What's Wrong With This Picture: Vue To Rebadge Edition
Remember the Saturn Vue? It’s back, baby, and more cannibalistic than ever. Starting in 2011, the refreshed Chevrolet Captiva will be undercutting Opel…
Read more
The Future Of Car Brands: Scooters

If you exist outside the fast-paced world of the automotive branding community, you might believe that the point of car brands is to sell cars. Needless to say, you’d be wrong. The big buzzword around car brands, particularly the more niche and eco-friendly brands is “mobility.” As in “we must leverage our brand values to provide a broad-based mobility strategy for the cities of the future.” Or, to put it into layman’s terms, “screw cars, we gotta start building scooters.”

Read more
Foreigners Create "Homegrown" Brands For China

China has a dizzying array of car brands. Nobody is quite sure how many car manufacturers there are. Number of car brands in China? Anybody’s guess. Well, there will be a new one. Nissan created a new brand exclusively for China. They call it the Venucia. Solid Chinese name …

Read more
Dealers Dish On The Fiat Future
I think there’s a decent business case if you take the long viewChrysler Dealer Don Lee gives Automotive News his take on Chrysler’s pitch to n…
Read more
Mazda Rethinks The 3
There are no rumors to report here, just a hypnotic video of Mazda working through its new Kodo design language on a compact hatchback concept. As with the S…
Read more
Drove The Chevoo To The Levoo, But The Levoo Was Dry

What would intellectual property lawyers do without China’s Chery? In 2005, a legal dispute between Chery and GM was settled after Chery swore that they would never sell a Chery car in the U.S. – GM took the position that Chery was dangerously close to Chevy. Attorneys, start your accordion file folders, here we go again:

Read more
What's Wrong With This Picture: A Buick Too Far? Edition
The last time we looked at the evolving Opel Astra coupe, I wonderedwhat do you call a Buick coupe that could fit under the hood of a classic Riviera?Though…
Read more
Internet Auto Journalism Arrives
The use of automotive journalism in car commercials never ceases to fascinate. For example, do consumers really consider Audi over BMW because Audi won three…
Read more
What's Wrong With This Picture: Dodging The Ram Issue Edition
The de-Ramification of the Dodge brand took another important step today, as Dodge previewed its new Ram-free logo. Similarly, the new 2011 Durango (on which…
Read more
Range Anxiety(R)

People have a lot of fears with electric cars/extended range electric cars. Will the government subsidies distort the market? Can manufacturers be able to sell them profitably? Are they really that environmentally sound? But the one which gets everyone is “range anxiety”. Will I have enough juice to get me home? It’s an issue which manufacturers are dealing with in their own ways. GM has come up with their own way of dealing with it; they’re trademarking it: With range anxiety being trademarked, someone just dreams the word, and GM’s lawyers will be on top of him, and make him surrender the illicit dream.

Read more
Joel Ewanick On "The Parent Company"

In recent interviews with Automotive News [sub] and AutoObserver, GM’s recently-hired marketing boss Joel Ewanick dished out some of the insights that have earned him the reputation for being an ace image guy. He tells AN [sub] that

Consumers don’t buy General Motors. General Motors sells nothing

Oh, really? Because GM decided to remove the GM Mark of Excellence from its vehicles right around the time it emerged from bankruptcy, the better part of a year before Ewanick was brought on board. Since the first Government Motors joke emerged on the internet, GM has sought to distance itself from its corporate umbrella’s brand… and this is the insight Ewanick is bringing to the organization? Hell, Automotive News [sub] suggested that “Stop mentioning General Motors” when he was hired in June of this year. Which leaves Ewanick only one choice: don’t talk about General Motors more than anyone might imagine.

Read more
Chrysler's Fiat/Alfa Dealer Plan: 50k Sales From 165 Stores In 119 Markets

Chrysler execs met with some 400 potential Fiat dealers today to discuss plans for a new network of Fiat and Alfa-Rome brand stores in the US, and as we have noted, a certain amount of overlap can be expected. Chrysler says that “as many as 200” stores could be opened for the Italian brands, but the company has only identified 119 metropolitan markets in 38 US states where it projects sales growth in small car sales. Even with only “about 165” stores planned for the initial rollout, quite a few markets could host dueling Fiat/Alfa stores. According to the NYT’s Nick Bunkley, Idaho, Iowa, Alaska, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, South Carolina, The Dakotas, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming will not receive Fiat/Alfa dealerships. Meanwhile, the AFP reports that Chrysler plans to sell 50,000 Fiat 500s in 2011 alone, meaning each of the 165 stores will sell an average of 303 units per year.

Read more
Ferry Porsche On The Importance Of Independence
Despite the deep ties between his firm and Volkswagen, Ferry Porsche firmly believed that Porsches could only be Porsches if the company remained truly indep…
Read more
What's Wrong With This Picture: Mazda's New Look Edition
When Mazda’s next-generation Mazda5 debuts later this year, it will mark the high-water point for the brand’s Nagare design language. Named for a…
Read more
Quote Of The Day: Mo' Brands, Mo' Problems Edition
The issue is it’s yet another brand. And given the fact we’re trying to allocate our resources to other areas that make the most sense, does it m…
Read more
Ask The Best And Brightest: What Does The Nissan Brand Mean To You?

Nissan was the fifth best-selling brand in the first half of 2010, but with nine new model rollouts planned for the next two years it’s looking for something its marketing team calls “breaking the mold” improvement. To do that, Nissan is leading its product blitz with distinctive products like the Leaf EV and t he Juke “sportcross,” but it’s also working to bring more attention to its brand as well as its vehicles. Marketing boss Jon Brancheau explains the problem to AdAge

If you look back over the course of the last 18 months at our creative, a lot of it has been focused on individual models and there hasn’t been an overarching idea that held everything together, laddering to Nissan. That’s what’s different about this work. It’s focused on the vehicle lines supporting the Nissan brand rather than just focusing on individual launch activity. The Leaf is the most recent example to believe that Nissan is an innovative company and that’s how we want to transmit our message to consumers, we want to turn it around a little bit — Nissan is the brand, and here’s the reason you should believe in it.

Unfortunately, the vehicle for Nissan’s latest bid at brand awareness is based on the tagline “Innovation For All,” a bon mot that is unfortunately reminiscent of the ill-fated Chevrolet tagline “Excellence For Everyone.” For a brand that is respected by many but loved by few, that’s a dangerously vague approach to a marketing push, and it hardly seems like the message to propel Nissan out of its perennial also-ran status. On the other hand, it’s tough to put a finger on what exactly Nissan should stand for because it’s brand has almost always been poorly differentiated in this market. So we’re curious: what does the Nissan brand mean to you, and what are the strengths it should build on as it seeks to improve brand awareness? Or are they on the right track already?

Read more
Topolino Trouble: Chrysler Dealers Losing Interest In Italian Brands

The enthusiasm for the Fiat coming to the market has diminished. At first, it was something that would be mixed in… now [Fiat-Chrysler is] going to have to present a compelling story and product to back me investing at least $1 million to build a new showroom

Everyone loves the Fiat 500, but Chrysler’s dealers aren’t exactly thrilled that they have to build brand new showrooms to sell the Italian (er, Mexican) subcompact, as witnessed by the quote above in the WSJ [sub]. Another dealer adds that he knows enough troubled MINI and Smart stores to be spooked by the prospect of dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars on what will clearly be a niche offering. Yet another calls it an “excellent opportunity,” but Chrysler needs to find 200 qualified dealers to make Fiat’s American adventure a reality. The credit and car markets, gas prices and Fiat’s less-than-stellar American-market legacy all conspire against the scheme. To say nothing of the poor historical precedents for Chrysler’s ballooning brand portfolio. But as usual, CEO Sergio Marchionne has it all figured out…

Read more
German Brands Move Towards Small FWD Cars… But Not For Germans

Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen/Audi are all moving inexorably towards a major downmarket expansion, as they develop a new generation of compact and subcompact cars based on front-wheel-drive architectures. Though Volkswagen has played in this space for some time, the move is a major cultural shift for BMW and Mercedes, which are typically associated with rear-drive luxury cars, particularly in the US market. But the truth is that the German luxury brands have always sold products in the German and other European markets that don’t match their premium overseas brand images (see, among other examples, the ubiquity of Mercedes taxis in Germany). But the strange thing about this next push towards smaller cheaper cars is that it’s not not aimed at Germany at all.

Read more
The Cruze Is "Solid," But Is Chevy's Marketing?

Earlier today, I noted that

Revitalizing a once-dominant domestic brand is a lot harder than telling the quality-improvement story of a once-reviled Korean value brand

and I think this video helps prove the point. For a brand like Hyundai, highlighting product details helped change perceptions… but then, Hyundai has never asked Americans to think of their cars in especially emotional, patriotic, or culturally significant ways. They’re just high value cars that have become better and better over time. For GM and Chevrolet’s new top marketing execs (freshly poached from Hyundai), the plan seems to be to follow the Hyundai “quality story” gameplan, with a little awkwardly hip flair. For a brand that’s been “the heartbeat of America,” “like a rock” and more, this latest video seems stuck in “excellence for everyone” (i.e. generic and directionless) territory.

Besides, when the word “solid” is used in marketing materials to describe a “ 3,100-3,300 lb” compact car, it sounds a little like a Mom calling her kid “big-boned.”

Read more
TV Show Investor Rescues Peel, Makers Of The World's Smallest Car
Thanks to one of the most popular Top Gear segments ever, the Peel P50 is now well-established in the minds and imaginations of the world’s automotive cognoscenti. After all, how often does Clarkson say that “if [car X] had a reverse gear, I would describe it as the absolute ultimate in personal mobility”? But now there’s another reason to pay attention to Peel: having been bought a few years back by Gary Hillman and Faizal Khan, the British microcar maker is set for a comeback that’s being funded by Sonny Coreleone himself, actor some British investor named James Caan (born Nazim Khan… cheers to colin42 for the British pop culture lesson, and apologies for unwittingly making the story better than it is).
Read more
Fisker Karma: The Car That Changes Everything Except Advertising Cliches
Why build the sexiest-looking “green car” to date, only to advertise it using cobbled-together promo clips and a royalty-free techno beat? Other…
Read more
Chevrolet Tries To Catch "That Hyundai Feeling"

Hyundai’s most famous superbowl ad may have imagined executives at Lexus and BMW getting steamed at the success of the Genesis, but that’s not necessarily where the upstart Korean brand is making the biggest impression on competitors. In fact, it’s Hyundai’s ability to market value so successfully, even in the premium space, that’s got the other automakers steamed. But instead of getting mad at Hyundai’s building momentum and reputation, GM’s getting even. Having already poached away former Hyundai marketing boss (and the man behind this ad) Joel Ewanick to lead GM’s entire marketing effort, GM just snagged Ewanick’s replacement as VP Marketing at Hyundai, Chris Perry, to head up Chevrolet marketing [via Automotive News [sub]. That’s right, two VP’s of marketing from the same upstart Korean brand, both poached away by GM… You think The General might be looking for people who can tell the momentum-turnaround, finally-getting-some-respect-around-here storyline?

Read more
The "Brand Savior" Rover 55 That Was Never Built
Before the remnants of the British Leyland empire were sold off to various developing-world automakers (in an intriguing automotive inversion of colonialism)…
Read more
Dodged Spanked For Monkey Ad

You may have caught a version of this ad on television not long ago, in which an actual monkey fires a confetti cannon. Notice that the monkey doesn’t show up in this version? That’s no coincidence. The Dodge brand, which has previously baffled audiences with such retrograde nonsense as calling the Charger R/T “Man’s Last Stand,” has backed down from using a monkey in its advertising after being criticized by PETA. So much for that thin veneer of über-macho, anti-PC gloss. Hit the jump for Dodge’s petulant response to allegations of animal cruelty.

Read more
French Workers Protest "Chevy-fication" Of Renault

Autocar reports that Renault workers in France are jumping on a bus and heading to the Paris Motor Show. Are the doing it because they fancy a day out? Maybe they want to see all the nice cars on display? Nope, they’re going there to protest. OK, so who do you think they are going to protest? Hyundai? Toyota? Ford? Nope. They’re protesting against Renault. So, a bunch of French Renault workers are going to the Paris Motor Show to protest against their own company? Why?

Read more
What's Wrong With This Picture: Yeah, It's Got A Hemi Edition
Jeep’s Grand Cherokee has earned consistently positive reviews by maintaining its off-road capability and nailing one of the few untouched crossover ma…
Read more
Is Ford Enjoying Full-Size Success?

Today’s Detroit News has an interesting item on Ford’s D3/D4 platform strategy, based on the thesis that

The remade Taurus has emerged as a flagship for the Dearborn automaker, restoring luster to a nameplate that had become synonymous with “rental car,” and helping to revive an automaker that had become dependent on trucks and sport utility vehicles.

As Jack Baruth’s Capsule Review of the Ford Five Hundred shows, the D3 platform offers good space and comfort, and the recent update and return to the Taurus nameplate has been rewarded with steadily-increasing sales. And though the Taurus has fought back to become a Ford-brand flagship (likely at the expense of Mercury), its platform-mates have been consistent underperformers on the showroom floor. Flex has sold in the low 3k monthly range, while MKS and MKT have been thoroughly beaten in YTD sales by the Cadillac DTS and Escalade, themselves hardly the most competitive alternatives to the big Lincolns.

Read more
Ask The Best And Brightest: Is Crossover A Dirty Word?

I recently attended a fancy-pants dinner held by Chrysler PR for some Houston-area bloggers. We were wined, dined and introduced to the 2011 Grand Cherokee. While free food and journalistic integrity are a tough combo to swallow, I found something entertaining and inherently blog worthy: the castrated 2011 Ford Explorer is in the new Grand Cherokee’s gunsight. Why? One of the SUV’s most famous nameplates is now a crossover, while another is still an SUV. But neither of them like being called names.

Read more
Porsche Product Plans: More Deadly Sins On The Way?

TTAC’s writers don’t always agree with each other, but we can’t help but rub off on each other a little bit. After all, as our Jack Baruth puts it, “great artists steal.” Lately we’ve been treated to a tour of Jack’s love-hate relationship with the Porsche brand in his take on Paul Niedermeyer’s “Deadly Sins” series. And if the latest news on Porsche’s product plans [via Auto Motor und Sport] are anything to go on, we can probably expect more Baruthian takedowns of Zuffenhausen’s flights of fancy going forward.

Read more
Saab Fan Blog Inspires Official Award

Anybody who made it through the last 12 months or so with their passion for the Saab brand intact deserves some kind of free psychological screening and endangered species protection award. Hell, anyone who made it through the last 20 years… you know what, this isn’t the moment for cynicism. Through the wrenching chaos of GM’s often-abortive attempts to sell Saab, the website SaabsUnited has stood by its brand, aggregating the most complete Saab sale coverage on the web, and generally consoling the faithful. Oh yes, and suffering through a relentless stream of cynicism from yours truly (sorry guys, it’s all we know). Anyway, for being the keepers of hope when all hope seemed lost, Saab has named and annual award after SaabsUnited which

will be made annually as the company’s way of expressing its gratitude to people like [SU founder Steven Wade] and others who continue to show us such great support.

Read more
Wild-Ass Rumor Of The Day: Buick Taking On Lexus LS?

Sometimes I miss Bob Lutz so much it hurts. First we’re teased with rumors of a Cadillac flagship and now this: a Zeta-based Buick flagship that’s the spiritual successor to the 1996 Buick Roadmaster. The news is exciting, even if it lacks the panache of a Lutzian rear-wheel-drive screed. But you have to read a little deeper for the real punch line.

Read more
Quote Of The Day: Win On Sunday, Sell On Monday Edition

New vehicle buyers who are influenced by motorsports typically love cars and trucks and they are opinion leaders for other car buyers – they give an average of 25 or more vehicle recommendations per year to others. More importantly people follow their advice – and we have measured it. So, there is a downstream impact from the races in the form of on-going word of mouth recommendations. That’s why we say that the roar from a race car continues away from the track.

Steve Bruyn, President of Foresight Research breaks down an intriguing finding from his firm’s “2010: Automotive Marketing Return On Investment” study [via PRNewswire]. What makes Foresight’s finding so strange is that from Formula One to NASCAR, OEMs have been grumbling about the irrelevance of major race series to their automotive products. Meanwhile, there’s no shortage of anecdotal evidence to suggest that automotive enthusiasm is on the decline in general, a reality which implies that racing is less important to automotive buying decisions than ever. So just how effective is the oldest form of automotive marketing?

Read more
What's Wrong With This Picture: I Want To Believe Edition

Just because I want to believe doesn’t mean I should. Or that I can. Even by the gonzo standards of 1970s Italy, the Stratos was always a wild one… precisely the kind of car that has no obvious place in the homogenized, safety-crazed world of 21st Century automobiles. Besides, Lancia and Chrysler are becoming two names for the same brand, and it’s tough to imagine a Chrysler Stratos ever coming stateside (if only to avoid the “Cloud Car” associations). Besides, if Fiat is keeping Alfa around as a sporty brand, why would it develop a Lancia sportscar? Other than Old GM-style branding confusion, of course. But the least believable part of these pictures, purportedly showing a Stratos prototype testing at a Fiat test track [via Italiaspeed] are the photos themselves… and the story going along with them.

Read more
Does Opel Have Only Six To Nine Months To Live?

Recently, Opel’s boss Nick Reilly was asked by the Süddeutschen Zeitung how long it could be before GM’s top management decides that it doesn’t want to rescue its European division Opel after all. His answer [via Autobild]:

It’s not a question of two years, but rather six or nine months, before we need to have proven that we’ve made positive progress

Even then, Reilly admits that

We need four to five years before we’re able to get back to where we were

That doesn’t sound so good, does it?

Read more
Ask The Best And Brightest: Can Fiat Sell 50k-100k Cars In The US Next Year?

The Fiat brand returns to the US later this year, spearheaded by the Mexican-built 500 minicar and followed next year by Abarth and convertible versions of the A-segment hatchback. With some 200 Chrysler dealers in major urban centers preparing to add the Fiat brand to their portfolios, Automotive News [sub] reports that the brand hopes to reach at least 50k units and as many as 100k units by next year. For comparison, the MINI brand sold 45,293 units in the last 12 months (ending in June) and 48,562 in the previous 12 months.

Read more
Ford Gives Lincoln MKZ No-Cost Hybrid Option
The automotive world largely yawned when Ford announced the 2011 Lincoln MKZ hybrid. After all, Ford already offered the Fusion and Mercury Milan in hybrid f…
Read more
Chart Of The Day: A Changing Nissan? Part Two
As a Nissan rep pointed out via email last night, yesterday’s Chart Of The Day hardly tells the whole story of “the other Japanese brand.”…
Read more
MINI Prepping Mini-er MINI
When BMW announced that it would be building a million front-wheel-drive cars, a conflict between the new BMW-branded “Megacity” or 0-Series and…
Read more
Quote Of The Day: Quirky Brand's Burden Edition
Ever since the Subaru brand was introduced to the US market as the makers of “cheap and ugly” little cars, it’s suffered from a tortured re…
Read more
Smart Scoots Into The Two-Wheel Game

Smart’s current plan for reviving its fading sales is a Tesla-powered EV version of its Smart ForTwo, which the Daimler-owned firm hopes will keep its city cars moving until a new platform is jointly developed with Renault. Further down the road though, it seems that Smart is moving to expand out of cars, as Autocar reports that the brand is developing a plug-in electric scooter. A senior Mercedes-Benz source tells the British magazine that

Smart was originally established to tackle the need for improved mobility, especially in congested city environments. Up to now we have concentrated our efforts on four-wheel solutions. The next stage is to looking at how to expand beyond this with other environmentally friendly vehicles

Read more
"Build Them Where You Sell Them" Becomes "Sell Them Where You Build Them"

With Kia’s first US plant pumping out hot-selling new Sorentos, the Korean brand has been desperate to stake its claim to the transplant patriotism that has helped the Japanese automakers rise to dominance in the US market. In this latest ad for the new Sorento, Kia leaves the viewer with no room to doubt where the Sorento is made… and it’s already the second ad to feature Kia’s new West Point, GA factory. So, how does this all play back home in Korea? Hit the jump for the answer…

Read more
Ask The Best And Brightest: Could Kia Disappear?

24/7 Wall Street seems to believe that Hyundai’s junior brand could go away in the next year and a half, as it named Kia to its “Ten Brands That Will Disappear in 2011” list. This despite the fact that Kia’s first-half sales were up 15 percent over the first half of 2009, and Kia’s rolling 12-month sales are over 22 percent higher than its performance in the previous 12 months. So, why does 24/7 Wall Street see Kia disappearing?

Kia Motors Corporation is one of the two car brands of Hyundai of South Korea. It has always been a marginal brand. Its stable mate, Hyundai USA, has a reputation for high quality cars like the Sonata and Genesis. Kia sells “low rent” cars and SUV nameplates like the Sorento and Rio. As GM and Ford have already discovered, it is expensive to maintain multiple brands and storied car names, including Pontiac, Saturn, and Mercury, are disappearing. Most Kia cars sell for $14,000 to $25,000. Hyundai has several cars in the same price range. Hyundai’s Sonata has quickly become one of the best-selling cars in America, and its Genesis flagship model competes with mid-sized BMWs and Mercedes. The parent company will take a page from several other global car companies and dump its weakest brand.

Read more
Chrysler To Introduce Fiat Dealer Net

After a year of bitter battles with its dealers in the wake of a bankruptcy-era dealer cull, Chrysler is about to do the unthinkable: start a whole new dealer network to sell Fiats built in Italy by its new owner. The Detroit News reports that

existing Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram dealers will get a chance to apply to sell the Italian Fiats, but they must be able to operate separate facilities with different sales and service teams in order to win a franchise.

Fiat will return to the US by the end of this year, starting with the Mexican-built Fiat 500.

Read more
Bugatti 16.4 Supersport Ensures Another Decade Of "Veyron-Killer" Wannabes

And you thought it was over. You thought that, with Top Gear’s “Car Of The Decade” trophy accompanying Ferdinand Piëch’s “Ego Of The Decade” award in the Volkswagen trophy case, Bugatti could move on and let tiny companies based in sheds and garages fight over who has the world’s fastest “production” car. But no. That’s not how things work in Wolfsburg… er, Mollsheim.

Read more
Oh Say Can You CL?
One of these cars is two years old and has a base price of £19,365 in the UK (it is not sold in the US), while the other is brand-spankety new and star…
Read more
Bitter Builds A Better Buick

Now that we can basically predict the styling of future Buicks by putting waterfall grilles on current Opels, and the brand’s biggest market is China, it’s safe to say that Buick is no longer a particularly American brand anymore. It should come as no real surprise then, that it took a German to build the Ultimate Buick. That “B” on the grille stands for Bitter, an old-school German tuning house that has been to Opel what Alpina is to BMW. But because Erich Bitter has spent his life improving mass-market cars rather than Bavarian bahnsturmers, he brings a unique approach to the Opel Insignia, also known as the Buick Regal. In fact, you could almost call it more Buick than Buick.



Read more
Land Rover Dumps Alphabet Soup For Evoque-ative Nameplate
Kia may be dumping its generally bland model names for the increasingly favored “alphabet soup” paradigm, but Land Rover has gone the opposite d…
Read more
Ask The Best And Brightest: Does GM Need A Manhattan Flagship Salon?
According to BusinessWeek‘s David Welch, GM’s New York market share has slipped below ten percent for the first time, prompting The General to co…
Read more
What's Wrong With This Picture: Alfa's SUV Plans Parody Themselves Edition
Alfa’s been talking about selling an SUV for years now, as the brand has thrashed around looking for a rescue line. Now, a long-rumored ute named Kamal…
Read more
One Of These Audis Is Not Like The Other…
Audi’s new A8 and a prototype of its upcoming “four-door coupe” cousin, the A7, get caught looking mighty similar by Auto Motor und Sport&r…
Read more
Happy 100th Birthday, Alfa Romeo
If you go to www.alfaromeo.com, you’ll be invited to celebrate Alfa Romeo’s Centenary, which is officially marked today. Try to click on the &ldq…
Read more
Futurama 2010: Shanghai

This video, of the presentation at GM-SAIC’s 2010 Shanghai Expo pavilion, is not the newest video to hit the web (nor, necessarily, the most exciting), but it’s definitely worth a peek. The world of the future, as imagined by the automaker, is a classical leitmotiv of the industry, and its changes over the years can often reveal deep truths. Granted, this particular show is aimed at the international and Chinese audiences, but the contrast to footage of Futuramas past couldn’t be more stark. See for yourself, after the jump.

Read more
Dodge's Second To Last Stand: The "Man Van"

The Wall Street Journal [sub] asked several Chrysler dealers about the newest hotness being developed in Auburn Hills, and came away with the tales of a “man van” that Chrysler hopes will lend the Dodge Caravan some masculine swagger. According to the WSJ, this re-man-ification of the minivan includes:

a slightly sportier look on the outside, possibly finished off with a black-and-gray interior trimmed with hot-colored stitching on the seats and steering wheel

Oh yes, and some “edgy” ads laden with tired cliches of sexual politics. In short, they’re sending the 2008 “Caravan R/T” concept into production. But why?

Read more
Buick Going Global?

After North America and China, we have other markets in our sights. Buick has no plans for Europe at this moment, but that could change.

GM’s Jim Federico spills possible plans for a Buick expansion to Auto Motor und Sport.

Read more
Quote Of The Day: PeaPod Pisses Off Edition

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

People really viewed the Peapod as an incredible case study in how you could – in modern times – bring forward a completely new idea in the automotive sector in the space of just several months. It was pretty phenomenal

Remember the PeaPod? It was “the new wave car for the younger set” masterminded by former Chrysler “Chief Innovation Officer” Peter Arnell, during the chaotic “try anything” years of Cerberus ownership. It was supposed to start going on sale last October, but the division (formerly known as GEM) was spun out of new Chrysler during bankruptcy and hasn’t been heard from since. Surprised?

Read more
What's Wrong With This Picture: We All Knew This Would Happen Someday Edition

Via dinosaursandrobots.com come pictures of what may be the most predictable conversion ever… and it looks like this particular Kia owner went the full Amanti with it.

Read more
Daimler's Dream: "The Best Or Nothing"
As Bertel put it when he first reported the newest Mercedes ad slogan, we are not making this up. How could we?
Read more
Chevy Versus Chevrolet: An (Official) Explanation

So, this was all about new markets where the Chevrolet brand is relatively unknown. In other words, the markets where consumers are just as likely to call their Chevrolet a “ChevWoo” or “Daewoo” as a “Chevy.” The reality is that nothing hurts the Chevrolet brand abroad more than the continued existence of the Daewoo brand… by comparison the use of a familiar nickname is a minor issue. And what is going to be easier for a non-English-speaker to say, Chevrolet or Chevy? Anyway, based on the harried, apologetic tone in this video, it’s pretty clear that GM would rather this controversy had never started. So why did the new ad boys feel like dropping “Chevy” was so important?

Read more
Jeep Grand Cherokee "Manifesto"

Chrysler Group didn’t shy away from the political overtones with its first ad for its first new product since bankruptcy. In fact, this spot, titled “Manifesto” is more political porn than anything else. Instead of selling America on the simple fantasy of outdoor escape, Jeep is selling the biggest fantasy of all: a real revival in American manufacturing. “Fear not, brave citizens,” it seems to be saying, “globalization isn’t actually wreaking havoc on your manufacturing base. The statistics are lies. Now buy this SUV.”

Otherwise, it’s quite a well-made ad.

Read more
What's Wrong With This Picture: MINI's Growing Family Edition

MINI’s new six-model lineup gets an early preview, as the Cooper, Convertible, Clubman, Countryman, Coupe and Roadster meet up outside MINI’s plant in Oxford, England. The Countryman SUV won’t arrive in the states until February 2011, with the Coupe and Roadster following by six and 12 months respectively.

Read more
  • Analoggrotto TTAC is full of drug addicts with short memories. Just beside this article is another very beautiful article about how the EV9 was internationally voted by a renowned board of automotive experts who are no doubt highly educated, wealthy and affluent; the best vehicle in entire world. That's planet earth for you numbskulls. Let me repeat: the best vehicle in the world is the Kia EV9. Voted, and sealed, and if you try to deny it Fanny Willis is ready to prosecute you; but she will send her boyfriend instead because she is busy.
  • MaintenanceCosts Our Bolt is not going away for a while but if I had to predict today what would replace it, I'd predict an EX30. It checks every box for my wife.
  • Ajla Both Biden and Trump are on record caring ~0% what the WTO says and the US government isn't bound by WTO rulings.
  • Honda1 The FJB Inflation Reduction Act will end up causing more inflation down the road, fact! Go ahead and flame me libbies, get back to me in a few years!
  • Cprescott Fisker is another brand that Heir Yutz has killed.