It’s going to be a big year for , which will soon be reloading its model lineup with the new and XTS sedans. The compact slots in below the , while the larger 2013 XTS aims to take care of traditional Caddy buyers looking for immensity above all else. While at diametrical ends of the spectrum, the two new models will share a technology package that all revolves around a new seat.
General Motors is throwing around fifty-cent words like “haptic” and phrases like “directional tactile sensation” to describe its new Safety Alert Seat, which vibrates to warn the driver of potential dangers like wandering out of one’s lane. The seat employs two electric motors to create its directional feedback, and it’s at the center of both safety packages Cadillac will be introducing this year. The first is aimed at merely providing the driver with safety alerts, while a more comprehensive suite will also offer vehicle intervention. Cadillac is using six radar sensors, eight ultrasonic sensors and two vision cameras to drive the new safety systems.
The Driver Awareness Package will debut with the launch of the XTS in the spring and offers the seat, Forward Collision Alert, Lane Departure Warning, Side Blind Zone Alert and Rear Cross Traffic Alert. In the fall, Cadillac will begin offering the Driver Assist Package, which adds Adaptive Cruise Control, Front and Rear Automatic Braking, and Automatic Collision Preparation. Both packages will also be offered on the crossover, details of which we expect to hear about at the . Click to read more and to view two demonstration videos.
Back when Ally Financial was known as GMAC Financial, the U.S. Treasury gave it $17.2 billion in TARP funds to weather the global economic crisis. GMAC is now Ally Financial, and although it has repaid $5.4 billion of what it was loaned, there doesn’t seem to be a clear path for repaying the outstanding amount. Bloomberg reports that Ally’s mortgage unit, Residential Captial (ResCap), is teetering on the ledge of bankrupcty, and its banking operations didn’t perform well in the Federal Reserve’s stress tests that assess a bank’s health.
An IPO for the entire company faces dim prospects (one was ), so in a private equity ploy, the Treasury would like Ally to divvy itself up and sell the pieces to unlock value. Estimates are that the pieces could fetch $23.1 to $28.6 billion. The plan is supported by Elliott Management Corp, a shareholder that holds 2.3 percent of Ally stock. However, Ally’s CEO and its board don’t want to break the company up, and the Treasury – which holds 74 percent – doesn’t want to lean on the leadership too hard for fear of “appearing as a heavy-handed owner.”
In addition, the looming bankruptcy of ResCap will have an unknown effect on Ally’s ability to do anything. Before the mortgage implosion, GMAC’s auto unit was struggling and ResCap was restructured as a separate entity so that it wouldn’t be dragged down by the captive finance department. The situation is reversed now, with ResCap in trouble and the captive finance arm supporting itself, but Elliot feels that the restructuring won’t be enough to shield Ally from perhaps 18 months of litigation and billions in claims.
Ally execs feel differently, but no one will know until the trigger is pulled and the courts weigh in. With the Treasury reluctant to compel a move, it could be some time before it sees its $11.8 billion again.
The new Ford Transit cargo van promises improved fuel economy compared to the outgoing , in part because it will be powered by the . But that’s not the only mill that will be powering the Transit. Ford announced that the fresh take on cargo vans will also boast a diesel powerplant option when it makes it to production in 2013.
hasn’t yet delved into any specifics about the diesel powerplant, but The Blue Oval is confident that buyers will experience some serious fuel savings. The automaker says the choice of a turbo-six or an oil burner plus over 300 pounds in weight savings versus the Econoline should combine for 25 percent better fuel economy. That could lead to serious savings at the pump for the independent contractor and large fleets should save some major cash as well.
In fact, Ford is so confident that the new Kansas City-built Transit and its other products will deliver big fuel economy benefits that it’s developed a tool to show fleets just how much fuel and CO2 can be saved. The Vehicle Emissions and Fuel Cost Calculator utilizes a wide range of data like vehicle type and traffic conditions to evaluate overall fuel costs and carbon emissions. to read over the Ford press release.
Having trouble keeping track of which watchmaker is producing timepieces for these days? It can get a little confusing. Girard-Perregaux held the license for many years, after which a lackluster partnership was formed with . Then was contracted to make one very fancy-looking watch for the Prancing Horse marque, before got the nod. And that’s not including the more affordable watches marketed less to Ferrari owners than to the Scuderia’s tifosi. Now, Maranello has formed another partnership with a different watchmaker.
That watchmaker is Movado, the Swiss firm best know for creating elegant and simply styled timepieces that look just as much at home in a museum showcase as they do on a wearer’s wrist. Movado also makes watches under the Ebel, Concord, ESQ, Coach, Tommy Hilfiger, Hugo Boss, Juicy Couture and Lacoste labels, and will now be adding Ferrari to its roster of brands.
The collection is set to draw its inspiration from Ferrari’s road and racing cars, and is set to be launched next year at the Watch & Jewelry Fair in Basel, Switzerland, after which they will go on sale at Ferrari stores around the world and online with prices peaking at 1,500 euros (around $2,000). for the official announcement.
has announced that it will set up a new research facility in Palo Alto, California. While the manufacturer has similar labs in locations from Germany to China and Israel, the new location will be the first on the West Coast. Specifically, engineers and designers will focus on independent technology projects as well as finding new research directions and potential partners. While Ford is currently recruiting some staff locally, others are expected to be pulled from the company’s global workforce. Something tells us the company will have no trouble finding volunteers to move from Dearborn to Palo Alto.
TJ Giuli is one of those volunteers. The Ford researcher is a Stanford alumnus who’s going back to California to help lead the lab’s establishment. According to Giuli, the research community in the area is excited to have Ford in the neighborhood. for the quick press release.
If you haven’t had a chance to sit down and watch the full 13-minute CBS “60 Minutes” segment on that , we have yet another reason for you to do so. The good people at Allpar.com seem to have spotted something interesting lurking in the background of an interview with Ralph Gilles, head of design for Chrysler. Look closely, and there’s a red sports coupe hanging out just over the executive’s shoulder. Allpar.com seems to think this is a glimpse at the rumored Barracuda resurrection. After all, Chrysler made sure to trademark the ‘Cuda name earlier this year.
Automotive News took the time to ask Chrysler about the vehicle in the video, and the company very tactfully replied that the vehicle is “just one of the many concepts and projects in our studios. That is one student model.”
A student model that may hint to the design of the Barracuda? Possibly. See the complete video if you missed it the first time ’round.
Recalls have been issued for four 2012-model-year products over steering-gear issues. The and and and could suffer from pitman shafts that weren’t hardened properly, potentially leading to a fracture and a loss of steering. There are 6,159 vehicles involved in the recall.
GM will begin notifying owners early next month, at which time they can take their SUVs and vans to the dealer to repair the problem free of charge. for the full notification from the .
The future of the U.S. Army’s Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program might be powered by a Motor Co. V-8.
BAE Systems, Northrup Grumman and Meritor Defenses said this afternoon that their proposed light fighting vehicle, which is called the Valanx, will have a Ford Power Stroke 6.7-liter diesel engine under it’s steel hood. (And likely a .50 cal on its roof.)
If it’s good enough for the , it’s good enough for a Call of Duty.
“Ford products have a reputation for dependability and performance, even under challenging conditions,” said Ann Hoholick, BAE Systems Vice President of Amphibious & New Programs in the release.
Ford had dropped out of the JLTV program, which is searching for the next fighting machine to replace the venerable for the U.S. military. Ford is not a partner with the group but did provide a statement this afternoon.
“We’re proud of Ford’s 6.7-liter Power Stroke V8 diesel engines and their best-in-class power, durability and fuel economy,” said Ford spokesman Mike Levine. “And we are proud the engines were chosen to be part of BAE’s JLTV entry.”
Let’s just hope that engine is as bullet proof.
to Call of Duty: Ford could power U.S. military’s future
has announced it is recalling a whopping 1.3 million and vehicles from the 2003 to 2010 model years. Of those, Reutersnotes that some 368,000 examples were sold in the U.S. – most of them sedans like the one above.
It doesn’t sound like too difficult of a problem to fix, but the automaker says the cars’ battery cable covers could be incorrectly mounted. BMW says no accidents or injuries have occurred because of the issue, but there is the potential that affected models may fail to start, or worse, catch fire.
Owners will be receiving a letter soon and will be asked to visit a BMW dealer for about a 30-minute repair session.
A company spokesman tells that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been notified. Just 9 months ago, BMW was $3 million for failing to report safety defects to NHTSA quickly enough. It looks like they may have learned their lesson. Read the full press release .
Research by the American Automobile Association’s Foundation for Traffic Safety has revealed teenage girls are twice as likely as their male counterparts to use devices like cell phones while driving. The study used video taken of young drivers while they were behind the wheel to determine how teenagers engage in distracted driving. While talking on the phone and texting ranked among the highest sources of distraction, personal grooming and reaching for objects in the vehicle also played significant roles. Outside of using electronic devices, AAA found teens were distracted around 15 percent of the time while behind the wheel.
Girls were also found to be 10 percent more likely than their male counterparts to be engaged in other distracted driving activities. AAA found the young ladies to be 50 percent more likely to attempt to reach for something in the vehicle and 25 percent more like to eat while operating a vehicle.
Of course, driving with passengers in the vehicle also contributed to distraction, while having a parent or adult in the vehicle caused rates of distracting behavior to fall off. Shocking stuff we know. for the full AAA press release.
Back in the summer of 2010, the factory in Maranello, Italy, with one request: could they build him a with a V12? Nearly two years later, this is what resulted.
Reportedly called the SP12 EPC (bearing the initials of the famous rock guitarist), the one-off product of the Ferrari Special Projects division with a few photos the other day, but now we’ve got video footage of the car moving under its own power away from a London dealership – presumably en route for delivery at the multiple Grammy Award winner’s home.
With styling cues borrowed from the – an early mid-engined Ferrari that was never officially homologated for sale in the United States – the SP12 EPC is said to be based on the 458 Italia. Which isn’t a bad place to start. The big question on everyone’s mind, however, is what resides under the hood? Did Ferrari manage to shoehorn in the twelve-pot as hoped, or did it stick with the 4.5-liter V8 in the donor car? Hard to say, but sources point towards the latter.
to watch the blurry, shaky footage and listen to the custom creation rumbling, and share your thoughts – eight cylinders or twelve – in the Comments section below.
Dutch website NU that expects low demand for its Electric, and therefore it decided to stop building the mostly electric car (it has a small, ethanol-burning heater to keep passengers warm). The original source for this information was a story in the Belgian newspaper The Age that cited Volvo’s government affairs director, Anders Kärrberg. Turns out, this isn’t quite right.
First, Volvo has always said the C30 Electric is a limited program. When the company started making the attractive EV in last summer, the public plan was . So, the fact that the automaker is getting ready to finish up building the 250 units and then reevaluate the situation is not a surprise.
We asked Volvo’s Malin Persson about the situation, and she told Autoblog that “[it has] never been our aim to continue with production of C30 Electric for a longer period of time.” She added that:
[Volvo Car Corporation] will not end the production of the C30 Electric – but it has always been a project limited in numbers and time.
Approximately 200 cars have been built from the first generation, another 50 remain to be built before summer.
In the second generation, starting after the summer, 100 cars will be built in cooperation with Siemens and with Siemens technology.
The know-how and experience VCC has gained and will gain from the C30 Electric project will be extremely valuable when taking decisions about the way forward when it comes to electric cars.
So, instead of reporting that Volvo is stopping C30 Electric production, the reality is that 100 vehicles has been added to the build order. How aggressively Volvo continues to push on with electric technology beyond its C30 program – in something like the – remains to be seen. Kärrberg told The Age that Volvo thinks EVs will only make up one percent of the market in the next eight years, thanks to expensive batteries and a hodgepodge of government incentives.
may be out to improve the fuel economy of its powertrains by throwing extra gears into the transmission. Automobile Magazine reports the Japanese automaker is currently working to use a new nine-speed gearbox developed by ZF in its products as soon as 2014. If you’re keeping track, this is the same transmission set to debut in a host of products, including the replacement for the .
Despite the additional gears, ZF says the transmission is surprisingly compact, thanks in part to the fact that it uses planetary gears in place of a traditional design. Called the 9HP, the German transmission can be used in either front- or all-wheel drive applications and handle up to 354 pound-feet of torque.
All told, ZF claims the 9HP can improve a vehicle’s fuel economy as much as 10 to 16 percent. Given the torque capacities and relatively small size, the transmission could show up in nearly everything Honda makes, but odds are the company will debut the gearbox in models like the and as well as the and .
Nobody will argue with the musically-loping idle of a cammy V8 or the coluratura shriek of Italian exotics, but cars are rhythm players, at best. Yorkshire, England composer Mark Marrington sees it differently. Marrington has created a new single built entirely from sampled automotive sounds. We’ve all heard those novelty songs like dogs singing “Jingle Bells,” and Pink Floyd indulged themselves by creating an , all of which generally come off like a parlor trick.
Marrington sees it differently, and with “Cars” he’s gone past the irritation most of us have with the noises we tend to filter out of our daily experience and found the underlying music. The composer calls it “dance music with a vehicular twist.” We call it entertaining. Give a listen
Automotive News reports is staying the course with the company’s EXP 9 F SUV Concept. The ultra-luxury automaker plans to bring the vehicle to the Beijing Motor Show exactly as it appeared at the Geneva Motor Show earlier this month, despite the fact that the concept didn’t exactly debut to resounding acclaim. Critics described the design as awkward and unbecoming of nameplate like Bentley, but the automaker says it wants to vet the design in as many markets as possible before finalizing the exterior. Here’s hoping the crowds in China are as repulsed as those in Switzerland.
The EXP 9 F has already been green-lit for production, and while we have no qualm with the thought of a high-riding luxury brute with a twin-turbo 12-cylinder engine under the hood, we’d like to see something a little less muddled outside. Bentley says an SUV will give the company a leg up in markets like the Middle East and China, where luxury SUVs remain king. Through the first two months of this year, the company’s sales are up 66 percent in China, putting the country ahead of the United States as the largest market for Bentley products.
The Detroit News is reporting that General Motors will replace the 120-volt power cords on the majority of models the company has sold since 2010. The new charge cords are said to be more durable than the old hardware and should provide “more consistency in charging,” according to the report. GM has sold around 10,000 Volt units since the plug-in hybrid went on sale two years ago, and while some of those vehicles have already shipped with the new charge cords, most still use the old design.
Volt owners may also contact their dealers to begin scheduling appointments to have additional crash structure added around the vehicle’s battery packs. The additional steel is designed to protect against severe side-impacts. Technicians are also expected to add a new sensor to monitor battery coolant levels. The changes are in response to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation into unlikely . GM will reportedly without the new structure and sensor, saying neither poses a safety issue.
According to reports citing Japan’s Nikkei daily, will be cranking up production at its Normal, Illinois plant, but not because the company expects a 100-percent increase in demand here to match the 70,000 units the plant will soon be cranking out. Instead, the plant will be making models intended for export from the U.S. to markets like Russia and Latin America. To make way for the increased Outlander Sport output, the slow-moving family sedan will leave the building. No replacement has been announced.
Mitsubishi has plants worldwide, but those in closest proximity to strengthening markets are reportedly running at full tilt, so the move makes use of plants in markets where demand is slack. Mitsubishi has seen its fortunes in the U.S. atrophy, and even though sales improved somewhat last year, this production shift shows that turnabout is fair play, with the offshore parent using its American assets to make cars for markets that would typically be producing the goods, not consuming them.
has let it slip that the company may be working on a new crossover, and Autocar has gone through the trouble of rendering the machine. According to the report, the company is under pressure to expand into niches traditionally outside of its scope, much as sister company has done with the . That may translate into a new high-riding hatchback based off of an upcoming compact sedan. That’s right. Autocar claims Jaguar is out to launch six other “significant” new products over the next two years, and that’s excluding the “radical crossover” seen here.
Needless to say, the project hasn’t gotten the go-ahead from corporate just yet, but if it does, expect to see it built on the company’s new modular aluminum “Premium Lightweight Architecture” originally penned for its large vehicles. Jaguar could also borrow the bones of the previously mentioned Evoque for this little science experiment. Those two options present a disparate view of the would-be utility Jaguar. Of course, the model is a very, very long way from becoming reality. Head over to to see the full rendering.
Station wagons, as pointed out by ex-Autoblogger Jonny Lieberman, are boring. “It’s the penalty you pay for falling in love and having children,” he says.
Sure, just so long as your children like to go fast, at least when the chosen conveyance to move those booster seats from Point A to Point B is either the wagon version of the or , as tested by Motor Trend in the video you’ll see after the break.
Without spoiling any of the salient details, we’ll say that one car was a wee bit quicker, crossing the finish line a scant 79 feet ahead of its rival after a half-mile of acceleration to speeds surpassing 150 miles per hour, while the other was deemed the overall better car for enthusiast drivers.
Which was which? See the video for all the answers you crave, along with some brilliant exhaust notes from these two rare wagon-shaped beasts.
Ferrari has been known to produce one-off vehicles for customers, most notably the F430-based created for a wealthy Japanese collector in 2008 as well as the created on the 599 FTB Fiorano platform in 2009.
Now, if the Ferrari afficianados over on are correct, Ferrari Special Projects program has built a third vehicle, this time for musician Eric Clapton, who is known to be a .
The car looks to be based on the 458 Italia and has distinct styling references to the 12-cylinder Ferrari 512 BB built in the late 1970s and early 1980s with a large lower grille, hood slats and flying buttresses at the rear. Judging from the photos, the interior appears to be relatively unchanged from the 458 Italia, and the mid-mounted 4.5-liter V8 is likely still in place as well.
We will try and find out more details about this special Ferrari, but until then, check out the photos of the car in the gallery above.
