No, not the silly humpbacked 911. That’s just Porsche’s latest wallet-lightening technology. Porsche’s nod to heritage is in the fact that it’s building only 356 of these 911 “Speedsters.” Because, you see, the first Porsche Speedsters were based on the Porsche 356. Oh yes, and by limiting an “exclusive” to a few hundred units means Porsche can charge $204,000 for a 408 HP 911. Which, after all, is actually the more significant nod to Porsche heritage: the 911-based Speedsters, which arose in the cocaine and yuppie-fueled 80s, have long been a high point in Porsche’s proud tradition of charging silly money for ever-so garish “special editions.” Doesn’t heritage just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

Now that GM is thinking about trademarking “range anxiety,” the only choice left to Nissan is to do something about range anxiety. (Just in case GM is successful with their trademark application, we’ll call it Arrival Angst™ … remember, you’ve seen it here first, just in case we’ll have to call you as a witness.)  According to The Nikkei [sub], Nissan “will offer buyers of its Leaf electric car a service to ease drivers’ dread of having the batteries run out while on the road.” (See, even The Nikkei is staying away from “range anxiety.” Alright, let’s trademark Distance Dread™ also.) So how will that service work? Read More >

As with most EVs, we knew about the CODA EV for a long time before a price was ever trotted out (the car was first mooted as the Miles XS500, and was scheduled for a 2009 launch before reality struck). And even before we knew the price, we reckoned that a Chinese-built sedan with Chinese battery cells thrown into it in Southern California would face its fair share of challenges. Now that the CODA EV has been priced at $44,900 (full specs here), we’re certain of it. Of course, Federal tax breaks bring the CODA down to $37,400, and a further California incentive could bring it as low as $32,400, or about $400 less than a Nissan Leaf… before tax breaks. Why would anyone pay $12,000 more for a Chinese fly-by-night when they could have a Nissan? CODA CEO Kevin Czinger tells Automotive News [sub] that

Price is not a decisive factor in the sale of electric cars. I think the 40 percent additional range, and 40 percent additional battery energy with all-season thermal management, is the decisive factor

The first 9/10ths of this strange Nissan Juke spot is the typical youth-oriented car commercial: much sound and hipness, signifying nothing. Which is probably why the unexpected ending makes such an impression. Say what you want about Nissan’s decisions regarding the Juke’s styling and marketing, nobody can accuse the brand of living in the past.

Having told the world that Onstar will allow users to update their Facebook profiles and listen to Facebook news feeds from their cars, bosses at the GM subsidiary reveal that they haven’t actually determined if these features are safe yet. Onstar Marketing boss Sam Mancuso explains the situation to AdAge

Today people are texting while they are driving. It’s not legal and it’s a very bad idea; 47% of people who are texting say that they have done so in their vehicle while driving. To do a normal text message takes 4.6 seconds, and at the speed of 55 miles an hour, someone can travel the length of a football field. We know that people want to use technology, but we are working on using it in ways that they don’t have to be distracted. Our goal is to minimize that distraction to virtually zero.

The litmus test we use is “Keep your eyes on the road, your hands on the wheel and your mind on the drive.” If we find that the texting service or Facebook audio update capability causes people to be distracted we’re not going to do it. We’ll vet those things out internally…We’d be very proud to talk to you, others in the media or family and friends and say we tested it, developed it and it’s not safe.

Does anyone actually believe that this will be the outcome, now that GM and Onstar have begun hyping these features?
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Via Hemmings News comes this delightful find from Chevymall.com: an officially licensed poster comparing women to cupholders. So, did Susan Docherty sign off on that when she was GM’s marketing boss, or is this just more evidence that GM really is a “testosterone saturated, white, American male culture”? Either way, it cements the impression that Chevrolet’s values and image stopped making progress around the same time its market share did… which, incidentally, was about the same time the poodle skirt went out of fashion.

It’s just too bad that, between the ’59 Impala, the poodle skirt, GM’s US market dominance and casual sexism, only the casual sexism seems to have survived.

At $103,100, the just-announced Porsche 911 Carrera GTS costs $12,600 more than a Carrera S. With only 23 horsepower more than the S, the GTS’s premium works out to about $548 per horsepower. Or $6,300 per letter on the badge. Sure, you get a rear-drive version of the Carrera 4 body, an option that’s only been made recently available on the über-priced 911 Sport Classic, but other than that (and a claim to the title of fastest Carrera-badged 911 ever built), the GTS doesn’t appear to bring all that much to the table. And though the lightened, more powerful GT3 costs $25k more than the Carrera S, its extra power brings the per-horsepower premium to a more value-oriented $503. On the other hand, a Corvette ZR1 offers 200 hp more than even the GT3 for less money. As has always been the case, if dollars per horsepower is your game, you’ve still got to go to Detroit.

With 15 “new or refreshed” Chrysler Group products launching over the next 4 months [complete product plan in PDF format here], we’re about to find out definitively if a company’s product can be turned around in a little over a year. Given how complex automobiles are, and how deeply uncompetitive many of Chrysler’s products have been, the odds are obviously stacked against Auburn Hills… and Chrysler’s $50m loss on the Grand Cherokee launch is a sign of how scary things can get in a product blitz. But the real question here isn’t how many recalls Chrysler is risking, or how much money it could lose on launch costs and “associated industrial inefficiencies” but whether consumers will actually notice a difference.

The “mid-cycle refresh” is a familiar phenomenon for the American consumer, and few of them fundamentally change the character of a car. Though Chrysler is doing “deep refreshes” on cars like the 200 (neé Sebring), reworking the body, drivetrains, suspension and interior (also, the Durango, 300 and Charger will be “all new”), a number of the new launches will be of plain-old refreshes… like the 2011 Town & Country pictured here. Will the deep changes to some vehicles be lost in the flood of refreshed Chrysler Jeep and Dodge vehicles? More importantly, will refreshes like this one convince consumers that Chrysler has really changed?

Now that Geely has bought Volvo, their founder and chairman Li Shufu is seeking a new challenge. He’s going virtual.

Geely plans to sell cars specially designed for Internet sales at Alibaba, China’s biggest online marketplace, reports state news agency Xinhua. Read More >

Everybody is afraid of China swamping the world with low cost cars, but it hasn’t happened. As a matter of fact, Chinese car exports are downright horrendous. In the first seven months of this year, China exported 288,900 units. China imports far more cars than it exports. For the next year, more than 1m of imports are expected. This doesn’t keep Chinese car manufacturers from trying their luck abroad.

Great Wall Motor plans to make a sales push into Europe, the US and Africa despite potential obstacles to market entry, said Shi Qingke, deputy general manager of Great Wall’s international department to The Global Times, the English version of People’s Daily. Read More >

If cars have DNA, as it is being repeatedly claimed, then perception gap must be running in the family at GM. Now, Opel has admitted that they are afflicted by the syndrome. “I agree with you that the brand has great potential to be hipper and younger,” said Alain Visser, chief marketing officer of Opel in Automobilwoche [sub]. And they are trying real hard. They engaged German songstress Lena as an advertising icon. Not the “99 Luftballons” Nena. It#s a sound-alike, Lena Meyer-Landrut of dubious Eurovision fame. Further forays are imminent.  Says Visser: “After the music, we will occupy the themes of sport, art and science.” Read More >

Gimmicky sales techniques are tough. On the one hand, Hyundai’s 10 year warranty and Assurance buy-back program have helped it become one of the fastest-growing auto brands in the country. On the other, Chrysler’s free gas giveaway, “lifetime guarantee” and its latest, the “regret-free purchase” offer, have all come and gone without materially moving the needle for the beleaguered automaker. In fact, cars.com reports that just 21 buyers opted for the option of returning their Chrysler within 60 days instead of a financing deal. Which makes sense: people buy Chryslers because they’re cheap and they offer lots of incentives. If we’re honest, the option of returning a car because it is of lower quality than the competition shouldn’t really appeal to deal-minded consumers. Which is why only Ram now offers the “regret-free” deal, while the rest of Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge’s nameplates have loaded back up on incentives. It’s clearly what brings the customers in.

To hype its forthcoming Leaf electric car, Nissan has reached for the most manipulative imagery in the green marketing playbook: the Polar Bear. They’re cute, they’re cuddly, and because their icy habitat is being destroyed by regular cars, they will hug you if you buy an EV. Meanwhile, the causes, trajectory, and impacts of global climate change (not to mention its possible solutions) remain extremely abstract and far-away when compared to the political and economic ramifications of global oil undersupply. Too bad market failures and geopolitical instability aren’t as emotionally manipulative as those fuzzy bear guys…

The never-ending tension between the desire to give consumers more choices of in-car gizmos and the need to halt the advance of distracted driving took another confused twist this week, as Onstar announced that it is testing new features that could allow drivers to listen to text messages and update their Facebook status from behind the wheel. According to the DetN, the technology would read incoming text messages or a Facebook news feed to the driver, and could even allow the driver to update their own Facebook status verbally. Needless to say, GM and Onstar are hyping the updates as ways to keep up with Ford’s SYNC on the entertainment front, and because the features are all hands-free, they’re safe… right?
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When I was a young whippersnapper and did advertising for Volkswagen, we had a rule of thumb: “Over the lifetime of the car, you’ll spend the purchase price again.” In gas, oil, taxes, insurance, repairs, parts, you name it. We kept that rule to ourselves. We didn‘t want to shock the prospective buyer. Now, Volkswagen changed their mind. They are going for full disclosure. Read More >