Paul Tan on the Automotive Industry
Motor Image is looking to reignite the Subaru brand in Malaysia with the introduction of the new Forester and Impreza hatchback between June to August. This includes the highest factory spec Impreza possible, the 2.5-litre, 16 valve, turbocharged WRX STI.
Shannon Teoh was in Singapore to get an introductory feel of the two new Imprezas that will appear on our shores this year.
Read more after the jump.
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DRB-HICOM is currently evaluating whether or not to keep the Tata franchise in Malaysia, according to DRB-HICOM group managing director Datuk Mohd Khamil Jamil. Options currently are the logical three – A) keep as is, B) expand, or C) let go. According to Business Times, DRB-HICOM officials will be meeting up with representatives from Tata in May 2008 to discuss the future of the brand in Malaysia.
The current agreement between DRB-HICOM 70% owned Scott & English (M) Sdn Bhd and Tata Motors will expire by June 2008.
Tata is currently ramping up efforts in our region, with the new Tata Xenon (shown above) launched in Thailand not too long ago. Tata has been constantly featured in world headlines for the past few months thanks to its Tata Nano low cost car project and its recent acquisition of the Jaguar and Land Rover premium brands.
The latest automaker to jump onto the low cost car bandwagon is Fiat. The company plans to reveal its low cost car somewhere in 2010. According to Fiat R&D Chief Harald Wester, the new low cost car will be slighty larger than the Fiat Panda, but did not quote any indicative price range for the car.
The new low-cost Fiat will help with the company’s position in markets such as South America, Russia, India and China. It’s not known yet whether the new low cost car will be Fiat-badged or not, as there is a possiblity of a new brand being used. Fiat is still conducting internal studies on whether a low cost model could damage Fiat’s image.
This car would effectively be the spiritual successor to the Fiat Palio, a supermini designed by Fiat as a “world car” aimed at developing countries. There has been speculation on the revival of the Fiat Uno nameplate as well.
Toyota and General Motors will be recalling over 662,000 vehicles sold in the US due to defective power windows. The affected vehicles are the 2003-2004 production year Toyota Corolla, Toyota Matrix and GM’s Pontiac Vibe which is based on the Toyota Matrix platform.
Driver and passenger door glass bolts may loosen and come off, causing the door glass to separate from the window regulator. This could result in an abnormal rattling noise from the affected doors.
Toyota has officially revealed plans for its upcoming sports car co-development program with Fuji Heavy Industries, who owns the Subaru brand. The compact rear wheel drive car will feature a Subaru boxer engine, and both Toyota and Subaru will market the car separately under its respective badges. It will be built on a new Subaru platform, but will be designed by Toyota.
“I think there is high potential for this car. We haven’t had a sports car for a long time. This is a long-awaited-for model. Pricing would be not prohibitively high,” said Toyota Motor Corp CEO Katsuaki Watanabe. The car should be quite fun indeed, with rear wheel drive dynamics and that rumbly boxer engine note.
Since FHI president Ikuo Mori says he has personally driven a test version of the car and is pleased with it, development must have been going on for quite some time now. The car will be launched in 2011.
Other Toyota-FHI joint ventures will also increase, and FHI will stop producing compact vehicles of its own design. It will use Daihatsu badge engineered vehicles instead. The Subaru Justy based on the Daihatsu Boon was the first such Daihatsu-based compact vehicle, with the next one set to be a Subaru-badged Daihatsu Coo in October 2008.
Also confirmed is Toyota’s increase in Subaru stakeholding from the current 8.7% up to 16.5% in a deal valued at 31.1 billion yen (US$311 million).
It looks like rear safety belts will become compulsory from Q3 2008 onwards, if the Road Safety Department’s plans go through successfully. Old cars produced before 1995 are expected to be exempted from the rule for a period of 3 years so that there is ample time for rear seat belts to be retrofitted. According to the RSD, the technicalities of retrofitting rear seatbelts are currently being discussed with car manufacturers.
The ruling will begin with a 3 month grace period where a warning will be issued instead of a summon, after of which real enforcement will begin. RSD director general Datuk Suret Singh says that the RSD estimates risk of heavy injuries of death can be reduced by 50% with this new rule, or about 350 lives a year based on 2007 statistics.
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A twin turbocharged inline-4 diesel engine producing 204 horsepower? Sounds familiar but we are not taking another look at the engine powering the BMW 123d again here, instead this is Mercedes-Benz’s new OM651 turbodiesel engine, which is available in 3 stages of tune.
In the 250 CDI state of tune, the 2,143cc turbodiesel produces 204 horsepower at 4,200rpm and 500Nm of torque between 1,600rpm and 1,800rpm. Two lower states of tune are available – a 220 CDI tuning which results in 170 horsepower between 3,200rpm and 4,800rpm and 400Nm of torque between 1,400rpm and 2,800rpm, and another 200 CDI tuning produces 136 horses between 3,000 and 4,600rpm, and 330Nm of torque between 1,600rpm and 2,800rpm. Installed in the W204 C-Class, the 204 horsepower engine pushes it up to 100km/h in a mere 7.7 seconds, with 60 to 120km/h taking 9.4 seconds.
The twin turbochargers are installed in a sequential manner, with one high pressure small turbocharger spooling up quickly for low revs and the other low pressure large turbocharger taking care of the higher engine speeds. The high pressure turbo that serves the low revs has a bypass duct to prevent it from being overloaded, and it ceases work from medium engine speeds onwards.
The engine also has a fourth generation common rail system with 2,000 bar rail pressure, a big up from the previous generation 400 bar pressure. Maximum ignition pressure is 200 bar, and injectors are piezoelectric.
For smoother operation, two Lanchester balancer shafts with low-friction roller bearings help counter the vibration inherent with inline-4 designs. The engine’s forged crankshaft also has eight counterweights turns supported by five bearings. Conrods are made of forged steel, with weight optimised by Mercedes-Benz engineers. The aluminium pistons slide up and down in cast-iron barrels for minimum frictional resistance.
Lastly, the engine uses a two-mass flywheel which connects a primary flywheel to a secondary one by use of springs to isolate the crankshaft’s vibration from the drivetrain.
You will find a power and torque curve after the jump.
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Proton has launched the Proton Persona in the Brunei market, priced at BND$20,771 (RM47.636.50) for the 1.6 litre medium line manual and BND$22,495 (RM51,590.35) for the 1.6 litre medium line automatic.
It is available in seven colours, namely iridescent white, metal gray, tranquillity black, solid red, light gold, blueberry tea and solid white. Proton has been in Brunei since 1999, distributed by Worldwide Motor Sdn Bhd.
The sales manual for the upcoming all-new Nissan Teana has been leaked onto the internet and shows us that the new Teana will be a toned down production version of the Nissan Intima concept displayed at the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show.
The new Teana still maintains the Intima’s CLS-like banana car look. The aggressive split headlamps have been replaced with more traditional looking ones, and the front bumper has been changed to one that offers much more airflow to the engine bay as compared to the concept’s. The suicide doors are gone, as expected.
Look after the jump for 2 more scans featuring the new Teana’s side profile and two different interior colour schemes.
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Alfa Romeo conducted a poll for the public to pick the new Alfa Romeo MiTo’s new logo, much like the earlier poll which allowed the public to pick a name for the car. The result is the logo you see above, though there’s really no certainty if this poll has any effect on what the actual logo will look like at all.
The previous name poll had resulted in Furiosa being the top pick, but the final MiTo name wasn’t even in the choice of names to pick at all!
I’d put my money on a logo that looks something more like number 3 or 4. Such a logo would also look better on the passenger-side dashboard of the car.
Venusbuzz.com
