 |
Nissan ReviewsThe Nissan name was first used in 1933, but the company's history goes back much further. Originally known as Kwaishinsha Motorcar Works, the company produced its first automobile, the DAT, in 1914. DAT later became Datsun (son of DAT) in 1931 and Datsuns went on to become the first mass-produced vehicles in Japan. Americans got their first look at the Datsun in 1958 - the 1200 Sedan. The Datsun 240Z was released as a 1970 model and it became the best selling sports car in the world, selling 500,000 units in less than 10 years. |
Whenever sales in China come up, there is an echo somewhere: “Sure, but are they making money?” “Name the average transaction cost in China.” “Profits? Everbody know profits can’t be taken out of China.” Thanks for your concern, but Nissan doesn’t have these worries. Read More >
Even more than the Cadillac SRX reviewed last week, the 2010 Buick LaCrosse reflects Bob Lutz’s influence at GM. Soon after assuming responsibility for the corporation’s new product development in 2001, Lutz deemed the styling of the original Buick LaCrosse, recently approved for production, unfit for sale. The car was sent back to the designers for late revisions to the front end, delaying its launch by over a year. But not much could be done so late in the process. What would the LaCrosse be like if Lutz could oversee its entire development? With redesigned and re-engineered 2010 Buick LaCrosse we now have an answer.
Remember that the Google seismometer registered tectonic movements at Nissan’s future plug-in, the Leaf? In Japan, it rocks. Nissan planned to make 6,000 of them in the Fiscal year ending on March 31, 2011. On April 1, they started taking pre-orders. Yesterday, Nissan had received advance orders for 6,000 units, says The Nikkei [sub]. Sales target met, long before the car will go on sale in December. Read More >
Meet the Renault Vel Satis, erstwhile flagship of the Renault range. Dreamed up in the go-go ’90s for “non-conformist” customers who sought to “distance themselves from the traditional saloon,” the Vel Satis ended up being something of a whipping boy for styling critics. And why not? In retrospect, it’s hard to deny that the thing looks a bit like the love child of a Nissan Versa and a Cadillac DTS. And yes, it is the only car on earth that can make Nicolas Sarkozy look attractive by comparison. In fact, the most apt critique of the Vel Satis’s styling was probably Stephen Bayley’s assesment that it wasn’t quite ugly enough.
Did we say that the strike at a crucial Chinese parts plant is being closely watched? Last week, a 20 percent pay rise was given at a Honda-owned transmission plant, and slowly, everything went back to normal. Until today. Honda is in trouble again. Read More >
“We need young, college-educated people like you,” the man said, “because the old way of selling cars is dead and gone. That’s why I was hired — to bring the dealership into the present day.” And with those thoroughly self-deceived words, the new sales manager at “Infiniti Of Columbus” welcomed to me to the team in March of 1994. It was the end of winter in Ohio, but it was just the middle of Infiniti’s long winter of discontent. We had three products. There was a facelifted Q45 which precisely nobody wanted. There was a facelifted G20 which cost nearly as much as a Lexus ES300 while closely resembling a Nissan Sentra inside and out. Note, however, that the G20 shared nothing but the engine with the aforementioned Sentra. On any given month, we would sell two G20s and no Q45s. In fact, during my entire six months’ tenure at the store, we only sold two Q45s, one of them to a salesman who was quitting to go work for Merrill Lynch.
It was the new-for-1993 J30 that kept the lights on and paid our meager draws against commission. The jellybean-shaped, rear-wheel-drive sedan was available as a J30 or J30t. Neither car had any options available: in an amazing reductio ad absurdum of the Japanese export philosophy, the equipment list was the same for every single car that came off the boat. The “t” model added HICAS four-wheel-steering, a rear spoiler that truly spoiled the otherwise interesting design, and some cross-spoke wheels. They were hideously expensive — $37,995 and up in an era where an LS400 could be had for fifty grand or less — and they were both controversial-looking and suspiciously similar to a Nissan Altima at a distance. (Jerry Hirschberg designed ’em both.)
It didn’t matter. We rarely sold any outright, but more than 20 would leave the lot every month thanks to the Magic Lease.
Read More >
It’s out. Volkswagen’s best kept secret is out. At VW do Brasil’s website. The price for the mid-size (for Brazil) Volkswagen Amarok is out. It’s way out there. You can pre-order now. Ready? Take your checkbook out. Breathe deeply … Read More >
Google Trends says it’s so, according to gm-volt.com [via Autoblog]. The Leaf also has 54,000 Facebook fans to the Volt’s 24,000. Plus, the Leaf has 130,000 people on its official “interest list” while the Volt boasts a mere 42,000. The danger here: that Leaf beats the Volt to becoming the EV segment’s first successful brand, earning it “the new Prius” status that Bob Lutz so badly wanted to bring home to Detroit. [Hat Tip: gslippy]
As a nameplate, Lexus is now old enough to consume alcohol in all fifty states. Make no mistake, though: the brand Lexus has become is not the brand it was perhaps originally intended to be. Toyota and Nissan each launched with a (mostly) clean-sheet big V8 sedan and a warmed-over home-market showroom filler. For Nissan, the lineup was a short-wheelbase version of the all-new “President”, badged Q45, and a long-in-the-tooth Leopard coupe, yclept M30. Toyota introduced its “F1” global flagship as the Lexus LS400. To keep the new LS from being lonely in the showrooms, a quick nose job was done on a JDM faux-hardtop midsizer, and the ES250 was born.
Perhaps the Japanese thought they could win the “D-class” battle against BMW and Mercedes-Benz as easily as they’d destroyed the British motorcycle industry or humiliated the American attempts to build subcompact cars. It didn’t quite work out that way. The Q45 badge moved to the rather dismal Nissan Cima before completely fading away. The M30 was a sales catastrophe, to put it mildly. While the current LS460 does about the same annual volume in the United States as the Mercedes-Benz S550, it does so with a base price that is almost $23,000 below that of the Benz.
It was the humblest of the original four offerings from Lexus and Infiniti that would go on to conquer, if not the world, then at least the continent of North America. Today, Lexus is one of the top-volume luxury brands in the market. Its killer Camry-derived duo of ES 350 and RX350 perennially occupy the top of their segments’ sales charts, generating over 100,000 sales per year. Lexus is one of the most famous success stories in the industry, but it began with a straight badge-engineering job of a nearly obsolete car.
The big surprise in this segment? The fact that Nissan’s Versa has quietly become America’s top choice in the B-segment. All of a sudden we’re anxious to find out what percentage of those sales are of the sub-$10k stripper version. But even if that percentage is high, it wouldn’t mean that this segment sells on price alone. After all, Kia’s Soul is steadily gaining fans despite costing more compared to the competition than Kias usually do. In short, upscale does work… even for budget brands in a budget segment.
It has been almost three years since a young Saint Louis, Missouri motorist drew national attention by videotaping an out-of-control police officer’s profanity-laced tirade during a traffic stop (view video). St. George Police Sergeant James Kuehnlein was fired because of the bad publicity generated by the incident captured by the taping system that Brett Darrow, 23, installed in his 1997 Nissan Maxima. On Saturday, St. Louis County Police stopped Darrow once again.
Worried about the high MSRPs on most of the electric vehicles scheduled for launch over the next year? Don’t forget to include the cost of buying and installing a home charging station. Nissan reckons the charger for its Leaf will cost about $2,200, including a home electrical inspection [er, that’s a medical marijuana grow…] and installation. Oh, and it won’t be Nissan coming into your home: Aerovironment, a firm otherwise best known for its Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, has the contract to supply and install the Leaf’s charger. Coulomb Technologies supplies the home charger for Ford’s first EV, the Transit Connect EV, and according to Automotive News [sub], they’re partnering with Ford to give chargers away to the first 2,000 buyers of the electric-drive delivery van. But, as usual with good news in the EV sector, the charger giveaway is actually being funded by tax dollars…
How did Tokyo digest Toyota’s lackluster U.S. May sales performance? In a market that forged ahead by 19 percent, Toyota grew only 6.7 percent. Even more embarrassing, other Japanese brands like Mazda (+ 35 percent), Subaru (+35 percent), or Nissan (+24 percent) had outpaced the market. When Tokyo woke up to the bad news this morning, everybody ran to the phone, called their broker and … Read More >
With all precincts counted, May turned out much better than thought.
Detroit 3 post China-type double digit growth rates. Toyota lags. BMW, Porsche, Suzuki the only losers.
Industry up 19 percent for the month, up 17 percent up for the first five months.
Complete table for all automakers after the jump. Read More >
China has finally revealed its worst kept secret and announced a pilot program for five Chinese cities. It’s raining cash for buyers of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. And it “reflects Beijing’s resolve to foster domestic brands,” says Reuters.
Really? At first glance, there is no discrimination against laowei cars. Read More >
Recent Comments