Just for fun, let’s start right off topic, with trains.
You might have noticed that my colleague Simon Warburton has been getting about a bit of late, attending a CLEPA conference in Brussels last week and, after that, getting around to see a few suppliers to bring you an interesting series of interviews with the likes of Belgian employers organisation Agoria, BWI Group vice president Dan Warrell and Delphi Automotive CEO Rodney O’Neal, all well worth a look if you haven’t already.
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In the course of his travels, Monsieur Warburton (he’s fluent in French and makes a fair fist of several other European languages) blogged about the lack of wi-fi on Eurostar (he’s also expert at getting cheap fares and travelled in steerage for GBP39) despite the fact you can now get it for free on Chiltern Railways (also my local service which has done nothing but improve trains, stations, lines and service since taking over the franchise over a decade ago). Fair play to Eurostar, a proactive PR apparently spotted the complaint and emailed to say there wasn’t any yet but wi-fi would start to be introduced from 2013 on its shiny new train sets though no-one was yet sure if it’d be free or paid-for.
I’m pleased about those upcoming ‘shiny new train sets’ as, back in September, I went Eurostar to Lillle with Toyota en route to the Valenciennes Yaris plant and thought the train I was in – we were travelling the equivalent of the airlines’ premium economy – was looking a little shabby. A panel hung down under my table, exposing the wiring to the table lamp, because a screw had gone AWOL. I pointed this out to a French train attendant who slammed the panel shut. “Voila, fixed,” he proclaimed, and disappeared. One guess what happened next bump in the tracks…
To be fair, the current train sets have been in service since Eurostar opened in 1994 and most people I know would far rather go with them to Europe from St Pancras than with an airline from ‘eathrow. And the business class, sampled as a guest of Nissan a couple of years ago, was really rather good, especially the hot breakfast.
The Tokyo show opened this week in its shiny new venue and our Chris Wright was there, blogging and reporting. Everything is handily packaged here in a family-sized, take-home bag for your convenience.
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By GlobalDataSaab continued to fascinate and frustrate in the usual equal measure. Sadly, the UK unit has gone into voluntary administration – which in the UK means you call in the men in suits from the big accountancy firm before your creditors do; MG Rover did likewise in 2005 – and we hope the outcome is as positive as possible; we know a nice PR lady there who has helped j-a at a variety of automakers over the years. Again, all our coverage is in one place.
Automakers continue to climb into bed with each other and the latest marriage of convenience is between BMW and Toyota sharing li-ion battery and diesel engine tech. Makes sense. Anorak here noted that Toyota supplied the 1.4 diesel for BMW’s first Mini.
We also had some interesting news suggesting the currently US-built Altima, a nice sedan based on the (Toyota technology based) hybrid I tried at a Nissan show-and-tell in Portugal a few years ago, could go global. That prompted our Glenn Brooks, he of the just-auto Production Life DataBase (PLDB), to think about the ramifications.
‘Twas a popular read this week, that.
Have a nice weekend.
Graeme Roberts, Deputy Editor, just-auto.com
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