Best Selling Cars Around The Globe: My 50 Questions For 2013

Now that the Top 150 most popular vehicles around the globe are out of the way and 2013 has finally arrived, I thought I would ask 50 questions for this New Year… If you know the answer please feel free to comment! And also post yours… Can't be bothered about the New Year and wish you were in 2012 still? That's fine, you can check out the best-selling cars in 2012 in 171 countries and territories in my blog. Yes. That many. Back to my questions… And the first one is: Chery is creating a new brand for Europe: Qoros. Will it be a success? 1. Will Chery crack Europe with the Qoros GQ3? The Chevrolet Onix has the potential to threaten the VW Gol in Brazil. Will it?  2. Will the Hyundai HB20 or Chevrolet Onix threaten the VW Gol's supremacy in Brazil? 3. Which Passenger Car will top the Chinese year-end ranking? 4. Will General Motors, Toyota, Hyundai or any other major manufacturer announce the creation of a low-cost brand outside China? Will Nissan unveil a low-cost Datsun range as planned? 5. Will the new BYD F3 and Chery QQ make 2013 the year of the renaissance for local models in China? 6. Will Kaili, Volkswagen's low-cost Chinese brand, finally be launched? If so will it be more successful than GM's Baojun? Nissan's Venucia? Honda's Linian? Ciimo? Opel Adam 7. Will the Mokka and Adam help Opel towards recovery? 8. Will a BMW or Mercedes break into the UK year-end Top 5 for the first time? 9. Will the Renault Duster break into the monthly Top 5 in Russia? India? The Dacia Dokker could cannibalise sales of Renault Kangoo at home in France… 10. Will the Dacia Dokker dominate the French LCV market, the biggest in Europe? Nissan Altima 11. Will the Nissan Altima or Honda Civic threaten the Toyota Camry for the Passenger Car crown in the US? 12. Will the new generation Chevy Silverado threaten the Ford F-Series in the US? 13. Will the Ford Focus pass the Toyota Corolla to become the world's best selling car at year-end? 14. Will Great Wall succeed in the UK? Will it launch in another major European market? 15. Which of the Peugeot 208 or Renault Clio IV will finish the year #1 in France? Will they top another European country or will their success be restricted to their home country? Check out my forecast for the 2013 France models ranking here. 16. Will the VW Golf be threatened by anyone in Europe? Clio? 208? Fiesta? How many countries will it dominate? 17. Will Italy, Greece, Portugal, Croatia and Spain fall further into recession? 18. Will Europe stagnate or decline? 19. Will Peugeot/Citroen survive? Will Opel survive? Will the GM/PSA alliance thrive? Will Honda merge with another carmaker? Toyota Corolla 20. Will the Toyota Corolla top the Australian year-end ranking for the first time? Check out my forecast for the 2013 Australian models ranking here. 21. Will Indonesia and Thailand continue their explosive growth? 22. Which markets will be the 10 engines of growth? 23. Will the VW Up! go further up and reach the German/European Top 10? The Peugeot 2008 could help Peugeot survive in 2013… 24. Will the Peugeot 2008 and Renault Captur succeed or flop? 25. Will Mercedes, BMW and Audi continue their implacable growth in Europe? 26. Which of Mercedes, BMW or Audi will be the #1 premium brand in the world? 27. Will PSA end up selling its Peugeot 301 and Citroen C-Elysée in Western Europe to avoid grey market imports like Renault had to do with the Dacia Logan? Mercedes A-Class 28. Will the new Mercedes A-Class beat the BMW 1 Series and Audi A3 in Europe? 29. Will Hyundai reach 10% of the Brazilian market as planned? 30. Will Russia become the #1 car market in Europe, passing Germany? 31. Will the Nissan Qashqai finish the year in pole position in Spain? Renault said the Lodgy is destined for MPV-thirsty markets like Indonesia. Will it launch there in 2013? 32. Will Renault launch the Lodgy in Indonesia? The Dokker? A no-frills Modus? – just my suggestions  33. Will the 500L, 500X and 500XL get Fiat back on its feet in Europe? 34. Will the new generation Jetta and Santana be more successful than their predecessors in China? 35. Will Renault sell more cars in Brazil than in France? 2013 Dacia Logan 36. Will the 2nd generation Dacia/Renault Sandero-Logan be more successful than the first? 37. Will the Skoda Rapid replace the Octavia in pole position in Czech Republic? Slovakia? Poland? Ukraine? Hungary? 38. Will the all-new Skoda Octavia beat the all-new VW Golf in Switzerland? 39. Will Great Wall place one of its locally-produced models #1 in Bulgaria? 40. Will Chinese manufacturers continue their worldwide expansion and open more plants in new countries? 41. Will Hyundai pass Toyota in Africa? Will it continue to grow as fast in Europe? Worldwide? 42. Will Toyota stay #1 in the world? 43. Will the Volvo V40 rank on the Swedish podium at year-end? 44. Will the new Holden Commodore stabilise the nameplate's sales in Australia? 45. Will Mazda sell more cars in Australia than in Japan? Honda N-One 46. Will Honda sell the N-One in Europe? 47. Will the Maserati Kubang finally go on sale? Please? 48. Will Kia place one model in the worldwide Top 10? 49. Will the Hyundai Santa Fe break into the monthly US Top 20? Top 10? 50. Which from the US or China will gain more ground? And these were my 50 questions for 2013. What are yours? Let's reconvene on January 1, 2014 for all the answers… Matt Gasnier, based in Sydney, Australia, runs a blog named Best Selling Cars, dedicated to counting cars all over the world. from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

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12 Golden Country Greats: The Murilee Martin Lifestyle Brand™’s Greatest Hits of 2012

I wrote a lot of vaguely-car-related stuff in 2012, and here's my chance to show off the stuff that made me proudest (or at least took the most work to create). Enjoy. When I Build My Spaceship, It Will Be Equipped With This Cordia Instrument Cluster After years of an unhealthy fascination with science-fictiony Japanese digital dashes of the 1980s, I finally bought one from a junkyard and began the process of getting it to display its Mars Base 2115 stuff on my garage wall. As 2012 progressed, I obtained this 1984 50th Anniversary Edition Nissan 300ZX digital dash, then this '84 Toyota Cressida dash, then the Holy Grail: this 1985 Subaru XT Turbo instrument cluster. 1965 Impala Hell Project, Part 20: The End The 20-part series telling the 10-year tale of my art-car-turned-daily-driver-turned-drag-racer 1965 Chevy Impala sedan, which began in May '11 and took for-freakin-ever to create (due to the hundreds of pre-digital-camera-era 35mm slides and negatives that had to be scanned), finally came to a close in January of 2012. I plan to make a Very Expensive Coffee-Table Book version of this story, ideally during 2013. Bored On a Long Road Trip? Bad Car Bingo! I was hoping to summon up a record-breaking number of fatwas issued by the single-interest automotive jihadists enraged by my inclusion of their favorite vehicles in my sample Bad Car Bingo card (I still get the occasional enraged email from members of the Chevy Vega Jihad who can't let go of Vega-themed disses I wrote in 2008), but it turned out that aficionados of the Acura Vigor and Cadillac Catera have retreated into world-weary sulking and couldn't be arsed to fire up Microsoft Office's Fatwa Wizard. When Embarrassing Presidential Relatives Got Model Kits: Billy Carter's Redneck Power Pickup! When a team racing a Billy Carter-themed Ford Fairmont gave me a judicial bribe of this Malaise Era Revell model kit at the 2010 Arse Freeze-a-Palooza 24 Hours of LeMons, it inspired me to lobby Revell to create a complete series of Embarrassing Presidential Relative kits. Imagine, Onyango Obama's DUI-enhanced Montero, or the luxury car Donald Nixon bought with not-so-legit Howard Hughes cash! When You See a Clean Corinthian Leather Bench Seat In the Junkyard, You Buy It! I shot this '78 Chrysler Cordoba for the Junkyard Find series, then bought the Corinthian Leather bench seat and made a garage couch out of it. Since that day, I've been able to provide comfy, Ricardo Montalban-grade seating for my garage guests. Possibly the Greatest Badge Engineering Feat In History: Isuzu Statesman Deville! This car, an Isuzu-badged, Japanese-market version of the Australian interpretation of the Chevy Caprice, is the pinnacle of General Motors badge engineering. Someday, I will own one (and park it next to the Mazda Roadpacer I plan to obtain). Junkyard Jackpot: The Missing Pieces For the A100 Hell Project Puzzle When I bought my '66 Dodge A100 project van, I had some idea that it wouldn't be so hard to find parts for it. That idea, like so many project-vehicle ideas, proved to be wildly incorrect… but then I got a tip that a complete A100 had been seen at a wrecking yard near me. Unfortunately, that tip came in the night before I was due to fly off to a 24 Hours of LeMons race on an early-morning flight, which meant that I had to do all my parts-grabbin' on the way to the airport. In Denver in February. Automotive Lawsuit History Unearthed, Junkyard Style: The Ford Park-To-Reverse Warning Label Ever wonder what made Ford slap those ugly "Make sure the gear selector lever is engaged in Park" stickers on the dashes of millions of slushbox-equipped vehicles built during the 1966-1980 period? After seeing a bunch of those stickers in junked Fords, I did some research on the problem that was as real as the Audi "unintended acceleration" problem was hysteria. How Honda Survived the Vigor, the Del Sol, and the Lawsuits: Super Cub! In March, I spent a couple of weeks in Vietnam and developed a new appreciation for the most-produced motor vehicle in history: the Honda Super Cub motorcycle. It turns out that an 8-horsepower bike can transport an entire family and a bedroom set. Time Machine Dilemma: It's 1973 and You Have Enough Cash For a New LTD. What Do You Buy? The premise of the Time Machine Dilemma goes like this: Your time machine drops you off on Auto Row in a particular year, and you have enough money to buy a certain car. You have many other choices in the same price range. What do you do? '73 LTD… or '73 Opel Manta? My Introduction To Panther Love: Inaugural Police Interceptor Road Trip! Sajeev Mehta and Jack Baruth have this Panther Love thing going on, but they're not the only TTAC writers who appreciate the Ford Panther platform. Here's the story of 400-mile road trip I took immediately after buying an ex-San Joaquin County Sheriff's '97 Crown Victoria Police Interceptor at auction. Corvairs, Kaisers, and Cadillacs: Brain-Melting Colorado Junkyard Is a Mile High… and a Mile Wide This yard east of Pikes Peak has so many thousands of great old cars that I had no choice but to buy a '41 Plymouth there. During my visits, I shot lots of photographs of the cars I didn't rescue. Kill Switch Thwarts Denver Civic Thieves Once Again, Junkyard Parts To the Rescue For the second time in 11 months, the homebrewed kill-switch system in my '92 Civic prevented Denver car thieves from making off with my Japanese hooptie. Once again, I had to grab junkyard parts to repair the steering-column damage. What's It Really Like To Obliterate a Press Car? There was a lot of discussion about car writers and press cars after a Motor Trend writer rolled a Cadillac in July, so I interviewed veteran automotive journalist and 24 Hours of LeMons founder Jay Lemm about the Range Rover he destroyed at a press launch in the Rockies (when it turned out that he couldn't drive off-road as fast as Baja 1000 winner Malcolm Smith). Hooptie Harley Adventures: Hell Project Shovelhead Hauls LeMons Judge To Road America In Style Just when it seemed that Americans had lost the will to limp their half-finished projects several hundred miles in bad weather, my cousin and fellow 24 Hours of LeMons judge rode his nowhere-near-ready Harley from Minnesota to the Chubba Cheddar Enduro at Road America. Real-World Review: Fleeing Hurricane Sandy Across 8 States In a Rented 2012 Kia Sorento How a former pro racer drove several 24 Hours of LeMons organizers through the hurricane and to a functioning airport 900 miles away. Auction To Crusher: 12 Weeks In the Lives of Two Cars At a Self-Service Wrecking Yard In which I con a big self-service wrecking-yard chain into granting me behind-the-scenes access to their operation, then follow a '91 Civic and a '94 Camry during their final three months on the planet. New Car Reviews I don't do many reviews of new cars, because it's so hard to do anything different with the genre, but I did manage to write up a few new cars in 2012, including the '11 Mazda RX-8, the '12 Audi A7, the '13 Mazda CX-5, the '13 Scion FR-S, the '13 Mazda Miata Club, and the Piaggio Ape Europe. Junkyard Finds Mostly because I ended up spending so much time at U-Pull-&-Pay Denver while visiting the protagonists of the Junkyard To Crusher story, the Junkyard Find series evolved into a near-daily event. A few of the cars I shot really stand out as favorites, including the '48 Pontiac Hearse, the '51 Nash Airflyte, the unintended accelerator '84 Audi 5000, the Über-Rare BMW 700, the '70 Toyota Corona coupe, and acres of old Subarus. Project Car Hell While most of my keyboard-pounding is done on behalf of TTAC, I do write some stuff for other venues. I began writing the Project Car Hell series for Jalopnik back in 2007, and my old friend and former Year One coworker Andy Stoy at Autoweek talked me into reviving it as a quasi-weekly feature a while back. In 2012, PCH saw such matchups as a '51 Frazer versus a '57 Hudson, an all-Malcolm-Bricklin Subaru 360-versus-Bricklin SV-1 challenge, and a Shelby-centric Dodge Spirit R/T-versus-Dodge Daytona IROC battle. 24 Hours of LeMons Ranting Since the 24 Hours of LeMons managed to hoodwink Eddie Alterman at Car and Driver into inexplicably sponsoring the race series, LeMons HQ has me slaving away as C/D's official LeMons Correspondent. During 2012, I covered some real masterpieces of hooptiedom, including LeMons Weddings, Cars That Should Do Well In LeMons But In Fact Suck, Cars We'd Like To See In LeMons Part I and Part II, How Porsche Crapcan Racers Build Character, Epoxy Engine-Block Repair Tips For Celica Racers, Racing AMCs, Beauteous Benz LeMons Racers, Big Fat Luxury Racers, the Twin-Turbo Taxi, and many more individual car features. Guilty Pleasures I also wrote a series about "cars you shouldn't want but do want," aka Guilty Pleasures, for Motor Authority. This series ran until April and has some decent tirades about such gems as the Asüna Sunfire and Trophy 4-engined Pontiac Tempest. Then there's my own site, where you'll find lots of old and new stuff from the Murilee Martin Lifestyle Brand. What's in store for 2012? That's like asking how long Hindustan Motors can keep building the Ambassador! from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

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Tycho’s Illustrated History Of Chinese Cars: The Shanghai SH761 Parade Car

This is the fantastic Shanghai SH761 parade car from the Shanghai Car Museum in Shanghai. It was made in 1970 and was used to show high ranking foreign visitors to the masses. The visiting dignitary would sit rather uncomfortably on a hydraulically lifted rear bench in the back of the vehicle. The 'royal seat' was so high that the curious populace could see all, down to the buttocks. The visitor was supposed to wave his hand and smile to the adoring masses… The Shanghai SH761 was a gigantic hand-made machine. It was based on the platform of the much smaller Shanghai SH760A sedan. The engine came from the SH760A as well, a very old 2.2 liter six-cylinder with just 90 horsepower. Weight was about two ton and fuel consumption about 13 liter per 100 kilometer. Shanghai Auto claimed a 100km/h top speed, but during parades the car wouldn't go any faster than five. The elevated rear bench was beautifully crafted with red leather and lots of chrome. The handle bar on the front bench was especially constructed for the honorable visitor to hold onto with one hand. The other hand was for waving. The bar was no luxury, if the driver took a corner a bit too fast or tight the visitor could easily fall out of vehicle. It is unknown whether this ever actually happened. The beauty continues on the driver's side. Red leather again and a shipload of wood. The steering wheel, controls, dials and pedals are all straight from the SH760A. The gear lever is mounted to the steering column. A very long rear deck but upon inspection it turned out that it could not be opened. No space for luggage in the SH761! Probabl;y for safety reasons … who knows what those dignitaries hide in their suitcase … This very vehicle is also the subject of an intense controversy. Chinese experts of old Chinese cars disagree passionately about the origins of this SH761. The fight is rather simple: the believers say this is a real 1970′s SH761 parade car. The non-believers say it is a fake, made much later. This is what I know for sure: Shanghai Auto Works made 14 SH761 parade cars between 1965 and 1971. From these 14, only four survive until today. The whereabouts of these four vehicles are well known and well documented. The SH761 in the Shanghai Car Museum suddenly popped up in 2010 when the museum opened, making it surviving car number 5. The experts were astonished! Biggest problem is that the museum's parade car looks rather different than the other four. This is a certified member of the vehicular Gang of Four, housed in the China Classic Car Museum in Beijing. (More about this museum later.) As you can see, the front is very different. Lights, grille and bumpers all differ. The back is different too with much more simpler square lights. The base bodywork however is very similar. Once again the Shanghai car. The non-believers basically say they didn't know about the vehicle's existence, and therefore,  it must be fake. Not a very strong argument indeed, but it is strange that the vehicle managed to stay under the radar for so long. Interestingly, the museum says this SH761 is one of two, like some kind of special series within the already special SH761 series. If true, there must be another one, but did it survive? Nobody knows. The believers say the vehicle is technically so similar to the other well-known cars that it must be real and made in the 1970′s. The museum doesn't help its cause by being very secretive about where they got the vehicle from, making proper identification difficult. Well, I have seen, touched and smelled the Shanghai car and the definitely-real Beijing car. Except for the differences in design both vehicles seem so similar that it is almost impossible to believe the Shanghai car was made at a later time. But I am not sure. The Chinese experts are not sure either. The fight between the believers and non-believers has basically turned into a stalemate because none of the parties can prove the other wrong. The controversy will likely continue for a while… Thanks to Erik from ChineseCars.net for the tip and specs! Dutchman Tycho de Feyter runs Carnewschina.com, a blog about cars in China, from Beijing, China. He also collects die-cast models of Chinese cars. from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

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