Does this say "Scirocco" to you? Hey, it doesn't matter as long as it doesn't say "Corrado VR6" as far as we're concerned.
Pick your favorite rumor: 1)
Ford will take the company private after selling off Credit, Jaguar and Land Rover; 2) Ford will form an alliance with Hyundai/Kia or Renault/Nissan; 3) Ford will stick by its turnaround plan and weather its product drought; 4) Ford will change its name to an unpronounceable symbol, move to Minneapolis and push out some lazy career filler for the rest of its days. Stay tuned for our dissassembly of the situation next week, m'kay?
Well,
at least somebody is standing up for Jaguar. Personally we're confounded that whole generations of auto executives haven't managed to make a solid business out of it, especially with cars like
the new XK.
Ford says it's coming out with a clean truck diesel, and then
GM said the same thing. Chrysler has one on the way for Jeep, too. Our mental picture is one of lobbyists doing an abrupt about-face and falling like hundreds of dominoes.
Ford chopped a Lincoln V-8 out of its product plan, leaving it and Acura to battle it out for the title of "luxury-adjacent." To paraphrase a line from the movie
Singles, "futility is the world's worst cologne."
GM will be building Camaros again in Canada. Okay, wait a minute - just put aside all those stereotypes of "hosers" and "Alanis Morrissette wannabees" and "Celine Dion worshippers" and just thank God they didn't decide to build the damn thing in France. (Come to think of it, what's wrong with putting it in Hamtramck with Cadillac?)
Highway deaths are up, but this time it's pedestrians and motorcyles accounting for the rise. Didn't Denis Leary remind us all, "If you don't have four wheels, stay on the f*&#@n' sidewalk"?
Finally this week,
Toyota said it's considering slowing its product development cycle because of the plague of recalls descending upon it. The faint smell of heaping criticism is starting to linger there, no?
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It’s music festival season in Europe, with big events on seemingly every weekend. The bizarrely named Fruitstock took place earlier in the month in London, sponsored by smoothie maker Innocent, and Honda was there with a Civic Hybrid painted as a cow promote the green benefits of the eco-friendly saloon.
The car, nicknamed Clover, helped explain how hybrid technology works in very basic terms. Research conducted by Honda earlier this year, suggested three out of four people don’t know how a hybrid car works, while 50 percent had never even heard of the term.
Proving the old media adage that you don’t have to say it for it to appear in a press release, John Kingston, Honda’s U.K. environment manager, is alleged to have said: “When I first herd the idea in the office, I thought, “what a load of bull,” and told the person who suggested it to “pull the udder one.” But on reflection, it was probably the best moos I’d heard all day. Besides, no-one came up with a heifer idea.” Clearly it’s silly season as well as music festival season.—
Richard Yarrow
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Promoted under the slogan “It’s here, it’s queer,” the world’s first gay motor show is being staged in Cardiff, Wales, on Saturday 2 September. Organized by gay car site
www.topgayer.com, it will coincide with the city’s annual Mardi Gras festival. Many major manufacturers and local dealers are supporting it with stands, including Mazda, which is showcasing the new MX-5 Roadster Coupé – in bright pink. Aftermarket paint and bodywork firms are also attending, and there will be Gay-Friendly Dealer of the Year award. The people behind the event are billing it as “good clean fun for all the family.”—
Richard Yarrow
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Porsche's planning a fifth model line based on the upcoming Panamera.
Our spy shots clearly show the project far enough along that Porsche is trying to mate it out to Honda's Asimo robot.
Jaguar may be on the block as Ford tries to figure out why it can't make money from eight-year-old Focuses and Town Cars. If y'all want, we'll set up a PayPal account so we can offer 15 pounds sterling for it, like they did with Rover a few years back.
Ford is taking off on a new Expedition while GM is hoping it hits new highs with the
Sierra/Silverado. As our insensitive friend Bill would say, "They're damn lucky to get the last two seats on the Titanic."
An open question to Steve Wilhite: should you maybe do a terrible job and hope to keep it more than a couple of years? Because clearly, progress is career suicide.
Would they have called it
the Tiguana if it were built in Mexico?
We like the fact that
Picasso is getting his props, but we're a little concerned about the ergonomics if Pablo had a hand in them.
And finally this week,
Toyota has an M-Theory for keeping the Matrix from sliding off the sales charts. Our solution? Crib the Pontiac Vibe's styling and chop $2000 off the sticker. But that's just us talking.
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At a recent press briefing for the new Cadillac ad campaign, Caddy global marketing director Liz Vanzura might have exposed herself to being a little too close to the research. In describing two of Caddy’s most promising customer targets, “alpha males” and “hot Moms,” Vanzura said that her boss, Caddy brand chief Jim Taylor, perfectly embodied the “alpha male,” a guy who is successful and walks into the dealership knowing what he wants and more than the salesperson about the engine and performance specs. Not to leave anyone out, she also said that sales and marketing boss Mark LaNeve, who put her in the Caddy job, also embodied the “alpha male.”
When she got around to describing “Hot Moms,” women who are successful in their careers and who also raise kids, she offered up, albeit somewhat sheepishly and in a half-volume…um….herself!….as a good example of a “Hot Mom.”
Is there are another sub-target they left out—maybe “well-monied narcissistic?”
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Marty Padgett August 25th, 2006
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