This week's collection of motoring snippets reveals why Nissan sees a future in the saloon market, how Mazda's heading upmarket with its new models, why utility vehicles are still the backbone of Ford's line-up and more.
So long, saloon?
While the popularity of SUVs continues to soar, the saloon might be due a comeback, according to Nissan’s US boss. Denis Le Vot said the firm decided to make its recent IMs concept a saloon after a survey found twice as many youngsters preferred them to SUVs.
More snazzy Mazzies
Mazda is aiming to move upmarket by designing cars with fewer feature lines. The firm’s European design boss, Jo Stenuit, said: “Premium brands tend to have very pure lines. I think we’re going more premium now because we’re trying to delete all the unnecessary lines.”
Ford's truckloads of profit
Ford’s North American arm celebrated selling more than one million of its F-Series trucks last year. In total, 1.075 million of the pick-ups were sold, an average of one every 29.3sec. That was enough to generate more than £38 billion of sales revenue.
Porsche's problematic pallet
Porsche’s quality control boss, Frank Moser, says one of the toughest tasks in building any car is matching colours for interior trim items. Moser noted that the 11 interior colours offered on the new Porsche 911 have to be matched across 16 equipment levels and 300 visible parts, made from 51 different materials from 76 different suppliers.
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no future for saloons
i don't think that saloons will ever make a full comeback, there really isn't much future in them. unless of course your a top chauffer, in which case a saloon may prove to be better for some reasons.
i think the way the sales are going more people want a practical suv or a little hatchback. if you are looking for something a bit bigger than a hatchback then many companies offer their hatchback on an extended chasis making it an estate.
saloons don't carry the practicality of a suv or hatchback so i don't think we will see any significant rise in saloons throughout the next few years, whatever car makers may say.
SUVs will fall, and I suspect
JLR gained fickle conquest customers, which was all well and good in its own right, as long as they remembered they are fickle.
But they were foolish in the extreme to simultaneously snub those customers who would never have even considered being disloyal.
McGovern and Speth are corporate vandals.
eseaton wrote:
OH BE QUIET - you talk such rubbish - go back to your Barryboy Nova
I really hope the saloon is
I really hope the saloon is coming back, though my own prediction (as I'm sure I've mentioned before :) ) is that they will be fastback hatches and possibly a little tall to allow battery packs. Think Jaguar iPace. People can still have their practicality and sit a little higher but in something with a bit of elegance to the styling rather than the current breed of fat a**ed slab sided boxes of metal.
I'd say youngsters think SUVs are naff (is that a word anymore? showing my age) as they are what their parents drive, school run fake off roaders with as much street cred as a knackered Citroen Xsara Picasso MPV. Indeed I think the current breed of fake off roaders are just an evolution of the old people carrier that went out of fashion, and these are due to fall out of fashion too.
WallMeerkat wrote:
I was saying this in another post the other day, referring to the lack of 3-door small hatches. A few years ago young, first time drivers bought three door Clios and the like, but you don't see them buying the current larger 5-door models. When the 3-door Corsa goes, the 3-door MINI (according to Autocar), etc etc, what will they be able to buy, apart from a Fiesta, that isn't the same as their parent's SUV or dowdy 5-door hatch? I really can't believe that all the owners of the DS3, for example, have been clamouring for Citroen to replace it with an SUV.