No deal with those

So let’s present the not-really-candidates to buy either Jaguar, Volvo and Land-Rover or all of them together!

The unlikeliest are:

DaimlerChrysler – well, Daimler has decided to loose the Chrysler name, so why on earth should Daimler make another marriage when they just divorced their 10-year long partner? Also Mercedes is far to close to the three brands, Land Rover, Volvo or Jaguar.

BMW – some seem to like such a deal, I tend to differ. Land Rover or Jaguar are not interesting to BMW, remember Rover? And btw, BMW already owned Land Rover and seemed quite happy to get rid of them. After all, they could have kept Land-Rover just like Mini.  Volvo? They are front wheel drive cars, so what platform or component advantage would such a deal have for the BMW? Although some analysts speculate that Volvo and BMW customers are different, in our increasingly heterogenic world, who knows. So such a deal is not going to happen.

Volkswagen – Skoda and Audi are the Volvos of VW. So why adding the real thing, when Skoda and Audi are selling nicely? And VW has other problems to think about, the shareholding structure and Porsche, productivity and cost efficiency as well as the reshaping of the VW make.  How aboutLand Rover and Jaguar? Land Rover is a niche player and in combination with Bentley might be an interesting luxury option for VW. Jaguar is loosing money, rear wheel drive and therefore difficult to swallow. So, a VW deal is unlikely.

GM- oh please !

Japanese – Honda and Toyota don’t seem to wish to buy in general and show that brands can be developed from scratch quickly and successfully. So why on earth should they buy problems when they don’t have any?

technorati tags:Ford, Jaguar, Volvo, Land-Rover, BMW, Mercedes, Daimler, Toyota, Honda, Porsche, Skoda, Audi, Automobile Industry, buyers

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Let’s have some fun with Volvo, Land Rover and Jaguar

OK, so now we know officially that Fords wants to sell it’s silver. Everybody has known that for quite some time and if somebody had made Ford an interesting offer they would have sold those three long ago. But nobody seems to make an offer interesting enough. Why?

Industry “insiders” play games and publicly try to marry especially Volvo to some other car firm, like Renault-Nissan, PSA or BMW. For whatever reason, the big Japanese are not in the game. Maybe because Japanese firms have never really bought any big rival, considering those actions and the consequences too messy. And as they have shown, it’s easier to create brands like Acura or Lexus from scratch.

So let’s have some fun and explore some options over the next days. I have my favourite solution which I will present at the end of this “series” and I sincerely hope that Ford doesn’t make a deal before we finish our speculations. That would indeed spoil the fun

technorati tags:Jaguar, Land-Rover, Volvo, Ford, Automobile Industry

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Smart logic for colours

I like the Smart ForTwo, I really do. But I don’t get the colour-equipment relation. Why isn’t it possible to order a Smart ForTwo in “Passion” trim (Luxury) with “stream green” body panels? “Stream green” is only available with the “sporty” version called “Pulse”.

Another example: by paying twice as much for the Brabus compared to the basic “pure” version, you are getting less than half the choice of colours, silver or black for the Brabus instead of white, black, red, blue, grey and black.

That’s what I call artificial marketing restrictions.

Winterkorn: Difficult to get so many things wrong in so little time.

The latest news from the VW Group in the last month or so are quite worrying. It almost looks like much of what was gained over the last 20 years will be reverted or endangered… in only a few months. Sales were up this year and results in general were improving. In the last years, Pischetrieder’s team and project had gained the credibility from all. Still a lot of work to be done to be where the company should be, but things were on track.

19.5cm is long, not smart!

Most men (and women) will tell you that 20cm is bloody long. Now in car terms 20cm length can mean the world. For example luxury cars are often offered in two lengths: normal and long. The long S-Class has additional 13cm, the long Audi A8 has additional … 13 cm and the long BMW 7-series has got additional 14cm. That must be some kind of German consensus or standard for the VIP legroom requirement.

Wie smart ist Daimler-Chrysler?

Einem Blogpost folgen typische Kommentare zur Marke smart und deren Autos. Die smart Kritiker teilen sich üblicherweise in die, die die kleinen Flitzer nicht mögen und die, die smart eine Teilschuld am wirtschaftlichen Mißerfolg von DC geben.