Is this, actually, a brilliant idea?
This Polish Jaguar XJ Runs on a 1.8-liter Ford Diesel - Carscoops
Is this, actually, a brilliant idea?
This Polish Jaguar XJ Runs on a 1.8-liter Ford Diesel - Carscoops
Lack of charisma can be fatal.
Visca Catalunya!
Well, at least it's a comfy place to wait until you hit 60mph..
Life's too short to drive bad cars.
But imagine of the mpg's!
(image stolen from theoatmeal.com)
Lack of charisma can be fatal.
Visca Catalunya!
I think I realised were your tongue was...yet, I somehow take offense when
I read such general and dismissive statements which are poorly supported. I have seen far too many of those from so called car-lovers that can only think in terms of premium german cars (which they can probably not even afford themselves).
"I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting, but it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously." Douglas Adams
I am sure they do in China or something as well...the most popular 7er in Taiwan used to be the 728. In countries like that where you really don't have much of an open road, you want the luxuries and niceties offered by the top level saloon but you don't need the power...
University of Toronto Formula SAE Alumni 2003-2007
Formula Student Championship 2003, 2005, 2006
www.fsae.utoronto.ca
Actually, even on the open road, here in Europe, those cars would be fine most probably. Downsized, turbocharged engines have worked wonders for mid range punch and they no longer feel like you are thrashing a small engine which is struggling with the weight of the car.
Also, it would be nice that having a set amount of money you could choose between an entry-level, well sorted BMW (if BMWs ever go back to being well sorted again, that is) or a much faster, but less entertaining in the corners, generalist family/executive saloon.
In a way that's what I did with my current car; I chose intangible characteristics over cold numbers.
Lack of charisma can be fatal.
Visca Catalunya!
Toyota bottles out.
Toyota updates Euro-market GT86 suspension, appearance - Autoblog
Lack of charisma can be fatal.
Visca Catalunya!
Well ironically I feel pretty much the same about most European cars. Basically because in Australia they all command a premium price because they are “European”. The snob value attached alone is enough to put me off. When I see a Citroën C5 boasting front wheel drive and 150kw for AU $57,000 against a Holden Calais RWD 210kw AU$44,297 I cannot understand why anyone would buy the former other than for the snob value (or perhaps fuel economy that you can still get elsewhere). There may be a bunch of electronic gadgets that the Holden doesn’t have but I haven’t really looked into it because as far as cars go I don’t care. I suppose I see that most of these cars are for people who don’t really “love” cars rather see them as a form of transport. All good.
While not one who has a broad personal knowledge of European cars I guess I take a lot of stock in what I have heard from those who have. My father in law, was a service manager for several dealerships as well as being a qualified mechanic. He has worked on many types of cars. My brother in law is a qualified mechanic, has been a service manager, owned his own service centre and now lectures in automotive at TAFE ( a tertiary college for apprentice mechanics). One of my mates is a qualified mechanic, has owned his own service centre, has been a service manager and also lectures at MTA (a private tertiary college for apprentices). Both my mate and brother in law come in contact with apprentices from a variety of dealerships. These guys pretty much hold the same opinion as me and I guess influence mine in as much as my indifference toward European (and French) cars. Basically overpriced (here in Oz) and not necessarily reliable or at least no more so than our domestic product. And when you have to fork out for repairs the cost is exponentially higher. They simply do not offer anything I find more desirable than our own home grown product. Sure a high end BMW or Merc would be desirable but I don’t even necessarily aspire to one of them either. And as you say I couldn’t afford one. ;-)
"A string is approximately nine long."
Egg Nogg 02-04-2005, 05:07 AM
Euro-hippies, still adamant that three pedals are necessary.
Europes Favorite Ford is a White, Five-Door Focus with Petrol Engine and Manual Gearbox - Carscoops
Lack of charisma can be fatal.
Visca Catalunya!
FCA (or whatever the Marchionne circus is called now) unveiled their five-year plan yesterday. It seems pretty thorough and far-less off-in-space than I thought it would be.
The focus seems to be on segregating the American brands:
- Dodge will go from cheap and shit to cheap and sporty with the reabsorbtion of SRT and dropping the venerable Grand Caravan.
- Chrysler will be making the transition from a crypto-luxury to pseudo-economy brand; they will be fortifying their lineup at the bottom with a compact 100 and in the middle with several horrible crossovers. Hybrid engines will be capriciously sprinkled on the Chrysler range by Canadian line workers.
- Jeep and RAM will continue on in their current vein; they are the most profitable brands on this side of the Prime Meridian and Marchionne & Co. seem reluctant to mess with that success. There will be no aluminum RAM to compete with Ford's new F-150, instead they will focus on putting Cummins in as many trucks as they can. They will also selling their Doblo-based ludicrously-named RAM ProMaster City Eurovan thing, leaving only the General without a suspiciously-Cartesian van from Europe. Jeep will refresh its American offerings in their current mould, while cashing in on their rugged image in the rest of the world with a series of increasingly-pathetic cute utes.
- Maserati will mess around with the Ghibli (sedan), Alfieri (coupe/GT), and Levante (SUV). They seem to be trying to slowly phase out RWD and natural aspiration from their range as they chase after the Bentley/retired-pornstar crowd. Diesels will be there as well.
- Fiat will focus on the 500, which is coming dangerously-close to becoming its own spin-off brand. Hopefully, if this happens, 500 doesn't follow the same inbred bloated trajectory that Mini has taken. There is talk of a 124 and 124-derived sports car, as well as a possible Fiat interception of Alfa's Miata. Elsewhere, Fiat will maintain its diverse global lineup, with almost none of the attempts at consolidation that Marchionne seems hellbent on imposing onto the satellite brands.
- For sure, Ferrari will maintain their current posizione and will pursue the most premium setup for the car anda the mechandise.
- Alfa Romeo will be axing their current range in the hope of launching eight new AWD and RWD models: a large sedan, "specialty car", and two crossovers amongst them. The stuff I've read has been suprisingly mum about the Alfiata. Has anyone read anything on that? Fiat has indicated that they want Alfa to follow SRT's model of a small group of entusiast engineers and designers making enthusiast's cars. The cognitive dissonance, even for an Italian carmaker, is pretty high on this considering their admission of failure of the separate SRT brand.
I've tried to provide a more-or-less accurate and objective report as to what was said, but this is just aggregated from stuff I've read online and when my opinion bleeds through, I tried to at least do it overtly.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out for them. As the prematurely-senile individual that I am, I would have liked to see Chrysler return to its luxuriant past, but aside from that, the restructuring of the Mopar brands makes sense, except for RAM, which is stupid.
American truck manufacturers never seem quite sensitive enough to the affect of gas prices on their sales and Signore Sergio sure seems to be putting a lot of his eggs in that breadbasket. I think that, along with the proliferation of SUVs throughout the lineup as whole might be a bridge too far. The hybridization of some of their cars (and dieselization of their North-American trucks) might help, but we'll see.
Dodge is currently in a pretty uncomfortable place in the market that I don't think this maneuvering will do all that much to rectify. As far as I can tell, cheapness is one of their only assets. Also, if the Durango and friends are axed to make way for more Jeeps, Dodge will lose one of its more-popular models. I think the "sportiness" tht they hope to infuse into the brand with SRT Chargers and Challengers could be an asset if they can make a smaller rear-drive architecture that allows them to make a ponycar-sized ponycar.
As I said above, I'm not particularly happy with Maserati's strategy, but if done correctly (har har), I think it could work out well for them.
Fiat the brand is poised to be just as schizophrenic once this plan is in effect as it is now. I guess as an "American" carmaker it's their job to have the pilot brand's lineup be absolutley uncomprehensibe. I really hope they don't steal the Miata from Alfa, though my dad, with rose-tinted memories of his Fiat Spider, will surely be elated.
Ferrari is as Ferrari was, though their plans to release a new model every year seem a bit optimistic. When they're run out of backlogged R&D in 2017, we'll surely be seeing the Ferrari Linea with Ferrari-branded seats (1.5x10^10 lire) and steering wheel (1.0x10^10 lire).
Alfa is promising a lot, so I don't think anybody will be surprised if they fail very miserably. The whole idea of making Alfa into a crack team of enthusiasts seems very contrived and I'm sure will result in the same PowerPoint jockeys who run every other carmaker running Alfa. If Alfa can make a bespoke RWD two- and four-door coupe that is sufficiently Alfa, they might even do well. I keep telling myself that the market is saturated with BMW, so maybe an alternative sports sedan could sell well. I don't mean I want Alfa to make a 3-Series competitor. It should be smaller and perhaps even bear the Giulia name.
What do yinz folk think?
"Kimi, can you improve on your [race] finish?"
"No. My Finnish is fine; I am from Finland. Do you have any water?"
It is a sad day for Lancia enthusiasts ...
If you should see a man walking down a crowded street talking aloud to himself, don't run in the opposite direction, but run towards him, because he's a poet. You have nothing to fear from the poet - but the truth.
(Ted Joans)
Alfa's 3 series will likely be the Guilia, but they are talking about a couple of smaller cars as well, one of which will probably be a Guiletta. Seems odd that they talked about dropping the Alfa MX-5 RWD sports fun (or at least making it a Fiat Spyder) but then talk about having a flexible RWD platform for their cars, even the smaller ones. Might've made sense to make it all the same platform? No? Hmm. Hopefully that platform will lend itself to a little lightweight roadster anyway.
And yes, RIP Lancia, you finally will be allowed to die.
Life's too short to drive bad cars.
Sniffpetrol's sharp-as-a-knife sense humour hits the nail right in the head. We have seen far too many FGA/Fisler business plans to believe in this one any more than we did on the previous ones. Let's get cracking with the analysis.
Lancia's virtual death at least allows it to rest peacefully after having treated such an historic name so badly and unfairly. It remains to be seen what its definitive fate will be (China, hibernation or burial); but it's been a long and painful process which started in 1986 when Fiat bought Alfa Romeo and a clear example of how not to manage a brand. I won't delve into it further; we have discussed about it extensively in the past and you all know my opinion on it.
But this is the past, now let's look into what the present and the future may offer us.
To start I will clear the uninteresting tidbits. Ferrari will just continue as is, as a business there's little to fault and they will embrace turbos and hybridisation, the end. Ram and Fiat Professional are of no interest whatsoever to me and neither is Jeep.
Having said that, let's move into Chrysler. I think that here Fisler is making a huge mistake. Now Chrysler has never been full-on premium or luxury but nevertheless (and friends from the other side of the pond, correct me if I'm wrong) it has always carried a little bit of brand cachet, being above from purely mainstream brands like Ford or Chevrolet. Building on this would have allowed Fiat to pursue higher profit margins with each Chrysler sold and also try to get a foothold in China's burgeoning pseudo-luxury/premium car market, much like Buick has done. They have instead decided to go on the exact opposite direction which probably means Chrysler is the new Rover.
With that in mind, I wonder where does that leave Dodge. I always thought that Dodge was meant to be Mopar's mainstream offering, but apparently this is not the case at all. It seems the idea is to see on which market segments Fisler wants to be in, in North America and then distribute them between Chrysler and Dodge, Dodge being the slightly sportier alternative to Chrysler's more elegant and restrained attitude. This looks suspiciously like what happened between Lancia and Alfa Romeo, and we all know how that ended...
Moving on to Italy, Fiat-brand's strategy could make sense if it is well executed, but I'm seeing it more successful at the the lower end of the market (building on the image of the Panda and especially the 500) than on bigger cars. Bringing the Fiat Viaggio (and however the hatchback version is called) straight from China will quite possibly be profitable even with small volumes but it will bomb badly in terms of image. I don't know, it seems like Fisler does not care much about Fiat, nor do they want/need it to be a volume leader. The important thing here is not to lose money.
Maserati's strategy makes a lot of sense. They have the name and the prestige and with the right models they could achieve the correct amount of volume with high per-car profit margins. On the product side, they seem to be doing well and the up-coming models will very possibly be attractive and in line with what the market will demand. The Italian Porsche, basically. This was the easy one, though.
And now for the big one, Alfa Romeo. Now we could discuss about Alfa Romeo almost endlessly, but let's cut straight to the chase here, the brand has a loyal following and its fans are passionate but they have find extremely difficult to convert all this passion and joy into sales. And with no sales, there is no profit; and with no profit there's no point in making cars at all. They have tried all sorts approaches, from sportier Fiats to German-style premiumness but all have failed miserably. The only reason why Alfa Romeo hasn't been cancellerated (and Lancia has) is because Alfa Romeo is some sort of national treasure in Italy; one simply does not shut down Alfa Romeo.
Alfa Romeo has seen intents on revivals these last years, but this current one is the most exciting one in decades. Essentially, Alfa Romeo is going fully rear wheel drive. Now that they are free from annoying competition (Lancia) and with the necessary resources at their disposal (Chrysler) it looks as though they could make this time. The new models can't come soon enough and I can't wait to buy one, but will it be enough to tempt the average driver of BMWs? On that last front, I'm not really sure. Alfa Romeo's image may be too damaged to be recovered (although maybe the US can change that), only time will tell.
All in all, we will see.
Lack of charisma can be fatal.
Visca Catalunya!
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