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Automotive News - February 2003 2003 January February March April May June July August September October November December 2004 January February March April May June July August September October November December 2005 January February March April May June July August September October November December 2006 January Bentley Motors expects to spend more than $16.5 mn this year on a new sports car for the Le Mans 24-hour race in June. Bentley won the Le Mans race 5 times in the 1920s. The carmaker was placed 4th last year and 3rd in 2001, its first Le Mans race since 1930. Bentley is planning to quadruple annual sales to as many as 8,000 cars by 2007 by increasing the proportion of lower-priced, sportier vehicles on offer including the Continental GT Coupe, a new model. Chrysler plans to build small engines with Mitsubishi and Hyundai at a new plant in Dundee Michigan just south of Detroit. The plant will produce about 600,000 4-cylinder engines a year starting in 2005, and is part of a joint venture between the 3 companies called the Global Engine Alliance. The same engine will also be produced in Japan and South Korea next year and the total annual output from the 3 sources will be 1.5 million engines. DaimlerChrysler may build a new plant in Ontario, Canada, but only if it gets backing from the government, its union and its suppliers. If agreed it would be only Ontario's second major new plant in about a decade. Of the 17 new North American plants built since 1990, just one is in Canada, 7 were built in the U.S. deep south and 6 in Mexico. The rest were located elsewhere in the United States. DaimlerChrysler and ThyssenKrupp AG, Germany's No. 1 steelmaker, are in talks to create a joint venture for car steering systems. The 2 companies have been in talks for several months and are thought to have signed a letter of intent last month, giving ThyssenKrupp the option to buy out DaimlerChrysler's 40 % stake in the venture in 2005. Fiat will invest more than $400 mn to retool a plant in central Italy to produce a new line of light commercial vehicles jointly developed with PSA Peugeot Citroen. Fiat supplied half the trucks and vans sold to businesses in Italy in December. The agreement comes as Fiat struggles to return to profit. However, commercial-vehicle sales at Fiat Auto surged 45 % to 15,590 units, increasing faster than the 32 % increase for the market as a whole in December. Honda has opened production facilities in Malaysia. The 170-million-ringgit plant will initially produce 20,000 units per year for the domestic market. This new factory in Malaysia will act as an important focal point for Honda in ASEAN. Honda has a 51 % stake in the Malaysian unit. PSA Peugeot Citroen will begin manufacturing its new family of small gasoline engines, developed with BMW, at a new production unit in Douvrin, France at the end of 2005. The new unit, which will be attached to an existing plant that produces engines for both PSA and Renault, will require an investment of some $465 mn and employ 820 people. The $750mn cost would be divided according to the volume of engines produced for each firm. Hyundai will build a $50 million U.S. proving ground in California City, Calif. The 4,300-acre facility will be the test site for next-generation Hyundai and Kia vehicles. The Proving Ground site is located 100 miles north of Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert (north of State Highway 58). Construction will begin later this year and the facility is scheduled to open in late 2004. MAN Chief Executive Rudolf Rupprecht says he doesn't expect speedy consolidation among Europe's truck makers. "The manufacturers are all so big that no one can really afford to take over another one," Rupprecht told one German newspaper. The CEO also said that MAN's commercial vehicles unit will make a profit in 2003 after breaking even in 2002. He added that the unit aims to raise its West European market share to a level in excess of 15% this year and 18% in the medium term. MG Rover Group's strategy to open up niche markets with new products sees the company enter the commercial vehicles sector for the first time. The development of car-derived vans from the small car platform, brings the total number of vehicles in production at its single Longbridge factory to 11. The MG Express is based on the MG ZR hot-hatch, and the Rover CDV is derived from the Rover 25. Approved LPG conversions will also be available. TWR - Tom Walkenshaw Racing, the British automotive engineering group that recently lost some £20 million by investing in the failed Arrows F1 racing team, has gone into administrative receivership under PriceWaterhouseCoopers. PWC administrator Rob Hunt said he hoped the business could be sold. TWR has been a supplier of specialist engineering and assembly services to vehicle manufacturers including Volvo, Renault, Ford and GM. It employs some 500 staff. Studebaker, a company that went out of business 40 years ago, has been revived in name and to a massive new Sports Utility Vehicle. A prototype version of the military-inspired Studebaker, which looks similar to GM's Hummer H2, made its public debut the recent Chicago Auto Show. It was built by independent U.S. carmaker Avanti Motor Corp. and company CEO Michael Kelly says that sales will start in August. "The interest level is extremely high," Kelly said of initial public reception of the 7-passenger truck, which is 17 inches longer than a Hummer and being tagged by Avanti as an Xtreme Utility Vehicle Visteon has signed a $2Bn, 10-year deal with IBM. The agreement calls for IBM to provide wide range of IT services worldwide. IBM will supply mainframe support, data centres, application development, data network management, desktop support and disaster recovery. The deal will enable Visteon to move away from the Ford based systems it inherited from its former owner. Volvo, the world's second largest truck maker, is said to be holding talks with other truckmakers to sell the 45% stake it holds in rival Swedish producer Scania. Volvo bought the stake in Scania in 1999, but was prevented from merging by EU competition rules. Volvo has until April 2004 to divest the stake. Volkswagen, which already effectively controls Scania, is the obvious candidate, while both MAN and Toyota are also seen as potential buyers. Volkswagen has denied that it has reduced its target for the sales of the luxury Phaeton saloon from 14,000 to 7,800 units this year. VW is maintaining its 2003 sales target of 7,800 units and 20,000 in 2004. The model will not be delivered to the US market, where half its sales are likely to be made, until next summer. VW is reported to be investing more than $100 mn into expanding sales and distribution in North America by revamping 310 of its outlets. VW is looking to make the US its second-largest market after China within the next few years and double the volume of international group sales in the next three years. On the lighter side .... some strange but true stories. Piet Maas of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, became so frustrated when his car would not start that he burned his neighbour's garage down. He became jealous that his neighbour's car started first time, every time while his own was so unreliable. Richard Mason of Ottawa, Canada, has now officially the worst driving record in the world. He has been prosecuted for drink-driving 93 times over 7 years. In Hungary, good drivers are being given chocolate sweets by roadside police as part of a nationwide initiative to combat rising accidents. In America, nearly 100 cars had punctured tires when a lorry spilled 60,000 razer-sharp screws along a mile of main road in Cloesburg Bridge, Kentucky. Traffic police in Iran are recruiting children to catch bad drivers. The youngsters have been told to supply the registration numbers of cars that fail to stop at intersections. Police called to investigate noises coming from a car in Lancciano, Italy, discovered an 85-year-old man making love to his 74-year-old girlfriend. The man ran off, naked from the waist down.

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