If you’re a brontosaurus, and you’re reading this, then your hindbrain is just now finding out about mommyblogger Crissy Kight Page and her refusal to spread (the good news about Toyota) for ten bucks. Well, there’s more news about Toyota out there now, and rather than wait for poor Tiffany Lewis of the recently deceased “Mommy Networks” to get the word out, I’m going to put my own money into this new publicity effort.
Mommybloggers, read on to find out how you can earn a $20 Amazon gift card, courtesy of yours truly,this very afternoon!
Nissan raised a tempest in a chatroom (or 20) when it claimed a 7:29:03 Nürburgring lap time for its GTR, and taunted Porsche that this time beat its 911 Turbo. Porsche took the bait, claiming that its drivers couldn’t replicate the GTR’s lap time and that Nissan must have used non-stock tires. Nissan fired back, and as the controversy became mired in he said-she-said nonsense, the fanboys graduallylost interest. And now, years later, Nissan is literally shoving the controversy into the faces of Porsche owners in hopes of getting even more mileage over one of the sillier controversies in the world of performance cars. But can you imagine this nearly three-year-old taunt actually stinging Porsche owners into considering a GTR?
Nissan and Renault may be joined at the hip (well, at the CEO anyway), but they’re not going easy on each other as both charge ahead to bring down EV costs. Nissan’s Leaf is currently the cheapest major OEM-produced EV, but at around €30k, it’s still not all that cheap. Now, Renault is saying that its forthcoming Zoe EV will put the hurt on its cousin, the Leaf, with a starting price of “around” €21k. It’s not that much smaller than the Leaf and it’s got the same 100 mile projected range… so what’s Renault’s secret? Does it have some special pricing formula? The answer is yes… but it’s not so secret. You see, when you buy the Zoe (sometime in 2012), you won’t be buying a battery. Instead, you will lease the battery for around €70 per month. You see, unlike Nissan’s Leaf, the Renault Zoe will be able to use Project Better Place’s battery switch-station to swap batteries in just minutes. So, if you charge from home, the Zoe and the Leaf will be largely the same… but if you live near a PBP swap station, the Zoe’s range can be doubled in minutes. Plus, you don’t own the battery, so killer EV depreciation isn’t a worry. It’s like we’ve said: it’s not the cars that will break EVs into the mainstream, it’s the business model.
The question “what is the plural of Prius?” had been discussed at some length here at at TTAC well before Toyota’s marketing team picked up on the idea and held a contest soliciting votes on the correct answer. And, as it turns out, etymological corectness doesn’t resonate withe masses quite like a nice, short name… which, incidentally, brings the debate full circle. TTAC started out calling multiples of the hybrid hatch Prii, before New Years Eve when we found out that Priora was the more accurate term because
Prius is the neuter nominative/accusative singular of the adjective prior, but the plural forms of the word – which means ‘earlier, better, more important’- would be Priora
Actually prius is an adverb, so it can’t have a plural. But the related noun form is prior, prioris, 3rd declension. According to my Bennett’s New Latin Grammar (CR:1956), the plural of liquid stem (ending in -l or -r) 3rd declension nouns is -es (that’s a long e, with a bar over it). So it should be Priores.
But it turns out that our attempts to unite the twin disciplines of auto enthusiasm and Latin grammar fell on deaf ears. Automotive News [sub] reports that Toyota’s month-long survey is complete and that fans have determined that the name should be Prii. According to Toyota’s presser on the matter
Prii becomes the word not only endorsed by the public who chose it, but also as the term recognized by Toyota
They say blogging doesn’t pay, but in this case, it pays. When the incomparable Bertel Schmitt wrote his Toyota exoneration story, none of us knew that he was just one quick sex-change operation away from scoring a $10 Amazon gift card. It’s true. A marketing organization with no connection to Toyota (chuckle) has decided to comp “mommybloggers” free gift cards for getting the word out about Toyota’s exoneration.
Details, and a photo of the mommyblogger who blew the whistle on the whole sordid operation, after the jump.
American car ads of the early 1980s came up short in several departments: Burning rubber, jet-engine-grade turbocharger sound, and blatantly sped-up film that made the cars appear to be going 300 MPH. Oh, and they also lacked James Bond!Read More >
Bloomberg seems to think GM is heading back towards bad habits, reporting
General Motors Co. is offering to waive the last three payments on existing leases if holders buy a new car, adding an incentive onto deals that last month exceeded offers made by rivals.
The promotion began this month and is valid on most models with leases that expire between now and Aug. 31, according to the company. GM raised incentive spending in January by 16 percent to an average of $3,663 per vehicle, the highest among major carmakers, according to researcher Autodata Corp. GM sales outpaced the industry that month.
GM said in a video presentation for its initial public offering in November that it intended to offer fewer incentives that crimped margins and created an impression that price was the main selling point for GM vehicles. Early-return leasing deals may conflict with the that pledge, said Jessica Caldwell, an analyst at Edmunds.com.
“I hope they’re not walking down that road,” said Caldwell….
Given GM’s decision to release less incentives data, the signs do seem to be piling up. But, says Chevy marketing VP Rick Scheidt
I am not seeing any internal behavior that suggests we have gone back to old ways. It’s still way too close to the bankruptcy for us to be sliding back into bad habits. We know everybody’s watching.
Ever since Mercedes released its CLK back in 1996, Mercedes has offered one premium coupe slotted between its E and C-Class sedans. Sure, it offered the unloved C-Class Sportcoupe (aka CLC) for a few years in the US as an attempt at an entry-level Mercedes, but nobody really seemed to notice. Otherwise, between there and the none-too-cheap CL, Mercedes offered one coupe, known as the CLK (not counting the CLS “four door coupe”). Now, however, Mercedes has moved in a new direction, offering an “E-Class Coupe” and a “C-Class Coupe,” the latter of which will debut shortly at the Geneva Auto Show. The strange part: they’re both built on the C-Class platform. Mercedes, it seems, has learned an important lesson: when it comes to selling cars, it’s what’s on the outside that counts.
Is the auto industry headed for a price war? Hyundai Motor USA CEO John Krafcik seems to think so, telling Reuters
I think we can officially say that a price war broke out in the industry. There is apparently a lot of pressure to deliver sales results. I would call this a step backward for the industry. This is short-term thinking in a long-term process that hurts manufacturers and consumers.
Krafcik says GM kicked off the rush for increased volume by cutting prices in January, and that Toyota (which has increased its incentives by 37.5% since last January, according to TrueCar) “quickly” responded by matching The General’s price cuts. Honda, Nissan and Chrysler have also kept their incentives high, and Chrysler has told Automotive News [sub] that it plans on increasing sales by 45% this year. Says Krafcik
We’ll see if others decide to follow. It’s certainly not in our plan right now.
Krafcik has a point: though sales have recovered over the last year as the economy has come back from the depths of recession, industry-wide incentive spending is up 1.3% in the last 12 months. Rather than taking advantage of the economic recovery to bring incentives down and transaction prices up, automakers appear to be focused entirely on volume. That’s certainly the message GM has sent by announcing that it would no longer release its incentive data. And, as Krafcik points out, the industry has already suffered mightily from such short-term, unsustainable thinking… but not everyone shares his concern.
Just received this email from Chrysler Communications in my Outlook. It starts: “Dear Bertel: Who won the battle between the flakes of last week and the four-wheel drives from Chrysler Group LLC?”
Now that raised my interest. Did some folks with an Explorer or a Denali call out Dodge to a duel? Or did I just miss another RAM Challenge? And Chrysler PR calls the other guys “flakes?” Are the gloves coming off? Read More >
More than three years ago, on New Year’s Eve of 2007, our Beloved Leader, the dearly departed Robert Farago rattled the Best and Brightest with one of his thought (and sometimes aggression) provoking questions. This time, it was: “What’s the plural of Prius?”
Damned if I know, but a few days ago, the TTAC server reported repeated search terms for the very same “What’s the plural of Prius?” I decided to do my journalistic duty and investigate. The results were shocking. Read More >
Are you one of those who don’t watch the Super Bowl for the game, but for the ads? After taking mostly a leave of absence during carmageddon, carmakers will be out in force this time. There will be so many car commercials that “it looks like there will be auto gridlock in Super Bowl ads,” says USA Today. To get more impressions, carmakers are using YouTube to make the most out of the expensive airtime. Here comes a selection. Read More >
Like any other diverse, multiethnic state, the US of A doesn’t so much have a distinct national culture as a no-holds-barred cultural cagematch of competing values, lifestyles, and perspectives. We call it “pluralism,” although more politically-minded commentators might call it “the war for America’s soul.” Anyway, with America’s cultural divide still creating yawning chasms between the experiences of citizens in “red” states and “blue” states, it’s not enough to simply look at sales statistics for the whole country. No, to truly understand the different cultures forming America’s automotive melting pot, we must look at car sales region-by-region in hopes of identifying the constituent parts of our larger car culture. And that’s exactly what TrueCar has done, breaking out both sales and discounts for the top-performing vehicles in one West coast state (California), one East coast state (New York), one Midwestern state (Illinois), and one Southwestern state (Texas). The result: a snapshot of our diverse market for cars, and a peek at our conflicting car cultures. [Data after the jump]
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