VWWerke

Fiat 500L previewed ahead of Geneva unveiing Bravo! Bellissimo.... NOT! What a great idea, cross-breed cute Fiat 500 with not-so-alluring MINI Paceman concept, itself previously crossed with even-less-alluring Fiat Panda and you end up with the panacea to Fiat's ongoing North American sales conundrum! I see Mr CEO Meltifaceoni has done it again! Dear F.I.A.T. If you truly hanker for success in the North American market, may I suggest you rapidly develop a Mazda Miata rival in the form of the excellent Fiat Barchetta of the '90s, followed up by a contemporary model of the radical and highly individualistic Chris Bangle styled Coup? Fiat, you might just get somewhere.....

Fiat 500 wagon to be unveiled in Geneva: bound for US market Good points DCinBC, I fully agree with you about the US being a complex multi-faceted market that spans across a very wide spectrum of car buying habits. Unfortunately, it appears that the majority of US customers are not convinced enough to take that plunge regarding the Microcar. As you once again correctly highlighted about California and the West Coast, I actually perceive California to be by far the most cosmopolitan and forward thinking state in the US, at least where automotive solutions are concerned, a state blessed with a demographic that relishes taking on fresh and intelligent alternatives to the Status Quo, hence the well-known early/high adoption rates of Green vehicles there. I personally love Fiat, especially after I first drove a 1st generation Punto to be exact, all the more amazing vehicle for the fact that the ditzy owner had been driving it without oil for a long time without the engine skipping a beat, proving that the claim from Fiat about it's then new FIRE engine could run for 100 miles without oil was true, I drove that car back in 1998 and its still working perfectly today! I actually was on the verge of buying the gorgeous 500 back in 2006 when it first came out, but decided to wait and see what VW was going to do with the Beetle.....then they went and screwed that up! VW's lineup have been rather lacklustre and rewarmed whurst-like recently but I do hope they bring out the 'Bully' as is or, going very far beyond reality here, the astonishing XL1, I'll be in there like a shot. Anyway, the 500 is, by a country mile, far better built than any other Fiat you care to remember, and it appears to be very reliable too! If I was in the market for one now I'd go for the Twin Air model.....amazing engineering and much closer to the original in spirit and charm. As for Melifaceoni being smarter than most of us, well..... http://www.autoblog.com/2012/01/17/marchionne-admits-50-000-unit-sales-goal-for-fiat-500-incredibl/

Fiat 500 wagon to be unveiled in Geneva: bound for US market Introduce a WAGON version of a Microcar that has already bombed in a very discerning market that has a well known history of flatly refusing to buy Microcars and recently.....WAGONS? So Mr Meltifaceoni thinks by hybridising these two epically failed market segments into one dogs dinner of a mongrel he will somehow end up with a product that magically becomes greater than the sum of it's parts! Brilliant CEOesque infantile thinking, just like what would be expected from the mind of the jumped up sales-rep they usually are. Alas, yet another bungling self-referencing Mr CEO of the Auto World gets it right once again.....NOT! Hellooooooooooo!

Opel strategy a failure says GM Vice Chairman "GM will never sell Opel also because they have there a high-level development center with engineers and technicians of the highest quality." Spot on! These clueless GM shills need to understand that Opel is the only component in the fetid menagerie that is the All American corporapist beast GM that can inject any semblance of world-class engineering and German level "perceived quality" in their products. Without the disciplined spirit of Adam Opel Werke, GM would be all Autozone cum Fisher-Price toy level product integrity!

Suzuki Regina, Q and Swift EV Hybrid concepts revealed I totally agree with 'rogers', that design for the "Regina" channels the DS so amazingly well it actually seems to out-French the French! It also seems to capture the utilitarian\simplistic charm and style of Citro?n's Ami 6\Dyane. Even the interior looks like a DS. Now if only the DS3 looked like this, or better still Citro?n, how about a new DS model influenced by this design, scaled up to the size of a C6 named DS6!