“Worthy but bland”. “Same sausage, different sizes”. “Jacked-up Avant models”. Audi’s crossovers have been called many things by their detractors over the years, though it never prevented them from selling very well. Eventually, though, Audi got fed up and said “Enough!”, promising that going forward it would develop a distinct design language for its Q-series models. The Q7 was the first test, and it’s pretty much universally agreed-upon that it was a test that Audi failed. So it was with mixture of anticipation and fear that everyone waited for the new, “adventeruous” Q2 to be revealed. Finally, the curtain fell, leading many to proclaim:… Continue Reading …
Car sales in Europe continue their double digit growth in February, after a short interruption in January. Sales are up 13% to 1.077.352, the best February score since 2008 and the 30th consecutive month of growth for the European car market as it continues to slowly recover from the severe crisis. As in January, the gains are across almost all of Europe, with only Greece (-32,4%) and The Netherlands (-15%) contracting. The latter is due to a change in taxation of fuel efficient vehicles, which artificially boosted registrations in December, so the Dutch market should normalize as the year proceeds. The big winner is again Italy (+27,3%), once again larger than France (+13%) and now even the #2 market behind Germany (+12%) as the UK (+8.4%) traditionally has a weak first two months of the year as customers await the bi-annual license plate change in March, which usually pushes the UK to the #1 spot that month.
This is our third installment of our series on car models which continued to be produced under a new owner and a new name in China after having been retired from their original market. In part 1 we discussed the 
In China, Suzuki licensed production of the Alto to two manufacturers. Changan Auto, Suzuki’s manufacturing Joint Venture partner, produced the Alto from 1988 until 2008 as the Changan SC7080. Simultaneously, Jiangnan Auto produced their own version of the Alto, called the JN Auto. Jiagnan also exported CKD (Complete Knock Down) kits to PSA in Tunisia for local assembly as the Peugeot JN Mini (just over 7.500 assembled until 2003) and to Iran Khodro until 2000 for assembly as the Iran Khodro Alto, to compete with the Saipa Nasim, which was a locally assembled Kia Pride/Mazda 121. Jiangnan was taken over by Zotye in 2009 and the car was renamed Jiangnan Alto or Jiangnan TT. It was marketed at the end of 2010 as the cheapest new car in the world, with a price of 18.800 yuan, or US$ 2,830 at that moment’s exchange rates, close to the price of India’s Tata Nano. Production is said to have ended in 2013, but new registrations are still reported in 2016. Reportedly as a replacement to the TT, Zotye started production of the 
Volkswagen has been the most successful foreign car brand in China, thanks to being one of the first players in the market, as early as 1978. And in 1984, Volkswagen beat Peugeot-Citroën in to set up the first passenger-car production Joint Venture in China when it closed a deal with SAIC (Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp.) to assemble Santana sedans, a model that would continue uninterrupted production for 30 years. A few years later, in 1990, VW started a second Joint Venture in China, this time with the oldest local car maker FAW (First Auto Works). Because of plunging gasoline prices in North America in the 1980s, US demand for the Volkswagen 
Car sales in China are up 3% in February to 1.348.856 units, after growing 11% in January. However, as the week-long Lunar new year holiday moves between January and February, it can influence car sales in those months. Therefore most analysts prefer to compare combined January and February sales to the year before, as it gives a more realistic picture of the direction of the market. And that direction is still up, helped by the continued tax cut on small vehicles (up to 1.6 liter engines). In the first two months of 2016, the Chinese car market has grown 7,75% to just over 3,5 million vehicles. The share of local brands continues to reach record levels, now at 44,84%, up from 39,14% in February 2015 and from the previous record of 43,29% last month. The other trend we’ve witnessed in the last year also continues: SUVs gain 55% to 1,27 million sales and MPVs add 14% to their volume to 436.000 sales, while sedans drop 13% to 1,78 million sales. If this trend continues, SUVs will outsell sedans sometime in the next year or so.