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Transportation RSS FeedsThe VW Beetle is rubbish - Volkswagen has thrown its weight behind a project to cover a New Beetle in waste. Spark plugs, motherboards, bottle tops, you name it, it's there. If by chance you're reading this in Mumbai or Germany, there's a chance to see the car for yourself....Feed Source: www.just-auto.com How car show launches usedtabe... - Superb archive photo, apparently from the 1951 Chicago motor show, of the public launch of the Kaiser Silver Dragon.
Milestone info from Hemmings.com - looks like quite a lot of money was spent even for the time; just count the people on stage and the orchestra.... European capacity questions will get louder - With the European car market facing a decline in 2012, the focus is set to swing to that hoary old chestnut, excess production capacity. In a rising market, capacity utilisation may be going up and that can swing things so that vulnerable plants are kept in production. The 'rising tide' makes them look better than they really are and companies may feel that they can do without the distraction of shutting a plant and all the fuss it generates. But when the market is going down and capacity utilisation is deteriorating, it's less easy to put the issue to one side and carry on as normal.
Sergio Marchionne has been pretty vocal in lambasting the industry in Europe for not addressing overcapacity. And he is not at all happy about the pricing situation in Europe, either. Others are at fault, naturally.
GOLDING’S TAKE: Marchionne tells rival car makers to... Spare tyres becoming optional extras - The sealant and compressed air can be injected through the tyre valve but the result achieved will depend on the cause of the puncture and how far and fast the flat tyre has been driven on.
In other words, tyre inflator kits only work on small punctures over short distances. A major blow-out cannot be repaired using an inflator kit. If you find yourself in a remote rural spot out of reach of a cell phone signal, you could be facing a long walk to get help.
Yet with automakers under pressure to produce more fuel-efficient cars, it is hardly surprising to see them eliminating the spare wheel, thereby shedding up to 30 pounds in one stroke. While some motorists may be surprised to discover their spare wheel is missing from the boot (trunk), automakers say it is not unsafe to go without.
Here in the UK, there is no specific legal requirement for automakers to include a spare wheel with a vehicle. The only law regarding spare wheels is that, if a ve... When is a target not a target? - Just how do the average CO2 rules and targets in the EU apply to car manufacturers?
The people at cleangreencars.co.uk have a helpful guide.
In 2012, only the lowest polluting 65% of each manufacturer’s range have to meet the official target of 130g/km. Full compliance is not due until 2015. The EU is fond of quoting “130g/km of CO2 by 2012”, but this is simply not the case, they point out. Many will miss the target this year, but the range of loopholes means that fines are unlikely.
Car manufacturers who make heavy cars have a higher target. Take the example of Mercedes: with an average weight of 1661 KG, its current target is 143g/km of CO2, not 130g/km of CO2.
Manufacturers who sell less than 300,000 cars in the EU do not have to meet the target anyway. So, a company that sells fewer than that can continue producing an average of, say 160g/km of CO2, without fear. The only restriction for these companies is that their CO2 ha... Solar windows 1, Prius mirrors 0 - Just when you think you've heard it all, comes this from California Solar windows 1, Prius mirror housings 0.... Trip to the cinema, courtesy of General Motors - I caught the Steven Spielberg directed epic 'War Horse' last night at the flicks.
General Motors' UK PR people kindly invited me (thank you Denis Chick and Uta Deutsch, enjoyed the pre-movie tapas!), along with a few others, on the grounds that Vauxhall had provided some vintage cars for the movie.
The 1911 Vauxhall C-Type “Prince Henry” ( named after Prince Henry of Prussia who sponsored early reliability trials) and 1918 Vauxhall D Type Army Staff Car both feature. The film trailer features the Prince Henry racing against the War Horse across Dartmoor. Watch the trailer here.
Denis Chick, Vauxhall Motors’ Director of Communications said: “Steven Spielberg loved the C-Type Prince Henry but due to its non-conventional controls, an expert was on hand to drive on set to master the centre-mounted throttle and outside gear changes. Mecha... Dodge Dart Mark One - There's been a lot of mention of the new Dodge Dart on j-a recently following the Alfa Romeo Giulietta platform-based car's debut - replacing the Caliber hatchback but a true successor to the Neon sedan - at Detroit earlier this month.
The name's not new, though, and was once appended to a model line rather larger and way more powerful. Here's a trip down memory lane for those of us of a certain age.
These US Chryslers didn't just stay in North America, either. Chrysler Australia built its own Valiant tagged versions of the Dart two-door coupe body shell and similar models, some also using the Dart nameplate, were also built and sold in South Africa, South America and ... Replace the blue form with the red form NOW! DVLA - The DVLA - UK equivalent of the US DMV - has just mailed me, and presumably every other (30m?) vehicle owner in the UK, a new 'red' V5C form, aka logbook, a record of the legal registered 'keeper' as we are referred to over here. I must, a leaflet enclosed in the envelope says, "immediately" destroy my old 'blue' V5C.
Turns out a batch of the old blue forms - presumably blank - has been nicked and the DVLA says it is doing this to prevent fraud.
Questions arise: who forgot to lock a door and allowed the old ones to be pinched in the first place; are they still working for the DVLA on my taxpayer dime, and how much is all this costing the poor old taxpayer anyway? We really should be told.... GMC has a (pricier) future - It's looking increasingly like GM is going to reinvent GMC division as an upscale truck brand.
Regular readers might recall that I wondered aloud about the likelihood of GM culling the brand. For the record, I still wonder about the need for Cadillac when the company has done such an amazing job with Buick in China, plus reinventing it in the US - why not push the latter further upscale?
Back to GMC. Mark Reuss, General Motors' president of North American operations, is being reported as saying that GMC has to "pay its way". To that end, the replacement for the GMC Sierra will apparently become pricier than its twin, the Chevrolet Silverado. Let's see if GMC can make this strategy work. Ford couldn't, not at first. Now it has sort of succeeded by having a rethink: the Lincoln Mark LT failed in the US market, but is still made in tiny numbers for Mexic... Chery crows about sales record - One of my factors for how seriously I take a company's claims is its media-facing website. So it's worth noting that Chery Auto has suddenly lifted its game, as well as its sales.
Were I being kind, I would say that the state-run firm hasn't always had the clearest information on the releases it makes available to the likes of me. I'm all for balance and anyone learning from mistakes so feel compelled to report that Chery has lately been communicating far better. The latest news shows that.
So here's what's impressed me: in calendar 2011, the company claims it sold 'around 643,000' vehicles, of which a record 160,200 were in 'overseas markets'. It wasn't always that well worded, believe me. And here's the impressive bit, which also shows just how the company's SKD and CKD plants are doing the world over - YoY overseas markets' sales are said to be up by a combined 73 percent.
There's still some work to go. The headline of Chery's press release is as follows:... Natural gas prices plunge: which car brands could benefit? - The UK's Financial Times reports the Nymex February gas contract falling to US$2.402 per million British thermal units earlier on Thursday. That's got me thinking about CNG-fuelled cars.
Well, Honda is in pole position in the US market with such vehicles. The old Civic sedan was available in CNG-fuelled form but the sales numbers were never anything to get excited about. Then, American Honda got clever when it came to replacing it, making the new model available in all 50 states for the first time. That was back in October. Slowly, sales have been building. If I were Honda's ad agency I would be hassling the client with suggested campaigns right now, linking the Civic to news reports of plunging traded-gas prices.
'Forget the Civic Hybrid, hey we sold fewer than 5,000 in 2011 anyway, embrace the Civic Natural Gas'. Yes, perhaps my tagline needs work. There again, maybe the car itself could do with a snazzier model name.
If Honda misses this opp... Curious Citroen cinemagraphs - There is something oddly fascinating about Citroen's 'cinemagraphs', still images but with one moving element inside them.
We reported on this before when Citroen issued some of these images to help promote the DS5.
Some more of these subtly animated images have been released that include actions by football players (from Arsenal). Wasn't there an episode of Star Trek in which time apparently stood still, but some people were on a different scale, whizzing around at normal pace as I say, curiously fascinating.
... Hyundai crowbarred off its perch. By Kia. - Last week Dave and self were manning a very busy news desk whilst Graeme and Simon were over in Detroit. Which is my excuse for having taken a week longer than I normally do to glance at the major markets' monthly registrations numbers. So it is that I am only just noticing something big having happened in Korea.
After many, many years, the Hyundai Sonata has been knocked out of the number one slot. The Sonata, which is also a major seller in the USA, is proving to be less popular with the home market crowd. To be fair, car buyers' tastes in South Korea have been shifting in recent years and the car itself is getting close to the mid-point of its lifecycle.
More competition, a gradual opening of the market to foreign competitors but especially the ongoing wave of much-improved new cars are also to blame for the Sonata's fall. Its tumble isn't a big problem for Hyundai, mind. Even though sales plunged by 31 percent to 104,248 units, the larger and higher-margin Grandeur... Fiat's search for a third partner - It certainly is interesting to hear Sergio Marchionne again speaking about the primacy of industrial scale economies, of big automotive alliances and of his preference for Fiat-Chrysler to add a third partner.
PSA is being talked about as a possible suitor yet again. But the big difficulty there is that the gains would require capacity rationalisation in Europe that looks politically troublesome, especially when economies are in a weak phase. Both Fiat and PSA are relatively reliant on the weak European market, share plenty of model/segments overlap. Could be tricky to get the consolidation benefits that look good on paper.
Perhaps adding a strategic partner with a strong position in another world region would make sense? Suzuki on the rebound from VW?
Come to think of it, wasn't the diesel engine deal in which Fiat supplied Suzuki's Indian operation one of the things that put strain on VW-Suzuki'... The BMW 335Li does not officially exist - A long wheelbase version of the new BMW 3 Series is said to be set for a global debut at AutoChina 2012 in April.
BMW might possibly not thank for me informing you that pics of the LWB 3er are all over the web but it's so clearly a well proportioned car that I couldn't not share the news.
Might we see the 3 Series iL exported? I don't see why not. After all, BMW began to ship Shenyang-built long wheelbase 5 Series sedans abroad last month.
As is the case with other major shows throughout this year, we'll publish and republish a constantly updating list of world premieres before and during Bejing's biennial event. I'm currently sniffing around my own sources as well as nagging the official press departments for confirmations of debutantes. The list as ever will only contain models and concepts that have been announced by manufacturers. See our recent... 'Scandal of upbeat car industry news grows' - How great has it been to see so many positive news stories emerge from the Detroit motor show? Might there be something deeper going on?
I possibly over-expose myself to media. But as a writer the only real danger with that is if you stop reading and listening to what others are saying. Do that and you slowly start believing mostly in your own bias, and then, far worse, that most unattractive and dangerous of companions, an outsized ego. Oh the irony of having just written that sentence in a blog.
Back to the point. US media, media in other nations, just about anyone that these journalists pushed a microphone at - all seemed to ooze positivity. Remember that word? It seemed to vanish almost without trace around the third quarter of 2008 for the industry that surrounds the sales of new light vehicles in the US market. Now, life is returning. Possibly, and I will whisper it, strongly.
I've been inspired to bash out ... Marchionne generates huge scrum - I finally met James Cain from GM's financial news section yesterday in the RenCen - once I'd finished the obligatory several circuits of the place getting lost.
James was the spokesman for GM during Saab's recent and prolonged demise and was always on the end of a phone to front up to some fairly hostile Swedish reaction to GM's tough stance on licensing issues.
He also had some fascinating insight into how the iconic RenCen - this year thankfully with less motown music everywhere - was built.
Staying with the RenCen theme, last night's Automotive News World Congress dinner in the building, featured an emotional appearance by British racing driver Dan Wheldon's wife. Wheldon - winner of the Indianapolis 500 Borg-Warner Trophy in 2011 - died at the end of last year in a racing accident and the supplier paid tribute to his short life.
I've been in a few media scrums in my time, but last night's bunfight after Fiat/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne spoke at th... Detroit with a difference - It was Detroit with a difference this year. Different largely because of the weather.
I’ve been covering this show for 20 years or so and the city has almost always been covered in snow and certainly freezing cold – minus 17C on one occasion.
Standing outside the Cobo Hall on the morning of the second press day, the sun was shining and it was unseasonably warm, +7C – almost unheard of. Exactly a year ago, my connecting flight through New York on the way home was cancelled because of snow storms.
The warmth this year spread through to the inside of the Cobo Hall. This was Detroit Show with a buzz about it even though there is small chance of the market returning the 16m plus of the mid-2000s. Now, the industry has shaken out and finds it can still make money in a market hovering around 13m.
No outrageous giant SUVs and pick-ups this year, the Ford Fusion and the Dodge Dart represented a softer, more environmentally-friendly approach to ne... GMC: you thinking what I'm thinking? - General Motors has four US market divisions. Three of those had new products at the Detroit show. We heard nothing about GMC. I wonder
in fact I've been wondering if GMC has a future ever since last year's announcement about the new Chevrolet Colorado for the Wenztville plant in Missouri. What about a replacement for the current model's twin, the GMC Canyon? On that topic there was only silence. The Canyon hasn't been a strong seller so it's reasonable for GM to replace both it and the Colorado with just one vehicle.
I still wonder about GMC, though. As a brand it was outsold by Jeep last year in the US and it has no markets of notable size outside North America. If you were GM, wouldn't you start to think about merging its products into Chevrolet? In fact, that's what's been going on for some years.
All should be resolved within this calendar year. A small crossover, a production version of the Granite concept, is expected for the 2013 model year, plus of... Copyright © 2012, Pinellas County Real Estate. All Rights Reserved. |