By Chris Haak

Call it naïveté, call it giving folks the benefit of the doubt, call it whatever you want to.  But as a long-time buff book reader (I subscribed to Motor Trend continuously between 1987 and July 2010, or about 23 years), I never paid much mind to critics that accused media outlets of providing favorable editorial coverage for certain manufacturers and vehicles in return for advertising dollars.  Is the Motor Trend Car of the Year award driven by the best car, or by the best advertiser?  I’d always assumed that these magazines would take the high road and provide a fair and accurate description of the industry and its vehicles so that their readers could make informed choices when considering how to part with their hard-earned money.

But sitting at the breakfast table this morning with my newly-arrived October 2010 Road & Track, reading a single paragraph almost made me spit out my Cookie Crisp cereal.  At once, this single paragraph caused me to completely discount nearly everything else that I had read and was about to read in this magazine, and indeed, in many magazines.  The paragraph in question is found in R&T’s “New Cars for 2011″ section, a 28-page spread that highlights the changes to 2011 model-year vehicls with nary a critical comment.  That in and of itself is not reason to raise eyebrows, as “buyer’s guides” that tiptoe around a car’s shortcomings are certainly nothing new, but here’s what raised my hackles.

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By Chris Haak

From the day the flagship Volkswagen Phaeton launched in the US, analysts and customers questioned the wisdom of a company known for selling small, sporty, efficient cars deciding to sell a V8- and V12-powered $85,000 luxury car.  The wisdom of the Phaeton seemed even more dubious when one considered the fact that the Audi showroom down the street offered a very capable A8 luxury sedan, sharing many of the Phaeton’s parts and powertrain choices, for a price not far from the big VW.  There was also the large leap in price from the next-most expensive Volkswagen model at the time, the $40,000 Passat W8, to the Phaeton.

The best the company could have hoped for was selling a few Phaetons to executives who didn’t want the glamour and glitz of a luxury-branded car.  The more likely cases were that either the Phaeton would flop, or it would cannibalize Audi A8 sales.  As it turned out, the Phaeton flopped in the US.  Just 1,433 Phaetons were sold in the initial 2004 model year, followed by 820 units for 2005.  The car was withdrawn from the US market in 2006, and several VW executives distanced themselves from the white elephant.  Notably, former VW CEO Bernd Pischetsrieder called the car’s global 20,000-unit sales goal a “pipe dream.”

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We say there’s no way that Chrysler can get to 25 percent fleet by December 31.

By Chris Haak

The auto industry’s paper of record, Automotive News, did a nice piece of reporting in this week’s issue (link here [sub], via TTAC) on the explosion in fleet sales at Ford, GM, and Chrysler so far during 2010.  Thanks to a thorough review of internal documents, conversation with contacts at the manufacturers, and its own estimates, AN has painted a less-than-rosy picture of the sales mix behind the overall sales gains we’re seeing in the industry so far during 2010.  Basically, retail sales are nearly flat – if not shrinking – at GM and Chrysler, and both companies’ fleet/retail mix is more heavily skewed toward fleet than toward retail than is typical.

Generally, automakers try to keep sales that go to fleets at or below 25 percent of their total sales volume.  There are three main types of fleet sales – commercial fleets, government fleets, and daily rental fleets.  Sales to commercial and government fleet buyers aren’t as bad as sales to daily rental fleet buyers, because those first two types tend to hold onto the vehicles longer, maintain them well, and have a specific driver assigned to the vehicle.  Sales to daily rental fleets are not good because, well, we all know how people treat rental cars.  Worse still, rental cars are usually not well-equipped examples, and once their useful life has been exhausted, the rental companies dump them at auctions, which depresses the resale values of the same model everywhere.  That tends to anger consumers, and also tends to make leasing those specific vehicles a more expensive endeavor.  Finally, sales to daily rental fleet buyers are typically heavily discounted, meaning there’s little profit for automakers from the sales.  But hey, they keep the factories running, right?

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By Chris Haak

All of us at Autosavant are obviously dedicated car buffs.  Gasoline (or perhaps diesel fuel) runs through our veins, and our joints are lubricated by Mobil 1.  But several of us are also serious technology geeks.  It pained many of us to see what this industry has gone through over the past two years, and yet, rising from the wreckage of laid-off workers, closed auto plants, stiffed shareholders and bondholders, and a government on the hook for some $50 billion-with-a-B in bailout funds, we’re beginning to see an exciting round of outstanding new vehicles.

In the so-called ‘malaise era’ of the 1970s and 80s, small, efficient, and – most importantly – reliable Japanese imports swept into a post oil embargo America and ate the American automakers’ collective lunches.  Followed by their breakfasts, dinners, and desserts as well.  This time, it feels different.  Propulsion technology has sufficiently advanced so that cars can be fun-to-drive and efficient.  Big block V8s are no longer required (nor are they even produced anymore) for screaming fun in a new car.  Who needs a big block when the 2011 Mustang GT’s 5.0 doubles the 1993 Mustang GT’s 5.0’s horsepower output (412 vs. 205)?  And yet, the 2011 Mustang GT with the six-speed manual is rated at the same 26 miles per gallon highway rating that the 105-horsepower 2.3 liter base Mustang achieved with a four-speed automatic.  Quadruple the horsepower with the same fuel economy sounds good to me.  Domestic cars in large part have similar (sometimes better, sometimes worse) quality scores to Japanese cars.  Let’s look at this issue more closely.

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By Chris Haak

We’re not quite sure why this is even news today, since former GM vice chairman Bob Lutz told reporters two years ago, in 2008, that the Chevy Volt would sell for about $40,000 before the $7,500 federal tax credit.  But as the Volt’s fall 2010 launch date approaches, the company has confirmed that Lutz’s prediction proved true.  At that time, Lutz also noted that the Volt in its first generation would blow past its cost target by some $10,000, or 33 percent over the $30,000 bogey at the time the program’s development began.

Why is the Volt so expensive, when a new Prius goes for about half the price with similar interior space (actually, the Prius seats five, and the Volt seats only four) and an all-electric Nissan Leaf goes for $32,780?  And why should you consider a Volt over a Prius or Leaf?

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By Charles Krome

There are plenty of good reasons why Ford has reclaimed its place as one of the top automakers in the U.S., but one that sometimes gets short shrift is the company’s efforts to unify its global product offerings. So going forward, instead of having to spend the resources needed to support two entirely separate Focus lines, one in the U.S. and one in Europe, the company is going to take advantage of the economies of scale that come with building just one.

Unsurprisingly, the practical effect of this will be that many of the U.S. Fords will be replaced with their European counterparts—not the other way around. It actually started when Ford began importing the Transit Connect, and we’ll soon see the European Fiesta introduced on our shores, followed by the European Focus.

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By Charles Krome

Frankly, I’m not much of a Transformers guy. I was a bit too old to watch the cartoons, and the acting skills of Megan Fox notwithstanding, I watched but didn’t get much out of the first Michael Bay movie. Needless to say, I passed on the second altogether.

On the other hand, I am an old-school NASCAR fan, who grew up cheering for the likes of Bobby Allison, Richard Petty and David Pearson back in the 1970s. True, my interest in the sport shrank as NASCAR itself grew to become a multi-billion-dollar spec-racing series in more recent years, but it never disappeared entirely.

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By Charles Krome

When you think about it, Elon Musk’s decision to name his electric sports-car company after Nikola Tesla made for a perfect match. Tesla, the scientist, was originally known for his groundbreaking research into electricity and electromagnetism, but his later years were taken up by lawsuits, constant battles to get his projects funded and an increasingly eccentric personal life.

Needless to say, it doesn’t take much creative license to apply that template to Musk, which would seem to make Tesla, the automaker, an odd choice for a Toyota investment. Yet back in May, Toyota ponied up $50 million and the NUMMI plant in California to partner with Tesla on future products, with the future arriving a lot quicker than most people thought.

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By Charles Krome

According to my handy New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Thumb Index Edition), the word “evoke” means “call into being or activate (a memory, image, feeling, etc.).”

Here, I’ll use it in a sentence: When I first heard about the new Range Rover, it evoked the image of a sleek, angular high-performance luxury coupe with a retractable hardtop and a supercharged 405-hp Northstar V8.

But that’s probably because the name of what’s going to be the “smallest, lightest and most fuel-efficient Range Rover ever produced,” the vehicle that Land Rover’s design director called “a bold evolution of Range Rover design,” will be called the “Evoque” when it launches in 2011; the groundbreaking Cadillac concept vehicle that was introduced at the 1999 North American International Auto Show, the one that eventually morphed into the Cadillac XLR, that car was called the “Evoq.”

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By James Wong

I would be in trouble if I hadn’t realised this earlier. But I think there are many more out there who haven’t, and who are continually spending more and more money. Consumerism has become the economic engine of the world, but it is also a problem that might not have a turnaround if we don’t chart a course for its remedy. So what does this have to do with cars, you may ask. Actually, the car world is one of the biggest expressions of consumerism.

Just a few weeks ago, my dad took delivery of his new car. We were pondering for at least a few months whether we even needed this new car, because we were actually pretty happy with what we already had. However, driven by the itch to spend on something, and the desire to attain something of a higher status, we made the plunge and invested heavily in a new car. The decision felt like a good one when we were about to make it, but after making it and taking delivery, a tinge of ‘Why did we buy it?’ started to creep up inside me. Sure, it is a nice car and it does its job well… But what can it do that a car half its price cannot? Nothing much actually.

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