Forget the plural of Prius… what do you call a Prius that’s this confused? A transvestvolt? Or, as the Michigan plates indicate, is this more of a case of automotive Stockholm Syndrome? Or, perhaps we’re looking at Batesian mimicry at work? Either way, this is a new one… [courtesy: evchels.wordpress.com]
This ad, for the Chevy Camaro, was the most-watched spot during the Super Bowl, pulling in 119,628,000 sets of eyeballs according to the ratings agency Nielsen. A Chevy Cruze ad took second place in the “most-watched” category, and Chrysler’s much-chattered-about 200 spot tied for fourth (with 5 other spots, including one for Bridgestone Tires), with 17.565m viewers. In short, cars and car-related products not only accounted for many of the ads, they managed to snag the time slots where the fewest people were taking bathroom breaks or grabbing more bacon-wrapped buffalo wings. But remember, there’s more to effective advertising than merely drawing eyeballs…
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Let’s get something perfectly clear: if you’re spending good money to bring back a legendary Italian sports car brand like DeTomaso without aiming to capture the essence of the photograph above, you’re doing it wrong. Period. If, on the other hand, you’re bringing back the DeTomaso name in order to sell
a premium large crossover, dubbed SLC (sport luxury car) that would be a rival to cars such as the BMW 5-series GT and Lexus RX-450h,
you need to go rethink your entire perspective on life. Or at least find a new business. Tragically, this is exactly what former Fiat marketing executive Gian Mario Rossignolo is doing. DeTomaso. Crossover. DeTomaso. RX450h. DeTomaso. Luxury CUV. Haven’t lost your mind yet? Hit the jump for more claw-your-eyes-out details.
GM is leveraging the strong growth of its Buick brand to bring back a technology that might otherwise have ended up on GM’s discard pile: the mild hybrid, or as it’s now called “e-assist.” The updated version of the old BAS mild hybrid first debuted as the base engine option on the 2012 Buick LaCrosse, and now GM has included the stop-start system as an optional drivetrain for the Buick Regal. Here’s the weird part though: in the larger, heavier LaCrosse, the system provides 25/37 MPG, while in the more-efficient Regal it returns a mere 26/37. Given that the two vehicles could already be better differentiated, the fact that Buick’s engineers weren’t able to squeeze more efficiency from the Regal e-assist is a bit disappointing. Still, GM’s strategy of addressing its hybrid shortcomings by attaching its hybrid hopes to its fastest-growing brand seems like a solid one. Who would have seen Buick as The General’s hybrid standard bearer just a few short years ago?
They say that when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail… which is why, after writing about the dangers of “automotive nationalism,” this video made left me more impressed with Ferrari’s pride in the global development of its new FF Grand Tourer than with the pure eyecandy of the spectacle. Although, to be fair, the sheer sexiness of Ferrari’s new shooting brake-style tourer left me fairly riled up as well.
Fiat/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne has earned our last several quotes of the day with recent controversial statements, so today we present him with the honor for a few choice words that have nothing to do with the United States government. Volkswagen has been sniffing around Fiat’s Alfa-Romeo brand for some time, as Herr Piech reportedly has the hots for the Italian brand. VW CEO Martin Winterkorn even said recently that
Alfa’s a beautiful brand but there are quality issues with the engines and suspension systems for example. I’m quite sure we could make a beautiful brand out of Alfa again.
For a while it looked like Fiat might be playing along with the interest, but recently Marchionne shot down talk of selling Alfa to VW. And he did so with the kind of acid-edged verbal shanking that makes TTAC smile and nod approvingly, saying
As long as I am CEO of Chrysler and Fiat, Mr [Ferdinand] Piech will never have Alfa Romeo. It’s hands-off. I told him. I will call him and I will email him. I’m not the one who bought Seat. He’s the one who bought it. I don’t know if he can [fix it], but he needs to try.
What do you do when a much larger firm comes sniffing around your prized (if troubled) brand? Kick them right in their own struggling brand, and in this case, Marchionne went straight for VW’s “Spanish Pontiac.” The jury is still very much out on Fiat’s grand Chrysler alliance experiment, but if it fails, it won’t be because Sergio Marchionne was scared of a fight.The guy’s talent for confrontation couldn’t be more obvious.
CEO Sergio Marchionne certainly suggested as much in a speech at the NADA convention over the weekend, in which he said
Who knows? In the next two or three years, we could be looking at one entity. It could be based here
From the perspective of the American taxpayer, this would certainly be the favorable outcome. After all, Fiat didn’t put a single Euro into the restructured Chrysler, and national bailouts don’t usually result in the expatriation of the bailed-out firm. But the US Treasury department isn’t the only master Fiat has to serve, and Marchionne’s suggestion that the Fiat-Chrysler alliance has touched off something of a “firestorm.” The Financial Times reports that
Pierluigi Bersani, leader of the [Italian] opposition Democratic party, demanding an explanation from Mr Marchionne said it was unacceptable for “Turin and the country to become a suburb of Detroit”.
Industry Minister Paolo Romani adds [via the Montreal Gazette]
The head of the carmaker must remain in Turin
And with Italian backlash against a possible Detroit headquartering of the Fiat-Chrysler alliance building, Marchionne is backpedaling furiously.
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Ford’s been fixing Lincoln for so long now, it’s almost surprising that things on the dealership level are still so broken. But, as Ford told its dealers at last weekend’s NADA convention [via Automotive News [sub]], it’s time to put up or become a former Lincoln dealership. By the end of this year, every Lincoln dealer must comply with a few of Ford’s “more than reasonable” expectations, to wit:
You know, those do sound like reasonable standards for a luxury brand dealer network… and if a Lincoln dealer doesn’t like them, well, Ford is looking to trim the network by 100 stores or so anyway. Still, isn’t Lincoln’s problem pretty conclusively product-related? There’s no word from Ford’s boffins on that front, which means some dealers may be happy to leave the Mercury sign up and become one of those used car lots that still has an Oldsmobile sign up. Yes, Lincoln needs a top-notch dealer experience (and an own-brand sales manager to keep marks away from the Taurus) to make Lincoln viable, but demanding it without even hinting at future product is to ask Lincoln dealers to make an incredible leap of faith.
Chrysler is proud of the fact that they did NOT release their Super Bowl ad on YouTube like most of the others. “While many sponsors revealed their advertising plans for Sunday’s Super Bowl, the Chrysler brand remained tight lipped to create a stronger impact for the reveal of their new marketing and advertising campaign featuring famous Detroiter, Eminem,” their press release says. (Read More…)
Here comes the Opel Allegra, the forthcoming European market city car, and (CARB willing) maybe even Buick’s next CAFE-buster. A Buick on a shortened Opel Corsa platform is madness, you say? Let’s see your old Roadmaster get 35.5 MPG combined…
Poor Ford. As the latest sales data shows, its lone luxury brand Lincoln is one sick puppy. Lincoln’s best-selling vehicles are its entry-level models, the MKZ and MKX, indicating that killing Mercury still has yet to bring higher-end buyers to Lincoln showrooms. Higher-end products like MKS and MKT are dead in the water, failing to crack 1,000 monthly units combined in January. Pull out the dying Town Car and Navigator, and Lincoln moved less volume last month than the subcompact Fiesta. And though Ford acknowledges that it has a problem at Lincoln, managers have hardly been forthcoming about what it plans to do to fix the problem. Which, as far as TTAC is concerned is fine… Ford doesn’t have to convince us that Lincoln is coming back. It does, however, have to convince Lincoln dealers to stay on board… and because they’re playing with their own money, that’s a trickier task. Ford’s Jim Farley tells Automotive News [sub] that
My experience is that if you cannot show concretely that you have to spend x amount of resources and you get this out of it in terms of volume, margin and profit, they’ll never invest, no matter how much credibility we have
But will they invest without seeing product? Ford has announced that it won’t be showing new Lincoln products when it pitches dealers on the brand’s future at the upcoming NADA convention. But isn’t product the problem? Hasn’t product been the problem at Lincoln for years? Even if Ford commits significant resources to the problem, dealers have no way of knowing what that investment will actually yield. Need we mention the LS experiment?
Since Ford won’t make a solid pitch for the future of Lincoln, we’ll send the task over to you, our Best and Brightest. Short of mocking up prototypes, what products and promises does Ford need to make to get Lincoln out of the luxury cellar?
Via designauto.fr, come these first pictures of Fiat’s Chrysler-cum-Lancias, the Thema (Chrysler 300) and Flavia (Chrysler 200). But are these rebadges worthy of the Lancia name? Hit the jump for the context necessary to answer that question…
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Typically when an automaker launches its first EV, the standard procedure is to spend a lot of time talking about how this car will change the world. Not so with Audi. Having created an “e-tron” EV concept version of its Auto Union Type C pedal car, Audi is backing up its modest EV ambitions with some tough talk from CEO Rupert Stadler aimed at putting EVs in their proper place. Stadler tells Automotive News [sub] that
We are still in the early phase with the electric vehicle, in terms of commercialization and whether the cars will be sold or leased, or will just be a collector’s car. First of all we have to industrialize the lithium-ion-battery. This is happening with the hybrid cars which now have the role of a bridge technology. We should not overplay euphoria for electric vehicles. Our industry is in the middle of a system change and we still have a lot of challenges to solve.
And, just as its CEO admits, Audi still has real issues with the commercialization of EVs: for one thing, even its e-tron kiddy car is still a one-off modification of its €9,700 pedal-powered Type C racer. Audi currently has no plans to commercially produce the 1.5 HP, 25 km range EV sportster. Perhaps its too early to say for certain that Audi will be able to knock Tesla off its solitary spot atop the EV sportscar world.
With a number of shocking nameplate-engineering jobs on deck (who’s ready for a Chrysler 200-based Lancia Flavia?), Fiat’s easing into things with one of the more innocuous moves on the to-do list: rebadging Dodges Journey as a Fiat. In Europe, the Freemont will slip into obscurity between Fiat’s Qubo and Doblò, much as the real Fremont struggles to serve as more than a unnecessary and unwanted distraction between Oakland and San Jose. And even though European buyers don’t buy many midsized crossovers, and don’t come to Fiat when they do, the Journey has been reworked to live up to the refined tastes of the European soccer mom. From retuned steering and suspension, to diesel engines, a new instrument panel and more soft-touch materials, The Freemont is a Dodge Journey for people who aren’t willing to buy shockingly poor-quality vehicles on the strength of inane advertising alone. And since they’re not calling it the Multipla, there’s no tip-toeing around comparisons to storied predecessors. But the fact that Fiat isn’t used to selling vehicles like the Journey is already showing up in its marketing literature, which enigmatically refers to the Freemont as a
“factotum vehicle” which has been “designed to meet the diverse needs of families and those seeking a spacious, comfortable and versatile vehicle to cater for the frenetic pace of everyday life or weekend leisure time”
Though not technically a new debut at this year’s Detroit Auto Show, the “Prius C” concept was probably the most interesting vehicle Toyota showed at Cobo Hall this year. If nothing else, it certainly shows the promise of an expanded Prius brand far better than the “Prius V.” And if there’s a single market where this “baby Prius” can give Toyota’s eco-brand spin-off a boost it would be Europe, where small, efficient cars rule. But, it seems, this is not to be. Autocar reports
The strength of the Japanese yen seems almost certain to keep a production version of Toyota’s near-80mpg hybrid supermini based on the Prius C Concept hatch out of Europe. (Read More…)
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