2006 Geneva Motor Show Coverage by TCC Team
(2/19/2006)
Lexus Gaining Traction in Europe
While Honda officials may be
questioning the role of hybrids, Lexus, the luxury arm of
Toyota
, has no such
qualms. Gasoline-electric technology could soon account for a quarter of Lexus
sales in Europe, suggested the automaker’s vice president, Karl Schicht, during
a
Geneva
preview. Lexus sales have been steadily growing in recent years, he noted,
though they fell slightly short of the maker’s 30,000 target last year. The RX
sport-utility vehicle has been the biggest seller for Lexus in
Europe, and the RX400h hybrid racked up 4,612 sales in
2005, about 30 percent of total RX volume. That number, noted Schicht, “was
constrained by volume,” and should see a significant increase in 2006, “further
proving that hybrids are a brand-shaping technology” for Lexus. A second hybrid,
the GS450h, will be launched in 2006, noted Schicht, so for the year as a while,
hybrids “could become 25 percent of our total sales,” said the Lexus
VP.

2006 Lamborghini LP 640
Lamborghini: More Power With LP
640
For those who think the “base”
Lamborghini Murciélago is underpowered, there’s now the 640-horsepower
Murciélago LP 640. The sports car took its bow in
Geneva
Tuesday, and will hit dealer showrooms
by summer, likely at a European price tag of around 250,000 Euros. The
four-wheel-drive LP 640 will be able to hit a top speed of 211 mph, noted
Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann.
Opel GT Returns

2006 Opel GT
While it was seriously
underpowered and had more than a few technical problems, the Opel GT sports car
of the late ‘60s remains a fond memory for many automotive aficionados, some too
young to remember the original. But they’ll soon have a chance to check out the
reborn Opel GT. The European arm of General Motors lifted the covers on the new
roadster at the Geneva Motor Show, and will be launching sales later this year.
The Opel two-seater is based off the same Kappa platform as the new Pontiac
Solstice and upcoming Saturn Sky. Under the skin, the GT will be powered by a
turbo 2.0-liter engine making 260 horsepower, more than atoning for the original
sports car’s sins. Expect 0-60 times of less than 6.0 seconds, noted Opel
marketing chief Alain Visser. The projected price is 29,900 euros.
Unfortunately, GM officials acknowledged, there will be no right-hand-drive
version for markets like
Great Britain or
Japan
. But at least for now, demand
for the Solstice is so high, the three models are still likely to be capacity
constrained for some time.
GM Streamlining for Profit
General Motors arguably “hasn’t
been the world’s largest car company in 10 to 15 years,” suggested the
automaker’s “car czar,” Bob Lutz, during a Tuesday night dinner. “We were a
conglomerate of four to five regional companies with relatively little to do
with each other. No wonder Honda and
Toyota
have been cleaning our clocks.” The tough-talking veteran
said there may be a positive side to the threat of losing sales supremacy. It is
a wake-up call for the GM team that it can no longer expect to win without
putting up a real fight, Lutz said.
A number
of steps are underway to improve the odds of a comeback, he added, starting with
the switch to a global product development system this year. Among the goals, GM
expects to halve the number of global architectures it now relies on for its
varied vehicles. That could have saved $200 million just by having products like
the Opel Signum and Malibu Maxx share more of their underlying components, said
Lutz. The critical thing is to make sure that there is no badge engineering, he
emphasized. The new GM system will reduce the number of prototypes it needs by
40 percent, said Lutz, saving up to $200,000 for each of the advanced vehicles.
And GM expects the new development system to help it shave 20 percent in
materials costs through the better use of economies of scale. Overall, GM is
gunning for a 25-percent reduction in engineering costs and overall product
development expenditures.
Under new global system, specific
types of vehicles will be assigned to various regional development centers, no
matter where the products will ultimately be marketed. Saturns, for example,
will largely be developed in Europe , along with
Opel vehicles, according to Lutz. Europe
, he
noted, does a better job on medium-size passenger cars than the U.S. Large
trucks will be the purview of American engineers and designers. Small pickups
will be handled by
Brazil ,
while “very small cars” will go to Asia, primarily what used to be the Daewoo
operation in
South
Korea . But Lutz stressed that while
development might be focused in one country, “members of the team will look like
the United Nations.”
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