It’s been a busy week as usual with a whole raft of announcements jostling for position, but one of the most eye-catching, along with BMW and Toyota formalising their joint ventures, was Mazda’s decision to end production of the rotary-engined RX-8 after nine years.
The RX-8 went into production in 2003, having originally been exhibited as the RX Evolv concept at the 2001 Tokyo show, but the last car has now rolled off the line at the Ujina 1 plant in Hiroshima, with no direct replacement planned.
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Back in the UK, just-auto’s automotive director, Dave Leggett, talked to Toyota sales head, Jon Williams, who provided a dose of reality to May’s initially impressive numbers that saw the market rise 7.9%.
While the performance was relatively upbeat, the bald figures don’t really tell the full story, given the widespread, aggressive selling and ‘big discounting’ taking place.
“It seems to be occurring in all sectors of the market,” Williams said. “Volume and premium, retail and fleet. Everyone is being affected by what’s going on, including us.”
Here at just-auto, we also ran some research extracts from our QUBE Automotive Glazing sector intelligence service, ahead of an automotive glazing webinar scheduled for July 10.
These extracts look at panoramic roofs and switcheable glazing with Saint-Gobain Sekurit for example, noting in the early 1980s, the average surface area of glass in a car was around three square metres, with the figure rising to 4.5 square metres today.
“The clear view up to the sky, feeling of freedom and large amount of light are the key selling points to consumers, who are spending an increasing amount of time in their vehicles,” said the supplier.
Meanwhile, back in the US, former group vice president of global engineering for General Motors, Jim Queen, has joined the board of Carbon Motors, the Indiana-based police car manufacturer.
Ford also outlined plans to debut its inflatable rear seatbelt in Europe on its new Mondeo next year. The automaker maintains it is designed to reduce head, neck and chest injuries for rear-seat passengers, often children and older occupants, who can be vulnerable to such incidents.
In the event of an accident, the belt rapidly expands to disperse crash forces across a body area five times greater than that achieved by a conventional seatbelt, claims Ford.
Across in Asia and after a relatively quiet period of industrial relations, officials representing Hyundai Motor’s main union have apparently walked out of wage negotiations, threatening strike action, with a vote slated for 10 July or 11 July.
Returning to Europe saw the seemingly never-ending speculation surrounding Opel’s future strategy to address over-capacity and profitability given further impetus, with the automaker’s supervisory board’s approval of a new business plan, that appears to ask more questions than provide answers.
Some of the key highlights include: investments in the Opel/Vauxhall portfolio, combined with a new sales strategy; a revised brand strategy; plans aimed at reducing material, development and production costs and further leveraging synergies from the alliance between GM and PSA Peugeot Citroën and a redefined export and market expansion strategy.
All of the above are bound to trigger German union reaction despite the rather conciliatory tone struck by European Employee Forum chairman and vice chairman of Opel’s supervisory board, Wolfgang Schäfer-Klug.
“The 2012-2016 business plan approved by the supervisory board is a good basis for the future of Opel,” he said. “The support by GM shows how important European engineering and the European Opel/Vauxhall sites are to the company.”
However, he signed off with somewhat of a parting shot across Opel’s bows: “Opel must focus on its strengths in order to grow and secure jobs even in a difficult market environment,” he said.
Staying in Germany, I had confidently predicted its national team to roundly thrash Italy last night (28 June) in the semi-final of this year’s Euro 2012 tournament. I recently visited Federal-Mogul in Nuremburg with the town bedecked in German flags and in whose central square I saw a huge screen for the tournament framed by dozens of er, beer tables.
I imagined thousands of fans gathered in the balmy evening sun yesterday to watch Germany stroll past Italy, but Paul the (predicting) octopus I am clearly not.
Italy absolutely walked it and could have had a bucketful more than the two goals they did score. We in England are now consoling ourselves that as the Italians didn’t actually beat us in normal time last week, we can’t be as bad as we think.
Have a peaceful weekend,
Simon Warburton
business editor
just-auto
