Some of you may have heard the story about the Lamborghini delivery guy who decided to give the Lamborghini he was delivering a car wash before sending it to the customer. He drove into one of those automatic car wash machines at petrol stations. Needless to say, it was a disaster. The car was too wide for the machine and the paint was completely ruined. Do not make his mistake. If you ever want to give your Lamborghini a car wash… here’s where to do it. Miracle Detail.

Miracle Detail is an extremely premium car wash outfit in the UK which basically is self-proclaimed best carwasher in the world Paul Dalton’s one-man outfit. Paul has been washing cars since he was 13 years old. He charges £5,000 (RM33,399.50) for his top-of-the-range Pinnacle car-wash, which uses the best techniques, equipment and expensive Zymol wax which costs £7,000 a tube. About three tablespoons of the Zymol wax is used per car.

The RM33,399,50 car wash is a 52-stage process which begins at dawn with degreasing, four washes with four different buckets and four different sponges, with filtered water at a perfect temperature of 30 degrees celcius. He uses electronic probes to measure paint thickness to micron-level for removing scratches. Polishing is done using rotary polishers. Extremely gentle towels are used to dry the car. It’s just ridiculous. One of his clients is Rod Stewart, who sends his £700,000 Ferrari Enzo to Miracle Detail for car washes. £5,000 sounds fine for a £700,000 car, but RM33,399.50 can almost buy you a Naza Sutera here! But the results are fabulous. Check out Miracle Detail’s photo gallery.

As an automobile-loving freak even from young age, I always made it a point to catch the show Knight Rider on TV. Knight Rider was the typical crime-fighting series, and surrounds FLAG (Foundation for Law and Government) agent Michael Knight and his car/partner KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand).

Click here to read the rest of Knight Rider Movie

Industry insiders have confirmed that Honda will be producing a hybrid version of the Honda Fit subcompact car, known as the Honda Jazz on our Malaysian shores. Rumours of a hybrid engined version of the Honda Fit was first reported by the Nihon Keizai, a big financial daily in Japan.

Nihon Keizai mentioned in it’s previous report that Honda is developing a new 1.0 liter hybrid engine for the Honda Fit hybrid, but an anonymous source said the Honda Fit hybrid will likely use the Honda Insight’s engine, a 1.0 liter 12 valve 3-cylinder Honda Integrated Motor Assist hybrid engine. The Fit would also likely replace the Honda Insight in it’s market segment, though production of the Insight would likely continue for bragging rights as one of the most fuel-efficient vehicle manufactured on US roads, though in reality it lost the title to the Messerschmitt KR200. It was also the first hybrid car to be on sale for the mass market in the US.

The Honda Insight engine is a SOHC inline-3 1.0 liter engine making 67 horsepower at 5700rpm in gasoline mode and 73 horsepower at 5700rpm with Integrated Motor Assist. It comes with both manual and CVT gearbox options. The Honda Insight was featured in the movie Be Cool, where it was called the Cadillac of hybrids. The 1.0 liter IMA engine won the International Engine of the Year award 2000, and held the Sub-1 liter category from 2001 to 2005.

Volkswagen AG has put a hold on it’s plans to introduce Volkswagen cars here through official channels in the Malaysian market. Back in February 2006, Volkswagen said it planned to introduce a total of 9 models here in Malaysia, beginning with low-end models like the Volkswagen Fox and the Volkswagen Polo. Down the pipeline will be more premium models like the Volkswagen New Beetle, the Volkswagen Golf GTI, the Volkswagen Jetta, the Volkswagen Passat and the Volkswagen Sharan MPV. These models are CBU models.

The new National Automotive Policy reduces import duties (from 15% to 5%) for CBU vehicles which come from countries in the ASEAN region. This means competing manufacturers like Toyota, General Motors Corp (we get Chevrolet-badged Daewoos), Isuzu Motors Ltd and Mitsubishi Motors will be able to offer more competitive prices for their CBU vehicles which come from ASEAN countries like Thailand.

This will make the models that Volkswagen originally planned to bring in uncompetitive, effectively killing them even before they start to be sold here. Volkswagen still has plans to assemble cars in Malaysia, as well as make Malaysia one of its regional hubs but there has to be some change in plans on how to achieve those targets. It recently launched its Malaysian headquarters in Wisma UOA Damansara and has invested RM42 million ringgit in Malaysia so far. It has also appointed AutoStadt Asia Sdn Bhd as the sole importer of Volkswagen cars in the country, is in discussions with Cycle and Carriage Bintang on distributorship, and has started talking to potential CKD assemblers.

Source

A quick update, officials from PSA Peugeot Citroen has acknowledged discussions have been held on possible cooperations on projects but there is no current confirmed plan to engage in a joint project. No further details were given. It is probably still too early for anything to be confirmed, and sources for the previous piece of news has given a timeline of a few months for anything to be signed anyway.

Proton previously announced their new partnerships will be revealed by the end of April. It’s a week into May now, but The Edge has reported quoting unnamed sources that Proton’s new partner will be French automobile company PSA Peugeot Citroen.

Proton and PSA Peugeot Citroen

It’s not known whether talks involve an equity transfer, but what is revealed are plans to jointly develop a small car for the Southeast Asian market that could be marketed under either brand. It is believed that the car would be similiar to the Peugeot 106, which was a small hatchback.

The Peugeot 106’s sister was the Citroen Saxo, which was developed to replace the Citroen AX. The Citroen AX of course, was rebadged locally as a Proton Tiara. The Peugeot 106 has since been replaced by the Peugeot 107 (Citroen C1), which shares a platform with the Toyota Aygo. A small car like this could very well replace the Proton Iswara as Proton’s staple offering for the budget market, if it was a sedan instead of a hatchback. Of course, do not misunderstand the mention of the Peugeot 106. It doesn’t mean Proton will be rebadging Peugeot 106 cars, I think it was just used in the report as a reference as to what car Proton and Peugeot would be building together. PSA Peugeot Citroen’s French competitor Renault has a budget automobile developed together with Romanian car manufacturer Dacia, called the Renault Logan, which is basically a Dacia Logan - a Renault Clio platform with a boot. Peugeot could be thinking along the lines of the same strategy Renault has used to enter the budget car market.

Proton officials could not be reached for comment, but sources say that senior management of both companies have met and a memorandum could be signed in a few month’s time. But PSA is not the only company that Proton is in talks with.

Proton and Volkswagen AG

New negotiations with Volkswagen AG have been on-going, and rumours are that Proton might set up a joint-venture company with Volkswagen AG to jointly develop Proton-badged cars to be sold across South-east Asia and India. Word is that it would be a 49:51 joint venture between Proton and Volkswagen, with Volkswagen having the majority share. Two Proton-Volkswagen JV cars are in the pipelines and they will be based on a Volkswagen platform. When asked about the report, Volkswagen spokespersons repeated what it’s CEO had said previously, that any future plans with Proton would be to support Proton only, with no joint ventures or joint programs.

We’ll have to wait for official news from Proton then on whether these reports are true or not, as The Edge did not name a source for the news. I’m really eager for any new updates on where Proton’s heading, as well as eagerly awaiting the launch of the Satria Replacement Model.

Source: Forbes, Reuters

Chrysler is looking into using Chery Automobile to assemble a small car for the international non-US market. The car will be sold under the Dodge or Chrysler brand. This could allow Chrysler and Dodge to enter third-world markets like South East Asia, which are not big fans of Chrysler’s big cars with huge fuel-guzzling engines.

Daimler Chrysler already has an existing partnership with a Chinese company, Beijing Automotive Industry Corp. The joint venture assembles SUVs for Daimler Chrysler and recently the Mercedes Benz E-Class. But the JV company lacks experience and skills to manufacture small cars, which Chery has.

Chrysler could be seeking to produce the Dodge Hornet concept, a small B-segment vehicle smaller than Dodge’s smallest car, the Dodge Neon. The Dodge Hornet Concept was shown at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2006.

Only 70 of 270 suppliers of Proton Holdings Bhd complies with the ISO/TS 16949 automotive quality standard which ensures quality for automotive-specific suppliers. This is only about less than a third, which would explain why Proton cars seem to be sub-standard in terms of quality. Roughly 30-40 of the 270 suppliers do not posess any certification at all, while the remainder are ISO9001 certified.

Proton Holdings Bhd director of manufacturing Datuk Kamaruzaman Darus said that Proton tier-1 vendors must all obtain the ISO/TS16949 certification. There is no time frame for compliance for the moment, with Datuk Kamaruzaman choosing only to say “the sooner the better”.

Datuk Kamaruzaman Darus also said for any future new models, only certified vendors would be used, and minimum certification would be ISO9001. The Proton Vendors Association signed an MoU with UK’s Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA) which provides quality, environmental and health and safety management system certification for ISO9001, ISO14001, ISO/TS16949 and OHSAS18001 yesterday. The Memorandom of Understanding would allow the vendor association’s 140 members to obtain ISO/TS 16949 certification from VCA at a competitive price.

Sales for the Toyota Prius in April 2006 has dropped nearly 25% compared to April 2005, the same time period last year. Toyota sold 7,500 Toyota Prius hybrids in April 2006, compared to 11,345 in April 2005. Sales for the year 2006 to date is also 10% less compared to the same time period in 2005.

This drop has been touted as a reflection of the public’s declining interest in hybrid cars (Carlos Ghosn would be smug about this), but Toyota says the drop in sales is because of a production shortage, nota decline in the vehicle’s popularity.

Jim Lentz, group vice president and general manager for Toyota said to the media “If I had the vehicles, we could do 250,000 this year. We’re going to end April with just a four-day supply of Prius, and I don’t see that situation improving until later this year“. Toyota’s estimate of 250,000 is more than double the amount of Toyota Prius hybrids sold in 2005 (107,897 cars) but looks like whether it’s production issues or lower popularity, the figure won’t be achieved this year.

As the result of the new CBU and CKD car tax structure and gazetted CBU pricelist under the new National Automotive Policy, prices for the CBU Suzuki Swift and CBU Suzuki APV have gone up. To make up for the price increase, Suzuki has added bodykits as standard options for both the Swift and APV. The price for the Suzuki Grand Vitara remains the same. Here’s the new prices.

The price of the Suzuki Swift 1.5 (A) baseline without leather seats and tinting has actually gone up by quite a bit, but don’t worry as manufacturing of CKD Suzuki Swift cars is expected to begin in 2007. Tax on CKD cars are not as high as CBU cars, so you will be able to enjoy a cheaper but locally assembled Suzuki Swift next year.