Bloomberg read it in Sweden’s Dagens Industri that General Motors will send the tools for Saab’s new 9-5 model to China. Mind you, these are not the old 9-5 tools sold to BAIC. These are the tools for the new Epsilon 2 based 9-5, or what Dagens Industri calls “the crown jewels of Saab.”
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Beijing’s drivers can get off their anti-anxiety medication. Beijing’s government has decided that Beijingers can go forth and buy as many cars as they desire. Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform spokesperson Zhao Lei said that Beijing will not take administrative measures to restrain residents from buying automobiles, People’s Daily reports.
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Truck Saturdays is when I can safely indulge my love of big rigs. And BigLorryBlog is the place to do it. Here’s a few selections picked for your truck viewing pleasure. This is described as a 325-ton transformer and 6000hp of go-power courtesy of five 8×8 Tractomas monster pullers and a 10×10 Tractomas pusher up the back crossing a bridge. Here’s another view: Read More >
You want see the power of torque? Watch these over-boosted big rigs lift front wheels and twist frames as they haul full (oversize?) loads up a hill at the 2009 Rodeo du Camion in Quebec. There’s several more races to chose from after the first. Who said those Canucks were all mild-mannered socialists?
Yesterday’s pursuit of ugliness is going to spill over a bit into today’s TTAT. I consider the late’55- ’56 Chevy’s face to be one of the finest ever in the history of trucks. It’s a terrific adaptation of the remarkably clean ’55 Chevy sedan. The classic egg crate grille is nicely balanced by the single headlights, and ornamentation is kept to a minimum. GMC has been in the business of trying to differentiate their otherwise almost identical trucks forever, usually to poor effect. The other day, I ran into what has to be the most egregious example of ruining a fine face. Brace yourselves: Read More >
General Motors has contracted with a 78-year old man to debut a new Buick model meant to reorient the brand away from 80 year old buyers.
Robert A. Lutz, a Korean war veteran, helped himself up to the stage to announce the new Buick. Shown beside him in classic Buick white, Lutz said it would “be the final nail in the coffin for the old Buick brand image.” The new Regal GS is equipped with new-era technology, such as power seats, locks, and windows, as well as a full-sized trunk.
Another General Motors spokesman, Harold Braudel, told media members: “This new Regal is a classic American sedan. It marries European engineering with European design, all brought together by European manufacture.
Mr. Lutz had already teamed up with General Motors for work in the past; the octogenarian charmingly brought his Cadillac sedan to a track contest some months ago.
“Our goal is to show how youthful Buick has become. We’re shattering perceptions, and also hips,” Braudel concluded.
Saab’s extended January 7th deadline came and went. Four groups handed in offers: Spyker put in its third bid. Luxembourg-based private equity group Genii Capital joined with Formula 1 tycoon Bernard Ecclestone and Hakan Samuelsson, former head of truckmaker MAN, in a bid. Wyoming-based Merbanco Inc., and a Swedish investor group also submitted proposals. Apparently, the proposals did not impress. Saab declared bankruptcy, for the second time in a year.
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GM’s interimitis is turning into a chronic disease. First, Whitacre becomes interim replacement of Henderson, and is in no hurry to give up the job. Then, in November 2009. Nick Reilly becomes interim head of GM Europe while GM is supposedly searching for a replacement of Carl-Peter Forster. In December 2009, the interim boss was installed as permanent chief of GM Europe. Now, Reilly will be named permanent CEO of Opel, writes the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
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Detroit’s auto critics are a funny bunch. For decades they’ve been mocking the idea that Americans could ever love Europe’s small, underpowered, overpriced cars, as Detroit gorged itself on SUV profits. Now that Ford and GM have announced they’re bringing small cars like the Fiesta and Spark to the US, you’re starting to see the pendulum swing twice as hard in the opposite direction. “Yes, there will be a couple of mega-powerful V-8 asphalt eaters at the Detroit show, including the 2011 Cadillac CTS-V Coupe and the 2011 Ford Mustang GT 5.0,” writes Scott Burgess in a Detroit News piece entitled “V-6 engines begin long fade into history.” “But, it turns out, destiny has determined that the meek four-banger will inherit the earth.” Burgess’s theory follows Ford’s Ecoboost playbook fairly closely: thanks to direct injection and turbocharging, smaller engines can produce more power. And when you consider that electric hybrids can restore some of the lost poke of a large-displacement engine, the prediction seems all the more likely. Eventually. But just because the new Sonata and Regal aren’t being offered with a V6, doesn’t mean the six-banger is ready for automotive Valhalla just yet. Even Burgess admits that “it may take 10 years or even more.” When do you, TTAC’s Best and Brightest, reckon the six-cylinder option on cars like the Camry, Altima or Impala will fall by the wayside? When will we see the death of the six-cylinder popular sportscar alá the Nissan Z?
When someone pays tax, they generally like to think it’s going to towards something that will benefit society. Maybe it might be a repaired road? Or funding towards a crumbling school? I doubt they would want the money to go towards shifting a supposed CamCord killer or an alleged 3 series rival, but that’s what’s going to happen. BusinessWeek reports that executives at “New” General Motors are going to cut prices and rework adverts to boost flagging sales of the Chevrolet Malibu and the Cadillac CTS; two saloons considered critical to meeting Ed Whitacre’s target of a profitable 2010. That’s right, “New” GM are going to cut prices (A.K.A “Cash on hood”) to make more sales. Sound familiar?
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Blogging, like most human pursuits, is perennially torn between two competing impulses: getting paid and keeping it real. On the internet, where the basest pandering tends to yield the most bounteous rewards in traffic (if not discourse), the temptation to lose focus in search of new traffic is ever present. In a striking piece entitled “The Awesomeness Manifesto,” Jalopnik Editor-in-Chief Ray Wert admits that over the past year (or so) he and his website have strayed too far from the path of realness. The impetus for the decline in standards: pressure from Gawker bosses, and what he paints as a year of post-carpocalyptic malaise.
A year ago this month, I caved. I did what I was told, dampening our smart and snarky voice. I moved Murilee from daily to weekend duty and let go of many new names. Instead of looking forward while remembering the past, I forced my overworked and undersupported team to stumble blindly across the post-Carpocalypse automotive desert. We chased the same carrot as Autoblog, Motor Trend, and the rest, pursuing what we were told was the “growth segment” of the automotive universe — general consumers and non-enthusiasts…. we were hungry for cheap traffic, and we gorged, competing over meaningless press releases and page-view-whoring galleries because there was nothing else on the table. And dammit, we were good at it.
The good news is that Wert says he’s sorry. Jalopnik, he says, will once again focus on “a new breed of enthusiast… waiting to be freed from the shackles of a crossover culture.” The not-so-good news?
I knew the F-10 coupe was reminding me of something else in my CC repository. And then it hit me: the Renault R 17! Unfortunately, this one’s front end wasn’t available, but here’s a nice one: Read More >
TTAC Commentator 1981.911.sc writes:
So, today I passed a guy putting gas in his Prius on the side of the road. I assume he ran out of gas. Irony?
My question: can a Prius run on just battery power when the gas tank is empty? And if this guy ran it out of gas AND drained the battery, was he FUBAR? I assume it has to have a good battery to run, gas in the tank or not.
Thanks to the unionization of the US auto industry, its politics (and accordingly, those of the state of Michigan) tend to be of the center-left persuasion. This tendency was doubtless aggravated over the last year, as a congressional bailout of the industry was denied by southern Republican senators. But even in Michigan, the union-industry alliance isn’t strong enough to counter the trend towards ever more divisive politics, as two recent stories show some of the ideological cracks forming in this now highly politicized industry. First,according to the Freep, the National Tax Day Tea Party will re-open last year’s political wounds by staging a rally outside the RenCen during the Detroit Auto Show this year. The idea behind the rally is to “make a peaceful yet clear statement against government takeover of America,” specifically the government ownership of General Motors. Though it’s clearly an empty gesture intended to rally political support more than change anything, it will be a jarring contrast to the usual convivial mood at the NAIAS. And it’s just one of several ways in which the politicization of the industry is becoming steadily less containable.
If even the DetN prints it, then we can assume it’s official: China’s total light vehicle sales came in at 13.6m, slightly higher than the estimates. The Chinese car market grew 45 percent compared to 2008. This according to data released by the China Passenger Car Association. China’s official auto sales data for 2009 are scheduled to be released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers next week, but should not differ much from the figure which was put on the wire by the state news agency Xinhua.
Here are some of the largest players:
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