Yesterday, a whirlwind of spy shots uncovered what looks to be the SX4 replacement Suzuki will start shipping to lots later this year. So far, observations of the new pint-sized every man rally car look promising, including possible turbo power and a handsome, if unremarkable, interior. But, will it be enough to satiate the appetite of Anglo American tastes? Or does American Suzuki need to focus more on the brand image train?
The 2013 Ford Mondeo, aka our 2013 Fusion, was supposed to hit UK showrooms around this time, but the launch has been pushed back to September, so Ford can work out some quality-related bugs prior to its on-sale date. Read More >
The big winner for Renault in the first half of 2012 was their low-cost Dacia brand, while the losers were…everyone else.
Just when you thought shares of Ford and GM can’t get any lower, major brokerage Morgan Stanley “lowered its 2012 U.S. auto sales projections by about 3 percent and cut its earnings-per-share estimates for the North American auto sector due to weaker-than-expected sales in the United States and Europe,”Reuters says.
For what it’s worth, Morgan expects U.S. auto sales to be 14.4 million this year, down from its earlier projection of 14.8 million. What is more disconcerting is Morgan’s outlook on financials of U.S. makers. Read More >
Sometime toward the end of my high school years, “fast fashion” shops like Zara and H&M set up shop in at the local malls, and became the place to shop. The clothing there wasn’t any better than the Gap or the Ralph Lauren remainders at Marshall’s, but if you paid for your own clothes, you would have been silly to shop anywhere else.
Shopping at those stores went beyond mere fashion considerations. If you spilled beer all over your shirt at a party, it wasn’t even worth sending it to the dry cleaners. Just throw it in the washing machine and hope it comes out. If that fails, pay $9.99 for another one. Eventually, people got wise to the fact that after three washes, the clothes tended to fall apart, but we willingly ignored the cheapness because we could look cool on a tight budget. Which is exactly why the Fiat 500 exists.
When the question of whether a Death Watch should be started for Suzuki was first posed here at TTAC in April, there was a lot going on behind the scenes at the stylized “S” brand but not many facts filtering out to the public.
As of today, TTAC’s Death Watch starts for Suzuki’s North American operations. And if you haven’t been following the drama, here’s some background for you…
While sitting through the new Pitbull-scored Fiat 500 ad, a model at :49 seconds in caught my eye – it looks a lot like the leaked photos of the 500T, which supposedly carries a version of the Abarth’s 1.4L turbo engine.
The establishment of a new manufacturing base in North Africa has fascinated me for the past couple months – though few others seem to really care. The leader in this movement has been Renault, which is setting up plants in Morocco and Algeria to build their popular, low-cost Dacia vehicles in factories where employees earn a fraction of what a French assembly line worker would make.
PSA doesn’t have a low-cost brand of it’s own, so jobs haven’t gone across the Strait of Gibraltar – yet. But the closing of the Aulnay plant, where a massive contingent of North African immigrants (now French citizens) work, is a compelling snapshot of the socioeconomic and racial dynamics of France that happens to intersect with the auto industry.
Reader Mark Stevenson submitted this essay on life as a Suzuki owner. Please welcome Mark as he shares his unique perspective on a brand that we overlook too often. – DK
No matter how perfect a family appears on the outside, dig deeper and you’re bound to find secrets of drama, betrayal, and, more often than not, profound loss. Interpersonal relationships between family members can be complex – veins of hatred filled with love and the inverse being equally true.
My family is no different. But, in addition to all those feelings being bestowed upon each other, we’ve shared them with Suzuki, a car company that made exactly what we needed and then took it all away.
Two years after Lotus presented a grandiose, multi-car lineup at the 2010 Paris Auto Show, the company will not be participating in this years festivities at the Porte De Versailles.
Here we go again…Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is asking NHTSA to re-open the investigation into the Toyota unintended acceleration case.
“It’s nice to be liked,” my future third wife Liz Phair sings, “but it’s better by far to get paid.” When your humble author began a vigorous program of auto-media meta-criticism under the guidance of the august Robert Farago a few years ago, I expected to be hated by my peers, and I was. I expected to be shunned by the industry PR people, and I was. I even feared I might be the subject of underhanded personal attacks designed to cost me my job, my home, and my ability to feed my son, and I wasn’t disappointed in that, either. The only thing I didn’t expect was to be emulated.
Now we have the nice folks at FORTUNE doing their own meta-critical review-the-reviewers, complete with double helpings of cynicism and supposition. Their target: The new Chevrolet Malibu ECO. They credit TTAC’s own Michael Karesh with being “an early sign that consensus was building” on the car. And the verdict?
Sometimes, the Ford Facebook pages bring you horrifying news like “We commissioned Tanner Foust, Vaughn Gittin Jr., Brian Deegan, Ken Block, and other amazing drivers to take the Focus ST through its paces against competitors for our upcoming video series dubbed, ‘ST Sessions.'”
If the thought of indirectly paying those four, ah, individuals to “hoon” by purchasing a new Focus ST hasn’t completely made you lose your appetite, there’s now some actual news regarding the car to share:
A study by consulting firm McKinsey says that the cost of the lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles could tumble by as much as 70 percent by 2025, thanks to a combination of factors.
More than 70 percent of Hyundai’s 45,000 strong worker’s guild voted in favor of job actions, including a walkout planned for Friday. The guild is building up towards Hyundai’s first labor strike since 2008, as they seek better wages and reduced hours.
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