Month: July 2009 (Page 2 of 7)

Fiat will bring an Alfa Romeo to Chrysler showrooms next year

July 20, 2009 /

alfa-romeo-mito

Fiat has already announced that they will bring the Fiat 500 to Chrysler showrooms in the U.S. in 2010, and now they’ve announced that the Alfa Romeo MiTo will also be available in America next year.

“The MiTo is going to help us re-establish the Alfa brand in the United States,” said Richard Gadeselli, vice president for communications of the Fiat Group, in a recent interview at the company’s headquarters here.

Though Alfa Romeo left the American market in 1995, the MiTo hatchback will not really be the first new Alfa to appear in the United States since then. The 8C Competizione and Spider have been available through select Ferrari and Maserati dealers since last year. Considering the stratospheric prices of the limited-edition, hand-built 8C, the MiTo will be the first new Alfa intended for general audiences.

Both the MiTo and the 500 will be sold at Chrysler — not Ferrari — dealerships, though they will still wear Alfa and Fiat badges. American-market prices have not been announced, but $20,000 or so seems likely for the MiTo and mid-teens for the 500.

The new Alfa is aimed at “an active, thrill-seeking, performance-minded 20-something.”

I think this is a great move by Fiat. The Fiat 500 and the MiTo will give Chrysler dealerships hip vehicles that appeal to younger drivers who like the Mini Cooper and other small imports. The marketing campaign should be fun to watch.

New Cars, News

Toyota executive says U.S. auto sales can rebound next year

July 20, 2009 /

According to CNBC, Toyota Motor’s North American President Yoshi Inaba said that U.S. auto sales could rebound to a $12- to 13-million annual sales rate within a year. Toyota is also reviewing its options regarding an auto plant in California that was part of a joint venture with Pontiac that was terminated by GM, along with a planned plant in Mississippi that has been put on hold due to market conditions.

News, Video

VW to purchase Porsche

July 20, 2009 /

porsche-carrera-1

News broke over the weekend the VW will purchase Porsche.

Porsche SE’s controlling families will agree Thursday to accept an offer by Volkswagen to buy its sports car business Porsche AG for roughly 8 billion euros ($11.28 billion), Der Spiegel reported Saturday.

Germany’s leading weekly magazine wrote that the rival Porsche and Piech clans, which own 100 percent of Porsche SE votes, will approve the two-stage takeover at a supervisory board meeting on July 23.

There are several hurdles to the deal, however, including some tax issues, so we may not see this deal close as soon as initially reported.

News, Sports Cars

Going green may not save you green with your auto insurance

July 16, 2009 /

toyota-prius-ext_image1

Will buying a hybrid save you money on your auto insurance? That might not be a good assumption given this recent data.

Hybrid car owners may be a different shade of green than their insurers hoped.

Insurance companies often give discounts to drivers of hybrids, perhaps because the image of a tree-hugging environmentalist suggests a cautious type who is a good risk to insure. But hybrid drivers rack up more miles, more tickets and costlier accidents than conventional car drivers, according to a study released Wednesday.

“High-mileage drivers seem to be attracted to [hybrid] vehicles,” said Raj Bhat, president of Quality Planning Corp., the San Francisco firm that conducted a study of 360,000 vehicle-insurance claims made to 12 U.S. insurers over the last two years, comparing hybrid and conventional vehicles. Quality Planning is a unit of Insurance Services Office Inc., a closely held group of companies that provides data, analytics and other services.

The disconnect between perception and reality could leave insurers with unprofitable hybrid policies unless they adjust pricing to reflect the unexpectedly high costs, or make up the difference elsewhere, said Robert U’Ren, senior vice president of Quality Planning, in an interview.

For 2008 hybrid cars, the most recent model year it studied, Quality Planning found that the cost to insurers of providing collision coverage for hybrids was 13% higher than for conventional vehicles. The cost of providing comprehensive coverage, which also includes the expense of noncollision-related damage, was 17% higher. For older and particularly for larger hybrid models, the difference was even bigger. U’Ren said that the more complicated hybrid engine design likely accounted for much of the difference in cost.

The article goes on to explain that most insurance companies have not made significant adjustments relating to premiums and coverage for hybrid cars, and several insurance companies, including Farmers Group Inc., a subsidiary of Zurich Financial Services AG, and Travelers offer hybrid owners up to 10% off coverage prices. It will be interesting to see how this develops as more data becomes available.

Green, News

Chrysler begins its Fiat education . . . in Poland

July 15, 2009 /

Now that it has emerged from bankruptcy with the help of the American taxpayer, Chrysler needs to make small cars efficiently to survive. Fiat will be a huge help with its contribution of small-engine technology, but it looks like Chrysler can learn efficient production techniques from Fiat’s factory in Tychy, Poland.

The mammoth Fiat plant here, which churned out nearly half a million cars last year, may hold some of the answers for Chrysler (as well as Ford Motor and General Motors), as it struggles to regain its footing after its bankruptcy and reduce its dependence on muscle-bound trucks and sport utility vehicles.

For those who remember Fiat before its ignominious retreat from the American market — the name was said to stand for “Fix It Again, Tony” — the Italian automaker may seem an unlikely role model. It left the United States in the early 1980s after widespread quality problems.

But Fiat itself has undergone a revolution under Sergio Marchionne, who became its chief executive in 2004, raising standards for quality and reliability at plants like Tychy and mastering the art of building smaller cars with high efficiency. Chrysler hopes he can do the same thing for it now that he has assumed control of the American company.

“We are lucky there is a crisis,” said the director of the Tychy plant, Zdzislaw Arlet, unable to resist a gibe at the bigger cars and trucks that have traditionally stolen the industry spotlight. “Everybody wants to build small cars now.”

At Tychy (pronounced TICK-ee), one secret is flexibility: The latest robotic technology is balanced by workers who can quickly shift models to match demand. That is one reason Tychy is operating around the clock, six days a week, while most other auto plants in Europe and the United States are running at a fraction of capacity, increasing costly nonproductive downtime.

Marchionne has proven that he’s a great car guy, and there’s reason to be optimistic about his ability to transform Chrysler. With this visit the process has begun.

New Cars

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