Confidential

Baby Ferrari's long gestation

2008-05-13T11:22:46Z

When the pictures of the new Ferrari California landed in my inbox this morning I breathed a sigh of relief.

You see we’ve been tracking this car for so long and published so many stories and spy shots that I’m glad it’s finally out in the open and no longer subject to speculation and rumour.

That said, I’m proud to say that Autocar broke the story of the new GT in a world exclusive over three years ago. In fact I’ve just dragged out the issue (12^th April 2005).

I can remember it particularly well as I wrote the coverlines: “New Dino” it screamed (OK allow me some artistic license) and our sources at the time reckoned it would arrive in 2007 (so five months out).

But we got the rest smack on: “two seater”, “called Project California”, “400bhp V8”. Inside the mag, our computer rendering pictured a coupe but we speculated about the folding-metal roof and the positioning of the car – again, all bang on target.

So I suppose it’s time to let the news reporters loose on the next F430.

Read the full story on the new Ferrari California.

New 9-5 can't come soon enough

2008-05-13T11:18:55Z

On a recent trip to Saab’s Trollhatten hometown, I drove the hour or so north from Gothenburg airport in a 9-5.

I figured it could be last chance I’d get to sample one of the oldest cars on sale. The all-new 9-5 arrives early next year replacing the current model, which was launched in 1997. Indeed, only the Ford Ka, Land Rover Defender and Volkswagen Sharan spare the big Saab’s blushes as the oldest car still in production.

Yet despite its pension book, I’ve always had a soft spot for this big machine, being a particular fan of the interior, seats, turbocharged four-cylinder engines and the crash protection.

On the sunny drive from Gothenburg, it still impressed in many ways, though the steering was hopelessly over-light and chassis floaty and unsure of itself. It’s hard to imagine this bruiser being related to the unloved 1995 Vectra, but it is. The chief engineer on the 9-5 project admitted to me the Saab was “35 per cent Vectra”. But I never found out which bits made up the percentage.

The new 9-5 is already done and dusted, and being polished ahead of its launch in less than 12 months’ time. I can tell you that the new car is big and the styling imposing and polished.

As a critical friend of the company, I hope that the new 9-5 finally accelerates out of the cult scene and into the mainstream. It won’t be easy. BMW and Mercedes have new versions of the 5-Series and E-Class approaching – and the 9-5 will only be Saab’s third executive model in 25 years.

The truth is that only a first-rate driving experience will convince executive buyers to finally look seriously at Saab for the first time.

Subaru fights for its future

2008-05-02T11:39:30Z

So what does it mean to European drivers if Toyota and Subaru are starting to get closer and will soon start colaborating to build cars together?

Optimists might well reckon the Toyota connection will do something about Subaru’s generally woeful design and fuel economy – long since the two major weaknesses for car’s wearing the Subaru badge. Which would be a good thing, surely?

On the other hand, Subaru seems to be becoming slowly but surely entwined within the empire of Toyota, a far larger company. For a firm that has based so much of its appeal on individuality and going its own way, that’s a considerable risk.

There’s particular interest in Japan at the news that Subaru will be sharing its prized boxer engine with Toyota for the new rear-drive “Toyobaru” sports coupe that the two companies are jointly developing – something that has really raised eyebrows.

A year ago the very idea of a Toyota using Subaru’s unique flat-four engine would have been inconceivable. And to many Subaru fans, it’s a decision tantamount to selling off the family silver.

Of course, those with less emotional attachment might shrug and say a new kind of Celica with a Subaru flat-four engine on board might be kind of cool, and so wonder what all the fuss is about.

The truth is that small, quirky Subaru now needs its tie-in with big, rich Toyota to prosper – maybe even to survive. If sharing the boxer engine is part of the deal that makes that happen it’s a case of shoganai as they say here in Japan: “can’t be helped.”

Where's BMW'S R8?

2008-05-01T11:45:08Z

I love the way the Audi R8 drives, but unless I’m looking at it head on, I just don’t like the way it looks. It’s way too fussy for me and too jarring with angles and panels all over the place.

I was sharing this opinion with a senior motor industry bloke the other day and his response was fascinating. He reckoned I should forget about what Audi’s 911-rival looks like, it’s mere existence proves that the company is leaving arch-rival BMW for dead at the moment.

This is a chap who’s opinion counts for a lot. He’s run three major car companies and also spent a good chunk of his career working for BMW itself. And his perspective is that Munich has lost its direction – and that has allowed Audi to move in and plug the gaps.

He wanted to know where BMW’s mid-engined supercar is. It might not be a big money-spinner, but it would add some much-needed halo status to the brand. Something that, in his view, isn’t being provided by the current range of M-Powered saloons and coupes – nor by the company’s F1 activities.

I’ve got some sympathy with this view. Many of us have wondered why a company that makes such good-to-drive saloons has always struggled with sports cars: Z3 and Z4 anyone?

But they’ve all been strong sellers nonetheless. And is BMW’s image flagging? I’m not so sure. But I’m pretty certain that supercars don’t really solve anything. I’m glad Audi makes the R8, but the company would still have a stellar image if they took it off the market tomorrow.

Pininfarina's picture looks great

2008-04-29T16:28:33Z

Fascinating news from Italy that Tata is to take an ownership stake in styling house Pininfarina – rescuing one of the best-known names in automotive design from the financial crisis that threatened to engulf it.

Pininfarina has designed the bulk of Ferrari’s recent range, and currently builds the C70 and Focus C+C for Ford. And, like Britain’s beleaguered high-street banks, it’s raising money by issuing new shares.

We don’t know how much of a stake Tata will take – but the Pininfarina family will see its current 55 per cent holding (and the control that brings) diluted to about 30 per cent. Tata is likely to share the extra investment with French company Bollore, a specialist maker of electric cars.

Tata has already commissioned Pininfarina to set up a new design centre in India, which raises the prospect of handsome new Tatas with a European design flavour being sold around the world, including the UK. An application of Pininfarina design thinking to the next-generation Nano is an intriguing prospect, too.

But what’s really fascinating about the Pininfarina rescue plan is the involvement of a mainstream carmaker. Design houses usually avoid direct links with manufacturers, because it puts off other potential customers, worried their secret projects will end up in the hands of a rival. Lotus Engineering suffered when Toyota took a stake in the 1980s, and Pininfarina must be aware it is running the same risk.

It will certainly be interesting to see how Pininfarina’s may clients in China view the involvement of a competitor from another developing car-producing country. There’s already little love lost between Indian and Chinese manufacturers, and rivalries will intensify as the global motor industry migrates east.

Pininfarina’s key clients — Ford and Fiat-controlled Ferrari — must have rubber-stamped Tata’s involvement. Ratan Tata is a director of Fiat, as is Sergio Pininfarina at Ferrari and Tata has just spent months negotiating with Ford to buy Jaguar and Land Rover. “It certainly wasn’t a surprise to us,” says a Ford source.

In fact, I wonder whether Tata is a ‘white knight’, encouraged by Fiat and Ford, to ride to Pininfarina’s rescue? Those boardroom discussions between Ford and Tata might just have gone a bit further than we originally thought.

Geoff Polites: a great man

2008-04-21T14:01:56Z

Those who knew Geoff Polites, the universally admired Jaguar-Land Rover chief executive who died over the weekend, knew perfectly well that he was ill. But we were mostly able to put it out of their minds because his demeanour, workload and optimistic outlook on life made him seem anything but a man with major health concerns.

He was still working at “full steam”, as he would have put it, until a few weeks ago, but died in his native Australia a few days after the birth of a grandchild he had been hoping to see.

Polites was the prototype of a straight-talking Aussie, an inspirational leader who served in his youth as a top-level Aussie Rules football umpire (“a top place to learn about the importance of fairness”). He had been both a car company boss and a big-note Sydney car dealer in previous lives.

A friend of the former Ford boss, Jac Nasser, he took charge of the two UK companies in 2005 during their most problematic phase in recent history, when Jaguar’s huge losses were wiping out the profits that Land Rover’s new wave of products were just starting to earn.

Despite his illness, Polities didn’t shirk from any part of the massive challenge of turning the company’s fortunes around. Land Rover is earning billion-dollar profits, Jaguar has reached break-even (with profit around the corner) and the rationalisation move from the old Brown’s Lane factory has completed. More importantly, the twin brands now have stable management and a credible forward model plan orchestrated by the company’s new Indian owners. Polites couldn’t make the signing ceremony for the sale of JLR to Tata. A huge shame, as orchestrating all of this was his supreme achievement.

Polites hoped to offer Tata another three years’ service, but with typical realism he left nobody in any doubt this might not be possible. His death leaves the company’s new Indian masters with a difficult decision, so early in their ownership, simply because his balance of experience and skill will be very hard to replace.

But the twin UK marques are now securely founded in a way they were not when he moved into his last big challenge. And their future success – which looks more likely than not – will be his memorial.

Goodbye Longbridge?

2008-04-15T09:36:24Z

To be honest, most of us here had clean forgotten all about the plans to bring the MG TF back from the dead.

That’s odd, because it was less than a year ago that I drove up to Longbridge to see Nanjing roll a handful of the new TF2s off the still-idle production line. It was meant to be an indication that the MG TF project was well on the way. Now the withdrawal of a major supplier means that production at Longbridge seems to be off the cards.

The project started to get wobbly late last year, when Nanjing was ‘encouraged’ into a merger with the much bigger SAIC. The deal was simple. Nanjing had the K-series engine production line and the established MG brand. SAIC had developed two new cars based on never-completed MG Rover blueprints for a re-engineered 75.

But SAIC needed the engines and it also needed a western brand to help it meet its ambition of selling abroad. So the Chinese authorities stepped in to sort the situation out and in doing so, probably killed the last hope of manufacturing in the UK.

What we might see appearing in the next 18 months is a medium size saloon called the MG 550 and a big saloon called the MG 750. These two UK-engineered vehicles are probably the best ‘Chinese’ cars on the planet. And they just might get a foothold in the European market. What we almost certainly won’t see is either car being built in Longbridge, or a revival of the MG TF.

Finally, it seems it’s all over for car making at Longbridge.

Chevy Volt: worth the hype

2008-04-04T11:08:49Z

I’ve got pretty used to talking to excited automotive engineers enthusing about a model that they’ve been working on. But I’ve rarely come across such a jubilant bunch as the Chevrolet Volt team that I was talking to all day yesterday.

The Volt’s special, they say. Not just for the technological advances it will showcase when we get to see it in 2010. But it’s got a special status inside GM. According to the project leader Frank Weber: ‘it’s our biggest opportunity and our biggest risk’ but he had a big smile on his face when he was telling that so I guess he’s even excited about the pressure he’s under to deliver.

The whole project came about because The General was fed up with taking a beating from the Japanese and from the media in general about its perceived lack of technical prowess. So product boss Bob Lutz banged the desk one day and demanded an electric car. So we got the Volt concept early last year and now they’re all hard at work on the real thing.

Is it special, or just marketing puff? Well, I think that I now know enough about it to be excited; it should, after all, be the world’s first mass produced plug-in electric car. And the whole concept is genius. Battery power will take you for 40 miles (enough for 70 per cent of the population on a daily basis according to GM) and if you need to go any further then a frugal petrol engine takes over. You then charge it up overnight at home.

The whole thing has also been engineered using the new Delta platform – or the same as the next Astra and a host of other forthcoming cars – so it’s simple and flexible. It can also be made anywhere and it will be coming to Britain. The Volt is a global car, not a US market special.

And if the excitement of the GM bods that I met is translated into an exciting car to drive and own then it could well be as special as they all think it is.

The man who dreams about V12 diesels

2008-03-31T10:06:23Z

Here’s an interesting factoid: did you know that the man who managed the engine development programme for the original E30 BMW M3 is now batting for the opposition? That’s Audi, I hasten to add. Wolfgang Hatz is his name, and I met him this weekend, just after driving the R8 V12 TDi concept.

He’s a thoroughly nice bloke (despite appearances in this rather twee Audi press photo) and at the same time a bit of a motor industry legend. After leaving BMW in the late 1980s, he went to work for Porsche and worked on the 964 RSR, among other projects. After that, he had a spell in race engineering, both for Porsche and General Motors, and then went off to Italy, to be responsible for Alfa Romeo engines, and ultimately all of Fiat Group engines. Then, seven years ago, he decided to make the move back to Germany, and is now responsible for all VW Group engines.

He’s a connected feller. His boss is Ferdinand Piech, he’s best mates with Wolfgang Rietzle, a friend of Luca de Montezemolo – in short, he is the sort of bloke that you wish you could sit next to every Saturday night at dinner; a real dyed-in-the-wool car enthusiast, whose conversational titbits are dining-out fodder for months to come.

So do you think it would bother M-power aficionados to know that the man responsible for arguably the finest performance engine that BMW has ever produced now prefers diesels? To be bluntly honest, it upset me a bit. Here’s how Hatz rationalises it:

“I used to love gasoline engines: my passion was always about power and revs, and so BMW and Porsche were like paradise for me. But then, when I moved to Fiat, I had to learn to love diesel, because this is what Fiat does. And I haven’t been the same since.”

“These days I dream about diesel engines; for me, they have such huge potential, and they’re so challenging. It’s where the real breakthroughs are being made – the territory that is really being fought for right now. As an engineer, that fires you up, you know?”

So does this mean he’s turned his back on petrol totally? “No, of course not. When I look back over my time at Audi, I can pick out several great petrol engines that I’m proud that we made. The RS4’s V8 is probably the biggest achievement personally, because all my old colleagues at BMW said we couldn’t do a good, high-rpm engine. It felt great to prove them wrong.”

“The new Lamborghini direct inject engine, from the LP560-4 – this is great too,” he went on. “You’re going to love it; I’d say it’s twice as good as the old V10.”

And what of this new V12 diesel, soon to come to an R8 near you? “Yeah, this is the car I dream about now. I want, more than anything else, to make this car happen for Audi. It’s really only us that can make a diesel supercar, you know, and that’s why I think we must.”

It won’t be easy for him. There are cost savings to be made, there is new componentry to be developed, and business cases to make watertight. “We have two options with this car: make it a low-volume, higher price car, which might give us a higher development budget, or to do unlimited volume for a lower price, and then work to a lower price. The marketing men will tell us which within the next few months.”

But will that make the R8 V12 TDi the range-topping option in the range? “No, there will be a faster gasoline one.”

“With a new, high rpm V10,” I asked.

“No, guess again.”

“The twin-turbo, 572bhp RS6 V10? In an R8? Next year? Really?”

Hatz just smiled and nodded (that’s how Autocar news scoops are made these days).

And does it matter, then, that Audi will make a more powerful R8 than Lambo’s Gallardo? “We will wait and see,” Wolfgang replied.

The world's worst kept secret

2008-03-26T10:23:59Z

So the world's worst kept secret is out. Ford has finlly disposed of Jaguar and Land Rover and the Indian based Tata Group has stumped up nigh on a billion quid for the UK car industry's crown jewels.

Whether Ford was right to sell when Land Rover is super profitable and Jag is on the brink of a bounce back is now academic. What really matters is whether Indian billionaire Ratan Tata will be a good custodian of the company.

We think that the answer's yes. Tata's business model appears to be a light hand on the tiller and provide the right investment. We know that JLR now has excellent management, makes world class cars and has the engineering capability to keep them coming. And it appears that Ratan is prepared to fund an unprecedented rash of new cars for both brands.

In short there's nothing to be afraid of. Tata will change JLR. But I predict it will be for the better.

Ford Ka: the Fiat 500 should be worried

2008-03-18T16:04:47Z

We’ve always known that the all-new Ford Ka would share most of its underbits with the Fiat 500 (and Fiat Panda), as they share the same Polish production line. The Fiat and Ford models will have very similar major dimensions, engines, chassis, suspension and basic cabin architecture.

Yet the Ford remains a fascinating car, for at least three important reasons. For one, Ford needs its smallest model to embody all modern design values, not to pick up on a lot of retro cues like the Fiat. One big question will be to see how well it succeeds. And how well will Ford be able to disguise the relationship between its fascia furniture and that of the two Fiats (the 500 and Panda are satisfactorily different, but can Ford provide yet more design freshness?).

Ford’s freedom to do its own thing with the suspension will be of great interest. The company has amassed a great reputation for providing some of the best-handling mainstream cars on the road, but it has never been required to use someone else’s suspension before.

Ford’s insiders have confirmed that they thoroughly examined the Fiat hardware (while it was in the very last design stages) and satisfied themselves that it could work under a Ford. But road tests have consistently classed the Panda/500 as “pretty good”, rather than “brilliant”, and it’s unlikely Ford will be satisfied with that. It will be fascinating to see what Ford can do with a fairly restricted regime of rerating and rebushing.

Most interesting of all will be the price. Ford’s Ka will be, in effect, a modern-looking and better-handling Fiat 500, perhaps without the nostalgia and the sheer cuteness. It’s likely to be priced in Panda territory, so below Fiat 500. Will its sales blow holes in the 500? Will it bomb, because people believe it is not a real Ford? Will the Panda suffer at the hands of the other two? And how much better — if better at all — will the Ka drive than its Fiat progenitors? As we said, many fascinating questions to be answered…

Read the full news story here.

See more pictures here.

Back to the future

2008-03-14T12:16:26Z

Now that the £700m truth about Alistair Darling’s ‘showroom’ tax has emerged, it’s well worth reflecting that this is merely the re-introduction of a tax abolished in 1992 by the Tory government egged-on, ironically, by Labour MPs worried about jobs in the motor industry. How times have changed.

Between 1968 and 1992 the price of every new car sold was bumped up by the much-detested ‘Special Car Tax’, introduced by a Labour government that had lost control of Britain’s finances. Sound familiar?

SCT added 10 per cent to the price of every new car sold. In its last year it brought in £750m a year, £628m in tax and £122m in VAT. It was abolished after a long campaign by the car industry, which estimated SCT depressed cars sales by up to 70,000 cars a year – and the market certainly boomed in the years after it was ended.

Re-introducing an old tax glossed-up with the veneer of green respectability is probably something we can expect to see more of in the future. What an amazing, and clearly unrelated, coincidence that the amount raised in 1992 by Special Car Tax is exactly the same as that to be raised by the new showroom tax in 2010 and after.

Ironically one of the most vocal abolitionists back in 1992 was Andrew Smith, then and now the Labour MP for Oxford East, whose constituency includes the Cowley plant. Back then it was part of Rover Group and now it houses BMW’s highly successful Mini factory. Yet now, despite the substantial risks this new charge plays to the remaining parts of Britain’s indigenous motor industry, we haven’t heard a peep from Mr. Smith or the other MPs with car factories in their constituencies.

Read Autocar's budget 2008 analysis here

Why has Porsche bought Volkswagen?

2008-03-07T18:25:55Z

Forget the "we need to protect our suppliers", and the "our aim is to create one of the strongest and most innovative automobile alliances in the world" hype coming out of Zuffenhausen.

The Porsche purchase has everything to do with Ferdinand Piech's obsession with bringing the two independent parts of what he perceives as the Porsche family companies together. You will remember that Piech is the grandson of Dr Ferdinand Porsche, who created the Beetle - and thus Volkswagen and the city of Wolfsburg – for Adolf Hitler.

After WW2, Porsche's son Ferry set up the Porsche sports car company, using VW mechanicals as a basis. As an engineer Ferdinand Piech first worked for Porsche on a new flat-6 engine for what became the 911. After it was decided by his mother Louisa Piech and uncle Ferry that no members of the by then feuding family should work for the sports car company, Piech moved across to Audi in the early 1970s.

Eventually, Piech rose to be head of R&D and later chairman of Audi, although he maintained his links with Porsche by serving on the advisory board. From Audi he moved to became CEO of the Volkswagen group and upon retirement in 2002, assumed the chairmanship of the VW advisory board.

Remember, too, that it was Piech, as chairman of the Porsche board in the early '90s, who selected Wendelin Wiedeking, to run Porsche. It was an inspired decision, Wiedeking introduced Toyota production methods to the company and helped craft the Boxster/911 product plan that effectively saved the company after the disastrous loses and plunging sales of the early '90s.

From early in the 21st century, Piech, after his mother's death the largest single family shareholder in Porsche, and Wiedeking deliberately constructed a plan to combine the two groups under the Porsche banner.

That Porsche, which made 100,000 cars in 2007 can buy the VW Group, builders of lmost six million vehicles last year, tells you everything you need to know about Porsche's huge profit margins. Wiedeking is proud to claim they are the easily biggest in the industry.

Read the news story here.

Fiat 500 pulls Tokyo crowds

2008-02-22T15:40:00Z

I’ve just witnessed the launch of the new Fiat 500. I know what you’re thinking; didn’t our man Will Powell do that a few weeks ago? Well, yes and no. Will was at the London launch; I was at the Japanese launch of the car, which went off at Tokyo’s Italian Institute of Culture, in Chiyoda, earlier today.

In textbook Japanese style, Fiat Japan rolled out the new 500, the girls clad in traditional wafuku kimonos (see above), even the cherry blossom – and Tokyo’s motoring press turned up in numbers. They invited 500; more than 1000 actually arrived, many of whom had to be refused access to the Institute’s Umberto Agnelli auditorium.

The 500 is big deal for Fiat Japan. The firm’s distribution outfit is a fairly small one in comparison with Fiat UK. It sells 6000 cars a year right now, whereas Fiat UK turns around probably six times as many. The 500 is a car, it’s hoping, that can effectively double its sales, up beyond the 10,000 cars mark for 2008, and beyond that for 2009.

And driving around this city, it’s easy to see why. Contrary to what you may expect, Tokyo’s is actually quite a staid, unimaginative automotive landscape – but it’s also a uniquely postmodern one. Here, half the cars you see are what look like 30-year-old Nissan Cedric and Toyota Crown cabs; in fact, these Datsun-Cherry-a-likes are still made by Japan's domestic car-makers exclusively for service as cabs.

The rest of the cars here tend to be modern, but conservative-looking monoboxes – small vans, MPVs, and the occasional low-spec, upright hatchback. To a model, they are all white, silver, grey or black. There is very little colour here unless you count the rainbow-hued taxis. But there is a particularly interesting coming together of automotive design languages old and new.

That’s why the retro 500 could go down an absolute storm. Cleverly, Fiat will make all cars sold duoselect automatics, so they’ll be ideally suited to the realities of the city’s stop-go traffic too.

All this car has to do to succeed is to be desirable enough to break a few of this city’s 12 million inhabitants out of the culture of obedience and conformism that seems to be omnipresent here. Residents of Tokyo will need to be brave enough to stand being looked at in order to actually drive one of these things. I suspect many of them would rather remain anonymous.

You’ll need to not mind paying over the odds for this little car to buy one too. The 500 will cost the equivalent of £9k here; you can get a Nissan March (Micra to you and me) for not much more than £5500.

For all that, though, I reckon the 500 will be a roaring success. I reckon Fiat Japan will be able to sell as many as they can get hold of. It’ll be a welcome, three-and-a-half metre breath of fresh air for passers by like me, too. After all, there are only so many Toyota Crowns a right-thinking man can count.

Technorati tags: Fiat 500, Tokyo, Saunders

Porsches don't pollute

2008-02-19T17:49:00Z

It now looks like Porsche will be seeking a judicial review of the Mayor of London’s decision to bring in a £25 per day charge for vehicles in Band G. Porsche have written a letter to the Mayor and, if he doesn’t reply in 14 days, they will head – expensively – for the courts.

Andy Goss, MD of Porsche UK, says the "massive congestion charge increase is quite simply unjust." A spokesman for Mayor replied that "No-one is allowed to throw their rubbish in the street and Porsche should not be allowed to impose gas-guzzling, polluting cars on Londoners who do not want them.”

There’s a very serious point to be pursued here. Porsche, and the rest of the car industry, must wrest back the meaning of the word pollution from the grip of the Green spin machine. Gas-guzzlers they maybe (though I’d bet the average Porsche does far fewer miles in a year than the average Mondeo), but they certainly aren’t polluters.

Like all modern petrol-fired units, Porsche engines are as clean a whistle. Indeed, if you replaced all 21,000 black cabs with 21,000 Cayennes, inner London’s air quality would improve massively overnight. Recently, a blogger pointed out that when his imported Dodge Durango 5.7-litre V8 was tested by VOSA, the equipment could barely register pollutants from the engine.

What matters in the city centre is air quality and London’s is probably the worst in Europe. Worst because of the use of big diesel engines, in big heavy vehicles, trapped in stop-start traffic. And that’s nothing to do with Porsche, or any other car maker.