Domestic automakers have much to be happy about, with , and General Motors all gaining market share last year for the first time since 1988. Yet according to Bloomberg, 2012 won’t be as good to Detroit. Total sales are projected to grow from 12.8 million vehicles last year to 13.6 million, according to the report, but increasing competition from Korea and a Japanese recovery from the natural disasters of 2011 mean those extra sales aren’t likely headed to the Big Three.
The news agency spoke to five analysts, and predictions have the U.S. automakers losing 1.3 percentage points this year. The analysts estimate that GM will drop 0.6 of a percent, Ford will lose 0.5 percent, and Chrysler will be down 0.2 percent. is seen gaining 0.9 percent, with grabbing an extra 0.5 percent, while and are only projected to see their combined market share improve by 0.01.
If all this comes true, GM would have the top market share in the U.S. at 19 percent, with Ford in second at 16.3 percent, followed by Toyota at 13.8 percent, Chrysler at 10.5 percent, and Honda at 9.5 percent.
In the wake of last week’s about the safety of the (which itself followed an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that concluded plug-in vehicles “) former General Motors Vice Chairman has written a column for Forbes that strikes back against the media (especially conservatives) who are attacking the car he thought would be one of his most important legacies.
Politicians and members of the media on the right, from to , have talked smack about the Volt, and Lutz says this “has attracted my attention and ire.” , he doesn’t mince words, writing:
The Oscar for totally irresponsible journalism has to go to The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News, with, as its key guest, Lou Dobbs. Amid much jocular yukking, the Volt was depicted as a typical federal failure. … Boiled down to the subtext, Dobbs’ message was this: “All Volts catch fire, and therefore all Volts have been recalled.” That simply isn’t the case. …
To top it off, these two media pros lamented the fact that the same government that had forced GM to produce the Volt was now extending $7,500 tax credits towards its purchase, thus squandering even more of “our taxpayer” dollars on this failed Socialist-collectivist flop. Truth? The $7,500 tax credit was enacted under the Bush administration!
Don’t let Lutz’s words make you think he’s taking a left/liberal stance. He’s still a self-declared “conservative Republican” who hates that right-wing talking heads are spiraling downward into this sort of “deliberate misstatement of facts.” They “have managed to make me embarrassed to describe myself as a conservative,” he writes, adding, “Let’s leave the ‘invention of facts’ to the left-wing climate-change alarmists.” There – that should offend pretty much everyone who’s not in the dead political center.
has a redesigned that it truly believes can compete with the likes of the and . So it’s going where the eyeballs are with , ponying up for the brand’s first-ever Super Bowl ad. Lexus’ commercial is just a 30-second spot, joining the likes of Acura, , Cadillac and other brands buying time during the big game.
Lexus is calling its ad, “The Beast,” which calls to mind both and the . The actual spot, however, has a rather hackneyed sci-fi theme: A GS350 is locked up in a shipping container sized cage in a lab, and uses its new “Lexus spindle grille” to break free in a destructive orgy of CGI.
Saab North America acknowledged that the chances were exceptionally slim, but it long enough to give another company a chance to buy it. Shortly after Saab NA appointed a third-party administrator, McTevia & Associates, it was decided there was no way to save the company short of liquidation, and on January 23, the administrator announced bankruptcy.
But Saab NA was beat to the filing by a group of 162 out of the 188 Saab dealers, who filed for involuntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware. The dealers said last week they were going to file for Chapter 7, but instead chose Chapter 11 because of its lower costs and or for Saab NA’s parent succeeds and they want to restart operations here. The document was filed in Delaware because the dealer body feels they’ll get better hearing “further away from Detroit.” Dealers also wanted the force of court orders to back up any decisions made, not that of a third-party administrator.
Underneath all the legal machinations, though, if estimates from Saab NA dealer attorney Leonard Bellavia are accurate, then the parties could emerge without getting financially kneecapped. When McTevia announced its plan to file, that Saab NA’s liabilities were $10.5 million and assets at between $75 million and $125 million. With no more parts on the way and 2,400 cars on lots, McTevia had earlier said that the parts distribution business is “the only meaningful asset.”
When McLaren released the MP4-12C, there were some questions about the distinctiveness of its styling, but not about whether the engineers at Woking had extracted every bit of performance they could from its 3.8-liter twin-turbo V8 engine. John Hennessey and company, however, think they can do better. That’s why Hennessey Performance Engineering has targeted the 12C for its latest tuning package.
Traditionally, Hennessey usually starts by bolting on a pair of turbos to whatever car it can get its hands on. But McLaren has already done that, so Hennessey has fitted new ones, and along with it, upgraded the intercooler, intake, exhaust, electronic control modules and transmission. It’s also fitted a CarbonAero body kit, new wheels with Michelin Pilot Super Sport rubber and a redone interior swathed in carbon, leather and Alcantara.
The result is 800 horsepower, up from 592 stock. What Hennessey hasn’t touched, however, are the MP4-12C’s suspension and brakes, which the Texas-based tuner didn’t feel it could improve upon. Whether the rest is advisable is up for debate, but that’s never stopped the Texas tuner before, so check out the details in the press release and the renderings for a closer look at what to expect should any McLaren owners inexplicably feel their 12C is just too slow.
Perhaps the biggest reveal of 2012 for fans of luxury performance all-electric vehicles (or, perhaps, anyone automotively inclined with a pulse) is when pulls the shroud from its crossover at its new Los Angeles design studio. And now, we have been given a strong hint of what to expect.
The upstart California startup has just sent out a new version of its invitation to customers, and included on the summons is a partially silhouetted image of something seemingly very sleek and very sexy. Indeed, it must be the Model X. While there is some of the same design language used in the sedan, the teaser suggests a vehicle with a shorter hood, a taller roof and less-pronounced creases in its sheet metal.
We’ll have a presence at the event, but you can witness the unveiling in real time from the comfort of your own home. CEO has that the reveal will be shown live on the at 8:00 PM (we presume that’s Pacific Standard Time). He also adds, “Most cars are pretty blah. This is not.”
After seeing the image above and adding the “Quicker than a Porsche 911 and roomier than an Audi Q7″ statement we’ve heard previously to the equation, we’re going to give him the benefit of the doubt. For now.
This year’s selection for North American Truck of the Year was something of a sign of the times as the pool of nominees didn’t really fit the traditional definition of “truck” – beasts of burden with features like a low range, open bed and/or body-on-frame construction. Not only were all three finalists crossovers (including the winning ), but so were the other four on the short list of nominees.
The jury has been monitoring the market’s shift from body-on-frame SUVs to unibody-based crossovers for years now, and detailed discussions about whether to alter the name of its Truck of The Year award have been a staple conversation among members of the voting pool for perhaps half a decade. Those debates have finally bore fruit. Beginning with next year’s award, instead of North American Truck of the Year, the hardware will be awarded as the North American Truck/Utility of the Year.
The name change should not only be a bit cleaner when it comes to including the market’s ever-diversifying pool of crossovers, it will also afford room on the other end of the spectrum for the inclusion of heavy-duty full-size trucks, a segment of vehicles that previously weren’t eligible. The change reflects another shift in the market, where vehicles like the and are no longer being considered solely for purchase as work trucks – more and more everyday consumers are looking to them as capable daily drivers. The jury had previously considered only light-duty trucks like the and for the award.
With the crossover segment mushrooming in popularity and diversifying rapidly, it’s become difficult to readily classify what constitutes a crossover vehicle as opposed to a car. Branches of the U.S. government classify the exact same vehicle as a car and a truck, automakers invent new terminology to trumpet, journalists call them one thing and consumers end up labeling them another. The NACTOY jury will thus look to indicators like overall height and capability to help funnel eligible vehicles into the Car of the Year or Truck/Utility of the Year category.
When is a not a Nissan Juke? When it’s the 480-horsepower, Godzilla-powered Juke-R, that’s when. Then it’s a supercar-beater. And to prove the point, Nissan UK took its one-off super-crossover down to Dubai for a little street racing action.
So what did Nissan pit its Juke-R against? No, not other crossovers, but a pack of the leanest, meanest supercars on the market: the , and . We shot from the sidelines a couple of weeks ago, but since the publicity stunt proved so popular, Nissan responded by releasing an official, high-quality version, complete with in-car footage and plenty of tire squealing. to check it out.
The roads winding from the southernmost coast of Spain up to Ascari Race Resort near the town of Ronda are enough to bring telling tales out of any car that professes to have high performance intentions. What talented few acquit themselves well on these roads are then exposed to the 3.4-mile Ascari circuit, and that’s usually enough to send most of them home in a huff of brake dust and blow-by.
This time in the crucible, it’s the , a car first shown under the hard lights of November’s . Despite not being the most powerful in the range, this naturally aspirated GTS is tipped to offer the most race-like dynamics of the entire Panamera portfolio. And after 100 or so miles on public amusement park roads and 20 or so on the track, this plus-size GT showed us it’s capable of dicing it up like a or while delivering an understandably different experience from behind the wheel.
What happens when a meets an Alfa Romeo? The , that’s what happens. But as promising as Auburn Hills’ new economy sedan is, what we’re really looking forward to is what Ralph Gilles and company over at the SRT division can cook up. And the folks over at Motor Trend think they’ve got a pretty good idea of what to expect.
For the Dart SRT4, Dodge could go one of two ways: turbocharging the existing Tigershark 2.0-liter four, or shoehorning in the new . Since the latter would likely push the Dart SRT4’s price up beyond $30,000 and competitive levels, the smarter money’s on the former. But in order to compete with the likes of the and – and outshine the 285-horsepower it succeeds – we could be looking at nearly 300 horses under the hood.
Couple that with a six-speed dual-clutch transmission (we’d still hope for a manual), upgraded rolling stock, brakes and suspension, and a more aggressive aero pack and we could be looking at one very mean pocket rocket indeed.
It would probably be easier for researchers to change tracks and start telling us what doesn’t cause cancer or obesity or car accidents. Latest on the list of automotive smash-up causes, according to a study by UK insurer Swiftcover, are drivers leaving their fog lights on in good visibility. The numbers are brazen, with Swiftcover attributing “as many as 300,000″ accidents and two million near misses in the last 12 months “caused by drivers leaving fog lights on in the same period.”
The UK highway code prohibits driving with one’s fog lights on in conditions with visibility greater than 100 meters. Swiftcover’s study says the lights dazzle other drivers, especially in London where 50 percent of incidents were registered, and that this applies to both front and rear fog lights.
for a press release on the study and a link to the Highway Code if you need a refresher.
may be a nameplate still associated with , but as any New Yorker will tell you, it’s also a class of car and its application: large domestic luxury sedans used as chartered taxi cabs preferred by executives and highly valued professionals to get from one meeting to the next through Manhattan’s notorious traffic. It’s a market Lincoln itself is keen to retain, but with the demise of the Town Car as a model, it’s pitching the crossover for the application. , however, is going with the XTS.
The top-end GM marque’s new flagship sedan will be presented on February 13 at the upcoming International LCT (Limousine, Charter and Tour) Show at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. There, Cadillac will showcase the XTS W20 Livery Sedan Package, paving the way for extended-wheelbase and even sedan chassis to be made available sometime later this year.
So will Cadillac finally be able to leapfrog past longtime rival Lincoln in this vital market? Will the XTS prove the ultimate successor to the Town Car? for the full press release and cast your vote in the poll below.
This year Mopar is celebrating 75 years since its name – a combination of MOtor and PARts – was first trademarked. During that time, Mopar has evolved to become synonymous with performance parts for and vehicles, as well as amp’d-up specialty package vehicles, vehicle service and maintenance, and add to the long list of Chrysler Group brands it supports since the Italian automaker took part ownership in the smallest of Detroit’s Big 3.
Anniversaries usually come with presents, and Mopar is bring four to show and share at the next month. The first, and only one that will be sold turn-key, is the ‘12 Mopar 300, which becomes the brand’s third factory-built model for modern times following the and . While offering no more power than a standard 5.7-liter V8-equipped 300, the ‘12 Mopar does benefit from a new final-drive ratio of 3.91:1 that drops its 0-60 time in the low five-second range, as well as a significantly stiffer suspension, grippier tires and brake system upgrades.
Then there’s the exterior. If the plague’s preferred method of transmission were by car, this would be its ride. It is the Black Death on wheels, which themselves are 20-inch, 8-spoke forged aluminum rollers painted Gloss Black with Mopar center caps. We especially like the tasteful blue striping that appears across the ‘12 Mopar’s sides and around its rims. While we’ve yet to see it, Mopar says the interior is equally void of light save for accents of Mopar Blue.
Only 500 of these ‘12 Mopar 300 models will be built and sold this summer for the price of $49,700, which includes destination charges. Each one will also come with a special box of goodies that includes Mopar-branded key fobs and merch; proof of the vehicle’s exact manufacture date and number built; and a sketch of the car signed by its designer.
Follow the jump for three more anniversary models from Mopar.
Last year was a good one for Harley-Davidson. According to Asphalt and Rubber, the American bike manufacturer saw its sales increase by 5.9 percent globally compared to 2010. Sales in the U.S., meanwhile, were up 5.8 percent. All told, Harley-Davidson managed to move 235,188 units last year, with 151,683 of those heading to owners in the States. Those figures mean the manufacturer managed to post a net income of $105.6 million last year. By contrast, during the fourth quarter of 2010 the company saw a net loss of $46.7 million.
The global recession hadn’t been kind to the company. With a model line designed to cater to the wealthy and their lust for toys, Harley-Davidson suddenly saw itself posting yearly losses. Those at the helm sold off MV Agusta and pulled the plug on Buell all together in an effort to keep Harley-Davidson up right.
Those moves seem to have helped. The company posted $4.6 billion in revenue last year, which marks an increase of 11.6 percent over 2010.
For 15 years, McLaren was the F1 team of choice for , enjoying a near-works level of support and collaboration from the German automaker. But as you may recall, Daimler bought its own team three seasons ago: the outfit that started out as British American Racing, then became before branching out as Brawn GP, was rebranded Mercedes GP under its latest management and now rechristened Mercedes AMG Petronas. And ever since, McLaren has had to deflect speculation that it was looking for a new engine supplier.
Back in November, those rumors, somewhat ironically, centered around Honda, the company that once owned the team now owned by Mercedes-Benz and which was once McLaren’s most victorious engine supplier. The Woking-based outfit scuttled those rumors at the time, and has now had to deny another set, this time involving PURE.
The new engine supplier established by former Jacques Villeneuve manager and BAR-Honda team principal Craig Pollock (with considerable technical know-how from former Peugeot, Renault and engineers) is hard at work designing a new engine to be used from 2014 when the new turbocharged V6 engine regulations come into effect. There’s no telling which teams PURE will power at that point, but one thing McLaren is adamant about is that it won’t be theirs.
Instead, the brass at Woking is insistent that it is perfectly happy in its relationship with Mercedes-Benz, whose racing engine operations are linked to its eponymous racing team by little more than name and common ownership. McLaren, then, is expected to stick with Silver Star power at least through the end of 2015, if not longer.
Early last year, , with the brand’s performance flagship once again taking its place at the front of the SRT lineup. The next generation Viper , and it looks like will be doing its best to tease us mercilessly until then with vague sketches of the car. The first has just been posted on the , providing the very first look at the front end of the 2013 Viper. From the silhouette it’s hard to really tell what the design will look like, but the overall shape and the hood scoop distinctly remind us of the Viper GTS coupe built from 1996 to 2002.
So, what do we know about the 2013 Viper as of right now? For starters, as mandated by federal law. The powertrain is still unconfirmed, although there are rumors that the .
All of these rumors will be laid to rest come April, but until then we’ll just have to settle for the teasers that SRT gives us. We’ll be sure to bring you more news on the 2013 Viper as soon as its released, and let us know what you’re hoping to see from the new Viper in the Comments.
We’re almost ready to record Episode #267 of the Autoblog Podcast. Check out the topics below and you can join us live via , as well, and we’ve embedded our UStream player Thanks for listening!
Discussion Topics for Autoblog Podcast Episode #267
We’ve finally come to accept the fact that we’ll never be Vaughn Gittin Jr. There can be only one one pure-bred drift hooligan of his caliber on this planet and truth be told, our sideways skills are paltry at best. That doesn’t mean we can’t pretend, though. Gittin Jr. has teamed up with a smattering of companies to give away five very limited-edition RC cars made up in the image of his sinister drift machine. Only 5,000 of the HPI RC Ford Mustang cars will be produced in total, and Gittin Jr. is giving five of them away to Facebook fans.
To get the word out, Gittin Jr., K&N, Monster Energy and Falken Tire crafted a video demonstrating just what happens when the drifter can’t get his hands on the scale Mustang. An epic chase ensues, with the RC car taking a little “How it’s Made” tour of the K&N factory. The clip also features a few outtakes worth watching, as well. We won’t spoil it for you, but we will say more than one RC car gave its life in the making of the film. to check out the video for yourself. If you want to enter the sweepstakes, head over to the for more information.
The world would be considerably less entertaining if we could all predict the future. Even so, the classic car gurus at Hagerty Insurance have cast a few chicken bones in an attempt to figure out which vehicles produced today might eventually turn collectible.
The company restricted entrants to hardware with a price tag of less than $100,000, so the list isn’t populated with too many wild exotics. While vehicles like the , , and are low-hanging fruit, the list also featured a few surprises.
For starters, it begins with none other than the mighty . Hagerty says the vehicle is a win because it’s the first Buick with a manual transmission since the fall of the Holy Roman Empire. The also makes an appearance alongside an even hotter hatch, the . Of course, we’re simply thrilled to see the sinister make a showing. for the full list or view each vehicle in our gallery above.
We’ve driven the new 991-series , and now the next chapter of the new 911 story – the 2013 Turbo – has been caught proving itself in the wintertide climate. Its most important details – the front and rear bumpers and side intakes – remain behind camo, but we now get a look at how the tail sits across the wider rump, and we think it looks quite good.
When it’s finally revealed, the new 911 Turbo is expected to put out more than 500 horsepower – numbers from 520 hp to 550 hp have been mentioned – from it’s tri-turboed (yes, three turbos) 3.6-liter flat six. Both the seven-speed PDK and seven-speed manual transmissions should be on offer, and the lighter-than-the-last-Turbo package should be screamingly fast. Have a look at the high-res gallery to see it from just about every angle.
