#Branding

It’s been a short, strange trip for Maybach, as Daimler’s über-luxe branding effort went from toast of the nouveau riche to played-out self-caricature in a few short years. Needless to say, TTAC has been awaiting the long-overdue death of that brand for some time now, only to be stymied by a “final” facelift and a Xenatec-developed Coupe. Now, with Aston Martin reportedly working on the new look of the brand that “nobody at Daimler wants to let die,” Maybach’s masters are finally admitting to the fact that TTAC pointed out back in 2007: The Super S-Class was “born old hat.” Autocar reports:

Originally created to be profitable at 800 cars per year, Maybach has regularly struggled to sell half that annually since the launch of the 57 and 62 in 2002. Insiders now admit the decision to base the Maybach on the platform of a two-generations-old S-class, the W140, was a mistake.

Doing so prevented Mercedes from updating the upmarket limousine’s standard features with new navigation, communication and entertainment systems, as well as new safety features owing to an incompatible electronics platform dating back to 1990.

D’oh! But don’t worry… this won’t happen again. Honest.

The Blue Oval is trying to make the case that, after years of tolerating decline at its luxury brands, the fight to bring Lincoln up to snuff is deadly serious. But if admitting you have a problem is the first step on the road to recovery, CEO Alan Mulally may just have kicked off Lincolns rehabilitation with a minor stumble, telling Automotive News [sub]

we didn’t tarnish the brand. We just didn’t invest in it.

You say tomato, Alan, we say tomahto. If neglect won’t “tarnish” a luxury brand, nothing will. But now that the requisite excuses have been made, what is Ford going to do to bring back its lagging luxury brand?

Toyota’s December sales [ PDF here]dropped 5.5 percent compared to last December, capping a rough year for the largest foreign automaker in the US market. Toyota ended 2010 with a total sales volume of 1,763,595 units, down 6,552 from last year’s pre-recall performance. But despite holding volume basically flat and suffering the industry’s second-worst retail market share loss (at -1.2%), Toyota still finished the year with the highest retail market share of any automaker in the US market, at 17.3 percent according to our anonymous industry informant. Dig this: after the nastiest recall scandal since Ford’s Firestone debacle the Camry is still the best-selling car in the country, Lexus is still the top luxury brand, and Toyota still attracts more retail buyers than any other maker or brand. Would you have predicted that last February?

Yes, you read correctly. For less than $200 I recently added a brand new Cadillac to my garage. The catch: it has only two wheels and I must supply the power myself.

Though an objectively awesome car by any (non-environmental) metric (review forthcoming, I promise) some Corvette ZR1 owners are plagued with a strange brake vibration. Which, thanks to the Corvette Forum, is available for all and sundry to see. But let’s dig a little deeper: bearing in mind the customer involved is a personal friend, and his paraphrased comments are as follows.

Speaking of platform-sharing between brands, Volkswagen’s division of labor debates have been progressing this year with the result that Audi will develop the conglomerate’s SUVs, while Porsche is in charge of sportscar development, as well as the erector set that will become VW’s modular platform menace. Future luxury sedan development (think Porsche Panamera, Lamborghini Estoque and Bentleys) are also said to be the purview of Porsche, although the German newspaper Der Spiegel recently revealed that

Volkswagen’s boss recently decided that, in 2014, the brand will distance itself from sportscars, instead offering a sedan based on the Audi A8.

Which is an interesting choice. After all, the king of über-luxury sedans, the Rolls Phantom, is based on a unique platform, whereas the A8 shares greasy bits with even the lowly Volkswagen Phaeton. Initially the Bugatti sedan strategy was to build the most expensive luxury sedan (as envisioned by the Galibier Concept) on the market to out-Phantom the Phantom, while (VW-owned) Bentley nips at its heels with the new Mulsanne, but that plan fell apart as a worldwide recession took hold. Now the idea seems to be to create something considerably more modest and brand-engineered… which doesn’t sound like much of a payoff for the most superlative of modern brands. We’ll just have to wait and see where this goes.

Toyota, possibly more than any other automaker, epitomizes a major tradeoff inherent in mass-market success: mechanical and stylistic homogeneity. Subaru, on the other hand, traditionally occupies the other end of the spectrum, slinging mechanically unique but ultimately niche-oriented products. Since Toyota took a 16.5 percent stake in Subaru’s parent company Fuji Heavy Industries, observers have wondered how the relationship between two so different automakers would play out. And since Subaru had already cultivated a fiercely loyal following with its dedication to niche values, the outcome has largely been that Subaru fans have decried the perceived “ Toyotafication” of Subaru. And now, if a new rumor from Motor Trend is anything to go by, the uproar is about to get a little bit louder.

When I attended the launch of the Buick Regal, Buick’s product reps were anxious to talk all about the forthcoming Buick Regal GS, the high-performance version of the Opel Insignia-based sedan. At the time, the Buick Boyz were anxious for input; what, they asked, would enthusiasts prefer: a manual transmission or all-wheel drive. My answer: all of the above. Surely, I thought, Buick would be bringing a rebadged version of the Opel Insignia OPC, with AWD and the GM 2.8T V6 from the Cadillac SRX Turbo and Saab 9-5 Aero. No, came the answer. The 2.8T was not approved for use in a Buick. Stung by past oversharing between divisions, GM had decided that the 260-325 HP, Australian-built LP9 engine would be limited to applications in Caddys and Saabs. But now, it seems that GM may have penned some kind of deal with Saab, as GMInsideNews reports that the LP9 has been discontinued from its last remaining Cadillac application, the SRX Turbo.

Road & Track magazine may think Suzuki enjoyed

huge success following the introduction of the Kizashi,

but the numbers don’t really back that perspective up. With 21,347 brand-wide sales year-to-date, the Suzuki brand about as popular as the Dodge Nitro, and only 5,269 of those sales were Kizashis. For a product that was supposed to keep Suzuki in the game in North America, there’s no way around the fact that Kizashi hasn’t “moved the needle.” On the other hand, Suzuki hasn’t done much to market the Kizashi (outside the pages of R&T anyway), and Suzuki is trying to turn things around with a series of ads that are kind of a weird mix of GM’s “ May The Best Car Win” selective comparison strategy and Chrysler’s “World’s Best Vehicle (?)” absurdity. There’s been some mainstream media chatter about Hyundai and Buick’s ability to attract luxury brand buyers now that “value for money is the new black” (gotta love that MSM)… and Suzuki clearly wants in on the anti-snobbery bandwagon. But are these ads enough to put Suzuki on the radar?

Is it a coincidence that, on the day the newswires fill up with reports of renewed cooperation between Aston Martin and Daimler’s Maybach brand, the British sportscar firm has released a video with the theme “one engine, one ethos”? After all, before Aston built a hideous concept on the Mercedes GL platform and Maybach asked Aston to develop a four-door concept, the assumption was that Aston wanted Mercedes engines to replace its aged Cologne-built V-12. Now, possibly motivated by Lotus’s engine flip-flop, it seems that Aston is taking pride in its elderly but unique 12-banger. Which seems like a smart move: high-end buyers often care more about pedigree than absolute performance, and being seen as an independent house rather than an engine customer shop certainly helps cultivate that image… even if it means sticking with an engine that’s based on a pair of Ford V6s. Especially when those two V6s sound so damn enchanting.