Remember when Hertz announced that it was adding the Lotus Elise and the Lotus Exige to their fleet of rental cars? Well, now we know just how much it’s going to cost us to sit behind one of these bad boys for a day.
The rental car agency announced that the two Lotus models can be rented out for the princely sum of €458.54 per day in Italy and around $600 per day in the US. Unfortunately, that price doesn’t include insurance packages, which you’ll probably need if you do rent out one an Elise or an Exige.
It’s a lot more expensive than any of us previously thought, but then again, the thinking goes that if you can afford to pay that amount for a chance to blast off into the sunset with an Elise or an Exige, then it should be well worth every penny.
In addition to announcing the rental price for the two Lotuses, Hertz also announced that they are now offering a rental BMW Z4 sDrive 23i and a Fiat 500 Barbie edition. The Z4 will be available in selected dealerships in Spain with prices starting at €121 per day, while the Fiat 500 Roso will be available in The Netherlands for just €35 a day.
We all remember John O’Quinn for two reasons. One, he was one of the most feared – and revered – lawyers in the land, having once successfully secured $17.3 billion in a tobacco settlement.
The other thing that we were fond about John was the fact that he was an avid car enthusiast. Actually, even ‘enthusiast’ sounds like an understatement. His list of cars ran long and among those that were prominent and high-profile included JFK’s Continental limos, Franklin Roosevelt’s Packard Limo, a Ford Escort that once belonged to Pope John Paul II, and of course, a Batmobile.
Sadly, the auto world lost a great man today after O’Quinn was killed as a result of crashing his Suburban yesterday. It was a life taken prematurely and the irony of it all was that he was killed by the very things he loved most in this world.
Fresh of Audi opening its largest dealership in London, another top-flight car brand is set to open their own, this time in the waiting arms of the millionaire’s playground, Dubai.
That car brand is Ferrari, and recently the Prancing Horse opened a mammoth single-storey floor space dealership – some say the size is in the neighbourhood of 1,000 square meters – in Dubai. Present during the official ribbon cutting were Ferrari F1 drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Giancarlo Fisichella, who were both in town because for the final race of the F1 season in Abu Dhabi. Also present were Edwin Fenech, the general manager of Ferrari Middle East & Africa and Shafqat Malik, the CFO of Aldar Properties and Chairman of Fadar Retail, which, incidentally, is a major partner of Ferrari in the region.
The official launch of the new dealership came with a number of exhibits and side events, including a major Ferrari parade on October 30 that will start in Dubai and end at the Yas Marina F1 circuit in Abu Dhabi – the site of this weekend’s race. The parade will feature about 100 Ferraris – old and new – and will be highlighted by the new Ferrari California.
For all the raves the praises the Lexus LF-A has received since it was launched, it looks like Toyota isn’t optimistic about the sales of its new supercar, even saying that it would take a miracle for them to break even.
According to the company, the €375,000 price tag for each of the 500 LF-A’s that were produced wouldn’t be enough to offset the insanely expensive costs – including a plethora of technological features - the company incurred from the development and construction of the supercar.
For all intents and purposes, the materials used on the LF-A have never been used before. Of all the materials used in the car, only five can be found in the rest of the Toyota and Lexus fleet of cars. Toyota even used a carbon fiber-reinforced plastic for the LF-A’s chassis construction and body panels, as well as a powerful 552 bhp 4.8-liter V10 engine. It’s not exactly a typical car, is it?
Despite the expected losses Toyota is expected to sustain, the company made it clear that the primary objective for the creation of the LF-A was to jumpstart interest in the brand and use the supercar as the precursor for Toyota’s mission of producing better vehicles in the future.
So for now, despite the overwhelmingly positive reaction for the Lexus LF-A, Toyota has resigned itself to the growing possibility of not making a profit with the car. Nevertheless, Toyota is optimistic that the technology behind the LF-A will become the measuring stick for which all other Toyota and Lexus vehicles will be based from.
Over at Tesla, a new motto is apparently taking shape: “you don’t come to us; we come to you.” In an attempt to establish a reputation as a brand that caters to the needs of its customers, Tesla Motors is keeping true to its mission of being of service to its patrons. So, as a way to ensure that they have the customer’s back in ways no other brand has, the California-based company recently announced that the arrival of their new at-home service vehicle.
It’s called the Tesla Mobile Service Rangers and it was created to allow Tesla owners to have all their auto needs taken cared off right at the confines of their own homes. Whether it’s the annual service tune-ups or unsuspected malfunctions, the Tesla Mobile Service Rangers seeks to provide Tesla owners with the most personal of care.
The flip side of this new service is that it comes with a price, and it’s not a cheap one at that. Anybody who wishes to give these guys a call will be charged a dollar per round-trip mile with a minimum charge of $100. Then again, the price for convenience is well, priceless. Besides, if you can afford to buy a Roadster, then we think you won’t have any problems forking over $100 for its maintenance.
Magna has been making a lot of news lately and it looks like it’s bound to make some more in the coming months. After having successfully won a bid to acquire Opel, the Canadian-Austrian auto parts magnate recently notched another tie-up with a premium carmaker after it was revealed that Magna would now be providing aluminum bodies for Mercedes’ new supercar, the SLS AMG Gullwing.
As part of their new agreement, Magna Steyr, a subsidiary of the Magna conglomerate, will be tasked to provide a number of parts for the SLS AMG including the trademark gullwing doors, the hood and deck lids, as well as engineering support for the new Mercedes supercar.
It’s not the first time Magna’s facility in Graz, Austria has been involved in some way shape or form with Mercedes, having produced and assembled the MB Geländewagen for the better part of 30 years. The Graz production facility has also produced a slew of other cars from other manufacturers including the BMW X3, the Chrysler 300-C, the Jeep Grand Cherokee, as well as soon to be produced cars like the Aston Martin Rapide, the Porsche Boxster and the Porsche Cayman.
Now you can add another car on that list: the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Gullwing.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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