• “All of Volkswagen’s premium-enthusiast Euro-appeal has been stripped from the Jetta”
• “The new model has hard plastic that wouldn’t look too out of place in a Chrysler Sebring”
• “Gone are the things that made the Jetta special to those who cared”
• “For the Jetta, it’s pay less and you get less. And in our opinion, that’s a step backwards”

There’s your verdict, straight from TTAC, C/D, LLN, and Edmunds respectively.

Jetta sales, first half 2011: 91,752, an increase of well over sixty percent over 2010

There’s another verdict, straight from the people who actually matter.

Does the first verdict refute the second — or support it?
Read More >

We didn’t want to mention it when we wrote about GM’s buy a car, get free insurance deal. If we would have said it, it would have been the nasty B-word all over again. The rest of the media showed less compunction. “The worse you drive, the bigger the deal” headlined MSN Money. The deal can be staggering under the right or wrong circumstances, says MSN Money: Read More >

At GM, Joel Ewanick and  Chris Perry need to repeat the miracles for which they became famous  at Hyundai. So what do you do in that case? “Let’s just do the same thing again.”

If GM would do a repeat of the Hyundai Assurance Plan (lose your job, return your car), with a 10 year warranty thrown in, the journos would snicker, but the cars would fly off the lot. But at GM, this would be too gutsy.  So what about the next best idea? That’s right: “Free insurance!” Read More >

Answer quickly, without pondering: Does Mercedes-Benz make reliable automobiles? For most of us, the immediate answer is “No.” Perhaps it’s because we’ve owned post-1995 Benzes, perhaps it’s because we’ve heard horror stories from our neighbor’s first-gen ML or W210 E-Class, perhaps it’s because it’s easy to see that recent M-B products simply don’t seem to hold up or stick around the way the old ones did.

Now imagine how your friends and family would answer the same question. Again, the “nays” are probably going to outnumber the “yays”. Thirty years ago, everybody thought that Mercedes-Benz built the best automobiles in the world. Today, very few people do. It’s common knowledge now that the three-pointed star has been affixed to plenty of cars which were underdeveloped at best and utter garbage at worst. You can’t really trust a Mercedes-Benz, can you? Not like you can trust a Lexus.

There’s only one problem with the above statements: there is a group of people who have learned, firsthand, how durable, reliable, and flat-out awesome a Nineties Benz can be. You know them, I know them…

Read More >

According to The Nikkei [sub] “Toyota Motor Corp. said Wednesday it will start offering on Thursday a free application for smartphones that sounds an alarm if the user’s home electricity use reaches a preset level.” Don’t believe it. The Nikkei made it up. Read More >

When I used to go to Cannes for the Cannes Lions International Festival, it was more to hang out with friends at the bar of the Carlton or the Martinez, and to boo at the choices of the jury, after the more interesting topless attractions at the beach had gotten dressed. Volkswagen had a serious reason to go. They went home with a whole safari park of the coveted “Lions.” Volkswagen received a total of 34 Gold, Silver and Bronze Lions. Read More >

The transition from exclusively gasoline-powered vehicles to the new panoply of permutations of gas and electric power has not been easy on the old emm-pee-gee. The imperfect-yet-universal (in the US market) measure of efficiency finds itself at a loss to compare an electric car’s efficiency with that of a gas-powered car, and completely falls apart as a relative measure of efficiency between plug-in-hybrids which use gas and electricity in different ways (see the ongoing battles over the Chevy Volt’s efficiency). Into the breach have stepped several challengers to the emm-pee-gee’s supremacy, including the weak MPGe (which was responsible for the Volt’s disastrous “230 MPG” introduction), and the “Kilowatt-hours per 100 miles” measure championed by Motor Trend in a rare display of admirable pointy-headedness. But the Gordian contradiction of efficiency measures is that they must be both accurate and easy-to-understand… and if the MPG’s history tells us anything, it should probably err on the side of the latter prerogative.

Read More >

Porsche wants to do what every car maker wants. Sell more cars. So what would you do if you would have to move more Porsches? Tout their speed? Their horsepower? Call up Jack Baruth and offer him “Buy 10, get one free?” No, Siree. Porsche positions their cars as schoolbuses. Read More >

The US market’s Seasonally Adjusted Annual Selling Rate (SAAR) hurdled the 12m mark towards the end of last year, and was cruising above the 13m mark for much of the first half of 2011, but after a rough May, June seems set to become the market’s second month back under the 12m mark.

Read More >

Leaf or Volt? Ask the average person on the street that question, and you might get a response acknowledging that you’re talking about plug-in electric vehicles. Ask for more detail, and you may well be disappointed. Despite the many differences between the two vehicles, some simple and obvious, others subtle and complex, it’s unlikely that the average consumer is going to be able to tell you much about them. Why? Because chances are, your randomly-selected consumer doesn’t even know who makes which car. Automotive News [sub] reports that a Compete, Inc study shows

a little more than 17 percent of consumers polled knew that Nissan sells the Leaf. Another 13 percent incorrectly believed the car is offered by other brands, including Chevrolet and Toyota.

The Volt fared better. The study found that 45 percent of shoppers identified it as a Chevrolet.

Yowza. Considering that Nissan is betting bigger on EVs than any other manufacturer in the business, selling the only pure EV on the market and ramping up to 500k annual units of global battery production capacity, it needs to get on top of this branding awareness issue yesterday. Because as things stand, Nissan is making a gigantic global gamble only to find Chevrolet and Toyota stealing nearly as much credit for the Leaf as consumers give Nissan itself (13% versus 17%… what’s wrong with that picture?). Ads like this one are a good start, but Nissan needs to do more to ignore the Volt and make itself synonymous with pure-electric cars the way Toyota made itself synonymous with hybrids.

Every advertiser faces a basic choice at the outset of a campaign: come up with unique, relatable imagery for ads, or riff on an established cultural meme. Volkswagen went the latter route with its “Darth Vader” Super Bowl ad, achieving huge success: it was the most popular auto-related ad of the Super Bowl, and the Youtube version has received over 40 million views. The only problem with appropriating such popular imagery: you don’t enjoy unique rights to it, meaning you can be easily hoisted by your own petard. Which is exactly what’s happened here to Volkswagen. Greenpeace is angry that VW opposed a bid to bump the EU’s 2020 emissions goal from the agreed-upon 20% to 30% of 1990 levels (even though C02 emissions improved 3.7% last year and 5.1% in 2009, and average emissions are on track to hit the 130g/km 2015 goal ahead of schedule). As a result, they’ve turned VW’s hugely popular “Darth Vader” ad on its head, identifying the giant automaker with the evil Lord Vader, and encouraging fans to “join the rebellion.”
Read More >

Ronnie Schreiber reckoned that Chrysler would be able to protect its rights to the phrase “Imported From Detroit” in its lawsuit against local clothing firm MODA, but Automotive News [sub] reports that

U.S. District Judge Arthur Tarnow ruled that Chrysler’s request didn’t show that it would suffer irreparable harm or that it had a strong likelihood of winning its case. That means Pure Detroit’s owner, Detroit retailer Moda Group LLC, can continue selling its “Imported from Detroit” products.

Tarnow also noted that Chrysler doesn’t have a trademark on “Imported from Detroit” and rejected the automaker’s argument that trademark law isn’t applicable to the case.

Interestingly, the last time Chrysler fought over its brand intellectual property (in a dispute with a Florida high school that had adopted the Ram’s Head logo as its school symbol), it won… only to stop using the the logo for Dodges when it spun off its Ram brand. In any case, this latest ruling may take Chrysler’s tagline out of its complete control, but it should also stimulate a strong market in knock-off goods bearing the line, ultimately increasing its exposure. And, at the end of the day, Chrysler needs to look past Detroit-boosting if it wants to get its marketing back on a nationally-appealing footing and win back sales on the coasts. This ruling may not be sucha bad thing after all….

One of the greatest things about the internet is its ability to disseminate information that levels the playing field in relationships that have long been defined by asymmetrical information. Our buddies at TrueCar are tackling one such informational imbalance by posting its dealer holdback calculation for every brand on sale in the US. They note

Dealer Invoice is generally the amount the dealer pays the manufacturer for the vehicle. Because Dealer Holdback is paid to the dealer after the vehicle is sold, it represents an additional profit center for the dealers that is not immediately available to consumers. This is one reason why some dealers are able to sell some vehicles below Invoice and still make a profit.

The more you know!

Eight percent global market share. Eight percent operating profit. And all of that by 2016 – two times eight, get it? In Nissan’s glitzy waterfront headquarters in Yokohama, CEO Carlos Ghosn today presented a six year plan, called “Power 88.” The plan is audacious and auspicious at the same time.

Let’s do the auspicious part first. Read More >

Since cementing its premium-retro-cutesy positioning in the marketplace, MINI’s been leveraging its two platforms into a niche-munching binge. Soon the MINI lineup will range from cozy Coupe to two-door “Sport Activity Vehicle,” and will include two convertibles, multiple versions of the two-door hatche, two-and-a-half-door hatch, and four door SUV. So what’s missing? A Moke? A Delivery van? What about a re-interpretation of the old Mini Pick Up? You and I may feel like the MINI brand  already has plenty of niche offerings, thanks, but here is indisputable proof (found in a supermarket parking lot) that the market thinks MINI hasn’t chased enough niches. Carry on then, lads…