Inside The 300: Just Better, Or Actually Good Enough?
Chrysler has earned the reputation of having some of the shoddiest interiors in the business, a perception they’re working hard to address with their n…
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Maximum Bob: Lotus Has A 60% Shot

When “Maximum” Bob Lutz showed up on the advisory board at Lotus, we were hardly surprised about his choice of post-retirement projects. After all, Lotus is one of the most audacious (privately-funded) turnaround attempts in an industry that runs on turnarounds, and Lutz is the king of building automotive hype, fresh off of one of the most overexposed automotive projects in recent memory, the Chevy Volt. Besides, Lotus’s shot at an overnight leap from niche enthusiast brand to Ferrari and Porsche-rivaling juggernaut is so brazenly implausible, that Lutz actually lends credibility to the project. At least, he would do if he didn’t have that irrepressible knack for saying things like

People keep asking me if I’m sure the new plan will work, and of course I can’t guarantee that. It’s a risk. But I’m quite certain it stands a better chance than the Lotus status quo, which for sure would eventually lead this great brand into terminal decline

Lutz goes on to tell Autocar that Lotus’s billion dollar turnaround “a big gamble,” and admits that “a fair bit of showbiz” is driving Lotus’s quantum leap towards becoming a full-line sportscar and supercar maker. Does it sound like Lutz might have some mixed feelings about Lotus’s rush to trample its enthusiast credentials? More maximum mixed feelings below the fold.

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The Luxorace: Mercedes Throws In Towel

We have said the race for who will be the #1 luxury brand in the U.S.A. is too close to call and that it will come down to the wire. Now, those weenies of Mercedes throw in the towel and concede defeat. “I’m pretty sure we’ll be No. 3,” Ernst Lieb, president of Mercedes-Benz’s U.S., told Bloomberg. Whatever happened to “we will never surrender?” (Sorry, that was a Brit.) But look at those numbers, and join us in shouting “boohoo” at Lieb. And Mercedes. No fight left in them no more?

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Ask The Best And Brightest: How Should Hyundai Sell Its Luxury Offerings?

It’s a strange question to ask, considering that Hyundai is already selling the Genesis and Equus luxury sedans, but apparently Hyundai decided to bring out the cars before launching a brand. According to the Wall Street Journal

There are three branding scenarios under consideration. The most likely is to create a subbrand called “Genesis,” and sell the models under the same dealership roof as Hyundai but in a separate part of the showroom, possibly with dedicated salespeople, said John Krafcik, the president of Hyundai Motor America.

The other scenarios are to keep the premium cars badged as Hyundais, or—in the most ambitious move—spin off the brand into separate dealer facilities, much like Lexus or Honda Motor Co.’s Acura

Those are the options, but for a little more context, let’s check in with Hyundai USA boss John Krafcik…

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BMW Leads Audi, Mercedes

You-know-what-eating grins in Munich: BMW outsold rivals Audi and Mercedes-Benz around the world last month on strong sales of the new 5er and the new X1 SUV.

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Now How Much Would You Pay? Buick Verano Tipped For $21k-$26k Price Range

GM raised a few eyebrows when it priced its new Cruze compact at or above the base price of its closest competitors, marking a shift upwards in its pricing strategy. But with loaded LTZ versions of the Cruze crossing the $24k mark, one obvious concern was cannibalization of the forthcoming Buick version of the Cruze, the Verano. GM has yet to officially announce pricing for the Verano, but an online survey of Buick dealers has leaked to GM Inside News, showing that GM is eying a price range of $21k-$26k for the new Verano, a price point that certainly overlaps with the higher-trim Cruze models. And with the 2.4 liter four-banger from the Regal tipped as the Verano’s base engine, the case for the similarly-engined (and not all that much larger) Regal is made a little less convincing by the addition of the new compact Buick. Hit the jump for GM’s proposed trim levels.

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The Resurrection Of De Tomaso

Last night, I was on the phone with one of my VC friends (that’s VC as in Venture Capital, not as in Vietcong, don’t get any ideas) and he decried the paucity of free cash: “From Joe Shmoe to billionaire investors, all are holding on to their money.” It can’t be all that bad if what Autoguide says is right, and if De Tomaso will be back from the dead. They say, there will be De Tomasos at the Geneva Autoshow.

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Hyundai's "Modern Premium" Gambit

Hyundai has been working its way out of the low-cost, low-quality basement for some time now, but even with the introduction of its Genesis luxury sedan, the brand has maintained a certain amount of working-class value appeal. That image has served Hyundai well over the last several years, when an economic downturn has sent record numbers of customers to Hyundai dealerships in search of a deal. But with a new upscale-looking design language transforming solid but uninspired offerings like the Sonata into memorable designs, Hyundai wasn’t likely to remain the scrappy, more-for-your-money underdog forever. And sure enough, Hyundai tells Automotive News [sub] that it’s getting away from the solid values of quality and practicality, and moving into the tenuous world of “premium” brand placement. Executive Vice President for global marketing Cho Won Hong explains

In the past 10 years, we have been very successful in building an image for quality. From now on, our direction will be defined as new premium or modern premium. We have been doing quite well in building good functional quality. But we still have some room to improve our emotional quality, and that is related to our brand strategy. That’s why we set modern premium as the brand direction for the next five to 10 years
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Luxury Cars: And The Winner Is - Totally Up In The Air

We’ve been following the race for the #1 luxury brand in the U.S.A. for quite a while with rapt attention, and have been predicting all along that it will come down to the wire. It looks even more so after dissecting the November numbers. Or rather after leaving the dissecting to Bloomberg.

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Ask The Best And Brightest: Does Lincoln Need More Than A New Designer?
Lincoln’s recent styling direction has certainly generated its fair share of controversy here at TTAC, and certainly Lincoln’s sales need to impr…
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Sechs Appeal?

Does the new BMW Six Series improve on Bangle’s wild-eyed vision of an avant-garde gentleman’s coupe, or is it as bland as the music it’s introduced to here? Personally, I’d vote for the latter, but then I always thought that the last Sechser was one of Bangle’s more successful designs, injecting some much-needed vitality in the otherwise ultra-conservative world of German full-sized coupes. But then I’m still decades away from being in the target demographic for the Six Series… what say you?

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Indian And Chinese Truck Builders After Ferrari Designer Pininfarina

Giorgetto Giugiaro sold out to the tedeschi at Volkswagen. Bertone is teaching budding Chinese car designers in brutally cold Changchun. And now, the last vestige of inspired Italian car design is on the auction block: Pininfarina . Actually, they had hired the Italian investment bank Banca Leonardo in August 2009, but they took their time. Now, the bidding is getting serious. And guess who wants to take Pininfarina home.

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Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet Starts At $47,190
The Nissan Murano may start at a reasonable $28,500, but stepping up to the recently-announced CrossCabriolet version will set you back a healthy $46,390 (be…
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What's Wrong With This Picture: The Cimmaron Of The Future Edition
According to a recent projection, GM will be selling over 2m vehicles on its Gamma (Aveo) platform by 2016… and thanks to Cadillac’s Urban Luxur…
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China As An Export Market? No Problem, As Long As You Are German

Nick Taylor’s layman’s observations of American cars in China are a great first impression view. But first impressions can be deceiving. It is true that the Chinese auto market is very much similar to the U.S. market. They love 3 box “real cars” (trend recently shifting a bit), they love SUVs, they love big cars if they can afford them. “American” cars, mostly Buicks, Chevys and a smattering of Fords on Chinese roads are mostly made in China. Just like the “German” or “Japanese” cars that are made mostly in China.

China as an export market for U.S. cars is a whole other matter. China has a 25 percent tariff on imported cars. That pretty much limits car imports to segments where price doesn’t matter, or where a high price acts as a differentiator from the riff-raff: Luxury cars. And this is where Europe reigns supreme.

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When Is A Coupe Not A Coupe?
Thought the idea of a four-door coupe was confusing? How about a five-door coupe? Or, is that a four-door shooting break? While the debate rages on, Mercedes…
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Carmageddon Is Behind Us. If You Believe in Ghosts

The worldwide auto industry is officially on the mend. Carmageddon is behind us. The future is bright and shiny. How do I know this? If Rolls Royce can have higher annual sales than in any of the 30 years before, life must be good again. And there still are 2 months to go, with some possible Rollers under some possible Christmas trees.

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The Strangest Government Fleet Purchases Of 2009

Yes, our recent acquisition of complete 2009 fleet sales data came a little late in the game, but we’re still finding all kinds of fun facts buried in it. For fans of limited government, perhaps the most interesting revelation is that the government fleet sales data shows that American governments (it’s unclear whether these are state, local or federal agencies) bought some sweet cars last year. Some sweet, expensive cars. Let’s take a look at some of the most surprising government fleet purchases of 2009, accompanied by our guesses for how each purchase was used.

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Why Volvo Won't Build A Big Volvo

Australian Caradvice has the riveting story of (Geely-owned) Volvo discontinuing plans of a large S-Class type sedan that could mix it up with the likes of the Audi A8, the BMW 7er, and of course the Mercedes S-Class, all very much in favor amongst the Chinese rich and not so famous. Cardadvice makes it a fight between Geely CEO Li Shufu, who wanted the big Volvo, and his new hire Stefan Jacoby, whom he had snatched from VWoA to run Volvo, and who doesn’t want a big Volvo. The truth is elsewhere.

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Cadillac Reboots European Ambitions… Again.

Given that European luxury brands have generally had their way with Detroit-based competitors in the US market, it should come as no surprise that Cadillac has failed to make any appreciable headway in the European market. The brand has been launched and re-launched in Europe four times in the last twelve years, according to Autocar, and its latest relaunch was supposed to boost sales to 20,000 per year by 2010. Despite that ambitious goal, Cadillac has fallen flat with European buyers, having moved about 1,300 units this year. As a result, the latest re-launch of Cadillac has been accompanied by dramatically scaled-back expectations: 2,500 units per year within the next “several” years (Cadillac expects the new ATS to make up about 1,500 units of this volume). Only limited numbers of CTS sedans and wagons will be converted to right-hand drive for the UK, and diesel engines for the CTS range are on hold. But even with a more modest approach to Europe, Cadillac is widely expected to keep struggling in Europe. After all, Lexus spent some $2.8b attacking the European luxury market, but sales which peaked at 60k in 2007 have retreated to a mere 30k units. As Cadillac gets stuck into its fourth re-launch, analyst Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer is not optimistic

The brand Cadillac has no fascination for Europeans and no customer base. Why should I go from Audi, BMW, Volvo or Mercedes to Cadillac? Lexus has shown us how much investment is needed to do that… My forecast is, they (Cadillac) will not be in the market in Europe by 2020. Some people might buy one in the U.S. and export it to Europe. That’s it
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Cars To China's Countryside: Bugatti, Maybach, Bentley, Lamborghini, Maserati, Rolls Royce

Ever heard of a Chinese city by the name of Ordos? Neither have I, and it’s my sixth year in China by now. Google maps says it is in Inner Mongolia, China, halfway between the buzzing cities of Hohot and Yinchuan. Ordos just started its 2010 International Auto Show, going from September 30 to October 4. And what do they sell there, you ask, ox carts?

Prepare to be blown away.

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The Ultimate Automotive Status Symbol: The Indian-Market Bugatti Veyron
Everyone knows that buying a Bugatti Veyron has a lot more to do with projecting “because I can” status than with the car’s actual abilitie…
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Two Million Dollars In Motion

As the über-ridiculous Aston Martin One-77 approaches final production-readiness, watching the thing run hot laps is finally becoming as much fun as wrapping your head around its €1.4m ($1.9m) pricetag. Especially because we’re extremely unlikely to ever see one of these things on the street. According to Auto Motor und Sport, Aston has already received a $14m offer for ten of the One-77’s 77-unit production run, apparently from a single Gulf State collector. So unless you live in one of the tonier neighborhoods of Dubai, you’re unlikely to get any closer to the One-77’s 760 horsepower V-12 than this. Enjoy the taste, peasants.

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FoMoCo, Lincoln Dealers Face Off Over Buyouts And Upgrades
With Mercury going the way of Olds and Pontiac, Ford has made much of its intentions to turn its struggling Lincoln brand around. Ford has promised a $2b inv…
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One Million Audis Sold In China

It’s a bit hard to sell millions of units with a luxury brand. But with the help of a country that has more than 1.3b people, and where an A6 (long!) is a sign of “here comes a party hotshot, get out of the way,” Audi can perform the rare fusion of volume and luxury.

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What's Wrong With This Picture: Jobless Recovery Edition
America’s “ jobless recovery” is a strange economic phenomenon: though businesses are returning to profitability, jobs are not trickling do…
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Porsche Promises Across-The-Board Hybrid Options

Porsche has made much of its hybrid drivetrain development efforts, pointing out that its founder helped create the world’s first hybrid drivetrain one hundred years ago. But thus far, the talk has centered on Porsche’s “rolling hybrid laboratory,” the 911 GT3R Hybrid, and the Hybrid Cayenne, with the plug-in 918 Hypercar lurking across the horizon. But, Porsche’s development chief Wolfgang Duerheimer tells Automotive News [sub]

In the future, we will have hybrid drive in every model line

First up will be a Panamera with the Cayenne’s hybrid V6 drivetrain, arriving sometime next year. Duerheimer won’t give a timeline for hybrid versions of the 911, Boxster and Cayman, but he does admit that hybrid drivetrains aren’t the only way for a sportscar firm to shave off the 41 grams of C02 per kilometer that Porsche needs gone by 2015.

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Hyundai Targets The Germans On Their Own Ground: In The UK

Launching a new car division is tough. A monumental task, you might say. And it has to be executed just right. I’ll give you an example, look at Lexus. When Lexus was launched in the United States, it was a hit. It didn’t take much to separate American drivers from their Cadillacs, Lincolns and Buicks. Now compare this to the European launch. Lexus never really took off. Why? Well, a good reason would be that when Lexus starting exporting to Europe, Germany was making luxury cars to a high standard already, so Lexus was nothing special. Hyundai knows this.

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Luxury… By Tata

So, how does the maker of the world’s cheapest mass-market car go about building India’s first home-grown upscale crossover? First, go buy several small European automakers…

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GM's Anti-Hatch-Tax: CTS-V Sportwagon Priced $475 Less Than Sedan
We were not amused (to coin a phrase) at Ford’s decision to tax fans of the hatchback by adding $500 to the price of its five-door Fiesta and forthcomi…
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(Not So) Wild Ass Rumor Of The Day: Lincoln To Go Global?

When Alan Mulally took over at Ford and sold off Jaguar and Volvo, a few people (me included) wondered as follows:

Having “Ford” as a global brand is well enough, but how will they compete in the more profitable luxury market?

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Porsche's Nod To Heritage

No, not the silly humpbacked 911. That’s just Porsche’s latest wallet-lightening technology. Porsche’s nod to heritage is in the fact that it’s building only 356 of these 911 “Speedsters.” Because, you see, the first Porsche Speedsters were based on the Porsche 356. Oh yes, and by limiting an “exclusive” to a few hundred units means Porsche can charge $204,000 for a 408 HP 911. Which, after all, is actually the more significant nod to Porsche heritage: the 911-based Speedsters, which arose in the cocaine and yuppie-fueled 80s, have long been a high point in Porsche’s proud tradition of charging silly money for ever-so garish “special editions.” Doesn’t heritage just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

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Lincoln To China?

As cars are becoming a commodity item, a rich Chinese (and there are a lot of them) needs something to set him apart from the riff-raff. Luxury cars are a booming business in the Middle Kingdom. In 2015, more than a million luxury cars are seen changing hands in China. The trouble is, nearly none of them are American. The Chinese luxury segment is all but exclusively dominated by German makes. China has become the world’s largest market for the Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedans. In the first eight months of the year, BMW sold more cars in China than in all of 2009. Audi is China’s volume leader in the luxury segment. And the Americans?

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Liberace Museum To Close: Last Chance To See The World's Most Elegant Cars

From a source no less then the NY Times comes the stunning news that Liberace’s popularity is not crossing the generations, resulting in a precipitous drop in attendance at the Museum devoted to his refined taste. The doors are closing next month, so this is the last chance to see his splendiferous collection of custom automobiles, like one of only two Kanzler Coupes ever made (above) which obviously borrowed its passenger compartment from an Opel GT. This is just an aperitif of what’s on display inside.

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What's Wrong With This Picture: $548 Per Horsepower Edition
At $103,100, the just-announced Porsche 911 Carrera GTS costs $12,600 more than a Carrera S. With only 23 horsepower more than the S, the GTS’s premium…
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Ask The Best And Brightest: Does This Car Have A Chance In The US Market?

Over the last 24 months, the Mercedes R-Class has motivated a mere 6,469 Americans to plunk down $50k+ for a Mercedes-badged non-minivan. Now that it’s received a much-needed facelift that removes most of the slug-inspired design cues, will it sell any better? From the ash heap of history, the Chrysler Pacifica has recorded a “no” vote. What say you?

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What's Wrong With This Picture: The Full Amanti Edition
Ever since its interior took TTAC’s Best and Brightest by surprise, we’ve been keeping an eye on Kia’s K7 flagship sedan. Now Autospies has…
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China Can't Get Enough Of German Luxury

China is currently in a state of confusion about August sales numbers: More than 50 percent up? Or less than 20 percent? It will take a week or so to sort that out. But one thing is clear: The big winners in China are German purveyors of luxobarges, says Reuters.

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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.

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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…
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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)…
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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.

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Chart Of The Day: Luxury and Premium Brand Sales, July And Year-To-Date
BMW snagged the top spot last month, but Lexus and Mercedes are still battling for the top spot in year-to-date luxury brand sales. Lincoln and Mercury are r…
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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.

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Chart Of The Day: Luxury Brands
Our six month sales by brand chart is a bit crowded, so we’ve broken out luxury brands for today’s COTD. Bloomberg assembled a grip of analysts w…
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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…
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Acura RL On Its Way Out?
Automotive News reports that the Acura RL is about to be canceled in the Japanese market, where it is sold as the Honda Legend. Considering that Acura&rsq…
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What's Wrong With This Picture: Old Segment Made New Edition

Once upon a time, luxury cars were defined by giant drop-top land barges like Cadillac’s V-16 or the Bugatti Royale. Somewhere along the way, the luxury sedan-turned-convertible has fallen out of favor with the glaring exception of one of the world’s most expensive cars: the Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead. But now, having pioneered the four-door coupe and (coming soon) the five-door coupe, Mercedes-Benz’s endless search for “new” segments has it looking backwards to the good old days of massive top-down touring luxury.

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June Sales: Large/Premium Sedans
This segment is another big one, representing a number of four-door sedans that are either larger than another same-brand, D-Segment offering (i.e. Impala, M…
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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…
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BMW Beats Benz In June Luxury Sales By Brand

Look at our overall June sales numbers, and it’s clear that Daimler beat BMW Group last month (with help from an estimated 11 Maybach sales). By brand though, BMW won the volume game by nearly 1,000 units, with Lexus about another 1,000 units behind Mercedes. In general though, things were good in the luxury sector last month. In terms of percentage, the three “backmarkers” of the luxury field made some of the most dramatic gains, with Porsche booming 137 percent, and Jag/Landie combining for a 53 percent increase. Full numbers post-jump.

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Wild Ass Rumor Of The Day: Lutz To Lotus?

Our aim is to raise the Lotus brand equity back to its rightful place as it existed in the 1970s when it competed with the likes of Ferrari, Porsche or Aston Martin. Maintaining the unique Lotus DNA is crucial, but with more relevance, greater efficiency and even more sustainability than we have had in the past.

Lotus’s owner, the Malaysian automaker Proton, is getting tired of steady losses, and is giving the legendary British marque five years to become competitive with the top-rung of European sportscar houses. That means more volume (from 2,500 to 8k annual units in five years), more marketing and (almost certainly) less of the stripped-down enthusiast utilitarianism that keeps the brand so beloved by hardcore handling fans. Oh yes, and Lotus is reportedly getting one more thing that every brand overhaul needs: a little Maximum Bob Lutz.
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Saudi Arabia Sheiks Up The SUV Game
Possibly worried that SUVs are falling out of favor along with the dinosaur juice that keeps their desert kingdom afloat, Saudi Arabia is getting into the SU…
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Cadillac Introduces Free Four-Year/50,000 Mile Maintenance
With Cadillac’s sales remaining stubbornly slack, the GM luxury rband is looking for every opportunity to win back customers. Image-conscious fashion v…
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What's Wrong With This Picture: Hyundai Genesisn't Edition

In the midst of a nearly 3,000 word InsideLine treatise on the forthcoming Equus and Hyundai’s upmarket intentions in general, Hyundai’s USA boss John Krafcik reveals that the car pictured above very nearly became the Hyundai Genesis. No, really.

There was a lot of internal debate on design direction for Genesis. We used a European design house as an early consultant, and its proposals informed the core design elements of the first approved exterior model, which got as far as the tooling stage. In our industry, when you’ve built tools to stamp the exterior sheet metal, you’ve committed millions of dollars, and so you’re pretty much committed at that stage to bring that design to market. But in the end, we weren’t happy with the design. So we made the right decision (albeit a difficult and expensive one) to redo the exterior with a cleaner, more athletic and more enduring design, homegrown from our own design studio.

I got one word for you Krafcik: ballsy.

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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?
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Wild-Ass Rumor Of The Weekend: "Real" RWD Cadillac Flagship After All?

We’ve been pretty hard on Cadillac’s decision to replace its aging DTS/STS “flagships” with the stretched-Epsilon XTS, shown in concept form at this year’s NYIAS. We reckon Cadillac needs a true S-Class competitor (as opposed to a glorified Buick LaCrosse) to be taken seriously as a world-class luxury brand… and it turns out that Ed Whitacre agrees. C&D reports:

Cadillac fans will be thrilled to hear that Ed Whitacre himself has instructed the brand to build a true, full-size flagship above both the CTS and the upcoming XTS. The car has not been clearly defined yet. The Zeta platform (Holden Commodore, Chevrolet Camaro, etc.) is heavy and dated, and therefore the flagship is more likely be built on a stretched version of the CTS’s Sigma platform.

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Chart Of The Day: Junior Luxury Sedans

TTAC Commenter Charles T writes in:

Any chance you could do $30-$40k entry-level luxury, ie BMW 3-series and everyone else gunning for a piece of that pie? For completeness sake, include cars that normally aren’t positioned against the 3-series despite being a similar price (Lexus ES and Lincoln MKZ, for example) just as a sense of their relative market sizes; I’d be curious to see how the sporty vs unsporty dichotomy plays out in the real world.

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Guess The Brand: The New Look Of Luxury Edition
OK, so steel-wheeled, camo-clad test mules are never easy to identify. Especially when they are actually an all-new vehicle positioned at a segment that thei…
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What's Wrong With This Picture: Professional Driver, Slow Motion Edition

Strangely, this disclaimer isn’t even the funniest thing about the fresh-to-Youtube E-Class Cabriolet ad [available after the jump]. That prize goes to the way the otherwise undeniably handsome E-Cab looks with its “Aircap” system deployed. No wonder this previous ad stuck to long shots, and made light of the option’s contradictory and dispensable nature. Sure, folks in cold climates deserve convertibles too, but this Aircap thing just reminds me of cafe seating on Sunset Boulevard with heat lamps blaring on a 65-degree day. Silly wealthy folk… buy the coupe if you don’t like drafts.

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  • MaintenanceCosts It's not a Benz or a Jag / it's a 5-0 with a rag /And I don't wanna brag / but I could never be stag
  • 3-On-The-Tree Son has a 2016 Mustang GT 5.0 and I have a 2009 C6 Corvette LS3 6spd. And on paper they are pretty close.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Same as the Land Cruiser, emissions. I have a 1985 FJ60 Land Cruiser and it’s a beast off-roading.
  • CanadaCraig I would like for this anniversary special to be a bare-bones Plain-Jane model offered in Dynasty Green and Vintage Burgundy.
  • ToolGuy Ford is good at drifting all right... 😉