By Brendan Moore

10.30.2009

Automotive News has published a report stating that Jill Lajdziak, the general manager of Saturn, will retire from General Motors at the end of this year.

In fact, according to the article, Lajdziak has already left the building, so to speak.

She has turned over the wind-down of Saturn to Steve Hill, GM’s head of retail sales support, and is burning saved-up vacation days off somewhere else as she counts down to her actual last day on the books at GM.

Once the deal for Roger Penske to buy Saturn fell through, and GM subsequently announced it would close Saturn forever as a result, there really wasn’t much reason for Lajdziak to hang around.

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By Chris Haak

10.30.2009

Over its long history, GM has never really given small cars enough attention, building only as many of them as necessary to help with corporate fuel-economy rules or to at least have an entrant in that particular segment of the market.  The small cars that did come from GM were generally half-baked efforts that either were benchmarked to competitors’ current offerings, or cars that were left on the vine past their sell-by date and showed their age.

GM has established a pattern of promoting its small cars as finally turning the corner on quality, performance, handling, economy, and value each time a new generation of cars is released, only for the reality of bottom-of-the-pack comparison test results, falling sales, and a renamed car for its replacement. Continue Reading

By Andy Bannister

10.29.2009

This is the Premier Rio, a strange little mongrel SUV just introduced in a last-ditch bid by one of India’s few indigenous auto manufacturers to say alive in a fast-changing home market.

Despite the domestic name it is no home-made design. In fact, it’s nothing more than a locally-assembled version of a Chinese vehicle called the Zotye, which itself is based on an old model of the Terios, a small and relatively obscure 4X4 originating from the quirky Daihatsu division of Toyota.

Kits imported from China are put together in India and mated to an ageing diesel engine designed by Peugeot of France, making the Premier Rio one of the odder new cars to be introduced recently in India’s booming motor industry, which is now dominated by big players like Hyundai, Suzuki, Chevrolet, Ford and Tata.

India’s new car market is awash with customers like never before, and the company is pitching this as a “luxury” small SUV for aspirational types who don’t just want a hatchback for their rupees.

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By Kevin Miller

10.28.2009

Volkswagen of America has released an official sketch of their forthcoming sedan which is code-named NMS, or New Midsized Sedan. The NMS is said to be tailored for the North American market and will be built at Volkswagen’s plant which is currently under construction in Chattanooga, TN. No details of the NMS were released with the sketch.

The sketch is truly nothing special- a generically dynamic-looking traditional three-box sedan slightly larger than the current Passat. Sketched with ridiculously-oversized wheels, the illustration could just as easily be a high-school car nut’s margin sketch. Hopefully the car will be a bit more distinctive when it debuts in the metal, and hopefully the fact that it is designed specifically for North America doesn’t mean that it turns into a German-American Camry, devoid of VW’s typical driving dynamics. The sedan is predicted to launch late in 2011.

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Tomorrow, GM’s Bob Lutz will challenge bloggers from the likes of Jalopnik, plus any other challengers who GM has accepted, to the CTS-V challenge at Monticello Motor Club in Monticello, New York.  The rules call for unmodified vehicles in the CTS-V’s “competitive set,” which to me includes the Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG and E63 AMG, Jaguar XF-R, and BMW M3 and M5.  No blogs were able to secure a manufacturer’s press car from these three manufacturers after Mercedes-Benz pulled its C63 out and Jaguar pulled its XF-R out, so they’ll now all be challenging Bob Lutz’s lap time in – wait for it – a CTS-V.  Bob Lutz has managed to turn an off-the-cuff remark into a can’t-lose proposition for the CTS-V.  With the results already a foregone conclusion, I figured that I might as well save time and write about the event before it happened.

By Chris Haak

10.29.2009
(Actually posted 10.28.2009)

Today at beautiful Monticello Motor Club in Monticello, New York, the Cadillac CTS-V took on all comers and scored the fastest lap around the race track’s circuit.  Piloted by John Heinricy – the retired GM engineer and test driver who set the Nürburgring lap record for a production sedan in a CTS-V – the aforementioned Cadillac managed to set Monticello’s production sedan lap record as well of 7:59.  (Coincidentally, that is the same lap time that Heinricy had on the Nordschliefe). Continue Reading

By Roger Boylan

10.28.2009

Pu Yi, owner of two Buicks

Buick. To Americans of a certain age, the very name evokes old-geezerdom, not to say the somnolence of the retirement home. Doc, the grizzled family doctor; Great-Aunt Lucille, she of the howling hearing aid; weird Uncle George, who always listed to port behind the wheel and to starboard on foot…all proud owners of Centurys, Regals, or LeSabres. But in China, owning a Buick is a far livelier kettle of fish, akin for the Middle Kingdom’s thirty-somethings to driving a Lexus or Benz over here. This Sino-Buick romance goes back a long way; indeed, the last emperor, Pu Yi, was the proud owner of two Buicks, of which, you can be sure, he was no prouder than GM China is of its two million Chinese Buicks sold to date: “It took eight years for Shanghai GM to sell its first 1 million Buicks, but only three years to sell its second 1 million units,” said Kevin Wale, President and Managing Director of the GM China Group. Continue Reading

By Chris Haak

10.28.2009

GM’s former plant outside Wilmington, Delaware has in its recent history produced some real automotive duds.  The Chevy Chevette, Chevy Corsica, Chevy Malibu, and Saturn L-Series all come to mind.  Most recently, the plant (which has capacity to produce about 300,000 vehicles annually) has been building GM’s Kappa roadsters.  You know, the small, good-looking convertibles like the Saturn Sky, Pontiac Solstice, and the related Opel GT and Daewoo G2X.  The plant also made a few Solstice Coupes.

The plant appeared to have met its end in July 2009 when GM ceased production of the two-seaters.  There were some rumors that production of the Solstice or Sky could continue post-GM with slightly-restyled bodywork had GM managed to sell the models’ intellectual property, plant, and tooling. Continue Reading

By Brendan Moore

10.27.2009

A very tough 2008 and equally bad first part of 2009 has given way to profits again at India’s Tata Motors. Tata beat analysts’ forecasts as their profits more than doubled in the second quarter.

Tata posted the excellent numbers as a result of increased demand, higher margins owing to a decrease in costs and lower foreign exchange costs. Tata stated that its margins had jumped to 13.4%, a huge spike of 580 basis points from same time last year.

A company executive stated, “Volume recovery combined with improved realizations contributed to growth in revenues while stable material prices and accelerated cost reduction efforts continued to yield beneficial impact on margins.”

Tata produces an Indian lineup of lower-range passenger cars, the Nano, the world’s cheapest car, the Jaguar and Land Rover lines in the U.K, and a full range of trucks and busses for the Indian commercial market.

The profit figures do not include results from Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), which are resported separately.

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By Chris Haak

10.26.2009

In what is likely a first for an auto manufacturer, Volkswagen has decided to to eschew the traditional print/online/broadcast advertising campaign to launch its new 2010 GTI.  Instead, the company licensed an existing racing game for the iPhone, stripped out all of the other cars, added some slick social-media features and marketing materials for the 2010 GTI, and put it on Apple’s App Store for free.  The game is called Real Racing GTI.

iPhone apps as a promotional tool aren’t anything new; as I occasionally peruse the App Store, I’ll notice “featured” apps intended to promote movies or TV shows that are rated 2/5 or 3/5 stars.  Audi has sent several rounds of press releases over the past year about apps that it has offered for free to promote its products.  Being a car guy, of course I had to download those, and after trying Audi’s first effort for a few minutes, I got rid of it.  Let’s just say it was easy to see why it was getting only two or three stars.

What’s different about the Audi situation versus the GTI’s is that Audi only used the iPhone app as a supplement to a traditional media campaign.  There were still online and TV ads.  With the GTI’s launch, Volkswagen may have spent as little as $500,000 on mobile services like the game and other initiatives like a mobile device-friendly alternate website.  Volkswagen spent about $60 million, or 120 times more, on the 2006 GTI’s more conventional launch. Continue Reading

By Kevin Miller

10.26.2009

The 2010 Jaguar XF Premium arrived on a rainy autumn afternoon, with five days of heavy rain in the forecast. As I sat in the Ebony Black sedan in my driveway, taking in the striking Spice and Charcoal interior color combination and suede-like headliner while I familiarized myself with the controls and got my phone paired with the hands-free system, it was evident that I was not sitting in a mainstream car.

Launched in 2008 as a 2009 model, the XF introduced a new style for Jaguar sedans, a long-overdue departure from the quad-headlamp look of the XJ, S-type, and X-type. With a sexy body and innovative features like the (somewhat contrived) JaguarDrive gear selection knob, the XF is a sleek, striking sedan which looks like no other sedan on the road. For 2010, the XF Premium gets a new 5.0 liter direct injection V8 with 385 HP, a healthy increase from the base XF’s 300 HP 4.2 liter V8 Continue Reading