Car News Articles

With this issue of Automotive News Europe, we present 25 leading women in the European auto industry. We identified a number of them right away.

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Audi will unveil the new A6 exec in 2010 – a year after its key rivals the BMW 5-series and Mercedes E-class. Our artist’s impression, compiled with the help of sources in Ingolstadt, reveals a slick-looking evolution of today’s four-door, but we’re left wondering if Audi needs to evolve its styling more dramatically. Isn’t the new A6 at risk of becoming just another Russian doll Audi design?

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Kasey Kahne didn’t need to fret about his fifth-place finish in the Sprint Showdown qualifying race on Saturday. His loyal fans voted to send him into the All-Star race field and Kahne showed his appreciation by winning the whole thing. Read more and get final results here.
A.J. Allmendinger, a former open-wheel star in his second year of NASCAR racing, earned his first stock car win when he won the Sprint Showdown to earn a spot in the main All-Star event. Rookie Sam Hornish Jr., also from the open-wheel ranks, finished second to advance. Read more about the Showdown here.

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In the interest of full disclosure, I should let you know that I own a 2006 Nissan Murano. It’s sporty and has black leather seats, and those two things alone make it feel like a very different vehicle from the 2009 I recently tested. It’s almost as if the old Murano went and had a “procedure” or two done.

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And so it continues: the debate about the Toyota Prius as a fuel saver/economy car/green badge of honor/etc. over on Captain Mike’s review. Sammy Hagar’s off-hand comment about the Prius cannibalizing Camry sales intrigued me. For some strange reason– not anti-Detroit bias I can assure you (if you can be assured)– I’d never thought of the Prius as a cannibal. But it makes perfect (imperfect?) sense. If you’re in the market for “inexpensive, efficient, reliable transportation that makes you feel good about not driving anything else,” why wouldn’t you choose the Prius over the Camry? Or, for that matter, the Camry over the Prius? We’ve heard rumors that ToMoCo’s going to launch the Prius as a fourth brand. On one hand, yes. On the other hand, uh-oh. Toyota’s entirely useless Scion brand (remind me again what PRODUCT-related focus they bring to the table) is one GM-style branding mistake. Launching a Prius brand would be another. In fact, it looks to me like Toyota could, some day, maybe, not beyond the scope of possibility, become the new GM (especially when the old GM goes C11). Hey, empires rise, empires fall. C’est la guerre.  

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Did you know that sprinter Michael Duane Johnson could (can?) run 27 miles per hour? Obviously, he could only maintain that pace long enough to catch a bus or win an Olympic medal, and he’d have a hard time doing either whilst talking on the cell and carrying a child in one of those humongous child seats. But the point remains: 20mph is a very, very slow for a car. And a more important question also persists: is 20mph safer than say, 25mph? Or 30mph? In absolute terms, if we’re talking about car - pedestrian contact, ipso facto. The faster the car at the moment of impact, the more energy involved. But driving safety’s a slippery customer, where the primary variables are the driver’s level of attentiveness, personal reaction times and a wide variety of road conditions. So, will the UK’s decision to lower speed limits in town centers to 20mph help the Government reduce road deaths from 3,000 to 2,000 a year? To make that analysis, you’d have to know how many of those fatalities involved pedestrians in town centers, what speed the contact occurred, if a reduced speed would have prevented the fatality, and what other, perhaps more crucial variables were in play. From a public policy standpoint, you’d have to also analyze the expense of changing the signs and time lost vs. any other, perhaps more effective measures. But two things are for sure: that’s a debate the UK isn’t having, and no other measure would collect so much– if any– revenue for the government. And remember: it’s all for the children. 

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If I were Toyota, I’d be shaking in my boots right about now. Sure, Scion seemed like a good idea few years back when ToMoCo realized its buyers’ median age was seeping into Buick territory. Being charitable, one could call Toyota’s youth brand an interesting experiment. Being honest, Scion is schizophrenic. And the kids ain’t buying. And now they have some soon-to-be serious competition. Autoweek is reporting that Honda is launching a new “sub-brand” called Li Nian, which apparently means “subject” in Chinese. You’re looking at an unnamed concept built off the global City/Fit platform in conjunction with Honda’s Chinese partner Guangzhou Honda. The new brand will launch first in emerging markets (China, India) before eventually showing-up here in the States. Getting back to Toyota being frightened — kids might actually enjoy driving a sporty, inexpensive Fit-derivative– as opposed to a de-contented, lousy to drive Corolla hand-me-down. Li Nians should start rolling into dealerships near the guy that took your job in 2010. [There’s that date again…]

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CTVNews reports that the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) has reached deals with both GM and Chrysler for its Ontario members. The agreements mirror those that the CAW obtained from Ford. According to the official story: “Workers will see their wages frozen for three years in exchange for improvements in other areas.” “Other areas?” Such as not getting fired in the first place? The crux of the deal: Buzz Hargrove successfully delayed the inevitable. GM-Oshawa’s planned shift reduction is put off until 2009, and Chrysler’s Etobicoke plant, on death row for over a decade, will have its life extended to 2011. Hargrove is spinning the wage freeze as a victory, noting that he’s “done the very best to protect as many jobs as we could and protect and support people who won’t have a job”– despite failing to secuire long-term plans for either of the two plants. We now return you to our regular discussion of American Axle’s ongoing strike.

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The First Ever Second-Generation Biofuel Plant established in Saxony, Germany opened April. As we reported previously, a German/Dutch joint venture named Choren claims they’ll soon be converting wood scraps into 13k tons per year of “SunDiesel.” The list of claims for this venture is long: 90 percent fewer CO2 emissions than conventional diesel, less dependence on oil imports and less disturbance to world food markets than conventional biodiesel. Meanwhile… Autobild (print edition) says complex production processes means it will cost about one Euro to produce a liter of SunDiesel. Choren responded to the news by pointing-out that their first plant is not “optimized for low production costs.” What else, then? never mind. Choren is busy talking-up its large-scale plant, set to begin production in 2013 in Brandenburg, Germany. That new factory would/should/could produce around 200k tons/year of SunDiesel, at a cheaper price. That’s enough fuel to satisfy 0.6 percent of Germany’s demand for diesel.

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