Who says there is justice in this world? Steven had to get, drive, and describe a Kia Optima. Hard work. Cammy only had to ask “what are your favourite adverts or advertising campaigns from the auto world?” And the nominations kept pouring in. At the time of this typing, there were 112 comments, most of them with a link to an ad, as required. Some incorrigibles posted without a link, shame on you, stand in the corner.
Not only were the ads posted, they were watched. Due to the work of our Canadian crack coders, we can see how many times someone clicks on a link. Data derived from the click-count are the key to the easiest to write category: “By Popular Vote.” And the winners are… (ranked from most clicked on down:) Read More >
Motor Trend reports that Cadillac’s long search for a flagship is over. After debating a number of options, including importing a stretched Chinese-market STS, GM has decided that the “Super Epsilon”-based XTS will be the future range-topper for its luxury brand. The XTS was developed on a stretched version of the platform that underpins GM sedans including the Buick LaCrosse, Chevy Malibu and the forthcoming Buick Regal, and was shown in concept form as the XTS Platinum concept at the Detroit Auto Show. That concept was shown with a theoretical plug-in drivetrain made up of Cadillac’s 3.6 liter DI V6 and the plug-in components from the canceled Vue plug-in, and according to MT, the recent cancellation of the Converj plug-in means “there’s profit and green image to be had in the plug-in XTS.” Until that technology is production-ready, choosing the XTS’s engine options will be an interesting challenge.
The “First Drive” is one of the perennial stumbling blocks of automotive journalism. In return for exclusive access to the latest, most-hyped automobiles that everyone wants to get their hands on, outlets like Edmunds Inside Line are asked to swath their “First Drive” write-up in the most glowing terms possible. Or, as we’ve put it before, the price of an exclusive story is a straight face. Unfortunately the results of this kind of compromise are difficult to read with straight face. We’ve seen no better example of this than Inside Line’s recent “First Drive” of the Honda CR-Z, which yielded such unfortunate lines as:
The CR-Z is like a Tesla Roadster, but without the $109,000 price tag.
You know, besides having a different powertrain driving different wheels, a huge performance disparity, and, well, everything else.
Joel Ewanick is a name you’re probably not familiar with. I wouldn’t blame you, he works in Marketing, which is a pretty dull affair. However, you may be familiar with his work. He helped bring Hyundai to the mainstream with clever and well executed marketing plans. The Hyundai Assurance Plan (lose your job, return your car) was his idea. Not to mention during 2009, when the car industry was failing, his marketing plans helped Hyundai increase market share and even turn a good profit. Advertising during the Superbowl? His idea. Advertising at the Academy Awards? His idea again. Hyundai’s market share grew from 3 percent to 4.4 percent as of February (according to data from Autodata). To cap it all, he was named Marketer of the Year 2009 (the year of carmageddon) by Advertsing Age. So why am I writing about him? Well, he’s leaving Hyundai. Read More >
Japan’s auto industry is slowly putting its toes back into the Iraqi quicksand. Their stalking horse is Sumitomo, which established the first office of a Japanese company in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, The Nikkei [sub] reports. The office is in the business center at Baghdad’s international airport, surrounded by American military facilities. They’ll build the world’s most heavily guarded workshop. Read More >
Peter Schiff (the man who saw the financial meltdown coming from a mile away) continually asserts that financial stimulus isn’t cure, it prolongs or postpones the problem. Any hardcore free capitalist will find it hard to disagree with Mr Schiff. There is no governmental stimulus such as in Europe. There is plenty of stimulus from the car makers.
March sales for the United States are forecast to explode according to ecreditdaily. They report that JD Power & Associates forecast that new vehicle retail sales going to increase 25 percent. New vehicle sales for the month of March 2010 are expected to be around 883,300 units. The majority of the growth is expected to come from a certain manufacturer who’s been in the media for other reasons. Our own Darth Niedermeyer, saw this coming. Read More >
Lavish cash on the hood of Japanese cars may help their U.S. sales (or soften the fall in Toyota’s case). The largess also “will put pressure on earnings,” says The Nikkei [sub].
Toyota, Nissan, Honda raised sales incentives in February to an average of 2,221 dollars per vehicle, up 11 percent from January. Read More >
Let’s face it: it’s not the best time to be launching any new automotive brand just now, let alone a brand built in Formula 1 and offering only a single, $250,000 product. Throughout the industry, OEMs are abandoning or distancing themselves from motorsport, as the old “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” logic proves to be an ever-fading anachronism. And yet here is McLaren Automotive, launching its first new road-going supercar in over ten years, with the the help of two F1 champs. Can an automotive brand survive selling high-priced symbols of racing prowess, at a time when racing (particularly Formula 1 racing) is becoming ever-more divorced from road car realities? More importantly, can it take on the lions of the supercar world with mere techno-wonkery? Read More >
The biggest storyline right now for America’s bailed-out automakers is how little they’ve been able to capitalize on Toyota’s stumbles. While Ford and Hyundai made hefty sales gains last month, both GM and Chrysler’s performances were distinctly unimproved by Toyota’s woes. And now that Toyota is launching major incentive packages to recover lost sales momentum, Detroit has no remaining incentive to not revert to the bad old practices of incentive dependence. With GM and Ford diving into the zero-percent war, Global Insight’s George Magliano tells Automotive News [sub]:
Incentives are going to be here into the third quarter. We’re not going to wean consumers off incentives any time soon. We’re stuck with it. They’re all jockeying for position… After clunkers everybody backed off incentives. Now they’re going to the whip again
We still own the Ralliart name, and we still intend to brand our cars with it. The biggest change for us is that we won’t have to pay royalties to use the name anymore,
Mitsubishi North America spokesman Maurice Durand explains to Automotive News [sub] why the death of Mitsu-owned racing firm Ralliart is actually kind of a good thing. After all, how many Americans really watch rallying often enough to know or care whether Mitsubishi’s erstwhile rallying partner has anything to do with the cars that bear its name? The fact that the Lancer Ralliart has a two-liter turbocharged engine and AWD is what consumers will notice; using a brand name that leaves no doubt as to the inspiration for the trim level does everything it needs to from a marketing perspective. Whether a team named Ralliart actually races similar vehicles is, in the modern marketing context, almost completely irrelevant. After all, Subaru isn’t even competing in the World Rally Championship at all anymore… the old “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” adage couldn’t be more dead.
Remember Maybach? With eight years and untold millions now spent in a futile attempt to dethrone Rolls-Royce at the tope of the automotive pecking order, it seems that the monument to Daimler’s arrogance and greed will be going the way of Pontiac and HUMMER. Auto Express reports that
The firm plans to launch mildly facelifted versions of its three-model line-up – with new grilles and LED lights likely to be the only changes – before the marque is allowed to slip away.
Bosses have now privately admitted plans to wind down the brand – resurrected in 2002 – due to disappointing sales. The Maybach decision is part of Mercedes’ wider plans to take the next-generation S-Class upmarket.
Will there be any tears for the world’s most pimped-out S-Class? Of course not. Despite actively courting celebrities, and later, actually marketing the brand, Daimler was never able to break its super-luxe brand into the stratosphere of household-name luxury. At least not for more than a few months during relatively go-go economic times. As we recently noted, the experiment has conclusively failed. Maybach has nowhere to go but the ash heap of history. If we ever miss it too much, we’ll be sure to buy a brand-new, fully-loaded S-Class and take it to the least-tasteful tuner we can find.
In a recent Fastlane livechat, GM’s North American boss Mark Reuss revealed that:
Chevrolet re vamp in ads is well under way with Susan Docherty–you will like it a lot–shows the car, and uses “excellence for everyone”….you will really like it.
When asked if he was saying that “Excellence For Everyone” would be the new Chevrolet tagline, Reuss replied in the negative. Which makes it… a pickup line? Just a line? With “May The Best Car Win” having failed to make much headway, and “American Revolution” a pre-bankruptcy artifact, it wouldn’t be surprising to see this “Excellence for Everyone” briefly become Chevy’s main tagline. If only to give Reuss and Whitacre an excuse to fire Docherty when the campaign collapses under the weight of its own vacuity.
Sales recently began in India for Ford’s “all new” Figo. The launch of the Figo, a five-door sedan/hatchback, was a supposed to be a big deal. It is Ford’s first car designed specifically for the Indian market, and it was introduced by Mullaly himself in India last September. It’s built in Ford’s refurbished Chennai plant, where production started up in early February after a $500 million investment. In addition to producing cars for the local market, where sales are booming and compact cars, the so-called Sub B segment, make up 70% of the sales volume, Ford intends for the Chennai plant to be a supply hub for their Asia, Pacific and Africa operations.
In 1989, Toyota launched a new luxury brand that would go on to largely replace Cadillac as a vernacular term for excellence in luxury. Known as Lexus, this brand has spent the last 20 years making headway in the US market without ever publicly associating itself with its parent brand. Could this strategy have contained a lesson for the brand managers at GM who have spent the same 20 years fretting (or not) about declining Cadillac sales? Apparently so, as BusinessWeek reports that Cadillac is distancing itself from the corporate mothership in hopes of improving Cadillac’s aspirational appeal. And yet, strangely, it’s still not clear that the lesson has actually been learned.
The Shreveport Times reports that GM will restart production of the HUMMER H3 and H3T starting April 12, for a batch build of 849 units. An unidentified “fleet buyer” apparently needs a grip of the baby-HUMMERs, despite the fact that the brand is being wound down after a deal to sell it to Sichuan Tengzhong fell through. Production at Shreveport had been shut down until the deal went through, and unless one of the two rumored post-Tengzhong offers materializes (and we’re not holding our breath), this could be the last production run for the brand. In other “rumors of HUMMER’s survival have been greatly exaggerated” news, the German tuner shop CFC is just now announcing an all-chrome HUMMER model [via bornrich.com]. What is this, 2004?
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