newest vehicle, but the firm still envisions only abput half of Normal’s planned 50k units of production to be sold in North American markets (a safe estimate considering it’s still not outselling the Lancer). The other half will be exported to Russia, Latin America and the Middle East. That’s right, Mitsubishi is keeping its only UAW-represented workforce in order to build compact crossovers for export.
End of the 60s, Volkswagen and Porsche cooperated on a budget sportscar called the 914. Soon, one of the many feuds erupted between Wolfsburg and Zuffenhausen, and the mid-engined twoseater was sold as a “VW-Porsche” in Europe. Memories of the boxy, targa-topped car flash through my mind as I read in Germany’s AUTOBILD that Volkswagen might bring back a new Volksporsche. Read More >
Here comes the Opel Allegra, the forthcoming European market city car, and (CARB willing) maybe even Buick’s next CAFE-buster. A Buick on a shortened Opel Corsa platform is madness, you say? Let’s see your old Roadmaster get 35.5 MPG combined…
Recent Comments