Funny old show
Posted by Jason Barlow at 9:55AM on Tuesday 09 January, 2007 1 Comment
Funny old show, this one. You can usually rely on the Americans to deliver big, ballsy brush stroke messages, a kind of industrial equivalent of Die Hard-era Bruce Willis shouting 'yippee-ky-ay motherf**kers!' as he bungee-jumps through plate glass windows in pursuit of the bad guys.
Not this year. As reality continues to bite and analysts predict that imports will out-sell domestic products for the first time ever, the Big Three were about as bullishly extrovert as Woody Allen at his most hand-wringingly morose. This was an extraordinarily tentative performance from a business apparently lacking in direction or purpose.
Symbolically, the Saturn Aura was named North American Car of the Year at a ceremony on Sunday night. That's the US version of the Vauxhall Vectra, by the way.
New Ford boss Alan Mulally, meanwhile, made his first appearance in front of an expectant press corps, and immediately trotted out some nonsense about how good the underwhelming Ford 500 saloon was and how great everybody was and what a fabulous brand the Blue Oval was and about how much he was looking forward to the challenging road ahead and maybe it might be a good idea to take a few more lessons in how to use an autocue. (Pause, breathe, go Alan. Honestly, it'll work...)
Bill Gates joined us via satellite from Las Vegas to confirm that Ford has teamed up with Microsoft to install its new in-car operating system into pretty much the entire range from 2008. (Bill was as close to a Bruce figure as it got, which pretty much sums things up.)
Then they showed us the marvellous Interceptor concept and the fun but silly Airstream. Frankly the whole thing felt about as cutting edge as the ersatz cover version of an ancient Lenny Kravitz song that popped up on the soundtrack.
Nevertheless it was an Andrew Lloyd Webber-style spectacular compared to what Mercedes rolled out later that day, essentially a bunch of 4matic 4WD Mercs driving very, very slowly on ice, followed by the winners of the US version of Strictly Come Dancing ensconced in a vast four-door cabrio concept called the Ocean Drive (badged, incidentally, as a Mercedes rather than a Maybach).
The highly derivative Acura Advanced Sports Car concept - the new Honda NSX - wasn't much better, nor was Bob Lutz's contention that 'I've never been as excited about anything in my career' as he pushed GM's 'quick, we better do something, ANYTHING! Let's talk it up as the car version of the i-Pod' electric Chevy Volt concept. Pull the other one, Bob.
Which left the way clear for the British brands, amazingly, to steal the show. Rolls' Phantom Drophead looked utterly magnificent, and Jag's C-XF concept, which I first saw a few months ago, was even sexier and cooler than I remembered. Yippee-ky-ay, and all that.
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Jaguar C-XF might help Jaguar to recover its financial problems a little bit more. However the German rivals are providing more and more technology to that segment and this creates a problem for other brands. People are amazed with Germans technological gadgets but the Jaguar has a unique soul which cannot be found in German cars. The new Jaguar is an amazing design and actually when you compare with 5 Series, E Class and other models, C-XF is the best looking for the segment. I hope that Jaguar could recover the problems with this new design. Also Ford should not transfer interior parts from other Ford brands, I know it minimize cost but kill the soul. The Discovery 3 has same mirror adjustment with Ford Fiesta. By the way Mercedes is making brand streching and strech to it every where. Ocean Drive is very good looking car but the position is major problem. We all know that Maybach used to a sensational car but we know that sales are not sensational as it was predicted. CLC (Ocean Drive) is kind of a retro car, it may not be looking old but it brought the spirit of old times. Some CEOs might be driving a cabrio S Class, it would like nice.