Nikkei: Honda’s Future Hinges On A Kei Car

We have been saying for quite a while that Honda looks a big pale around the nose. The Nikkei [sub] agrees. According to the Tokyo business paper, Honda blew it by relying too much on the U.S. market, by ignoring the emerging markets, and by disregarding the fact that Japan has a love affair with 0.6 liter midget-mobiles, a.k.a. kei cars. All of this has to change in a hurry, and Honda's turn-around hinges on the success of a new kei car, the N Box. Says The Nikkei: "While it is true that last year's quake and the floods in Thailand dealt a blow, the carmaker has deeper structural problems. Honda let its success in selling expensive cars in the North American market go to its head, failing to notice changes in the global auto market. As other major carmakers shifted their strategic focus to emerging markets after the 2008 financial crisis, Honda saw its competitiveness wane and it was overtaken by South Korean rival Hyundai." "This is also apparent in the minicar segment. As it focused resources on its North American operations, Honda's minicar engineering team was stretched too thin. Now minicars account for roughly 40% of the domestic market and Honda has taken a beating in the segment, tumbling to fourth place behind Nissan." On the kei car front, Honda's counter attack looks promising. End of last year, Honda introduced the N Box, and Honda still can't make it as fast as it sells. There is a two month wait for an N Box. For the car, Honda revamped its production process for the first time in 10 years. Instead of the traditional monocoque method, an inner frame is built, and outer panels are welded on afterwards. This new process had teething problems, which delayed delivery. Now, Honda says it has mastered the production of N Boxes. Mastering success in emerging markets will take a little longer.       from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

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2013 Ferrari F12berlinetta: First Look

Competes with: Lamborghini Aventador, Aston Martin V12 Zagato Looks like: You can almost make the FF grille attractive Drivetrain: 730 hp V-12 engine, F1 dual-clutch transmission Hits dealerships: TBD A new Ferrari model is cause for celebration in the automotive world. Well, maybe except for the FF unveiled last year. The F12berlinetta — yes all one word — will spark boyhood fantasies and adorn computer desktop backgrounds of working adults worldwide. The design incorporates the grille from the FF, the headlights from the 458 Italia and the hood scoop of the California all into what is a rather cohesively drop-dead gorgeous look. Ferrari, of course, isn't selling this front-engine machine — likely to cost upward of $300,000 — on looks. It can haul, too. Zero-to-62 mph speeds of 3.1 seconds are about as fast as you can get in any road-ready vehicle. To get that performance, Ferrari tuned its V-12 engine to produce 730 horsepower and 590 pounds-feet of torque — the most powerful Ferrari of all time, as well as the fastest. The car is about 150 pounds lighter than the outgoing 599 GTB using a combination of a dozen different alloys in the chassis. The hood, sculpted side and elegant rear diffuser all aid in downforce and reduce drag to 0.299 Cd. Drivers shift gears using two large steering-wheel-mounted shift paddles connected to a dual-clutch transmission patterned on what's used in Formula One racing. Carbon-ceramic brakes slow everything down. The fact that this optimum performance comes wrapped in such an elegant package will likely make the F12berlinetta a hot commodity at Ferrari dealers. It will be a 2013 model, but Ferrari representatives couldn't say when it would be available to order in the U.S. or the cost. It might not matter. Ferraris live mostly in our dreams, and F12berlinetta fans can start theirs as soon as their heads hit the pillow tonight. from KickingTires http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/

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PSA And GM Are Doing It While Marchionne Watches

When the stock markets close in Europe today, PSA Peugeot Citroen and GM should announce that they are going ahead with the plan of GM buying seven percent of PSA. That according to "sources with knowledge of the discussions" that talked to Reuters. GM and Peugeot will pool R&D, vehicle platforms and technologies, Reuter's sources say. PSA hopes to save $2 billion in 4 years through the deal. What GM is hoping is anybody's guess. In the morning, The Detroit News reported that Sergio Marchionne also would not mind taking a stake in PSA. Depending on how that announcement is coming along, all Sergio can do is stand and watch while GM and PSA are doing the alliance. from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

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LeMons Good/Bad Idea of the Week: Bribing with Diorama of Judge’s Beloved Impala

The 24 Hours of LeMons Supreme Court, the members of which take as their model the frontier judges of the American Wild West, have sanctioned bribery as a means of ensuring mutual respect in the racer-judge relationship. In fact, so central is the judicial bribe to the LeMons BS Inspection process that we apply a BRIBED stencil to the car of the generous team. How does it work? Let's say the documentation on your LeMons car is a little shaky, and you need to convince the judges that you really did find those Bilsteins and that nice header at U-Pull-It for 25 bucks. If you have a cheated-up BMW E30 or Acura Integra, you're probably unlikely to get away with it, although the LeMons Supreme Court still appreciates the gesture of a nice bribe, which means we'll refer to you as a "rule-bender" rather than as a "shameless fraudster." But bribes from teams running quasi-credible $500 cars grease the wheels of justice for gray-area calls. The most common bribe is a bottle of quality alcohol or some of the local cuisine, but some teams get quite creative. California-based Dirty Duck Racing raised the bribery bar to new heights last fall, at the Skankaway Anti-Toe-Fungal 500 at Infineon Raceway, and it left me uncharacteristically speechless. A little background for those who haven't been avidly following the Murilee Martin Lifestyle Brand™: I owned a hooptied-out 1965 Chevy Impala sedan that evolved from college art project to daily driver to 13-second drag-strip toy over the course of a decade, and I chronicled my adventures with this car in a series of autobiographical essays. Many LeMons racers followed this series last year, and Dirty Duck Racing took bribe inspiration from the "Road to Victory" illustration above. The Dirty Ducks have been running a VW GTI in West Coast races for years now, and for the Skankaway 500 they Halloween-ified their magician-themed car. The Ducks, it turns out, have a pro model maker on the team, and so they commissioned him to build a 1:25-scale replica of the "Road To Victory" image of my Impala. When they gave it to me during the BS Inspection, I was stunned by the magnitude of this gift. My Impala was a sedan, and the only die-cast or plastic toy '65 Impalas available are fastback coupes. But, really, who cares? Let's look at the details of the Dirty Duck bribe. The patina on my Impala evolved over the course of a decade; it started with a thick coat of some sort of gloss-gray industrial paint, to which I applied various helpings of gray and black rattle-can paint plus greasy hand prints over the years. As you can see here, the 1:25 Impala Hell Project car very nicely captures the look of the original. The road and backdrop portion showed real inspiration as well; rather than just replicate my black-and-white illustration of my Impala driving on California's Interstate 5 into the Nagasaki mushroom cloud, the Ducks created their own color artwork. (Aside: My original image was the first serious work I ever did on Photoshop back in 1993, using a 386 with four megs of RAM—that's megs, not gigs—running Photoshop 2.5. I recall my computer requiring 25 minutes to save the file between changes.)  The mushroom cloud in the diorama appears to be from the Upshot-Knothole 1953 test series. In honor of the Dirty Duck GTI, the VW Rabbit emblem has been worked into the clouds. In fact, you can see the Dirty Ducks GTI itself off at the side of the road, complete with spin-out skid marks leading to its final resting place. The Road to Victory is treacherous! The model maker clearly read every word of the Impala Hell Project saga, judging from the number of obscure details worked into this thing. For example, after moving from California to Georgia, I fixed the rust around the rear window—rust in that spot is a GM-cars-in-California certainty, by the way—using beer-can metal and J.B. Weld. Above you can see the patch on the 1:25 Impala . . . . . . and here's the patch on the real car, circa 1995. The cryptic serial numbers on the doors (intended to call to mind archetypes of full-size "official vehicle" Chevrolets) that I applied soon after buying the car in 1990 were recreated as well. Here's the original, soon after application. You can see that the Ducks' model maker went for the patina the car accrued later in the 1990s. I find it interesting that the model maker opted to go for a blend of the various incarnations of the Hell Project Impala's life stages, instead of a slavish reproduction of the car as depicted in the "Road to Victory" image (which is based on a 1991 photograph of the car heading up I-5 to the original Lollapalooza Festival). In the photograph above, I am posing in 1996 at Atlanta Dragway. On the trunklid is an apparatus made from plumbing pipe, which I used to lock my bicycle atop the trunklid during my move to Georgia. Sure, it's anachronistic in the diorama, but having the bar was important as part of an effort to capture some of the Impala Hell Project's more memorable accessories. Even the 1991-vintage Doll Hut sticker on the trunklid, in its much-oversprayed-and-weathered glory, is reproduced. Truly, this is one of the greatest LeMons Supreme Court judicial bribes ever, and I'll say it again: Thanks, Dirty Duck Racing! from Car and Driver Blog http://blog.caranddriver.com

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BRAND NEW Hates BRAND NEW Jaguar Logo. And They Should

There is nothing wrong with updating the logo of a car company once in a while. At Volkswagen, we did it about once every twelve years, to the joy and enrichment of corporate design houses and makers of backlit signage. But did you ever notice that the Volkswagen logo changed? You are not supposed to. The holy grail of logo updating is doing it while the world remains oblivious and thinks it's the old one. Jaguar blew that bigtime, says the branding blog BRAND NEW. Boy, did that logo update ever get noticed. "I have always liked the Jaguar logo, for no particular reason other than it's well executed, seems well managed, and it's never tried too hard. With this last version it is trying so hard to be cool and relevant it's become annoying and, worse, noticeable. Not so much in the jaguar itself, or "Leaper", which has always featured some kind of metal finishing, but in the typography. Whereas the previous wordmark looked like a luxury, fashion-line brand, the new one has lost all sophistication in exchange for an overly extended, industrial look that cheapens its appearance. It reminds me of the Dodge logo, which I don't associate with hundred-thousand-dollar cars." And don't get BRAND NEW going on Jaguar's new print ads: "The sample of print advertising I found does not help their cause either: I mean, seriously, a sonogram? They seem to have lost track of their audience or what a luxury brand should look and talk like." I mean, really, a sonogram? If that kind of a baby would appear on a sonogram, even a Rick Santorum would demand an immediate abortion. BRAND NEW blames the branding atrocities on Jaguar's in-house agency Spark44. That agency is so hot, it doesn't even need a website. Or at least none that is accessible by prospective clients. from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

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Ferrari F12 Berlinetta; More Wretched Excess

12 cylinders. 540 horsepower. 509 lb-ft of torque. A 7-speed dual clutch gearbox. 3,362 lbs. 201 mph top speed. Non CGI-pictures after the car gets its debut next week at the Geneva Auto Show. from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

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Kinetic Motorsports to Expand Availability of Performance Parts to Kia Optima, Rio, Soul, and Sportage

Kinetic Motorsports, Kia's racing partner, has seen its relationship with the automaker blossom since the pair linked up to campaign a Forte Koup in Grand-Am's Street Tuner class two years ago. Following up on the Koup's class win last year, Kinetic is fielding two turbocharged Optimas in the upcoming 2012 Pirelli World Challenge series. The outfit also put together the B-Spec racing package for the Rio, and most recently has begun selling Kinetic-branded performance parts for the Kia Forte sedan and Koup. Now, Kinetic is adding individual parts for the Rio, Optima, Soul, and Sportage. Here's a list of performance parts you can expect by spring 2012: Optima (2.4-liter and 2.0-liter turbo models) Full cat-back exhaust system Exterior trim pieces in a variety of patterns/finishes Eibach lowering kit Cold-air intake Oil-filler cap Sportage (2.4-liter and 2.0-liter turbo models) Cold-air intake Soul Axle-back exhaust (muffler) Exterior trim pieces in a variety of patterns/finishes Eibach lowering kit Cold-air intake Oil-filler cap Rio 5 Axle-back exhaust (muffler) Exterior trim pieces in a variety of patterns/finishes Eibach lowering kit Cold-air intake Oil-filler cap The parts will be available through Kinetic Motorsports, but we're told the majority of the stuff will go to Kia dealerships, where it will be bolted on to new or used cars that are sold as complete vehicles. Kinetic's performance parts are somewhat limited in scope—this isn't Ford Racing, after all—but the operation is both new and largely experimental. As Kia did with its racing operations, it is testing the performance-parts waters using Kinetic's go-fast experience. Kia fully backs the exercise, but is giving the more-nimble Kinetic the freedom to create and manufacture the parts. In exchange, Kia dealers will advertise the parts and Kia will supply Kinetic with exterior trim parts for it to paint, pattern, and sell. Kinetic warrants the parts it sells, and none of the pieces void Kia's factory warranty. Given that the market for Kia-specific performance pieces is essentially unknown, having Kinetic build the parts reduces the risk for Kia. If Kia and Kinetic continue to find success with the Forte Koup race cars, do well with the more-powerful Optima in World Challenge, and get a foothold in B-Spec racing, then the pool of customers looking to add more sportiness to their Kias might grow sufficiently enough to warrant more serious offerings. from Car and Driver Blog http://blog.caranddriver.com

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