Aussie Motoring

You would hardly expect to find a brand new Commodore or Falcon going for a song on Pirate Pete’s Aussie Freebies now would you?

But if you were in America and happening to be surfing through Overstock.com just before Christmas last year you certainly would have seen this car going for a heavily discounted price.

Meet the Chrysler Crossfire a rather neat looking car that comes from Karmann in Germany. The 2005 model sold so poorly in the US that Chrysler resorted to the unusual sales ploy of selling them online through Overstock.com (the name says it all).

In fact so bad were the sales of the 2005 Crossfire that Chrysler will not be selling a 2006 model in the United States even though the 2006 Crossfire is being built in Europe.

The Crossfire is powered by a 3.2 litre V6 that certainly delivers some credible performance figures - but with a price tag of around $30,000 for the base model 6 speed manual coupe I guess it’s no wonder the Crossfire has not found much favour with the buying public in the US.

The Chrysler Crossfire is available in Australia with the base model coupe selling for $69,990 with your choice of auto or manual transmission

Honda has announced plans to have a completely new manufacturing plant on line in 2009 to produce 150,000 Civics and Fit models for the North American market. Reports suggest that the new plant will have the capacity to increase production to 300,000 models a year bringing Honda’s total capacity in North America to something around 1.8 million units a year.

Kia hasn’t been sitting back and taking things easy either. It’s currently in the final stages of bringing this large plant online in Zilina, Slovakia. It’s Kia’s first plant in Europe and construction has cost around one billion Euros.

When the plant is in full production it will be working round the clock to produce 300,000 units anually

Hyundai also has a new production facility in Europe.

Hyundai outsold Mitsubishi and moved up another place to claim sixth spot in the Australian car market in April with 3965 vehicles sold and a 5.8 percent share of the market, up 1.1 percent over April 2005.

Year-to-date, Hyundai has overtaken Honda and also moved up a place to sixth with 16,073 sales, accounting for 5.3 percent market share, 0.6 percent more than this time last year, according to official car industry figures for April released today by VFACTS.

At April’s end, Hyundai was up nine percent over the same period in 2005 while the 2006 total market was down 3.4 percent to date.

Hyundai was the only top ten car brand which sold more vehicles this April compared with April last year.

This was also Hyundai’s highest April sales in the last seven years.

In the SUV segment, Hyundai leapt to fifth in April from seventh in March, with Tucson moving up to fourth most popular Compact SUV from sixth in March.

Hyundai retained its fifth rank in passenger car sales with a year-to-date market share moving up 1.0 percent to 7.2 percent.

When Nissan released the Tiida I had a feeling I had seen that car somewhere before. It was just one of those niggling little thoughts in the back of my mind made even more annoying because the claim from Nissan was that this was an all new design.

Well now I know why I had that feeling. Nissan in the US is quite open about the fact that the Nissan Versa (that’s what the Tiida is called in the US) is actually based on this car:

the Renault Megane.

That doesn’t mean that the Tiida is not a good car - in fact it just goes to enhance the quality of the car because Renault have been building great cars for many years.

If you want to see what the Americans think of the Versa/Tiida then click here

We’re all aware of the effects that the rising price of fuel is having on just about every part of our lives but there are still a few changes happening that you might not expect as one journalist in the US found out this week.

Evidently he has to travel to Houston and he was going to need a hire car while he was there. It seems that in Houston - since the fuel prices started to climb - you can hire a 4WD cheaper than you can hire a small, medium or sedan.

The same reporter wonders if the used-car market could be being turned upside down too as big gas guzzlers go for a song while more fuel-efficient small cars increase in value.

I doubt that it is anything that we will see here.

Yesterday I wrote a brief piece about the new Audi Q7 SUV - released in the US but not yet available in Australia.

One of the features of the Q7 is a keyless entry system that will unlock the car when anyone who has the correct key approaches the vehicle. The person who has the key doesn’t even have to push a button, it just unlocks automatically. Many of these vehicles will also start without the need for a key to be inserted into an ignition lock.

Now you might think that a system like that was extremely secure and made it impossible to steal any vehicle that has that system fitted but in fact it can make the theft of the vehicle so much easier. Just ask David Beckham - he’s had two very expensive BMWs stolen by car thieves using simple computer software.

The thieves need nothing more sophisticated than a laptop to take any vehicle fitted with high tech keyless entry.

You can read more of the story here

Audi’s latest entrant in the luxury high-performance Sports Utility Vehicle market is the Q7.

It’s not yet available in Australia but it certainly is on the market in the US and Audi are offering road tests to some unusual people. Not only are they providing vehicles for motoring journalists but they even provided one to Guy Kawasaki, a venture capitalist, who took the time to provide an comprehensive and even humourous report on his blog.

You can read it here at Automotive review: Audi Q7 and it is well worth reading.

Ford Australia and the Federal Government announced yesterday that Ford would receive an assistance package worth over $50 million to ensure that Ford continues to build cars in Australia.

$40 million of that package will go towards the development and manufacture of the next Falcon and Territory models. Does this mean that we can expect to see John Howard embossed on the steering wheels of new Fords?

Seriously though, wouldn’t this money be better spent developing smaller and more fuel efficient vehicles?

Leadpile.com a leader in online lead generation services is suggesting that people shopping for luxury cars are moving online in the US and the time is not too far away when many of those who are shopping for luxury cars will never set foot inside a showroom.

Instead the initial approach will be online, the car will be taken to the buyer for a test drive and all further negotiations will happen away from the dealership. The CEO of Leadpile suggests that if a buyer is prepared to pay $100,000 for a vehicle then he should expect to receive service that is commensurate with the value of the car.

Requiring a potential purchaser to attend a showroom to see the car may not be seen as providing that level of service and it will only take one dealer to move away from the showroom scenario for others to follow.