I’ve been a long time reader of TTAC and am a big fan of the New or Used and Piston Slap columns. I am in the market for a new or lightly used (CPO) car and have a preference for rear wheel drive. I have a budget in the 20-25k range for this purpose. This car will be my only car; hence it should be able to handle daily driver duties (25-30 mpg would do) without being a complete snooze to drive (that’s where the rear wheel drive part comes in). A 4 door isn’t strictly necessary since I am single with no kids.
The 2011 Mustang V6 and the Hyundai Genesis Coupe seem to fit the bill nicely. I’ve test driven both and found them a hoot to drive. The fuel efficiencies, ride, and interiors are also up to the mark. However, I can only get the 2.0T version of the Genesis Coupe for the same money as the V6 Mustang. So, the Mustang seems to offer more value for the money, live rear axle notwithstanding.
GM’s troubled Australian division Holden has maintained its place in the GM empire for years now as the development center for GM’s global rear-drive architecture. The Holden-developed Zeta platform began as the basis for Holden’s Commodore full-size sedan, and has been put into use on a global basis by cars as diverse as the Chevy Camaro, the Chinese-market Buick Park Avenue and the Pontiac G8. But now GoAuto reports that the next-gen Commodore could be moved to Holden’s plus-sized version of the Epsilon II midsized front-drive chassis known as “Super Epsilon II,” the platform that will underpin the next Chevy Impala and the Cadillac XTS. The era of the Aussie RWD sedan may well be coming to a close…
Panther Appreciation Week rolls on with this look at the platforms sales since 1995 (sorry, our sales data doesn’t go back farther) compared to some key competition. As the last several years of the graph prove, large sedans were hit fairly hard by the “Carpocalypse,” but Panthers were in a terminal sales decline anyway. In the mid 90s, Ford was selling nearly 100k each of its Ford, Lincoln and Mercury-branded Panthers, but steady updates from large, cushy FWD competition like the Avalon slowly eroded sales.
Meanwhile, the 300/Charger combo from Chrysler looks to be the Panther of the 21st Century. Beloved by fleets and Donkophiles alike, the LX sedans beat the mass-market-branded large, RWD competition… such as it is. Heck, it even beat FWD rivals like the Avalon, the Genesis (21,889), the Lexus ES (48,485) and the Taurus (45,617) in 2009. And with the updated 2011 Charger in strong competition for police fleet business, Chrysler could just be building big, old-school, rear-drive sedans in the American style for some time to come. The Panther is dead… long live the LX?
As Sajeev points out, America’s police forces could well be the savior of large, rear-drive sedans in the American market. Which is hugely convenient for Chrysler, which recently spent big bucks updating its 300/Charger LX platform. Much to the chagrin of Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne, in fact. A devotee of per-platform volume-based “industrial logic,” Marchionne has publicly stated that he would never have spent the money to update a platform with so few “applications,” had he been in charge during the Cerberus era. But winning police fleet business could change all that, and Chrysler is clearly going all out for it.
The 2011 Dodge Charger has not been shown anywhere in civilian guise, but several outlets including the Detroit Free Press have snapped shots of the new sedan testing for police buyers. Given Chrysler’s well–documentedstruggles with fleet sales addiction, giving police fleet buyers the first look at an “all new” car is an interesting move. Discuss the looks all you want, what I want to know is will consumers go crazy for a cop car? GM obviously doesn’t think so…
With rumors coming in that Toyota is repositioning its planned FT-86 “Toyobaru” sports coupe to reflect higher price and higher buyer age targets, word around the enthusiast fring of the autoblogosphere has been downright apocalyptic. After all, the promised combination of a $20k base price, manual transmission and rear-wheel-drive were what launched the FT-86 to internet notoriety. But development overruns are a fact of life, and Toyota says it has no choice but to bump the FT-86’s projected price point to $23k base, $26k loaded-level. So while the FT-86 faces the bloat that comes with a more upmarket target, another sports coupe aimed at undercutting the FT-86’s prices by about $5k is already under development according to Road & Track.
First developed by Holden in 2004, GM’s Zeta platform now underpins vehicles as diverse as the Statesman/Lumina/G8/Caprice sedans, and the Chevy Camaro. Originally designed for full-sized , rear-drive Australian sedans, Zeta was downsized as far as it could be for the Camaro, which reviewers largely view as overweight and rather too ungainly for true sportscar status. Accordingly, GM has been developing a new rear-drive platform known as “Alpha,” which will form the basis of GM’s performance and luxury RWD models for the considerable future. Last we heard about Alpha was last August, when Bob Lutz swore there was no development underway of the platform he compared to BMW’s 1-/3-series. According to Motor Trend, work on the Alpha platform has begun… but there are already signs of trouble.
While the autoblogosphere frets bout whether BMW drivers can tell which wheels drive their cars, the real news in the BMW-goes-FWD storyline is the impact that the sea change in brand strategy is expected to have on volume. Automotive News [sub] reports that BMW is developing a new family of modular gas and diesel engines, which are intended “primarily for BMW’s new front-wheel-drive architecture, but the powerplants also will be used in the automaker’s rear-wheel-drive cars,” according to CEO Norbert Reithofer. And the volume at which this new family of three, four and six-cylinder engines will be produced is one of the early indications of where BMW is going with its FWD expansion. Today, BMW sells just under 1.3m vehicles worldwide. That’s fewer cars than will be powered by this new family of engines alone, which Reithofer says will motivate 1.5m vehicles worldwide. Considering BMW’s goal is to sell 2m vehicles of all its brands by 2020, it’s clear that much of that growth will be made possible by new FWD-inclusive drivetrain technology. (Read More…)
Debates over the relative values of front-, rear- and all-wheel-drive have raged for as long as automotive enthusiasm has existed, and after decades of argument, the only thing that anyone seems to agree on is that the the drive wheels matter. But do they? According to Automotive News Europe [sub]’s Luca Ciferri,
More proof that customers don’t care about the difference between rwd and fwd came last week when BMW revealed that 80 percent of its 1-series owners believe the car is fwd
Ciferri wrote this in the “blog” section of the Automotive News [sub] website, and didn’t link to any sources to back his claim up. Meanwhile, a search of German news sources has failed to pull up stories that link to a source other than Ciferri’s blog post. Though Ciferri is a respected auto journalist, and we hesitate to accuse him of making this stuff up, there’s a definite chance that this study isn’t all that it seems. After all, Ciferri cites BMW’s research at a time when the Bavarians are developing the first ever FWD car to carry the famed BMW roundel. Though we don’t doubt that many BMW 1-series buyers might not know which wheels drive their cars, the 80 percent number seems suspiciously high. Furthermore, Ciferri doesn’t indicate whether that statistic reflects global customers, European buyers, or the American market. Combined with BMW’s obvious incentives to de-stigmatize front wheel drive, these problems leave us little choice but to take Ciferri’s statistics with a hefty grain of salt.
Oh, the sad saga of the Pontaic G8. GM finally built a vehicle worthy of Pontiac’s sporty pretensions, only to can the whole brand months later, leaving the G8 orphaned. Which was crummy for enthusiasts, but ultimately a good thing for GM’s business as G8s were assembled in Australia and shipped over to the US, bleeding profit margin all the way. Then came news that a G8-alike would be built in North America, but would only be marketed to police fleet buyers as a Caprice. “Insult to injury!” shrieked the slighted fans of V8 RWD sedans. What they didn’t realize was that GM was still in injury mode. For the real insult, we turn now to the Carpoint.com.au [via Jalopnik], which reports that consumers can still buy new Pontiac G8s. In Australia. Sort of.
After backing away from the ridiculous torque figures it gave with its R8-based e-tron, Audi is having another crack at the electric sportscar theme with a second e-tron concept at the NAIAS. Of course by not giving it a new name, Audi created the impression that this might be a very similar concept to the R8-based model it says its going to build at some point. The e-tron mk II is, however, a very different beast. Where as the first e-tron was an electrification and restyling of the R8, the e-tron 2 actually previews the look of an eventual R4 sportscar, based on Volkswagen’s Blue Sport concept. If Audi eventually sells an EV version of that vehicle (and they say the e-tron name will become a brand for Audi EVs) and it’s materially the same as this concept, it would be the first RWD production Audi since… well, why don’t we have some guesses?
Hi Sajeev and Steve, I’m looking to buy a new car in the next year or two. I have a 2006 Toyota Corolla CE with 35k on the clock. It’s a manual transmission, which is the only thing that’s kept me from going insane. When I bought it, I didn’t have much choice in the matter (time crunch) and the price and gas mileage (something like 41 mpg hwy, though I regularly get 35 mpg in stop and go traffic). It has been servicable, reliable (mostly), cheapish, and gas efficient. There is nothing wrong with it, other than it’s just kind of boring.
I’m looking for something a little more fun. I want something that is fun to drive, not just a machine to get from point A to point B. I used to have a fabulous 1991 Nissan 240SX SE Fastback (again, manual) that I loved. However, I moved to Phoenix and didn’t have the funds (because of the move) to take care of the things that it needed. I still regret selling it. So now I’m looking for: (Read More…)
After the 1 series, BMW pretty much committed themselves to the smallest car, because it was the smallest number, they were going to make under the BMW marque. Or did they? You see, there is actually another number lower than 1 and BMW plan to release a series of cars based on that number. Now we’ve known this for some time, but Car-Chat.info put forward a very real scenario. Since the 0 series will be smaller than the 1 series, that means it will go head to head with BMW’s other marque, the Mini. Now, one could be optimistic and say that 2 cars under different brands could grab a bigger slice of the market or, one could be realistic and say that cannibalisation is afoot. BMW aren’t stupid, which brings forward the very real possibility that BMW could phase out the Mini brand. At top production rates, Mini produce 240000 vehicles a year. That’s niche levels. And who wouldn’t want a BMW badge instead of a Mini? Yes, there may be a few “Italian Job” fans upset and a couple of “Germans kill iconic brand” headlines in the UK gutter press, but when you think about it, it kind of makes sense. At least as long as a front-wheel drive BMW doesn’t strike you as too blasphemous (and BMW doesn’t seem to have a problem crossing that Rubicon). So now TTAC posits a question to the B&B: Does the world really need Mini? Are we hanging onto a brand which doesn’t fit viably in the today’s market? Or is an FWD BMW the real mistake?
Enthusiasts have been adamant that GM’s decision to sell a police-only version of its RWD global Lumina platform (Holden Statesman) creates a fantastic opportunity for GM to return the Impala to its RWD roots. Such a decision would seem to make sense from a business perspective as well, adding civilian sales volume to what otherwise would be a fleet-only platform. No such luck though. Bob Lutz tells Inside Line that the forthcoming Impala replacement (due in 2014) will be based on GM’s global FWD midsized architecture (Epsilon II). The rationale for this decision appears to be fuel efficiency: Lutz mentions the need to compete with the Ford Taurus’s efficiency achievements as a factor in the decision. By going FWD, GM also hopes to be able to shoehorn the two-mode hybrid system from the discontinued Vueick CUV into a future Impala. In addition to forgoing an opportunity to leverage the Caprice police special architecture, this decision also adds to GM’s epic midsize FWD sedan bloat. From the Malibu to the Buick LaCrosse and Regal, from Impala to the Cadillac XTS “flagship,” GM’s default decision seems to be to base all of its sedans on a single platform, making pricing and content differentiation an ongoing challenge to its product strategy. Vive le sameness!
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