They have been together for a while. Behemoth Volkswagen and tiny, but bigger than life Porsche shared technologies and booths at auto shows, Volkswagen generals are in key positions at Porsche. Fitting the German Zeitgeist, they lived together without being formally married. This will be rectified in a few weeks. Read More >
The Fourth of July is upon those of us who wave Old Glory while eating some grilled chicken marinated in Ale-8-One, drinking some fine Kentucky bourbon (straight or as a mint julep), doing a burnout in our Corvettes, and setting off a bunch of firecrackers, sparklers and cherry bombs for our amusement.
Oh, and celebrating freedom from the British, too.
The results are in. There is a winner in the Where Am I Contest: After careful photoanalysis, TTAC’s independent and impartial one man jury declares PaulMorgan the winner of the Where Am I contest. Here is the post-game analysis: Read More >
Germany’s new car market recovered slightly in June. Sales were up 2.9 percent to units, Germany’s Kraftfahrtbundesamt reports. Read More >
Domestic sales of regular new cars, trucks and buses increased 40.9 percent in June, while sales of mini vehicles rose 48.4 percent on the year. Overall, Japan’s new motorvehicle market rose 43.6 percent on 505,342 units sold. The data compare with a post-tsunami June 2011. Read More >
Here’s to all my American friends and readers; your glorious country is 236 years old, still the land of opportunity, where immigrants from all over the world flock to make their dreams come true. But you must wait an absurdly long time to import clapped-out world-market hot hatches, like this Peugeot 106 GTI. Soviet Canuckistan isn’t so bad now, is it?
One of the cool things about car shows in the Detroit area is that you will most likely start seeing interesting cars before you actually enter the show. I like to call them “parking lot prizes”, but then I’m fond of alliteration. At the recent Eyes On Design show, which benefits the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology, I spotted a couple of prewar V16 Cadillacs, a ’61 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud and a first generation Corvette with a custom wooden boat tail before I even got to the press credential tent. Those are not common cars but the subject of this post is particularly rare. What could be rare about a Jeep Cherokee? They were in production in the US, South America and China for over two decades. However, this isn’t a Jeep Cherokee. Read More >
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
That all men are created equal.
That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.
That among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
| Rank | Analyst | GM | Ford | Chrysler | SAAR | SAAR Diff | OEM Diff | Overall |
| 1 | John Sousanis (Ward’s) | 12.0% | 8.0% | 18.0% | 14.0 | 0.6% | 6.1% | 6.7% |
| 2 | Jessica Caldwell (Edmunds.com) | 8.7% | 4.4% | 19.0% | 13.9 | 1.3% | 10.3% | 11.6% |
| 3 | Brian Johnson (Barclays) | 6.4% | 7.1% | 18.0% | 13.8 | 2.0% | 10.9% | 12.9% |
| 4 | Alec Gutierrez (Kelley Blue Book) | 7.3% | 1.4% | 20.0% | 13.9 | 1.3% | 13.7% | 15.0% |
| 5 | Emmanuel Rosner (CLSA) | 9.1% | 2.9% | 17.0% | 13.8 | 2.0% | 13.4% | 15.4% |
| 6 | Peter Nesvold (Jefferies) | 5.2% | 4.4% | 19.0% | 13.8 | 2.0% | 13.8% | 15.8% |
| 7 | Rod Lache (Deutsche Bank) | 7.0% | 1.4% | 19.0% | 13.8 | 2.0% | 15.0% | 17.0% |
| 8 | Patrick Archambault (Goldman) | 6.2% | 2.0% | 17.0% | 13.8 | 2.0% | 17.2% | 19.2% |
| 9 | Chris Ceraso (Credit Suisse) | 8.2% | 2.4% | 14.0% | 13.7 | 2.7% | 17.8% | 20.5% |
| 10 | Jesse Toprak (TrueCar.com) | 6.0% | 0.3% | 16.0% | 13.6 | 3.4% | 20.1% | 23.5% |
| 11 | Joseph Spak (RBC) | 7.7% | 5.9% | NA | 13.9 | 1.3% | 108.5% | 109.8% |
| 12 | Adam Jonas (Morgan Stanley) | NA | NA | NA | 14.0 | 0.6% | 300.0% | 300.6% |
| 13 | Alan Baum (Baum & Associates) | NA | NA | NA | 14.0 | 0.6% | 300.0% | 300.6% |
| 14 | Jeff Schuster (LMC Automotive) | NA | NA | NA | 13.9 | 1.3% | 300.0% | 301.3% |
| 15 | Christopher Hopson (IHS) | NA | NA | NA | 13.8 | 2.0% | 300.0% | 302.0% |
| Average | 7.6% | 3.7% | 18.0% | 13.8 | ||||
| Actual | 15.0% | 7.1% | 20.3% | 14.1 |
Analysts polled by Bloomberg predicted June light vehicle sales to come in much lower. All analysts except one: John Sousanis of Ward’s predicted that this will be a good month. He nearly nailed the SAAR, and came closest to reality in his OEM forecasts. Read More >
Mazda’s Skyactiv engines are hitting on all cylinders. The company will double production capacity at its engine plant in Hiroshima from 400,000 units to 800,000 units per year in October 2012. The capacity increase is “in response to increasing demand” for Skyactiv-equipped cars, the company said in an emailed statement. Read More >
Chrysler Group up 20 percent, GM up 16 percent, Toyota up 60 percent. Across the board sales up 22 percent (see table.)
June sales of new cars and trucks come in stronger than the cautious estimates of analysts. Why? America’s most successful sales predictor thinks everybody needed to “make that quarter.” Read More >
Sergio Pininfarina died overnight in his Turin home at the age of 85. The company that bears its name designed almost every Ferrari since the 1950s and delivered the shapes of cars from the 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Rondine to the 1996 Peugeot 406 Coupe. Sajeev will have a tribute to the man later on.
GM has blamed Western Europe location for Opel’s woes, unions, the economy. Opel has a brand crisis, and the crisis is “a self inflicted-wound,” says Christiaan Hetzner, Reuters’ man in Frankfurt, Germany, in an article on why Opel is in so much trouble. “Reputation is seen as the problem, not cars.” The recent attempts to move the Opel brand up-market ripped those old wounds open and could kill the patient. Read More >
The McLaren MP4-12C may be a supremely competent and accomplished sporting supercar, but only someone with a creepy, shiny-vinyl Lewis Hamilton signature Vodafone pit-crew shirt would pick one over the Ferrari 458 or Lamborgini Gallardo. It’s a bland, generic-looking wedge that was named after a secret “performance factor” number using calculations known only to McLaren. Not since Pontiac named a car the “6000STE” has nomenclature been so uninspiring, and since the Audi R8 offers twice the visual drama for about half the money it’s easy to see why the MP4-12C isn’t exactly setting the world on fire. The old SLR “McMerc” may have been a claustrophobic sauna that was frighteningly vulnerable to its much cheaper SL65 AMG sibling in a straight line and at risk from the even more prole-oriented SL55 AMG around a racetrack, but at least it looked like something interesting.
Just like the SLR, however, the MP4-12C is being top-chopped to pique a bit of consumer interest. It must absolutely grind the gears of the faceless androids working at the McLaren Technology Centre that they have to add eighty-eight pounds of folding hardtop to their marquee road car, just to make sure the average Russian gangster puts one in the garage next to his Aventador, but as the English say: “Needs must when the devil rides”.
One engine. One man. 300,000 miles… and it was only the beginning.
Yesterday I visited an auction where 8% of the vehicles had over 300,000 miles.
I did a double-take when I did the math. Read More >
Recent Comments