Testing Times

Argentinian driving tests seem to involve driving around a circuit that looks a bit like the Legoland Driving School (sponsored by Fiat) - my children particularly enjoyed that attraction in Legoland Windsor.

Here's an Argentinian lady having a go at it - as reported by BBC News:

The annoying thing is that they don't say whether or not she passed.

Turkish Delight

I take no delight in another new SUV:

which, let's be honest looks like all of the others out there: 

 

And that's only a selection.

 

Yuk.

 

This one though is an EV and it has an interesting interior:

The other thing interesting about it is that it is Turkish.  Car+Driver have the story here.  They say that this car is from the first ever Turkish car company.  Although Wikipedia tends to differ with that statement and given that they provide photos of various old Turkish cars, I'll go with Wiki on this one.

 

This new brand is TOGG - which Car+Driver helpfully tell us stands for "Türkiye’nin Otomobili Girişim Grubu" which it doesn't helpfully tell us translates as "Turkey's Automobile Enterprise Group" - Google did that.

 

As opposed to FIAT which stands for "Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino" meaning "Italian automobile factory of Turin”

 

Or SEAT which stands for "Sociedad Española de Automóviles de Turismo" with the altogether cooler translation of "Spanish Society of Touring Cars"

 

Turkey has been advertising a lot on telly lately as a holiday destination but given their current president (in this story getting involved with TOGG) and what he has done to the Kurds, I think I'll give it all a miss.

 

Here's the only Turk I find delightful: 

and he's Northern Irish.

Does 200 Come With Fried Rice?

Chrysler 200 that is.

Looks like a local chip shop want to buy out Fiat Chrysler. 

You can't see that chip shop from space.  Various news sources have the story.  Here's what BBC Business have to say.

 

It would appear, though, that the Chinese are more interested in the Jeep part of Fiat Chrysler.

But they aren't ruling out a bid for the whole FCA she-bang.  If they'd gone for it last year, they could have got Ferrari too.

 

I chose the BBC story to link to because they picked up on something I had also thought - I can't see Mr.Trump being too happy with China owning a major US Car Corporation as well as a large chunk of the national debt.

 

Here's a Jeep toy that might make him feel better about it. 

As Mork would say...

Nano Nano.

Amazon Primed to Sell Cars in the UK

Allegedly, you can already buy a new Fiat 500, 500L or Panda through Amazon in Italy.

I can't find any evidence of that actually happening though.

Autocar have the story here.  It looks like it will be Fiat Chrysler Group cars they'll be flogging though.

Hope they've got a big drone.

If it was to have been used cars, then they should have been thinking Volvo:

(That's a Volvo Amazon)

 

Now they just need some way of publicising the venture to lots of people interested in cars. Can't think how they may go about that...

Peugeot Splashing The Cash

At the weekend, it emerged that Peugeot were buying the Ambassador brand - that is the Hindustan Ambassador -

 - not the Austin Ambassador -

The BBC story is here.

It doesn't say whether or not they are taking on the whole Hindustan Company, factories etc.  I suspect they are not which is a shame because they could restart manufacture and maybe restyle it on a more modern car than its original base which was the 1950s Morris Oxford:

 

A Peugeot 404 perhaps?

I imagine labour is a bit cheaper in India than Europe - they may wish to start building the other ranges they've just purchased there too.  Check out this story that has been building all week.

It looks like Peugeot are involved in negotiations to take over Vauxhall and Opel.

This would given them Peugeot, Citroen, DS, Vauxhall, Opel & Ambassador - and probably too many factories - not good news - especially since they have had financial problems over the last few years while Vauxhall & Opel have been losing money.

Although, allegedly, Peugeot shares are doing quite well at the moment.  They may be hoping to do a Fiat who had their own problems not that long ago.

In any case, I would be worried by that sudden Indian connection.  I'll just stick with my Jaguar in the meantime.

Tata for now.

Color Me Bad

I've spelled "colour" the American way there because of a survey a couple of the American sites have picked up today.  Here's the Fox News version.  Apparently, white was the most popular colour for new cars for the fourth straight year.  This is true Stateside and in Europe.

I've not really done much on car colour in the past - here's a post from a couple of years back on yellow cars although it was probably just an excuse to include a picture of Susanna Reid.

Here's another one.

Now, despite white being most popular, a sort of metallicky yellow seems to be the colour of choice of this week's press releases.

Like this Lexus LF-C2 concept from this story.

Can't help thinking that the front end looks like a cheese-grater - or perhaps a pedestrian-grater.  If you hit an animal in it, you would end up with diced meat cooking on your engine block.

The other car in that colour is this one.

It is from this story.  It is a Willys Interlagos.  Willys doesn't really exist any more and Italian coachbuilders plan a limited run of this vehicle (apparently based on a Porsche 911) which pays homage to the original Willys Interlagos of the 1960s.

I hadn't heard of the original Willys Interlagos of the 1960s.  In fact I thought Willys were just responsible for the WWII Jeep.

But no.  Here is the Willys Wikipedia page so you don't have to type "Willys" into Google.  They had a long and illustrious car-making history which eventually became part of Daimler-Chrysler/Fiat (aka FCA) who make the modern-day Jeeps.

Like this one...

Which I don't.

Who's The Boss?

That was quite a good series in its day - especially the character Mona played by Katherine Helmond.  And isn't Judith Light scary now as the old biddie in Dallas?  This was much better than the British version, The Upper Hand.  There seems to be new version of this now called Melissa & Joey.

 

But that's besides the point.

 

A lot of Ferrari employees may now be asking the question, Who's the boss?

 

This follows on from today's news (in Autocar for example) that Ferrari are being split off from the parent Fiat-Chrysler organisation - or FCA as it's known by its friends.  Ferrari will be a stand-alone company.

 

It feels like only 23 days ago that I was reporting on the changes at Ferrari with FCA boss Sergio Marchionne taking Ferrari over from Luca di Montezemolo.

Today, FCA currently owns 90 per cent of Ferrari, while the other 10 per cent is owned by the son of Enzo Ferrari.  Apparently,10% of FCA's interest in Ferrari will be offered to public investors. The remainder will be distributed among FCA shareholders.

 

So FCA shareholders will own 81% of Ferrari and more if they buy some of the publicly offered shares.

 

So will they be happy for Sergio to continue in charge?

 

Interesting times.

 

Meanwhile Fiat are getting involved with interesting cars:

This is from this caradvice.com.au story.  It's a much more interesting story.  Possibly because it doesn't talk about shareholdings.  But probably because it discusses a concept premiered at the Sao Paulo motor show in Brazil.  It's a coupe SUV which I shouldn't like given how much I hate the looks of the BMW X6.

 

But this one, the FCC4, is longer than an X6 and not as tall - and looks really cool.  Will the Brazilians go nuts for it?  I don't see why not.

 

But if they don't, blame the boss.  Whoever that is.

Car Body Language

It's all change at Ferrari.

Alonso is out and Vettel is in.

But, more significantly, di Montezemolo is out and Marchionne is in.

Both these changes seem to be F1 related.

Well, obviously the first one is!  It is covered in this week's news from many sources including The BBC who also covered the news last month about Sergio Marchionne taking over the chairman's chair from Luca di Montezemolo.  As can be seen in that article, there is speculation that Luca's departure is him being pushed out due to disagreements with Marchionne.  These will be partly down to the very poor recent performance of the Ferrari F1 team.  I don't see swapping Alonso for Vettel altering things there - the problem is the car not the driver - I reckon Alonso is the better of the two albeit not by a lot.

Anyway, as boss of Fiat-Chrysler, the parent company of Ferrari, Marchionne has the power to take over and that is what is happening - on October 13th to be precise.

Which leaves things a little awkward for them at the Paris Motor Show this week.  Paris saw the last ever Ferrari press conference for Luca with Sergio there to "support" him.  Andrew Frankel of Autocar covered it in two articles first factually, then artistically.

The first article reports the usual corporate press-conferencey stuff - the future direction of the company etc. and does have the little dig where Marchionne claimed his most important priority was to return Scuderia Ferrari to the top of Formula 1, a goal he described as a "non-negotiable objective."

The second article looks at how the two men appeared at the press-conference:

The outgoing boss is enthusiastic and open while his successor looks bored off his trolley and decidely uncomfortable.

 

It makes an interesting read.

 

And I know who will be the happier man on October 13th.

Is The Jaguar an Endangered Species?

Well, it doesn't appear in the list of 20 most endangered.

The BBC and The Telegraph both pointed me at the Honest John site today where this story can be found.

I must admit that I got a bit distracted by the adverts to the right...

where two different men seem to own the same wallet with the same picture of the same car.

But I digress.

The story looks at the survival rates of mass-produced British cars particularly from the '60s, '70s and '80s.

The car that seems to be faring the worst is the Austin Allegro...

...with 642,340 built and 291 remaining in the UK, for a total of 0.0453% left.

The BBC report concentrates on the 1980s and is particularly worried about survival rates of cars from that decade.  It is quite scathing about the Scrappage Scheme of a few years back and, speaking as someone who didn't get to take advantage of it, I wholeheartedly agree.

This got me thinking about the car I owned from that decade, my 1980 Triumph Dolomite 1500HL in vomit yellow.  The Honest John site lets you look up just about any car right up to modern ones so I checked out The Dolomite and found some nice charts and, basically some good news:

In December 2007, there were 2,373 registered

By December 2011, 2,159 of those were left

On average, 53 were lost each year, or 2.3%

At that rate, it will take 29 years until half of those left today are lost

I guess that once a car reaches a certain age, people will look after them.

I then got distracted by Top 20: Fastest disappearing cars from UK roads.  This list contains a few non-surprises like Daewoos and Fiats, one fairly surprising entry - the Vauxhall Cavalier and car I actually don't remember - the Sao Penza.

In case you're wondering, Sao Penza. Population in 2007: 13, population in 2011: 3, for 23.08% of '07 cars remaining.

I'll alert David Attenborough.

For Chrysler's Sake!

I keep seeing this ad on TV and I always end up shouting at the screen..."There's been good times and there's been bad times, but we came through it. How?"

BY BEING BAILED OUT BY FIAT WHO NOW OWN MOST OF YOU - THAT'S HOW!

Most of those cars are only re-badged Lancias anyway.

If they had stayed with their old European partners, Mercedes Benz, at least their ads would be a bit more innovative. This one, disguised as a sunroof and for their Actros truck is only visible from above - for example, from where a truck-driver would be sitting.Clever eh?

Another one of theirs was highlighted by Autoguide today, for the Mercedes Viano:
The Viano mustn't be confused with the awful Mercedes Vaneo - my local Merc dealer gave me one of those once as a discourtesy car.Very embarassing. But who knows, if they still made them today and Mercedes were still tied in to their old partners, it could be appearing in adverts as a Chrysler People-Mover.

Sorry America

The number of hits my Blog gets from the US is in danger of overtaking the number I get from the UK, so, while your President is over here, I'll address an apology to you.

I'm speaking as a European here, because it was the Italians who did this - albeit for the British market.

There you were, rightly so, feeling very pleased with the way you dealt with Bin Laden when you find that Fiat have stuck a Chrysler badge on this...God that's ugly. What Car? have reviewed it here and don't exactly enthuse about it but don't really comment on HOW BLEEPING UGLY IT IS either.

They picked on Chrysler because it was a brand they owned and Lancia has a rust-bucket reputation in the UK.

Your other big car brands (apart from Ford who we think of as British while Germans think it is German and Australians think of it as Aussie) don't fare too well either.

Let's take Chevrolet for example - and there are many fine examples to choose from:



















But what cars get Chevrolet badges here in the UK?

Renamed Daewoos - that's what!Ugh!! But you've only got GM to blame for that.

Meanwhile, an attempt to bring the Dodge name to Britain was attempted four or five years ago.

On actual Dodge cars!

Very funny advert:
But it didn't really work and they eventually gave up.

The only Dodge I've ever driven was identical to this one:You'd call it a 15-Seater Minibus.

I just called it scary.

Alfa Romeo & Juliet

Looks like the Volkswagen Group are courting Alfa Romeo.

Don't think much of the chat-up line though:
Volkswagen’s Chairman Ferdinand Piech announced in Geneva that the company would be able to almost quadruple annual sales of Fiat’s ailing Alfa Romeo brand.

Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has refused to sell the brand – “As long as I am CEO of Chrysler and Fiat, Mr. Piech will never have Alfa Romeo”

Didn't think it would work.

Autocar are running the story today.

They talk of Alfa failing to meet sales targets but there will be many reasons for this - not least the current economic climate. I've been looking out for the new 11-Reg cars that were let loose on Tuesday and so far, I've only spotted one - it was a Punto though so Sergio should be pleased.

Another reason could still be Alfa's reputation. Saint Jeremy states that you can't be a proper petrol-head unless you've owned an Alfa. I disagree. I've never even sat in one and have no desire to - it's like smoking or sky-diving - I have no desires in that direction. Mind you, out of those three options, the Alfa is the one I am most likely to attempt. Years of reading about Alfa has, maybe wrongly, prejudiced me against the brand - whether it is the seating position that suits Orang-Utans or the woeful reliability or the abysmal customer care - all issues that could be resolved by now for all I know - but I'm not bothered enough to find out.

A third reason could be the looks of the cars. I'm sorry if my view goes against everyone else here, but I think the Mito is downright ugly. I think it's the headlights that do it - they are the wrong shape and too far apart and there's not enough of them.

Compare it with the gorgeous Brera from a few years back:
They seem to have lost the plot along the way somewhere.





Not as badly, though, as when they got into bed with Datsun. Don't be jealous, Herr Piech, their love-child was an abomination combining Japanese style with Italian reliability instead of the other way around.

I am actually quite surprised that VW would want the Alfa brand, the only way I could see it working would be to stick Alfa badges on the Seat range and shut down a few factories and I don't think anyone would want that.

In fact it would be a tragedy.