David Leggett's automotive industry blog - from just-auto.com
- Prodrive visit
<p>I am visiting Prodrive at Banbury today and will get some time with Tony Butcher who heads up the auto technology side of the business. The firm is, of course, most well known for its motorsport activities (it's owned by David Richards). It should be an interesting few hours at Banbury - I'll get a tour of the facilities there also. There is, I believe, just a chance I will get a look at the Mini Countryman WRC... </p><p><a href=http://www.prodrive.com/p_releases.html?id=281 target='_blank'>MINI Countryman WRC completes shakedown</a></p>
- The killer hay bale
<p>What a bizarre way to depart this mortal orb.</p>
<p>RIP, ELO founder and cellist. A vinyl copy of <em>Eldorado</em> still lurks somewhere in the DepEd's archives.</p>
- 'Thermal incidents'
<p>Ferrari doggedly referring to vehicular fires as 'thermal incidents' and wanting to avoid the use of the more common and also more obviously alarming term (ie 'fire') is not exactly without precedent in the PR world.</p>
<p>American mobile phone company Kyocera once had a problem with overheating batteries that exploded. The PR people referred to batteries in the phones that might be prone to 'rapid disassembly'. And the term 'uncontrolled thermal event' has been used in the aerospace business before.</p>
<p>Other possible terms for explosions include 'spontaneous rapid disassembly event' and 'unplanned loss of containment'.</p>
<p>Crash? How about 'deconstructive deceleration event'...</p><p><a href=http://www.just-auto.com/news/ferrari-458-fires-prompt-global-recall_id105686.aspx target='_blank'>ITALY: Ferrari 458 fires prompt global recall</a></p>
- Pump up the volume
<p>News the component and tyre workers' dispute is also involving many of South Africa's forecourts reminds me of a time when I had a student weekend job in a petrol station as we refer to them in the UK.</p>
<p>For the princely sum of £1 per hour - <em>£1</em> mind - I would trot out from my little hutch and fill punters' cars with petrol, diesel and whatever else they needed doing.</p>
<p>The manager - perhaps realising he wasn't exactly paying me movie star wages - decided to dangle the incentive of selling oil to the same customers - with the result I would use my non-existent sales skills to harangue drivers into buying the product -whether they needed it or not.</p>
<p>Health and safety didn't appear to be quite the priority it is now either - I would periodically clamber up onto the massive lorries delivering 25,000 litres of petrol a time - and 'dip the tanks' - just to make sure the volume was right, while also inspecting the mammoth underground tanks.</p>
<p>Indeed, while wrestling once with the extraordinarily heavy manhole cover over one of those tanks, I dropped it onto my foot resulting in an extremely hasty visit to the local doctor who managed to patch me up.</p>
<p>Still, the work was incredibly varied - living in a small town I knew a fair amount of the patrons - while kindly souls would sometimes give me a tip as I sat freezing on winter mornings in the hutch.</p>
<p>We've pretty much lost that personal touch in the UK now - my local petrol station has an option to pay at the pump rather than the kiosk - but it seems South Africa has resolutely kept to the old ways.</p>
<p>The issue appears not to be one of choice there however, but regulation - forecourts are tightly controlled by the government - but I would wager a bet that South Africans might well miss the pump attendants if they went.</p>
<p>I used to say I worked in the oil business when I was in the petrol station, but <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-490818/The-petrol-pump-attendant-whos-worlds-richest-man.html" target="_blank">here's a chap</a> who's dad had the same job as me, but er, is worth slightly more.</p>
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- More j-a Leaf driving
<p>Our man Golding <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVm-3oKqjo0" target="_blank">has a go</a> at the Leaf.</p>
- Mini's new 'flow' ad
<p>Clever new <a href="http://www.youtube.com/MINI" target="_blank">'flow' ad</a> for the Mini Countryman. Closest I've got to the new BMiniW so far.</p>
- Copy? IPR infringement? That's flattery squire...
<p>The broad subject of car copies, 'Frankencars', technology rip-offs and intellectual property theft and rights infringements generally in China has been done to death before (not that that means it has gone away, of course).</p>
<p>Over there they are pretty adept and quick at a bit of snazzy reverse engineering (to a certain level, anyway) that can turn a Yaris into a much cheaper Florid. There's a cultural thing that allegedly means they see it as a form of flattery and they are collectively moving away from that anyway now etc, etc. The blatant copies are overwhelmingly sold in China so the international fuss is limited - and international OEMs have been caught in a tricky position, politically. Upset powerful people in China or turn a blind eye as long as it's fully understood that the model stays for sale only in China? </p>
<p>Anyway, I did just come across this website with links to reports that do some interesting car-by-car comparisons, including pictures.</p><p><a href=http://www.chinacarforums.com/china_cars_reports.html target='_blank'>Have I seen that car somewhere before?</a></p>
- 'Messi engine'
<p>I am not alone in the just-auto/Aroq office in being fascinated by the often bizarre and eyebrow raising things that go on in the world of football (soccer if you're American) - on and off the pitch. </p>
<p>And the crazy world of the high-end footballer never ceases to amaze. Whether its mysteriously crashing your Ferrari (Mr C Ronaldo), getting lairy for the paparazzi outside a London nightclub at 2am (too many takers to mention though Ledley King springs to mind), these young guys with their wealth and adulation give us something to talk about even before they kick a ball.</p>
<p>Product and brand endorsements? I guess a certain David Beckham provides the model to follow. Designer brand associations are the holy grail. Get a few of them and more will come a knockin' - but don't overdo it in developing your prestige personal brand over a number of years.</p>
<p>I have just come across something a little incongruous while on Chery Auto's website. I remember seeing something about FIFA World Player of the Year Llionel Messi during the World Cup. Oh yes, he's a brand ambassador for Chery Auto. I'm not having a pop but it's not exactly Porsche or Bentley is it? I would guess he might attract some training ground banter with that particular brand endorsement.</p>
<p>Messi, who once represented Adidas, Pepsi and other world-famous brands, chose Chery, the release says, because of its 'huge brand potential and unlimited development prospect'. Messi said that he was lucky to be the ambassador of Chery and he was much honoured that Chery named its T-series engine which used many world leading technologies as "Messi Engine."</p>
<p>Woah - so there is even a Chery engine named after him! Even the Beckham brand has not managed that one, as far as I know. I just hope Mr Messi drives a Chery - an electric QQ perhaps, please let it be so - to the Nou Camp on match days and tells his curious team mates as he parks it up that a) it is the future, China is becoming a force in the auto industry don't you know, and b) it's a lot cheaper to run and kinder to the environment than their blingy gas guzzlers.</p><p><a href=http://www.cheryinternational.com/en/node/864 target='_blank'>Chery Auto release on Messi as brand ambassador</a></p>
- 'Straddling bus'
<p>Just when you think you have pretty much seen and heard everything on the problems of and solutions to chronic road congestion in urban areas...</p>
<p>There's something called the 'straddling bus' concept in China that is apparently being seriously proposed over there.</p>
<p>It looks like a cross between a RoRo ferry, catamaran, tram and a bendy bus on steroids. The promotional video is well worth a look. Is it serious? They do have appalling traffic congestion in Chinese cities - vehicle parc growing all the time with 10% pa GDP growth and a humungous auto industry now present - and air pollution is something they are very concerned about.</p>
<p>Maybe it could work on selective busy dual carriageways, no turning for cars. Can't quite see it on the Euston Road.</p>
<p>Would you drive under one? Watch the video and try and keep a straight face. </p>
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- Peugeot's 3008 HYbrid4 'plug-in'
<p>It will be interesting to see how the Peugeot 3008 HYbrid4 - a diesel hybrid - does in the market next year. But wait until 2012 and the 'plug-in' version of the same car is planned for introduction. Peugeot says that the plug-in 3008 HYbrid4 will return 141 miles per gallon (British mpgs I think, or 2 litres/100km) and average just 50g/CO2. I wonder what the range on a fully charged battery will be... </p><p><a href=http://www.just-auto.com/news/psa-to-debut-worlds-first-diesel-hybrid-production-car_id105579.aspx target='_blank'>PARIS PREVIEW: PSA to debut world's first diesel hybrid production car</a></p>
- Language of Tolstoy
<p>I've spent a large proportion of this week trying to get through to a certain Russian car company with varying degrees of success.</p>
<p>A large part of the calls have been attempting to talk to the media relations department, but the operator doesn't speak English and I don't speak Russian.</p>
<p>A quick bash at Google language tools comes up with a romanised version of media as 'sredstva massovoi informatsii.' The only bit of that I could understand was informatsii, so I repeated this several times in what my colleagues said was becoming an increasing attempt at a Russian accent.</p>
<p>In fact, kind souls that they are, they insisted I was sounding like the Russian meerkat from the UK's sensationally successful TV ad for car insurance that has been running for quite some time.</p>
<p>Now Russian is the language of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, et al and a beautiful-sounding language at that, so far be it from me to ruin it. Needless to say, all I got for my 'informatsii' effort, was a 'niet, Russki,' response.</p>
<p>It's late Friday afternoon before a UK bank holiday - US Labor Day - on Monday - so I'll just continue the meerkat theme a bit longer.</p>
<p>Andrey Arshavin is a mighty fine footballer for Arsenal in London, but his team-mates have decided to nickname him 'meerkat' for his Russian accent - a fact the UK's redoubtable <em><a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2573610/Andrey-Arshavin-teased-for-sounding-like-tellys-Compare-The-Market-meerkat.html" target="_blank">The Sun</a></em> newspaper couldn't resist picking up.</p>
<p>Whereas your average English footballer is fluent in at least three languages - although English doesn't appear to be one of them.</p>
- Life after GM...
<p>There's a heart-warming tale from Kalamazoo, Michigan, on what happened when GM closed a plant there.</p>
<p>The former GM site is now a business park that houses 13 companies and hundreds of employees, in stark contrast to more than 75 manufacturing plants across North America that remain idle since Detroit's Big Three automakers began shuttering operations in 1980.</p>
<p>Kaiser Aluminum has invested more than $100 million in the Kalamazoo plant where 150 workers are now turning out parts for the aerospace, defense and other industries; Seneca Medical Inc. set up a distribution centre for medical and surgical supplies inside the old factory while it builds a new facility on 10 acres it acquired on the campus; numerous smaller companies have leased space; and Candlewood Suites opened a new 95-unit hotel on the site last autumn.</p>
<p>"When General Motors closed the plant in 1999, we had a potential white elephant on our hands," recalled Ron Kitchens, CEO of Southwest Michigan First, the regional economic development agency. "Instead, we viewed it as prime real estate midway between Detroit and Chicago and we moved quickly to capitalise on the opportunity. It's since risen like a phoenix from the ashes."</p>
<p>Southwest Michigan First worked closely with Los Angeles-based Hackman Capital Partners and public and private partners to transform the dilapidated 2.2 million-square-foot facility and the 340 acres surrounding into a business park. The new owners invested about $30 million to revamp the massive building, splitting it into two buildings with a truck bay between them, and giving it new lighting, paint and landscaping for better commercial appeal.</p>
<p>Now dubbed Midlink Business Park, the site is bustling with activity with the two buildings about 80% occupied and bulldozers clearing the site for Seneca Medical's new 80,000-square-foot distribution facility. Midlink President David Smith says the park is currently targeting manufacturers that would benefit from being in a Michigan tax-free Renaissance Zone, as well as retailers, restaurants and others to support the cadre of new businesses that now call the old GM plant home.</p>
- Moscow supremacy
<p>From Jaguar comes the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/aug/25/jaguar-xj-sentinel-moscow-motor-show" target="_blank">XJ Sentinel</a> - which as its name suggests is a fairly tough cookie that is sure to be a hit with those who feel they might be the target of some pretty robust characters.</p>
<p>Unveiled at the Moscow Motor Show the Sentinel looks like it could cope with just anything anyone so-minded could throw at it - and that includes Jaguar itself - which seems to have had some fun trying to blow its own car up.</p>
<p>Talk of Moscow reminds me of my last visit around two years ago, when the Russian capital's notoriously gridlocked streets were as vivid a reminder as anything of the country's rapid embrace of all things western - it took almost as long to get to the hotel as it did to fly from London.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">And many moons ago I was also on a trip to Moscow with the guide book sternly warning us that under no circumstances were we to get in unlicensed cabs, i.e. private cars. Instead we had to seek out the city's - apparently - plentiful yellow taxis.</span></p>
<p>Well, that was the guide book. There appeared to be almost zero yellow taxis around during the whole time we were there and so in desperation, we would flag down passing Ladas. They all seemed to be Ladas.</p>
<p>This went swimmingly until one dark evening my German colleague and I - she already highly nervous about the whole procedure - hailed yet another mud-caked Lada.</p>
<p>After a lot of pointing and gesticulating as to our address, we lurched off on what seemed a completely random route only for the leather coated and cap-clad driver - chain smoking for Russia - to screech to a halt and reach into his glove compartment.</p>
<p>The same thought occurred to both of us that we were about to be robbed at gunpoint but instead, our driver extracted a delicate chamois and proceeded to wipe the outside of his grimy window with an attention to detail we hadn't thought possible.</p>
<p>The guide book was wrong on this case - the Lada drivers we encountered were more than helpful - and apart from inhaling CO2-busting amounts of nicotine from them - got us safely to our destination.</p>
<p>However, for anyone wanting an action-packed view of Moscow through the eyes of some pretty good drivers, have a look at <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUtINRG3pxk" target="_blank">The Bourne Supremacy car chase</a> and some of the best driving around. In one of those yellow cabs too.</p>
- Cable car
<p>My ongoing battle with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (still not a snappy title) has entered a new phase, having watched our local television news here in the UK's Midlands region yesterday (24 August).</p>
<p>There on the screen was the new British business secretary touring - among other automotive sites - a test track near Warwick to meet apprentices and engineers from Aston Martin and Jaguar.</p>
<p>BBC Midlands ran a piece highlighting Cable's jaunt to the region, which appeared to include the Liberal Democrat business secretary enjoying some er, most un-Liberal like supercar driving in Aston Martin and Jaguar vehicles.</p>
<p>OK, Jaguar's hybrid car is called the 'Limo Green,' so maybe that'll assuage the more traditional wing of his party.</p>
<p>And the visit came hot on the heels of the business department chief's fairly tough comments on the UK industry recently, which weren't exactly highlighted when I attended his <a href="http://www.just-auto.com/the-just-auto-blog/crossed-cables_id2358.aspx" target="_blank">subsequent speech</a> later that morning at the Toyota plant.</p>
<p>A call to Cable's DBIS office elicited the following: "We only invited regional media and The Sun newspaper yesterday."</p>
<p>The Sun is a mighty successful redtop in the UK but seems a bit of an odd choice to single out.</p>
<p>Just to prove I'm not bitter about The Sun, I suggested to DBIS we interview Dr Cable - as I believe he's also known.</p>
<p>I've yet to hear back. And we're in the regions.</p>
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- No small beer for Italdesign
<p>This is an <a href="http://www.italdesign.it/news-eng/giugiaro-corona-commercial" target="_blank">interesting ad</a> featuring a Roman taxi driver and highlighting the clever people at Italdesign Giugiaro in Turin.</p>
<p>It's actually for Corona Extra beer but its star attraction is the extraordinary Italdesign Quaranta prototype based on the 1968 Bizzrrina Manta.</p>
<p>Quite apart from referencing every Italian cliché in the book - pasta, Italian man still with mama, Italian man gesturing wildly and making sure his hair looks good - the car itself is absolutely stunning.</p>
<p>The ad itself is actually pretty good though - the Roman backdrop firmly associates the core brand with luxury and heritage - although would anyone know it's Italdesign behind the motor?</p>
<p>And it ends with a humorous shot of the cabbie getting in a taxi himself having - presumably - had to give the Quaranta back.</p>
<p>Should Corona decide to expand the concept maybe they could do a UK ad with a London cabbie driving through a pea-soup fog, past rows of bowler-hatted, umbrella-carrying city folk walking across Westminster Bridge.</p>
<p>Come to think of it, Corona and Italdesign could take the concept around the world - supercar versions of the black cab/2CV/Zil limo/Chevvy etc?</p>
- Learning to ride the Prancing Horse
<p>It seems Ferrari has had a spate of <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1305396/TEN-Ferraris-latest-model-crashed-gutted-3-months.html" target="_blank">incidents</a> with its rather swift 458 Italia brand.</p>
<p>Three fires - plus one unfortunate incident when a 458 was involved in a London Heathrow storage blaze - have got the good folk at Ferrari scratching their heads.</p>
<p>There have also been a reported number of accidents - although that is maybe more common than thought with new supercars - this is a very fast motor car and anyone not experienced at handling it might well have a few teething problems.</p>
<p>Interestingly, Ferrari often runs courses at several sites around the world to teach new customers just how to handle models such as the 599 GTO.</p>
<p>Anyone considering parting with what is a fair amount of cash for a Ferrari, might well give some thought to going on one.</p>
- It'd be quicker to wok
<p>Next time you happen to be stuck in a queue, spare a thought for the residents of Beijing, who have apparently just had to endure a nine-day <a href="http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2010/08/23/chinas-monster-traffic-jam-a-sign-of-things-to-come/" target="_blank">traffic jam</a>.</p>
<p>Motorists were caught up in an extraordinary 100km logjam that wasn't exactly helped by road works and broken-down cars on the Beijing-Tibet road.</p>
<p>China's phenomenal economic growth is all very well but consumers are going to start falling out of love with cars if they're constantly crawling or at a standstill.</p>
<p>However, one of the reasons for China's huge economic success is its resourceful population.</p>
<p>It appears local residents along the highway were offering noodles at four times the usual price to hungry truck drivers.</p>
<p>It's an ill wind...</p>
- Not dead, just sleeping
<p>Classic British cars - which ones need reviving?</p>
<p>The Daily Telegraph <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatpicturegalleries/7951965/Classic-British-cars-which-ones-need-reviving.html" target="_blank">opines</a>.</p>
- Carnage on the roads
<p>I have looked into road death stats before and the aggregate numbers are undeniably scary.</p>
<p>Tens of thousands being killed on the roads annually in Western Europe (30,000-40,000 sticks in the mind - I think a broadly similar figure for the USA) is undeniably a big headline number and not to be casually dismissed.</p>
<p>And I obviously applaud the efforts of all those charged with getting accident rates and casualties down. The fact that - in Europe - accident rates vary so much by country suggests that there are things that can be done to improve safety, so there's no room for complacency or simply shrugging the shoulders. Car design, safety technology, highway construction/layout, street 'furniture', rules of the road and driver education - especially for the inexperienced kids - all have roles to play.</p>
<p>That said, a degree of perspective is needed. The physical transportation of people and goods will never be entirely risk free. More people die from other things and you face an assortment of varying risks to your continued health from a multitude of sources from the moment you step outside your front door in the morning. You'd be pretty unlucky to be struck by lightning or a meteorite, but if you ride a motorcycle you have perhaps significantly increased your chances of spinning off your mortal coil. And drunk pedestrians are also dramatically shortening their odds of getting into a spot of serious bother while attempting to cross the road.</p>
<p>With respect to road death stats though, a bit of granularity and detail can perhaps be helpful to establishing the causes of accidents, addressing those and also arriving at a reliable assesment of risk for different road users. This blog on Autocar caught my eye...</p><p><a href=http://www.autocar.co.uk/blogs/anythinggoes/archive/2010/08/13/time-for-the-truth-on-road-deaths.aspx target='_blank'>Autocar blog</a></p>
- Detroit dinosaurs not dead
<p>Remember those 1980s photos of UAW officials banning imports from UAW car parks and encouraging the public to take a sledgehammer to a Datsun?</p>
<p>Thought such dinosaur union attitudes were over?</p>
<p><a href="http://detnews.com/article/20100819/AUTO01/8190362/UAW-s-Bob-King-reiterates-ban-on-foreign-cars-on-union-property#ixzz0x3Pg0RUq" target="_blank">Think again</a>...</p>
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