Despite the deep ties between his firm and Volkswagen, Ferry Porsche firmly believed that Porsches could only be Porsches if the company remained truly independent. “Independence,” he says in the video above, “has always been the attitude at Porsche.” But as the latest addition to the Volkswagen empire, tasked with developing mass-market architectures and planning Porsche-brand versions of the Audi Q5 and Volkswagen BlueSport, Porsche’s culture has little choice but to change. But will becoming a good team player within the VW-Audi-Seat-Skoda-Bentley-Lamborghini-Bugatti strategy kill off the spirit that made Porsche great? Or can cultural independence survive the VW takeover?

When Mazda’s next-generation Mazda5 debuts later this year, it will mark the high-water point for the brand’s Nagare design language. Named for a 2006 concept that first showed off the dramatically flowing (some might say overwrought) look, Nagare has not been a stunning success, and Mazda announced several months ago that the Mazda5 would be the last car to use the design language. At that time, Mazda said it intended to reposition itself as “The Japanese Alfa-Romeo,” but lines like that could mean literally anything.  Today, with the debut of the Mazda Shinari Concept, it’s clear that Mazda’s new look is headed in a far more conservative direction. In fact, to our eye, the sleek four-door looks quite a bit like the meeting point between the Tesla Model S and the Fisker Karma. In any case, it fits the “Japanese Alfa-Romeo” billing quite well. Plus, it doesn’t look like a deranged Pokemon. Now that’s progress!

The issue is it’s yet another brand. And given the fact we’re trying to allocate our resources to other areas that make the most sense, does it make sense to introduce another brand out there?

Kia Motors America product planning boss Orth Hedrick uses a rhetorical question to explain why the Korea-based automaker dropped its EcoDynamics sub-brand plans for the US market. The badge appears on European-market hybrid versions of the Forte, Cee’d and Sorento, and was planned as a global sub-brand. Instead, Kia is introducing many of the EcoDynamics components like low rolling resistance tires, electric power steering and more efficient alternators on some standard models, and will roll out a hybrid version of the next-generation Optima. With countless unnecessary brands and sub-brands littering the marketplace, Kia is smart to keep consumer focus on the Kia brand… especially in terms of associating it with good fuel economy. [via Wards Auto]

Nissan was the fifth best-selling brand in the first half of 2010, but with nine new model rollouts planned for the next two years it’s looking for something its marketing team calls “breaking the mold” improvement. To do that, Nissan is leading its product blitz with distinctive products like the Leaf EV and the Juke “sportcross,” but it’s also working to bring more attention to its brand as well as its vehicles. Marketing boss Jon Brancheau explains the problem to AdAge

If you look back over the course of the last 18 months at our creative, a lot of it has been focused on individual models and there hasn’t been an overarching idea that held everything together, laddering to Nissan. That’s what’s different about this work. It’s focused on the vehicle lines supporting the Nissan brand rather than just focusing on individual launch activity. The Leaf is the most recent example to believe that Nissan is an innovative company and that’s how we want to transmit our message to consumers, we want to turn it around a little bit — Nissan is the brand, and here’s the reason you should believe in it.

Unfortunately, the vehicle for Nissan’s latest bid at brand awareness is based on the tagline “Innovation For All,” a bon mot that is unfortunately reminiscent of the ill-fated Chevrolet tagline “Excellence For Everyone.” For a brand that is respected by many but loved by few, that’s a dangerously vague approach to a marketing push, and it hardly seems like the message to propel Nissan out of its perennial also-ran status. On the other hand, it’s tough to put a finger on what exactly Nissan should stand for because it’s brand has almost always been poorly differentiated in this market. So we’re curious: what does the Nissan brand mean to you, and what are the strengths it should build on as it seeks to improve brand awareness? Or are they on the right track already?

The enthusiasm for the Fiat coming to the market has diminished. At first, it was something that would be mixed in… now [Fiat-Chrysler is] going to have to present a compelling story and product to back me investing at least $1 million to build a new showroom

Everyone loves the Fiat 500, but Chrysler’s dealers aren’t exactly thrilled that they have to build brand new showrooms to sell the Italian (er, Mexican) subcompact, as witnessed by the quote above in the WSJ [sub]. Another dealer adds that he knows enough troubled MINI and Smart stores to be spooked by the prospect of dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars on what will clearly be a niche offering. Yet another calls it an “excellent opportunity,” but Chrysler needs to find 200 qualified dealers to make Fiat’s American adventure a reality. The credit and car markets, gas prices and Fiat’s less-than-stellar American-market legacy all conspire against the scheme. To say nothing of the poor historical precedents for Chrysler’s ballooning brand portfolio. But as usual, CEO Sergio Marchionne has it all figured out…

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Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen/Audi are all moving inexorably towards a major downmarket expansion, as they develop a new generation of compact and subcompact cars based on front-wheel-drive architectures. Though Volkswagen has played in this space for some time, the move is a major cultural shift for BMW and Mercedes, which are typically associated with rear-drive luxury cars, particularly in the US market. But the truth is that the German luxury brands have always sold products in the German and other European markets that don’t match their premium overseas brand images (see, among other examples, the ubiquity of Mercedes taxis in Germany). But the strange thing about this next push towards smaller cheaper cars is that it’s not not aimed at Germany at all.

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Earlier today, I noted that

Revitalizing a once-dominant domestic brand is a lot harder than telling the quality-improvement story of a once-reviled Korean value brand

and I think this video helps prove the point. For a brand like Hyundai, highlighting product details helped change perceptions… but then, Hyundai has never asked Americans to think of their cars in especially emotional, patriotic, or culturally significant ways. They’re just high value cars that have become better and better over time. For GM and Chevrolet’s new top marketing execs (freshly poached from Hyundai), the plan seems to be to follow the Hyundai “quality story” gameplan, with a little awkwardly hip flair. For a brand that’s been “the heartbeat of America,” “like a rock” and more, this latest video seems stuck in “excellence for everyone” (i.e. generic and directionless) territory.

Besides, when the word “solid” is used in marketing materials to describe a “3,100-3,300 lb” compact car, it sounds a little like a Mom calling her kid “big-boned.”

Thanks to one of the most popular Top Gear segments ever, the Peel P50 is now well-established in the minds and imaginations of the world’s automotive cognoscenti. After all, how often does Clarkson say that “if [car X] had a reverse gear, I would describe it as the absolute ultimate in personal mobility”? But now there’s another reason to pay attention to Peel: having been bought a few years back by Gary Hillman and Faizal Khan, the British microcar maker is set for a comeback that’s being funded by Sonny Coreleone himself, actor some British investor named James Caan (born Nazim Khan… cheers to colin42 for the British pop culture lesson, and apologies for unwittingly making the story better than it is).
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Hyundai’s most famous superbowl ad may have imagined executives at Lexus and BMW getting steamed at the success of the Genesis, but that’s not necessarily where the upstart Korean brand is making the biggest impression on competitors. In fact, it’s Hyundai’s ability to market value so successfully, even in the premium space, that’s got the other automakers steamed. But instead of getting mad at Hyundai’s building momentum and reputation, GM’s getting even. Having already poached away former Hyundai marketing boss (and the man behind this ad) Joel Ewanick to lead GM’s entire marketing effort, GM just snagged Ewanick’s replacement as VP Marketing at Hyundai, Chris Perry, to head up Chevrolet marketing [via Automotive News [sub]. That’s right, two VP’s of marketing from the same upstart Korean brand, both poached away by GM… You think The General might be looking for people who can tell the momentum-turnaround, finally-getting-some-respect-around-here storyline?
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Before the remnants of the British Leyland empire were sold off to various developing-world automakers (in an intriguing automotive inversion of colonialism), BMW temporarily became the caretaker of a number of British auto brands, including Rover, MG, Land Rover, and Mini. Only Mini now remains under Bavarian fealty, but before dumping the mess on the hapless Phoenix Consortium, BMW helped the Rover brand develop its only halfway-competitive car of the 1990s: the retro-inspired Rover 75. And according to Britain’s AutoExpress, BMW also helped Rover developed this odd duck, known as the 55, as an attack upmarket on Audi’s A4 and Mercedes’ C-Class. It was to be followed by a larger replacement for the 75, which would have given Rover a one-two punch to match the Mercedes C and E Classes, Audi’s A4 and A6 and so on.

The long-nosed look of this 1997 design study is the result of a Passat/A4-style longitudinal-front-drive platform, which (like the 75’s platform) had been experimentally developed by BMW. Of course, the looks are a bit odd, and BMW really didn’t need to develop unique-platform competitors for its 3- and 5-Series, so this car was probably never likely to make it to production. Still, it’s interesting to imagine what Rover would be like today if it were still struggling along with a large neo-retro flagship based on dated German technology and not much else… except that then it would pretty much be a British Chrysler.

You may have caught a version of this ad on television not long ago, in which an actual monkey fires a confetti cannon. Notice that the monkey doesn’t show up in this version? That’s no coincidence. The Dodge brand, which has previously baffled audiences with such retrograde nonsense as calling the Charger R/T “Man’s Last Stand,” has backed down from using a monkey in its advertising after being criticized by PETA. So much for that thin veneer of über-macho, anti-PC gloss. Hit the jump for Dodge’s petulant response to allegations of animal cruelty.
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Autocar reports that Renault workers in France are jumping on a bus and heading to the Paris Motor Show. Are the doing it because they fancy a day out? Maybe they want to see all the nice cars on display? Nope, they’re going there to protest. OK, so who do you think they are going to protest? Hyundai? Toyota? Ford? Nope. They’re protesting against Renault. So, a bunch of French Renault workers are going to the Paris Motor Show to protest against their own company? Why?

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Reuters [via ABC] reports that GM has completed its S1 filing and will file Monday, after a Friday the 13th filing was delayed in order to

add a management risk factor after Chief Executive Ed Whitacre announced on Thursday he would step down and be succeeded by Dan Akerson effective September.

And that won’t be the only “risk factor” warning to investors in GM’s S-1. Bloomberg found a number of analysts ready to support the headline

GM’s Akerson to Struggle in Proving to IPO Investors Europe Fixable

Any bets on the number of times the word “Opel” appears in tomorrow’s filing?

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Jeep’s Grand Cherokee has earned consistently positive reviews by maintaining its off-road capability and nailing one of the few untouched crossover market positions between mass-market minivan replacements and high-end luxury SUVs. Does that mean the Dodge version, which will bear the Durango nameplate, will be similarly received? Not necessarily. Expected to be less off-road capable than its Jeep cousin, the Durango will compete head-to-head with the new Ford Explorer, GM’s Lambda juggernaut, and a pack of established mid-large CUV competitors. The Durango will also be the toughest trial yet for the tortured relationship between Dodge and the ostensibly spun-off Ram brand, as the Durango has traditionally resembled the Ram off which it used to be based (need proof? Dodge is calling the Durango a “three-row performance SUV”). On the positive side of the Durango’s balance sheet: an optional Hemi engine. Sure, the Grand Cherokee offers that too, but the Jeep brand doesn’t get to call it a Hemi. Now that’s what you call differentiation!

Today’s Detroit News has an interesting item on Ford’s D3/D4 platform strategy, based on the thesis that

The remade Taurus has emerged as a flagship for the Dearborn automaker, restoring luster to a nameplate that had become synonymous with “rental car,” and helping to revive an automaker that had become dependent on trucks and sport utility vehicles.

As Jack Baruth’s Capsule Review of the Ford Five Hundred shows, the D3 platform offers good space and comfort, and the recent update and return to the Taurus nameplate has been rewarded with steadily-increasing sales. And though the Taurus has fought back to become a Ford-brand flagship (likely at the expense of Mercury), its platform-mates have been consistent underperformers on the showroom floor. Flex has sold in the low 3k monthly range, while MKS and MKT have been thoroughly beaten in YTD sales by the Cadillac DTS and Escalade, themselves hardly the most competitive alternatives to the big Lincolns.

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