A few comments about the new Ferrari seem to have missed a crucial point: there’s been a Ferrari California before, and it’s had a huge influence on the new one.
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I’m attending Automotive News Europe’s Congress in Turin next week. I go every year and it’s a useful occasion to get up to speed on some topical issues, hear some good speakers and meet up with people. It’s usually fun, too. Last year’s was in Prague and I wrote a review.
Hard to believe that was a whole year ago. Back then it looked like Volvo Cars was close to being on Ford’s sales block. And private equity was still all the rage.
Looking back, there were some prescient remarks from UBS analyst Max Warburton on Ford.
Must say, I liked Matt Donnelly’s (of Russia’s Rolf Group - he’s left there now) very direct way of expressing himself: ‘Russians don’t like hatchbacks - the weather gets very cold. Open the hatch and grandma in the back dies.’ He had one heck of a laid-back presenting style, too. I spoke to him on the phone last October - interesting bloke.
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Via
NY Times
In the last couple of decades, corporate profits and executive salaries have soared. But for many workers, the only thing that has increased is insecurity. In âThe Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker,â Steven Greenhouse, a labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times, examines the difficulties faced by workers at companies like FedEx and Wal-Mart, and points to Patagonia and Costco as models for corporate America. The book was published by Knopf on April 15. Chapter One is excerpted here.
Excerpted from âThe Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker,â by Steven Greenhouse (Knopf, 2008).
In his job at a Wal-Mart in Texas, Mike Michell was responsible for catching shoplifters, and he was good at it, too, catching 180 in one two-year period.
But one afternoon things went wildly awry when he chased a thief â a woman using stolen checks â into the parking lot. She jumped into her car, and her accomplice gunned the accelerator, slamming the car into Michell and sending him to the hospital with a broken kneecap, a badly torn shoulder, and two herniated disks. Michell was so devoted to Wal-Mart that he somehow returned to work the next day, but a few weeks later he told his boss that he needed surgery on his knee. He was fired soon afterward, apparently as part of a strategy to dismiss workers whose injuries run up Wal-Martâs workersâ comp bills.
Immediately after serving in the army, Dawn Eubanks took a seven-dollar-an-hour job at a call center in Florida. Some days she was told to clock in just two or three hours, and some days she was not allowed to clock in during her whole eight-hour shift. The call centerâs managers warned the workers that if they went home, even though they werenât allowed to clock in, they would be viewed as having quit.
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For the last two decades, two diminutive titans have towered over the rest of the compact car field, dominating sales, reputation, and mind share. Every friend of mine who has looked for a small car in the last decade has started their search by looking for a Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla, and for good reason–they tend to be durable, high-quality cars.
Overshadowed somewhat by this excellence has been Mazda’s small cars, which have ranged from okay (the GLC) to amazing (the 323 GTX) to beautifully refined (the Protege). The Protege has long been one of my favorites; for quality transportation over the last decade, in my mind it has been more of a mentor in its class than a protege, leading the way in refinement, quality, and its driving dynamics.
Given my wagon fanaticism, it should come as no surprise that the Protege5 is my favorite Protege of all. A sports car among economy cars, with sweetly chiseled good looks, the Protege5 had it all–agility, cargo room, and ease of maintenance.
Proteges are underrated as sporty economy cars, possibly because their styling is usually so staid. We’ve talked a lot about older Civics as sporty little runabouts, but the Protege is a sweet handler in its own right. The Protege5 was no exception–reviews at the time called the Protege5 a hatchback Miata.
The Protege5 only had 130 horsepower, and there was never a Mazdaspeed Protege5, so it’s not as if the Protege5’s cup runneth over with power. But matched to the sweet chassis, and given the deceptively light weight of the Protege5–only 2,700 pounds–it was quick enough to be fun.
The styling, though, is what keeps me coming back to the Protege5. The Protege5 is, in my opinion, the best-looking small car of this decade–it’s conventional, but very pretty. Wagons get my blood pressure up anyway; but unlike most wagons the Protege5 is lean and purposeful. Compared to most of today’s over-stuffed cars, which look as if they are inflated at around 1,500 PSI, the Protege5’s lines are sleek. It’s sporty without looking tacky, classy without being boring. It’s even one of those few cars that looks great in yellow.
Subaru has really fumbled around with the styling of its otherwise excellent WRX; it would be much better off with something that looks more like the Protege5.
The Mazda 3 replaced the Protege in 2004, and while the 3 is a nice piece (in fact, soon we’ll run a Mazda 3 Car Lust from Nathan), I miss the lean simplicity of the Protege5. What I don’t miss is a car name that rams a number into a word. Protege5? Hit the space bar, Mazda!
Sorry, I guess I’m feeling mildly curmudgeonly today.
–Chris H.
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Why choose a Specialist over a Generalist? Independent over Dealer?
As a specialist we know your car better, especially when it comes to the right way to make economical repairs that a general repair shop wouldnât know about or a Subaru dealer would never consider. Sometimes a vehicle will develop a pattern failure and a real solution needs to be found or a more economical repair procedure can be had.
Through the years we have found solutions to replacing expensive parts by making repairs to existing components rather than just blindly install new ones. We have been able to become very good at repairs and service work by specializing in Subaru and we try to share this experience with our customer with lower labor prices.
We know what parts we can use on your Subaru without sacrificing longevity. Most automakers have become pure design and assemble companies leaving the parts manufacture to other companies. These auto parts companies are free to sell the same parts in aftermarket channels with out the Subaru logo. While in some cases in only makes sense to stick with Subaru parts especially when it comes to slower moving items that may have not been introduced in the aftermarket by the companies that originally made the parts for Subaru. There is also a good chance that the exact replacement part can be found at a 20% savings if you know how to look (we do).
From top to bottom we really know your Subaru well and want to help you get as many trouble free miles out of it as possible. We have seen these cars go well over 300k and I am the owner of a 1992 Legacy with 292k and counting. We take pride in servicing cars with higher miles and often have suggestions to help keep them going. Even though your Subaru may be getting up there in miles donât discount just how long they will run.
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TEHRAN, Iran â Iran Khodro Company, the country’s largest vehicle manufacturer, continues to expand its regional and global reach. The automaker is opening a plant in Syria in April and readying a new plant in Turkey for 2009.
IKCO, as the automaker is known, is also ramping up exports as it builds a global presence outside Iran, one of the largest auto markets in the Middle East. The company builds more than half a million vehicles a year, and officials have said they want to boost annual production to more than a million vehicles and hike exports to more than 600,000 by 2016.
The Syrian plant has a modest annual capacity of 5,000 units. The Turkey plant will supply markets in Russia and central Europe. IKCO in the past two years also has begun kit assembly in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Venezuela and Argentina, with plans to add assembly in Egypt, Vietnam and China in the next year or two.
The vehicle of choice for most of these local assembly operations is the Samand, a compact sedan based heavily on the Peugeot 405 platform and priced starting at about $9,000. “Samand” is the Persian name for a local breed of horse.
Last year, the Iran government announced plans to develop a new model aimed specifically at Islamic markets in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, in cooperation with local partners in Malaysia and Turkey. With IKCO as the lead manufacturer on the project, the car is slated to begin production in 2011 and is being designed to sell for under $10,000.
What this means to you: If the U.S. government ever decides to lift sanctions on Iran, the Samand could challenge future Chinese and Indian imports at the low end of the market. â Paul Lienert, Correspondent
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The new Ferrari California will satisfy even the most demanding of owners in term of its superb vehicle dynamics and driving pleasure. The new model will be available exclusively as a convertible with a folding hard top. Both chassis and bodywork are aluminium, in line with the rest of the current range. The California will be powered by a new V8 engine mounted for the first time in the marque’s history in the mid-front position.
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Hyundai has been announced its eight-seat MPV model. The Hyundai MPV, called i800, goes on sale on 20 June for $20,000, and as with conventional seven-seat MPVs, features three rows of chairs. But unlike most of its rivals, which have a bench for three people across the middle and space for only two in the third row, the i800 has a pair of benches each with enough room to take a trio of passengers. Sliding rear doors will also ensure easy access to all the back seats.
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Sara Lacey is the perfect person to review the new 2009 Nissan Murano because she actually went out and bought the 2006 Murano. With a few years of experience with the crossover under her belt, she’s well-positioned to offer her take on the updated version. As Sara puts it, the new Murano seems to have had a “procedure or two done.” Read her full review on MotherProof.
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