We mentioned yesterday the first public showroom sighting of the Audi R8 Spider at the new Audi showroom in London, England. And while the mere sight of the convertible version of the R8 left us wanting to book the next flight to London, we couldn’t go by a day without mentioning just how enormous the new dealership is.
Covering 190,000 square feet, the five-story Audi dealership is being touted as the company’s largest dealership in the world, and justifiably so considering that it took six years for the building to be completed.
In addition to the five-stories – the first three of which are showroom floors that Audi says can hold as many as 120 cars, while the top two floors occupy the “Audi Quattro Rooms”, the complex’s business and creative floors – the new Audi dealership at West London also has two basement floors where a 32-bay maintenance area is located, as well as parking spaces for employees and guests alike.
A workplace of this magnitude needs a lot of serviceable and efficient employees and Audi has said that the dealership will have at least 100 employees working together to provide the best Audi service possible.
Ambitious as it may be for Audi to move-in to an enormous dealership, the brand sees it as the first step in increasing the brand’s significance in the UK. According to Jeremy Hicks, director of Audi UK, “In its scope, size and complexity, West London Audi is like nothing we’ve built before. It is 100 times more complicated than a normal retail centre."
You don’t say, Mr. Hicks. You don’t say.
In the ever-evolving world of automobiles, technological innovations are as important – maybe even more – as putting together a powerful engine. There’s always that thin line between being an innovator and being a follower and if you ask all car manufacturers all over the world, all of them would prefer being the former than the latter. For the past couple of months, Honda, together with scientists from Purdue University, may have discovered the next breakthrough in vehicular development after discovering that microscopic carbon nanotubes just might become a quicker and more efficient way of distributing electricity in cars. In addition to that, the newly-discovered nanotubes are also being touted as a better – lighter yet stronger - material than carbon fiber.
The discovery of carbon nanotubes has the capacity to revolutionize the way cars are going to be produced in the future, especially when it comes to the production of batteries, cables, fuel cells, and solar cells. But what’s more important than all of that is the fact that this new breakthrough can also become beneficial on other industries like robotics, and supercapacitors. According to Dr. Hideaki Tsuru, the project director of the Honda Research Institute USA, "Our goal is not only the creation of new and better technologies and products, but to fulfill Honda’s commitment to environment sustainability.”
Like we said, sometimes there are scientific discoveries that go beyond the realm of the industry it is in and this is one of those times. Whether or not the discovery of carbon nanotubes results in more efficient cars remains to be seen, but it does open a world of other possibilities not just in the auto industry, but in others as well.
Press release after the jump.
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After months of negotiations and a few bumps in the road along the way, General Motors has finally reached an agreement with China’s Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery to sell an 80% stake of Hummer to the China-based company.
News of the impending sale have been floating around for months now but for a time, the deal was met with some strong resistance from the Chinese government especially since the proposed purchase of a gas-guzzling vehicle like Hummer goes against the country’s new protocol of becoming more eco-friendly out on the roads.
But now it seems that the road to the sale has been smoothened out and while the deal still needs approval from a number of regulatory agencies in the US and China, it’s looking like it’s only a matter of time before Hummer finds a new home out on the Far East.
For its part, Tengzhong’s foray into the world of consumer vehicles is a step away from its comfort zone of only producing commercial trucks and industrial equipment. Nevertheless, the company is optimistic that it can make a seamless transition into producing fuel-efficient vehicles down the road.
According to Tengzhong’s CEO, Yang Yi: "We are excited about some of the initiatives already underway at HUMMER that we believe our investment will be able to accelerate, particularly related to the creation of the next generation of more fuel-efficient vehicles to meet not only future regulations but also customer expectations."
As part of the deal, GM will continue producing Hummer vehicles in its plants until June of 2011 with a possible one-year extension until 2012.
Press release after the jump.
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It wasn’t that long age when the name ‘Lotus’ evoked images of highly-powerful sports cars, capable of duking it out with the Ferraris and Lamborghinis of the world. But for one reason or another, the iconic brand fell off the radar and has yet to regain its long-lost glory.
That may soon change, however, as Proton managing director Datuk Syed Zainal Abidin Syed Mohamed Tahir – that’s a long name – recently made it clear during the launch of the Lotus Evora that the company is turning over a new leaf and is seeking to take back what its spot among the world’s elite car brands.
Speaking in a group of Malaysian reporters, Tahir said that the time was ripe for Lotus to return bigger and better than before. "We believe Lotus’s potential is in the branding. If you go across the globe, the brand recognition is very strong but we have not lived up it, but that’s all about to change,” he said.
If Proton does have plans on returning Lotus to its former glory, it has to take advantage of the brands reputation as an iconic brand that has long produced some of the world’s best sports cars.
Don’t look now but it sounds like the new McLaren MP4-12C is going to have a Sipider offspring pretty soon.
This bit of news was reported by Autocar after finding out that McLaren’s new MP4-12X assembly plant includes a huge space specifically reserved to cater to a ‘Webasto RHT Sub Assembly’.
Now, if you got confused with the name, we’ll be more than happy to give you a hint. The ‘RHT’ on the name stands for ‘retractable hard-top’, which, in plain English would mean a convertible.
For their part, McLaren has neither confirmed nor denied the rumor, only saying that Webasto is but “one of several potential suppliers.”
We’ve always considered McLaren to be a little more closed to giving away company secrets that easily but we’re thinking that this is one occasion where they cat got out of the bag far sooner than they expected and no matter what kind of spin they put in it, it won’t change the growing sentiment that the MP4-12C is about to go topless pretty soon.
2010 is poised to become a big year for Aston Martin as it tries to regain some ground it lost after stumbling through the global financial crisis. The British automakers are scheduled to release three cars for the next calendar year with one of them being the highly-anticipated One-77.
Unveiled at the Monterey Car Week a few months ago, the One-77
supercar, which carries over 740 horsepower on a 7.3-liter V12 engine, will be sold for around $2 million where only 77 (hence, the name) will be produced. Production of the One-77 will begin at the tail-end of the year so you can expect sales to commence sometime in 2010.
In addition to the One-77, Aston Martin will also roll out its all-new flagship four-door sedan, the Rapide. While not as expensive as the One-77 – the Rapide sells for $230,000 – the new sedan is expected to hit American soil sometime in the spring of 2010.
Without question, the most surprising of three new Aston releases is the Toyota IQ-inspired Cygnet. It’s surprising not only because out of the three, it’s the only that doesn’t at least carry a six-digit price tag, but also because it kind of veers away from Aston Martin’s reputation for releasing exclusive sports cars.
Nevertheless, the Cygnet is going to be sold exclusively in Europe at a rather pedestrian price of only $32,000, a far cry from the selling price of the Rapide and the One-77.
It’s been an enormously successful car for the better part of its run over the past few years, but as it turns out, Nissan may finally be ready to park the Nissan R35 in the garage and be replaced by the R36.
According to the boys over at Pistonheads, Nissan vice president of global product planning, Andy Palmer flew in to check up on the brand’s GT-R program at the Nurburgring. While he was there, Palmer reemphasized Nissan’s continued commitment in the development of the GT-R program, so much so that he also hinted on a model (the R36) replacing the R35 in the coming years, expected to be 2013.
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Less than two months after General Motors launched a partnership with eBay to sell their vehicles in California, the automakers have decided against renewing the contract with eBay that was supposed to be set up for extension after September.
While the program generated mixed results across the board, GM eventually decided to scrap it after officially launching its ‘may the best car win’ nationwide marketing and advertising campaign . GM spokesman John McDonald made it clear to Automotive News that while the eBay program was an exciting initiative in the beginning; it eventually had to be scrapped to give way to GM’s turn to a new direction.
The GM-eBay program didn’t fare very well as far as online purchases were concerned. But, according to McDonald, the program did generate a ton of attention from prospective buyers, most of which used the eBay program as a stepping stone to eventually buying a car from their local dealerships.
For the meantime, GM is now solely focused on their new ‘may the best car win’ campaign, as well as their new 60-day money back guarantee promotion.
These days, the push towards electric car production has not been limited to just big time auto manufacturers; even the small-scale brands have taken their turns in creating their own electric vehicles, proving that the electric car could very well be the future of the industry.
Take Tesla, for instance. While it doesn’t have the same resources as other car brands out there, the California-based electric carmaker has nevertheless made quite an impression in the industry as a foremost proponent of the electric car revolution. Though a relative newbie in the industry with a still questionable financial structure, Tesla has been able to produce some of the more popular electric cars out in the market today; so much so that it even secure a loan from the Department of Energy to help finance the building of a new plant to develop the Model S.
At least, that’s what the original plan was. As it turns out, the company is also using the funding it secured under the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program to develop a whole new fleet of electric cars, including a minivan, a CUV, and a utility van.
Continued after the jump.
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Do you see anything wrong with these photos? It’s a beautiful Nissan GT-R with one notable problem: it has no tires.
The Nissan sports car was the victim of a robbery in Long Island as the petty crooks took out all four tires from their spokes in the middle of the night. The hapless owner, who we can only assume was dozing off when the crime happened, had no way of knowing that his gorgeous ride would end up tireless when the sun came up.
We don’t condone – nor will we ever – any form of robbery but we can bet that the thiefs who stole the GT-R’s wheels had amateurs written all over them.
That’s because you can always tell the difference between a smooth criminal from a riff-raff just looking for kicks on a weekend night. The former knows what he’s trying to steal and sets about it in a discrete and timely way. The latter just takes anything he can and prays that it’s worth something out on the market.
As in the case of this one, we’re guessing that those douches had no idea what a Nissan GT-R is, so they just decided to swipe the tires, thinking that they’re worth more than the whole car itself.
To those who did this, we believe in karma, boys; sooner or later, it’s going to run you down.
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