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BMW M3 Pickup
From luxist.com Filed under: Luxury Cars & Autos The BMW M3 has been available in all manner of body-styles: coupe, convertible, sedan…but not a pickup. That is, until now. BMW has created this one-of-a-kind M3 pickup as something of a ruse. Yet it actually exists. The truck packs the same 4.0-liter, 420-horsepower V8 as the production M3, only it’s capable of hauling 110 pounds of whatever you need. It also boasts a removable roof for open-air driving, but you can’t buy it. BMW built one as a gag, and will use it at the M division’s workshop to help move parts around.
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From luxist.com Filed under: Luxury Cars & Autos Feast your eyes on our first look at the new BMW M5. Technically a “concept car,” the M5 you see here should closely represent the upcoming production version. The car is set to debut later this month at the Shanghai Motor Show, but has already leaked onto the Internet. No details were announced, but what we already know is that the 2012 BMW M5 will feature the twin-turbo V8 from the X5M and X6M performance crossovers (instead of the V10 from the previous model). Stay tuned…
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From luxist.com Filed under: Luxury Cars & Autos While some automakers roll out special editions around the entire globe, the BMW Group has of late opted to create individual specials for specific markets. Witness, as examples, the Trusardi edition 5GT (exclusive to Italy), the Z4 Silver Top edition (Japan), the M3 Pure edition (Australia) and the M3 Frozen Gray edition (United States). BMW’s subsidiaries Mini and Rolls-Royce have followed the same formula with the Mini Cooper Mat Edition (France) and Yas Eagle edition Phantom (Abu Dhabi), and now BMW has announced a new special edition M3 exclusive to China. The M3 Matte Edition packs the same V8 engine and everything else as the standard model, but is distinguished by its special matte black paint scheme, offset by black chrome trim and high-gloss 19-inch alloy wheels. Inside there’s carbon fiber and red trim, but you’ll have to live in China and act fast to get your hands on one.
Filed under: Spy Photos, Wagon, Geneva Motor Show, Hatchback, Volvo Some automakers try their damnedest to keep their new products under wraps until they’re good and ready to show it to the world. (And of those, some succeed more than others.) Others, meanwhile, steadily leak out photos and details – through official channels or back ones – to keep us hooked. We’re not quite sure which approach Volvo meant to take with its all-new V40, but we do know we’ve seen more of this car that’s yet to be released than we’ve seen of others that have. This, however, is our best look at the new Swedish hatch yet. Ostensibly, this new V40 could replace the C30 hatchback, S40 sedan and V50 wagon in one fell swoop, but we probably won’t know more until the Geneva Motor Show. These leaked images come courtesy of the Facebook page of Motoryzacyjny – a Polish car mag whose name this blogger, for all his Eastern European shtetl roots, can’t pronounce any better than the rest of you – and it shows us what appears to be a rather shapely sports hatch that aims to give the likes of the Audi A3 and BMW 1 Series a run for their money. Of course, since the range has not yet been officially launched, we’ve yet to receive word on whether the V40 will make the transatlantic voyage forged by its Viking ancestors to the New World in which we live, but one can hope. One can certainly hope.
Striking Viking: Volvo V40 slips out on Facebook ahead of Geneva originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. This 700-hp BMW M3 Once Had More Chassis Than Engine [Video]
From feeds.gawker It’s the smartest of tuning strategies: Take a car with more chassis than engine — like the E92 BMW M3 — and add more engine. “Smart” and “tuning” don’t always join in acts of automotive congress. But bully for us when they do. More » Ferrari F620 GT Slips A Trailer Out, BMW Accidentally Confirms M135i, And Don’t Buy Classic Cars [Video]
From feeds.gawker This is the Morning Shift, our one-stop daily roundup of all the auto news that’s actually important — all in one place at 9:00 AM. Or, you could spend all day waiting for other sites to parcel it out to you one story at a time. Isn’t your time more important? More » Hydrogen Hybrid Powered Vehicles May Be in the Future for BMW
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BMW Noise Cancelling System to Provide More Comfortable Ride and More MPG?
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Cadillac and Audi Ham It Up in a Battle of the Hippest
From rss.businessweek There’s a subtle rivalry brewing in the luxury car business. Audi and Cadillac are both hamming it up with television advertising to make the case that they’re the hip antidote to stodgy traditional luxury (read: Mercedes). In recent ads, both of them have new commercials loaded with imagery painting luxury as cold and stuffy as they take a fun stab at old money. One of Cadillac’s newest ads depicts an older couple having an anniversary dinner at their long dining room table. Actor Laurence Fishburne intones, “blue-blooded, cold.” Cut to racy imagery: a motorcycle roaring down the highway, a young guy eyeballing a beautiful woman in a glass elevator. The ad eventually goes to a Cadillac CTS and Fishburne asks, “What happened to luxury? Where did the personality go?” The point, of course, is that Cadillac brings something new and edgy to the luxury market. The theme is “red-blooded luxury.” Audi takes it a step further. On one of the German brand’s newest ads is an obvious play off the classic Margaret Wise Brown kids’ book “Goodnight Moon,” with a vaguely creepy animated fox fur and other classic luxury items such as a well-coiffed French poodle and gold cuff links. “Goodnight outdated. Goodnight stuffy,” the ad says. “Good night old luxury and all of your wares.” Then we see a Mercedes sedan. Its lights go out. The ad concludes with a beauty shot of an Audi A8 sedan and we hear, “good morning, innovation. Good morning, unequalled inspiration.” Audi likes throwing down the gauntlet before its German rivals. The brand has taken on BMW several times. Audi actually staked its claim as the newest and coolest luxury brand several years ago with an ad that had an old rich man waking up to the grille of his big luxury car in his bed. It’s a knockoff of the horse’s head from “The Godfather.” So who has the better shout? Both brands are growing fast, Audi sales rose 23% last year and Cadillac was up 35%. Cadillac sells almost 50% more vehicles. But in terms of burnishing the brand as the coolest newcomer, Audi has the edge. Its average buyer makes more money. The A8 is a legitimate competitor to the Mercedes S-class and BMW 7-series flagship sedans. Audi’s A4, which is smaller than the Cadillac CTS, attracts nouveau luxe buyers. Cadillac is still working on cars to battle it out in those two vital market segments. Plus, Cadillac marketers readily admit that they are trying to expunge the image of old, stuffy Cadillac. You have to appreciate the moxie shown by both brands. Notes From the Detroit Auto Show
From rss.businessweek By David Welch The mood in Detroit is considerably better at this year’s North American International Auto Show than it was a year ago when General Motors was hunting momentum and Chrysler’s very survival was in question. I’ll get into the new models and concept cars as they roll out. In the meantime, here are a few notable comments from the auto executives I tracked down at the show. Chrysler going public The Italian automaker owns 25% of Chrysler. The UAW owns 63.5% of Chrysler. The U.S. Treasury holds 9.2%, while Canadian municipalities have a 2.3% stake. Marchionne told reporters that he wants to pay back $7.5 billion in debt to the U.S. and Canadian governments in 2011 and then go public. Following GM’s successful IPO, Marchionne says Chrysler can launch its IPO following a couple quarters of profitability. “I’d love to do it in the second half of this year.” IPO yes, but electric cars… maybe not BMW’s U.S. boss throws down the gauntlet GM tries to make money on small cars The gamble is that cars like the Sonic–which have traditionally been cheap, entry-level transportation–can fetch a higher price by offering more horsepower, better ride and handling and features like MyChevrolet, a phone app that allows drivers to unlock doors, start the engine and check the vehicle’s diagnostics remotely. Ford is making the same bet with its Fiesta, which can sell for more than $20,000. Chevy has not priced the Sonic, but GM won’t set a ridiculously low price on the model, Reuss said. “If we’re going to make the cheapest, silliest car in the U.S. and try to make money on it, that isn’t going to work,” he says. Wise Audi: The New A8 Seeks Prestige, Not Big Volume
From rss.businessweek I sat down with Audi of America President Johan de Nysschen last week to chat about the brand’s plans for the U.S. market. As de Nysschen prepares to launch the new A8 sedan later this year, he had a few refreshing things to say. The first was that he thinks Audi should cap its growth in the U.S. He thinks that the sporty luxury brand should max out its U.S. sales volume somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 cars – almost twice what the brand sells in a typical year but still less than its chief rivals have sold in the market. His thinking is that luxury brands can become ubiquitous and lose their cachet; the next thing that goes is pricing power. Cadillac and Lincoln both lost their luster in the ’80s and ’90s in part because they were in a mad race to sell more cars than the other. By the end of the ’90s, both brands had cars everywhere. Having fleets of Town Cars and Devilles lined up with the taxis at airports probably didn’t help. His other push is to keep moving Audi upscale. Make no mistake, Audi wants growth. It is the top seller in Europe and China these days. In the U.S. this year, sales have surged 25%. Only Cadillac has outpaced its growth among luxury brands. But the brand would rather have prestige than gaudy sales numbers. Audi’s U.S. sales of 86,000 cars is less than half Lexus’s total. Take the new A8 that hits showrooms in November. Its starting price of $78,050 is about $2,000 more than the current car. Audi is loading up the car with a slew of new technology, like an 8-speed transmission that boosts fuel economy. The car will get 27 mpg on the highway, 4 mpg better than rival BMW’s ActiveHybrid 7i. It will also have a night vision system, a Bang and Olufsen sound system and, starting next year, a WiFi hot spot in the car. Later next year, the company will start selling the A7, a prestige coupe to compete with BMW’s 6-series. Bottom line, the brand is moving into more expensive models, not big sellers. That’s the kind of thinking that has pushed Audi into the top tier of luxury brands along with BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus. BMW Presents its new i Brand
From luxist.com Filed under: Luxury Cars & Autos, Green With its EfficientDynamics program, electric Mini prototypes and an electric Rolls-Royce under development, the BMW Group is getting serious about its environmental credentials. And now the German automaker has announced a new venture. Announced earlier today, the i division will be a new range of environmentally-friendly vehicles produced under the BMW banner. Two vehicles will lead the way: the i3, a city car in the same vein as the Smart and the Toyota iQ, and the i8, a production version of the Vision EfficientDynamics concept car. The company has set up BMW i Ventures with $100 million in capital based in New York City with a variety of initiatives under way, and we expect to head more as they progress.
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From autos.ca.msn Hybrid and high-powered models in testing BMW revives M1 ProCar Race Series
From autos.ca.msn Legendary racers to run July 19-20 BMW builds tribute to legendary M1
From autos.ca.msn Concept Celebrates 30 Years of M1 History German auto industry downshifts: GM, Ford, BMW, Daimler curb production
From autos.ca.msn FRANKFURT, Germany – Germany’s automaking titans announced production cuts yesterday, as the global financial crisis rattled unabated across one of Europe’s key industries. General Motors Corp. (NYSE:GM) subsidiary Adam Opel AG, the German unit of Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F), Daimler AG and BMW all announced reductions in Germany. GM said its other subsidiaries in Europe were also affected. Opel will stop production entirely at its Eisenach plant in eastern Germany for three weeks starting next week.”We’re feeling the effects of the financial crisis,” Opel spokesperson Andreas Kroemer said in Russelsheim. “People are holding on to their money and not ordering cars.”The company’s Bochum plant already stopped production last week, and Kroemer said the company expects to build 40,000 fewer cars than initially planned this year. Kroemer said the Bochum Opel facility would restart production in a few weeks. Kroemer said Opel plants in Kaiserslautern and Ruesselsheim weren’t affected yet. However, other GM plants in the U.K., Poland and Spain would be affected by the economic slowdown, and the company is in talks with officials at its plant in Antwerp, Belgium on whether to make reductions to the plant’s night shift capacity. A spokesperson said GM wants to stop production at U.K. facilities Ellesmere Port and Luton for 10 days each, but it was unclear how long it would halt production at a Polish plant in Gliwice. GM’s Opel facility in Zaragoza, Spain, would stop production for two weeks this month, the spokesperson said, while GM unit Saab has said for some time that it will reduce its Trollhaettan, Sweden, plant to just one shift. Munich-based BMW said yesterday it will send 20,000 cars originally intended for the U.S. market to Russia or China instead in light of weak North American sales, which meant cutting production by 20,000 cars. Ford’s German unit said it would curb production and lay off 204 part-time workers at its 6,500-worker Saarlouis plant in western Germany, while the company’s Cologne plant in the northwest of the country would continue production without changes. Stuttgart-based Daimler, maker of Mercedes-Benz and Smart cars, said it wants to keep production at a low level and adjustments could affect German facilities and Daimler’s Tuscaloosa, Ala., plant. No specific plans were outlined. This past summer, Daimler said it would stop production at its largest German factory, Sindelfingen, earlier than usual for the Christmas holidays. Production is to resume in January, but no date has been set yet. “It’s our general goal to keep vehicle levels at a low level,” Daimler spokesperson Florian Martens said. The story was different at Porsche, however, also based in Stuttgart. Spokesperson Albrecht Bamler said there were no plans to curb production and plants at Stuttgart and Leipzig are running at full capacity. Porsche produces its 911 model in Stuttgart and the Cayenne SUV in Leipzig. The situation for the short-term automotive market isn’t bright, said car analyst Paul Newton at Global Insight in London. “Early indications of West European car sales point to a wholesale slump across the major markets during September,” Newton wrote in a note to investors last week. Final numbers are not in, but he estimates September car sales fell 20 per cent in Britain, 25 per cent in Spain, 12 per cent in Italy and between five and 10 per cent in Germany. “The figures will send a shudder through the entire industry, as the slowdown in showroom traffic seen over the traditionally quieter summer months worryingly extends into the stronger selling month of September,” Newton wrote. “The major issue at the moment is the ripple effect of the financial markets on car sales.” BELGRADE, Serbia – Why does a Yugo have a defroster on the rear window?To keep your hands warm while you push it.That’s just one of the “Yugo jokes” about the cheap and much-maligned subcompact that won notoriety for being one of the worst cars ever exported to the United States.Now, the last Yugo, once the pride of communist Yugoslavia’s automobile industry, will roll off its Serbian production line Thursday in the central town of Kragujevac.It will be missed here – but probably not in America.Soon after it hit the U.S. markets in 1986, selling for the bargain-basement price of just $3,990, the boxy Yugo was derided by American car magazines “as barely qualifying as a car” and “an assembled bag of nuts and bolts.”U.S. owners complained of frequent engine failures and transmission problems – with the manual gear sticks sometimes detaching and ending up in their drivers’ hands – in addition to passenger doors and trim parts going awol.When the U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety conducted crash tests of 23 compacts in 1986, the car with the worst results was the Yugo, with $2,197 worth of damage in slow speed crashes against a flat barrier.Still, over 100,000 Yugo GVs – standing for Great Value – were sold in the U.S. before Yugo America – the company that imported it – went bankrupt and Washington imposed economic sanctions on Belgrade for fomenting ethnic wars in the Balkans in 1992.In the U.S., Yugo has made several joke appearances in Hollywood blockbusters such as Die Hard 3. Artists in America also found inspiration in the flimsy tin-can structure, turning it into something more useful – like a queen size bed or a kitchen stove.When sales started plummeting in the late 1980s, some U.S. dealers tried to clear their stocks by throwing in a free Yugo with an Oldsmobile or a Cadillac.”Of course, Yugo was never a BMW or a Cadillac, but I think most Americans did not know how to appreciate it,” said Momcilo Spajic, a proud Serbian owner of a Yugo – one of the nearly 800,000 produced by the Zasava, or Flag, factory since 1980.”This is driving in its most natural form. You feel every bump, squeak and jolt, and one can enjoy the sweet smell of gasoline and exhaust fumes,” he said. “No car can replace it.”Although it was a flop in the U.S., Yugo enjoyed iconic status in the former Yugoslav republics – something like the Volkswagen beetle in West Germany or the Trabant in East Germany.It was also exported to East European states, but not in the same numbers as to the U.S. mostly because Zastava could not meet huge domestic demand.Zastava is finally stopping the production of Yugo because its new owners, Italy’s Fiat, plans to start the assembly of its own compact, the Punto.As Zastava’s workers prepared to bid farewell to their greatest commercial success so far, they have attached a handwritten sign on the tailgate of the last Yugo on the production line.It reads: “Cao, nema vise” – “Goodbye, no more.” Automakers face legal heat over $100 air conditioner tax charges
From autos.ca.msn TORONTO – Automakers are being accused of deceiving vehicle buyers into paying a $100-per-vehicle charge on air conditioning which is presented as a Canadian tax but is really part of the negotiable price. A class action suit filed in Ontario Superior Court against five automakers seeks refunds of the charge to everyone who paid it. The $100 federal excise tax on air conditioners, paid by manufacturers when they produce or import a vehicle, “is really just part of the sale price and is not actually an obligatory tax payment,” stated Toronto-area lawyers Brian Osler and Glyn Hotz. The lawsuit, not yet tested in court, contends that manufacturers and dealers misrepresent the charge as a retail excise tax that everyone buying or leasing a vehicle is obliged to pay – not part of the price that can be dickered over. “They try to make it difficult for you to negotiate the price and understand exactly what you’re really paying for,” Osler said in an interview. “But all that stuff is just part of the sales price – it’s just the cost of getting the car.”The proposed class action names Ford Motor Co. of Canada, Chrysler Canada, Honda Canada, Toyota Canada and Nissan Canada. Representatives of Chrysler, Nissan and Toyota said their companies hadn’t been served with the suit and had no response. The other companies didn’t respond to requests for comment. General Motors and other automakers also impose the charge but are not cited because no buyers of their products have come forward as complainants, Osler said. The lawsuit, with seven lead plaintiffs, seeks restitution of the payments that were represented as an excise tax.It also alleges a conspiracy and fraudulent representation to pocket the “unconscionable” charge. It’s unclear how much money would be at stake in the litigation if the Ontario Superior Court agrees to hear it as a class action, but the statement of claim suggests $2.5 billion and seeks $50 million in punitive, exemplary and aggravated damages. As a class action, any compensation would be shared among people who are sufficiently like the named plaintiffs to be recognized as members of the class. However, there are several legal hurdles the plaintiffs must cross before their suit is recognized by the court as a class action. Osler said the tax has been in place since the late 1970s – “it goes back quite a ways.” “The manufacturers and dealers tell you that there is an excise tax. The reality is there is no $100 excise tax on a retail sale and they know it,” said Osler. “When they say, ‘We want you to pay an extra $1,000 because of delivery,’ at least most people probably know you can negotiate that. But when they say, ‘You’ve got to pay a tax,’ you’re not going to negotiate that – you’re just going to pay it, like any good Canadian taxpayer.” Osler is also involved in a suit filed in February accusing Transport Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency, Mercedes-Benz and BMW of violating the Competition Act by forcing buyers to pay large fees for unnecessary vehicle modifications and approvals on cars imported from the U.S. He also filed suit in June 2007 against Mister Transmission (International) Ltd., alleging illegal fees for providing repair estimates. A court hearing on whether this should be certified as a class action is set for early October. Motorcycle Accident Attorneys Orange County
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