Now it can be told, more than twenty years after the fact. This recent kid-smashing-up-press-car incident has caused me to think about my own misspent youth and the potential parallels between it and that of Little Lord Cheney. My father was a decorated war hero rather than a demoted war reporter, and when I crunched the nose of my first car my dad responded by taking away my license for an entire year and forcing me to ride a bicycle to my job washing dishes from 8pm to 2am at the local pizza-delivery place. He also made me learn how to drive on his stick-shift BMW 733i, so I never had the chance to drive a car through a garage door.
Still, I can point to a few incidents of damn-the-torpedos bad judgment in my teen years, and perhaps my favorite one was the day I found myself behind the wheel of a brand-new BMW 750il and decided to take a shot at one hundred and fifty-five miles per hour. (Read More…)
Ever since the late 90s, car manufacturers and especially car dealers were scared of the Internet. By the end of the 90s, it was agreed that the likes of Carpoint or Autobytel would turn into huge virtual showrooms and would put dealers out of business. It didn’t happen. The opposite happened. The many car shopping sites drove business to dealers. Ten years later, there it is again: The specter of the wicked disintermediation has returned. Direct sales to customers via electronic media are popping up in the world’s largest auto market. (Read More…)
Give up? The answer is that they’re giving South Korea a headache. OK, let’s go back a bit. The Korea Times reports that something funny is happening to the South Korean car market. Effectively, for years, the South Korean car market used to be closed off to foreign competition, thus, keeping domestic production and sales high. The market for foreign was only for the exclusively rich who didn’t mind paying the tariffs. But now, even the proletariat is getting in on the act. In spite of a global slump in the market, the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association (KAIDA) reports that foreign imports rose, month on month, by 51.1 percent, to 7,208 units in April. Still a drop in the water: Korea makes 3.5m cars in a good year, of which 2.5m are exported. But it’s a start. (Read More…)
The Volkswagen brand grew sales across all nameplates other than the Chrysler-rebadge Routan minivan, en route to a 42 percent overall volume increase. Audi maintained its momentum, with a 33 percent improvement over its 2009 sales, on strong sales from the A5 and Q5. The new E-Class drove the Mercedes brand to a 21 percent improvement, although Smart was down nearly 50 percent to 680 units. Despite 50+ percent drops in 5- and 6-Series volume, BMW managed to hang onto a nine percent volume increase, including a five percent improvement by the MINI brand. Ze Germans may be focused on China in the long term, but for now they’re back to methodically growing their US-market business.
You can already buy a BMW 3-Series in sedan, coupe, station wagon and X3 “cute-ute” bodystyles, and for some automakers that might be enough. For niche-crazed BMW though, it’s just the beginning. A 3-Series GT is planned in the mold of the 5-Series GT, as a midway-point between the coupe, sedan and station wagon versions. You know, in case you can’t decide which you want. “This has never existed!” screamed Autobild… back in 2008. Of course, now it does exist in the form of the 5-series GT, which could actually end up replacing the 5-series wagon in the US market. And as the march of the niche vehicles rolls onward, there’s one more segment that the 3-series architecture still hasn’t capitalized on: the jacked-up midway point between coupe and SUV. That’s right babies, the X4.
As Bertel Schmitt has exhaustively documented, the Chinese luxury car market is hot fire right now. By 2015, luxury sales are expected to quadruple to 2m annually, making China the most important growth market in the world for brands like Audi, BMW and Mercedes. Having landed early, thanks to Volkswagen’s pioneering presence in the Chinese market, Audi is the king of Chinese luxury car brands, and isn’t showing any signs of quitting. And though 77 percent sales growth last quarter is nothing to sneeze at, longer-term trends show Audi’s market share sinking inexorably as its rivals fight hard for a toehold in the lucrative Chinese luxury game. According to BusinessWeek, Audi’s Chinese market share has skidded more than 20 percentage points since 2004, falling from a dominant 66 percent to a mere 42 percent last year. Can BMW and Mercedes continue to make gains? The only certainties are that they will try, and it won’t be easy.
While its German rivals pour into the burgeoning four-door premium coupe segment, BMW has been busy exploring the premium five-door GT segment. With its complement of GT variants complete, the Bavarians are making up for lost time with this Gran Coupe Concept, debuting at today’s Beijing Auto Show. Basically a lower, wider, more coupe-profiled 7-series, the Gran Coupe is clearly aimed at models like the Porsche Panamera, Maserati Quattroporte and especially the forthcoming Audi A7. And though it’s technically just a styling exercise, the Gran Coupe (or something like it) could be headed for production.When asked by Autocar about the Gran Coupe’s chances of launching a revival of the 8 Series nameplate, BMW Chief Designer Adrian van Hooydonk said:
I don’t think of this car as an 8-series, but our marketing department may think differently. Either way, their work is just beginning, and I know that often it can take longer than our design work!
The volcano on Iceland spews trouble for auto manufacturers. Ever since most of Europe has been declared a no-fly zone, just-in-time bit the dust. Literally.
Today, the lines stopped at the BMW factory in Dingolfing, writes Automobilwoche [sub]. On Wednesday, the lines will stop moving in Regensburg and on Thursday in Munich. More than 7000 bimmers are affected. The reason: Electronic parts that usually get flown in. Icelandic ash brings production lines all over the globe to a grinding halt … (Read More…)
Reporters didn’t hold a gun to Fiat/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne’s head when they asked him where the next big industry consolidation would occur. He didn’t have to give an answer, and Automotive News [sub] certainly didn’t have to run it as a standalone story. But then, Marchionne’s Fiat is the Don Juan of the global auto industry, having been linked to flirtations with nearly every automaker in the game. If anyone has an idea of the M&A picture in Europe, it’s Sergio. His reply?
The next merger will probably be French. [PSA Peugeot-Citroen] tried with Mitsubishi and they will try with someone else… An alliance involving France and Germany is not that easy, but [the Renault-Daimler-Nissan deal is] a step in the right direction
PSA Peugeot-Citroen and BMW currently develop transverse four cylinder engines together… does Marchionne foresee a deeper relationship?
Guess who was matchmaker for Daimler’s three-way tie-up with Renault and Nissan? The Nikkei [sub] thinks it was Volkswagen. VW’s alliance with Suzuki “spooks Daimler into thinking small,” says the Tokyo business paper. And that’s quite a change for formerly bigthinking Daimler. (Read More…)
Which drive train will own the future? ICE, hydrogen, hybrid? BMW bets it will be all of the above. Autocar reports that BMW has mated a regular ICE with a fuel cell, electricity-storing supercapacitors and an electrically driven rear-axle. The reasoning behind this new type of hybrid is that BMW’s engineers believe that this power train will make the cars capable of switching to an emissions free propulsion system and switch back to ICE when needed. Now I know what you’re thinking at this point. “Cammy, aside from being the worst new writer of the year, why would anyone want to buy a car like this?” Well, the answer lies in Europe. (Read More…)
Diesel clatter in a BMW is like watching Bullit to the tunes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. In other words, distasteful and illegal in 48 states. And yet, driving BMW’s new X1 is a surprisingly John Deere-like experience. Is this a BMW or the ultimate agricultural machine? Maybe this sort of confusion is the X1’s worst problem.
While everybody is afraid of China flexing its muscles, the Middle Kingdom is stretching its feet. And its cars. Long versions are very popular in the world’s largest auto market, where one can hire a permanent driver for a few hundred $ a month. (Read More…)
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